The Last Ten Books I Got For Free

This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt is a "freebie," and I literally am so overworked that all I could come up with was books I got for "free." Is that unoriginal or what? I've gotten a lot of great books for free lately, though, so I'm excited to show off some of my latest acquisitions. They're only roughly in order, though, because I don't really keep track of exact dates. And by "don't really" I mean "don't at all."

1. Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

I got this as my free book in the Barnes & Noble summer reading program. I know the program says it's for kids through middle school, but you know what? I read the fine print, and there is nothing in there restricting prize-winners to a certain age group. So I am so totally participating in this program every summer until I die! Or until I become embarrassed by how old I am and still turning in the kids' program, whichever comes first. :P Anyway, my review of Counting by 7s will go live on Friday. It was a gorgeous book, but had some serious believability issues.

2. The Marvels by Brian Selznick

Funnily enough, my review of The Marvels went live this past Friday. This was an ARC I got from Scholastic, after I sent a semi-begging e-mail going on about how much I love Selznick's books and I needed to get my hands on this new one now because I just knew I was going to love it.

Well, I didn't. And I feel bad about that. Because the first half of the book, which told a story completely through pictures, is absolutely beautiful. The second half, told in text, is . . . less beautiful. Click here to check out my full review.

3. A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen

This is another Scholastic ARC that I requested. Unlike The Marvels, which I liked much less than I'd hoped, A Night Divided actually surpassed my (already very high) expectations. It's a wonderful book, one that I will most definitely be re-reading over and over again in the years to come. I posted my rave review here.

4. Project Inspired by Nicole Weider

I got Project Inspired through the BookLook Bloggers program about a month and a half ago. It wasn't what I'd thought it was when I requested it (for one thing, it had only a fraction of the page-count I expected), but it was still pretty good. I'm keeping my copy for now in case I want to use it as a reference, but I have a feeling it will vanish during my next belongings purge (i.e. when I go off to college).

5. Cheap Chic by Caterine Milinaire and Carol Troy

This is a book I got through the Blogging For Books program, which usually has slightly better options than BookLook Bloggers. I'm in the middle of it now, and it's pretty interesting: a fashion advice book from the 70s, written for girls who don't have much money. Half of the advice boils down to "don't buy much, but spend lots on what you do," so I'm not sure how helpful it would have been for the truly destitute. Then again, I'm only halfway through it so we'll see. I haven't made up my mind about it yet.

6. The Looney Experiment by Luke Reynolds

This is another BookLook Bloggers read, and it looks pretty interesting. Between my other books and the start of the school year I haven't gotten to it yet, but it's (almost) at the top of the TBR list.

7. Diary of a Jackwagon by Tim Hawkins

This is, yes, yet another BookLook Bloggers book. I only got it two weeks ago and I haven't (as of writing this post, September 2) started it yet. I'm really excited about it, though, because it's by the Christian comedian Tim Hawkins. He's one of the funniest guys alive, and I have literally been sucked into YouTube vieos of his shows for hours on end. I can't wait to start Diary of a Jackwagon!

8. All Fall Down by Ally Carter

This one is only sort of a book for free, because I bought it with a Half-Priced Books gift card from my grandparents. That still counts as free, right? I wanted to put it on thsi list because I'm so excited about it. Anyone who's read my review knows that I really loved it. So finding a hardcover in brand-new condition for only $8, at a store where I had a giftcard, was exciting enough. Imagine the thrill when I opened the cover and discovered that it was autographed! That's right, my new beauty was signed by Ms. Carter herself. Now I call that $8 of free money well spent!

9. Frosted Kisses by Heather Hepler

This was an unsolicited ARC from Scholastic, which I got a few weeks ago. It's sitting on my TBR pile - my "to be reviewed" one, that is, not "to be read." It's in that in-between stage when I've already read it but I haven't gotten my act together enough to actually write a review of it. So I haven't gathered my thoughts about Frosted Kisses yet, but in a nutshell I thought it was a cute story with maybe a little too much petty schoolgirl drama for my taste. Keep an eye out for a proper review coming out October 23.

10. The Missing #8: Redeemed by Margaret Peterson Haddix

This was a Simon and Schuster ARC, arguably one of my most exciting ARCs ever! I'd been reading and adoring the Missing series for like five years, and I was desperate to read the long-awaited conclusion. I poured that desperation into an e-mail to Simon and Schuster, and was overjoyed to find out that my entreaties had been heard - and that a copy was in the mail! Needless to say, all productivity stopped while I devoured the beautiful sucker (because seriously, the cover was gorgeous). It was one of the hardest reviews I'd ever written, though, because I had so much to say I wound up with an abscenely large review that no one would ever want to read. It's shorter now, though still longer than most of my reviews. If you're a fan of the Missing series (i.e. are ready for the spoilers that come with discussing the eighth book in a series) you can click here to check out my review.

Well, what do you think? I've gotten some pretty good books lately. I can't wait to dive into the ones still waiting on my to-be-read pile!

The Marvels by Brian Selznick, 2015

Click to view
on Goodreads 

Caldecott Award winner and bookmaking trailblazer Brian Selznick once again plays with the form he invented and takes readers on a voyage!Two seemingly unrelated stories--one in words, the other in pictures--come together. The illustrated story begins in 1766 with Billy Marvel, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, and charts the adventures of his family of actors over five generations. The prose story opens in 1990 and follows Joseph, who has run away from school to an estranged uncle's puzzling house in London, where he, along with the reader, must piece together many mysteries.

(672 pages; Release date September 15))

 I absolutely adored Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The way he combined text with gorgeous pictures awed me to no end, and I loved the (also gorgeous) movie Hugo, starring Asa Butterfield. I also read Wonderstruck, Selznick's second book using this combined medium, and really loved the story, the pictures, the way I got to see the world through the eyes of deaf kids . . . and pretty much everything else about the story as well!

The first half of The Marvels was everything I had hoped for and more in a new book from Brian Selznick: stunning pictures, a beautiful storyline, compelling characters, and the pure joy that comes from devouring a gorgeous story. My favorite sequences were the ones that showed time passing, like the four pictures showing Billy growing up. Selznick's drew Billy as a little kid learning how to work the curtains, then a few years later working them under supervision, then as an adolescent working them by himself, and then working them as an adult. It's really beautiful.

But then there was the text, and it wasn't so amazing. In the past I don't remember ever being very enamored with Selznick's prose, but it was intermingled with the pictures and didn't really stick out enough for me to really analyze it. Here in The Marvels it's forced to stand by itself, though, telling its own tale without the crutch of Selznick's beautiful pictures, and it really isn't up to the task. Even before the big reveals came, I was just kind of bored by the story. I never had any reason to like Joseph, and his uncle was kind of over-the-top strange about the house. I love a good mystery as well as the next person, but what on Earth am I supposed to make of the way Uncle Albert kept all of the rooms looking as though people from the 1700s had just stepped out, but were actively living in them? I was thinking along the lines of ghosts, time travel, and just plain insanity (on Albert's part), and the real explanation was pretty original but also pretty disappointing.

Partly because of homosexuality. And that's really all I'm going to say about that, because I don't want to spoil anything for people who are going to read the book. It's one thing to put that sort of material in a book for adults, but The Marvels is (according to my ARC, anyway) geared for ages 10 and up, and grades 5 and up. That makes it MG. This is not MG material. And I didn't like being blindsided by it so far into the book, without any previous warning. To be perfectly honest, though, I probably wouldn't have liked the ending anyway - it feels like there's a lot of build-up, between the mysterious story told in the first half and the pressing questions Joseph encounters in the second half, and then the explanation at the end is pretty . . . anticlimactic. I would have much preferred a more poetic, romantic ending to the - well, the explosion we wind up getting.

So yeah. I highly recommend the first half of this book, and I very much don't recommend the second half to anyone. So unless you're going to get the book and only read the first half (which is, actually, completely reasonable - that's what I would have chosen to do, if I'd known what I do now in advance), I say just don't read it. And I'm sad to discourage people from reading a book with Selznick's amazing pictures, but I just can't encourage anyone to read the second half of The Marvels.

Disclaimer: I received a free ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.