New on my bookshelf

Razorhurst by Justine Larbalestier

I received this advanced readers copy of Razorhurst from Allen & Unwin (my second one ever - thanks, A&U!) because I won another comp to review the book. Razorhurst is a young adult historical novel with ghosts, I believe! It's set in the 1930s. You can find out more on its Goodreads page here.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

It seems like everyone has read The Night Circus but me! I've only heard wonderful things about this book and I've kinda been in the mood for a circus-themed fantasy story to delve into recently. I love the cover (all of them, not just this one) and I hope the novel meets my expectations. I haven't read anything by Morgenstern before, so I don't really even know what to expect anyway! Hopefully lots of lovely magical happenings.

New on my bookshelf {YA}

From the title of this post, I suppose you can safely assume these are a few books I've received/bought recently and are, as I say, new on my bookshelf. 

Voila! Bon voyage! Bon appetit! On y va.

A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty

A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty

click through to Goodreads

My rating: 5 stars! 

A Corner of White is the first book in the series "The Colours of Madeleine" (or "The Colors of Madeleine" if you're American) by Australian author Jaclyn Moriarty.

In case you are a new reader of Chimneys and Magic, you might know her as one of my all time favourite authors, whose writing, stories, characters, imagination and words I greatly admire. She wrote Finding Cassie Crazy (the first book of hers I read back in high school), The Betrayal of Bindy MacKenzie, Feeling Sorry for Celia and Dreaming of Amelia (most of these novels have various other titles in nations abroad), as well as a handful of other adult novels. Jaclyn Moriarty led me straight to her sister Liane Moriarty, who also fast become one of my favourite authors ever, especially due to What Alice Forgot (which was the first novel of hers I read). Anyway, enough babbling on about authors and such, there's so much I have to say about this book so let's get a-moving.

The Battle of the Labyrinth (#4 Percy Jackson & The Olympians) by Rick Riordan

The Battle of the Labyrinth (#4 Percy Jackson & the Olympians) by Rick Riordan

Woah. Okay, just let me pause for a minute to gather my thoughts.

I can't believe this series is only five books long! I feel like there are just so many more adventures to be had. But I guess that's what the Heroes of Olympus series is for. Percy when he's older, right? I'm so looking forward to getting my hands on those books.
Anyway back to this book - it was all the fun and danger and action and heroic adventurous epic-ness that you would expect from Rick Riordan. I just love this story so much. Or rather, this whole series.

The Titan's Curse (#3 Percy Jackson & the Olympians) by Rick Riordan

The Titan's Curse (Book #3, Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan

Wheeeheeheeeeee!
I am seriously loving this series. So much so, I'm going to start reading Book 4 as soon as I'm done writing this post. And I never read sequels consecutively, even when I have them on my shelf ready to be read!

The characters are awesome, as usual. We get to know Thalia a lot better in this story, and we also get introduced to some other really great characters too, like Artemis, Apollo, Zoe the Huntress, and a couple of new half-bloods, Bianca and Nico. Clarisse isn't really present in much of this book but that's alright because no one really likes her that much. Hehe.

2013 End of Year Survey

My End of Year Book Survey 

I haven't done one of these before, but it looks like fun, so here we go!

This is hosted by Jamie over at her blog, so click here to get more info, link your own post, etc!

My survey will be a tad different; I'll just pick out a few questions from the many original questions to answer. 

1) The best book I read in 2013?

I have to pick two! I'm sorry!

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. 

Books don't just win Newbery Medals for no reason! Here's a full post on what I thought about this book.

It was beautiful. Charming. Funny. Magical.

Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella.

Probably one of my favourite Sophie Kinsella novels, if not my very tippy top favourite. 

Hilarious fun with deliciously exciting characters, flapper dresses and Charleston dancing.

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

I had a lot of fun writing Goodreads status updates for this one as I read through it. 

You can see them here.

This was a rather intense one. I know it's called The Husband's Secret so I should have expected some mystery and twists, but there's some heavy stuff that these characters deal with! For example: grief, guilt, betrayal, the blurred line between right and wrong, and murder. There were also lots of secrets and tragedies.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman.

I've just been sitting two metres away from my laptop just now, on the couch, reading the last pages of this book. Now I'm here. This little 'my thoughts on...' post will be a tad different, I'll be writing (and rating) in a more segmented fashion. Hope you don't mind. I'll give a rating out of 5 for each category and then at the end we'll see what the average turns out to be! But FYI, the rating I've given this novel on Goodreads is 4 stars. :)