Three weeks ago (Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon day, actually), I went to a library book sale. My goal was to find lots of books for my Little Free Library. I opened my LFL in August, and there's definitely more books going out than coming in at this point. I had almost depleted my stash of books to put in it, so I thought that the $5-a-bag day at the library book sale was perfect to replenish it.

And it was. I came home with nine bags of books. The book sale volunteers said I won the prize for taking the most books home with me. They had a place to leave the bags as I filled them, and after a while, they would see me coming with a full bag and already have the next empty bag ready for me, complete with my name written on it. They were good!

I promised I would share my goodies here on the blog once I finally unpacked all of the bags. It took me several naptimes' worth, but here are the glorious books I found!

This is the stack of children's/young adult. By the time $5-a-bag day rolls around, these sections are already extremely picked over, so I didn't expect to find too much.

This is nonfiction. I honestly didn't even touch the main nonfiction table, sticking more to the memoir-ish books. I thought those would probably be more popular in my LFL.

And these two glorious pictures show what I found in the fiction section. There were so many good books! I kept telling myself, "I'll make it to the end of this table, and then get another bag," but I couldn't make it that far. The bags would be overflowing, and I'd end up with an additional armful to add to the next empty bag. Such a wonderful selection!

And here's the stack I got for myself. Some of these will eventually go into the LFL piles, but I wanted to read them first (How can you pass up a book called The Pope's Rhinoceros?).

Altogether, I ended up buying 167 books, which works out to 27 cents a book. How can you beat that??

Okay, let's try this again. I wrote and scheduled this post last week, but when it published, all that was there was the picture. So. . .​ take two!

Cross your fingers and hope that this one actually posts correctly this time! As for my challenge progress, as always, I need to read more of the books I own. Last year, the Read the Books You Buy challenge really helped me limit the number of books I bought. Not so much this year. Now I just need to get reading them!

I saw this tag by Kate at Opinionated Book Lover, and since my reading life has vastly improved since discovering Goodreads, I thought this would be fun to participate in!

1. What was the last book you marked as "read"?
Robinson Crusoe ​by Daniel Defoe. I've been working on that one on Serial Reader for a couple months, and I finally finished it on Monday!

2. What are you "currently reading"?
Physical book: The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde
On Serial Reader: The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
Audiobook: Frogkisser! by Garth Nix

Positive Discipline: The First Three Years by Jane Nelson (recommended by Christine at Buckling Bookshelves!)

I have The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman out from the library right now, and I've been eagerly waiting to get to it.

5. Do you use the star rating system?
Yup! It's an easy way to keep track of which books I liked and which books I really liked.

6. Are you doing a reading challenge?
​Definitely. I've even already had to increase my goal for the year, and it looks like I'll have to again. I've read 96 books out of 100 so far.

7. Do you have a wish list?
I did create a "to buy" shelf so that when I was in a bookstore or placing an order online I could easily see what books needed to come home with me. It somehow only has 6 books on it, although I buy way more than that when I'm at a bookstore.

8. What book do you plan to buy next?
Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race by Chris Grabenstein is coming out on October 10. I'll definitely be buying that one brand-new right off the shelf!

9. Do you have any favorite quotes?​
I haven't saved any quotes on Goodreads, although my favorite bookish quote is "The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I have that quote on my library wall.

10. Who are your favorite authors?
C.S. Lewis, Jasper Fforde, L.M. Montgomery, Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen. How many am I allowed to list?

11. Have you joined any groups?
​I've joined the One Million Pages Per Lifetime group and the Litsy group (although I haven't really participated in either yet).

12. What do you think Goodreads could do better?
First of all, I LOVE that they finally have the functionality to mark rereads. That was always my number one thing I wished they could do better. Half-stars would be nice. It's not something I would use often, but occasionally I'd like to differentiate between 3, 3.5 and 4 stars.

I'm sure most of us book lovers collect series, or even just books by the same author. How important is it to you to have the covers match throughout the series?

I didn't think it mattered to me at all. The words inside were more important, right? But I've just recently discovered that it matters more than I thought. In May, I bought a copy of The Mysterious Howling, which is the first book in The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series by Maryrose Wood. This is the cover I have:​

Last month, my husband gave me $15 to spend on books on our Amazon order. I found a good deal on a hardcover book I wanted, and had about $4 to spare to buy the second book of the series, The Hidden Gallery. But at some point, the series had been reprinted and the covers had changed. I wanted the one that matched the first book that I already owned. It looks like this:​

But for some reason, that version was about $10, while the reprinted edition was on sale for $3. The reprinted cover looks like this:​

I went with the reprinted cover, because I couldn't justify spending seven more dollars on a book just for a different cover. I didn't think it would matter, until I got the book in the mail. I just like the original cover so much better - and I really want my books to match! - that I will probably end up buying that version at some point in the future. So I guess if I'm willing to buy a book twice just to have matching covers, then it matters way more than I thought it did.

I saw this tag by Kate at Opinionated Book Lover last week. I don't normally take a look at the books I've read mid-year (outside of the statistics), but this looks like a fun way to do so!

I've had a lot of five-star reads this year, but the one that's stuck with me the most is The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson.

I've started a lot of series this year. Continued, not so much. I adore the Penderwick series, and I finally let myself read the last book (although there are rumors of a fifth!). The Penderwicks in Spring by Jeanne Birdsall is amazing.

I love travel narratives, and I just discovered Tsh's podcast, so At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider is a must read for me.

Okay, technically Goodreads tells me this book was released on June 27, but I don't follow new releases that closely to know what all is out there, so I'm going to count it. I loved 100 Cupboards, so I'm definitely on board for a sequel - The Door Before by N.D. Wilson.

New Zealand is on my list of places I want to travel someday, so I was really looking forward to reading Slipping Into Paradise by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. But something about his writing voice just rubbed me the wrong way, and it was not the enjoyable reading experience I thought it would be.

I was hugely surprised by how dark The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo actually is. I don't know how Disney ever made a kids' movie out of it. I'm glad I read it, but it was not exactly what I was expecting.

My book club read The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. It wasn't my first read by him, but it was the one where I decided I would do my best to read everything else he's written!

I'm rereading Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series this year, and I'm enjoying revisiting Thursday's relationship with Landen. Landen seems like he makes a really fun husband (if you can just work out that whole blinking out of existence randomly thing).

Frank is such an incredible character. There were things about the rest of the book that drove me crazy, but I could have kept reading about Frank forever in Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson.

Okay, I have to repeat here (should have looked ahead at the categories). The Penderwicks in Spring by Jeanne Birdsall literally had me sobbing. I rarely cry at books, but this one did it!

I just finished First Impressions by Charlie Lovett yesterday morning. This book was just so delightfully bookish that I couldn't help but smile while reading it.

Um, I have a one-year-old. I haven't watched a movie in a very long time. Sorry, but I can't answer this one!

Reviews really seem to have fallen by the wayside this year, but here are two posts that I enjoyed writing and discussing in the comments: How Do You Read a Series? and Cover Confusion.

I'm not sure if "beautiful" is the right word, but I love love love the cover of Around the World in 50 Years by Albert Podell.

This could be a very long list. But I desperately want to read The Shadow Sister by Lucinda Riley. I was planning to get it during my last library trip, but it was already checked out. I was so disappointed! Next time, for sure!

Somehow we're halfway through the year already. I feel like a broken record on these wrap-up posts, because in every one, I say that I can't believe how fast the year is going. But it's still true!

Favorite book this quarter: ​Tie between A Hope Undaunted by Julie Lessman and The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman. I had a surprising number of 5-star reads this quarter. It's hard to narrow it down!

The lure of the library has been strong this quarter. Only 37% of the books I read are books I own, although I have been listening to a fair amount of audiobooks, which come from the library. So that makes the number look worse than it is. Overall for the year, sixty percent of the books I've read are books I own. Still okay, but I'd like the swing the percentages back the other way for the third quarter and read a lot more of my own books!

I am terrible at finishing series. I have so many series that I've started but never finished, even if there's only one more book to read. This might be because I can't get a hold of the next book, or it might be because the series didn't hold my attention enough to continue.

But very frequently, it's neither of these reasons. Case in point - 100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson. I loved that book, and my library has book two on its shelves. But did I check it out the next time I visited the library, or even the time after that? No, I didn't. One of those times, I even saw it on the shelf, yet decided not to check it out. The same thing happened with The Midnight Queen by Sylvia Izzo Hunter. As soon as I finished it, I was dying to read the next book - yet chose not to get it from the library. I read that book a year ago, and I still haven't checked out the sequel. I have a feeling the same thing will happen with The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman. I just finished that book, and absolutely loved it. But will I get the next book from the library when I go in a couple of weeks? Past history shows that that's unlikely.

I can't figure out why this is. So I'm curious how you read a series. Do you devour all of the books as quickly as you can get them (assuming that all of the books have been published)? Do you space them out a little bit to savor the experience? Or do you let the series hang there for months or years until you get around to finishing it, if ever?

First of all - why do publishers feel the need to change covers between U.K. and U.S. editions of a book? And even more confusingly, for the book I recently read, they also changed the title!

Here's what I'm talking about:​

Surely those are two completely different books, right? Nope!

The cover (and title) on the left is the U.K. version. The cover is whimsical (well, maybe not the blood so much), and the old-timey map is wonderful. (I'm a sucker for maps both inside and outside a book.)

The cover on the right is the U.S. version, which means that it's the version that my library had, of course. The premise of the book is that a London police officer discovers that magic is real and is "drafted" into the branch of the police force that deals with ghosts, vampires, werewolves, etc. Not normally my kind of book, but I had heard it described as "grown-up Harry Potter" and wonderfully British, so I thought I would give it a try.

I enjoyed it, but I couldn't read it at night before I went to bed. In fact, I ended up piling other books on top of it on my nightstand because of the cover. The (spoiler!) revengeful ghost aspect of the story was really freaking me out, and I think I can partially trace that to the cover. The U.S. cover just looks scarier than the U.K. cover. To a certain extent, it affected my reading (and enjoyment) of the book.

How does the Newbery committee decide which book should win the award, and which should be the "runner-up"s? The number of Honor books has varied over the years, from none (for a few years at the beginning) to as many as eight (in 1931 and 1934 - now that is difficulty making a decision). It's obviously hard enough to decide which (and how many) books should be recognized in the first place. But then how do they decide which of those books is the winner of the actual Newbery Award?

I'm asking because I've actually read three of the four Newbery books for this year - The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (the Newbery Award winner); The Inquisitor's Tale by Adam Gidwitz and Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk (both Newbery Honor books). And in my humble opinion, the two Honor books blew the winner out of the water.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon was a wonderful fantasy story, but it didn't stand out to me as different or better than many of the other fantasy stories published today. But The Inquisitor's Tale provided a unique storytelling method (reminiscent of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales), a unique format ("illuminated" text), and a great way to learn about life in medieval times. Wolf Hollow has been compared by many to To Kill a Mockingbird, and the comparisons really do hold up, in its tone, atmosphere, and coming of age story that will touch your heart - and potentially have a profound effect on its readers, especially if that reader is a middle schooler. In my opinion, either of those books deserved to win the award.

Every time I finish reading a book, I rate it on Goodreads. I like to look back over books I've read, and rating them is an easy way to see which books were stand-out reads for me. It takes a lot for a book to be given a five-star rating, but there's a fair amount of leeway between three stars and four stars for me. This is often the hardest decision - I liked the book, but did I like it enough to give it a four-star rating?

There are two books recently where I realized I was thinking about my rating while I was reading the book, and that thought process was the same for both books. When I got to the middle, I figured they were each solid three-star reads for me so far. But I knew that whatever the ending was could bump it up to four stars for me. (The two books, in case you're curious were Moloka'i by Alan Brennert and Uprooted​ by Naomi Novik. Moloka'i ended up with three stars; Uprooted with four.)

The very fact that I was having this thought process while reading surprised me. I hadn't realized I thought so much about the ratings. And then it made me curious. At what point in your reading process do you decide what rating to give a book? Do you wait until you're completely finished (which is what I thought I did, but apparently not always)? Can you tell by the middle what rating it will be? Have there been any books that you thought you knew how you were going to rate it, and then the ending changed your opinion completely?

​Please add your thoughts in the comments. I'm really curious to know how other readers approach this!