 I'm wearing such a sunshiny day outfit, but it's so dark and gray outside, like literally the only light that I have is from that lamp and the fact that my phone does the self-lighting thing. Otherwise, this video would be so dark, but it's just been so rainy recently that I need some sunshine. Hello, hello everyone. My name is Laura. This is my channel, Laura's Little Library, and welcome to today's video, which is a book haul yet this year. I think I did one right at the end of last year, or maybe one like really early this year, but I just haven't done a book haul, so I'm really excited to do a book haul. These are pretty much all the books I've acquired this year. Not quite all of them, because I think some I've done, I've hauled in like a vlog or something. Basically, so for those of you who are new to my channel, I have an allowance on how much I'm allowed to spend on books, so right now I'm allowed to spend $20 a month on books, which has been a bit of a struggle, but you know what? I am accepting it, and I am slowly figuring out ways to kind of use that $20 for all it's worth. This is just on a really pretty new release, and sometimes I can get it to be three to four books a month, so I also thought it'd be fun in this video, because this book haul isn't really like super big, you would think being almost halfway through the year and doing my first book haul of the year that it would be fairly big, it's not small, but it's not big. Like I got like 14 books, yeah it's a good like not big size. So I thought it'd be kind of fun to talk to you about my strategy for buying books, both with this book budget, but also just in general. If you watch my bullet journal videos, you know that I have a spread every month dedicated to my book budget, and how this works is that I have this month and then the next two months, and I brainstorm kind of the top priorities that I want in those months. So sometimes if a book is coming out, like it's a new release, and I really want it, it'll be in the brainstorm, otherwise maybe a book that I've already read before that I really want to have now for one reason or another, maybe because I want to use it in a recommendations video, or maybe it's a continuation in a series, and I've been trying to focus on completing my series on my shelves a little bit more. I put that down in these months, and some months it's like yes that new release is what I want, it's what I'm going to go for, and some months it's like no I can wait a little bit, so then what back listed books can I buy, and then depending on where I buy them from, how many other books can I get, how can I budget the most amount of books that are still good quality for that month. So base, and then I have quite a few bookstores that I do shop from, so obviously I do have a membership in Barnes & Noble, I do, and that's kind of the place I go for new releases, or like recently released books that I want to try and see if I can't save money on maybe to buy something else, so Barnes & Noble tends to have a lot of like buy one, get something else half off, and so a lot of times if I'm getting a newer book then maybe I can get also a second book within my budget, or some sort of little book merch, whether it's like a bookmark, or a bag, or masks, or socks, or whatever, so Barnes & Noble is where I go when I want to get a newer book, but I want to try and get more than one item. If I want just a new release, a hard cover, brand new beautiful book, I will go to an independent bookstore, I will go to a local bookstore in Minnesota, I've got one that I love called the Red Balloon, and that's where I love to go, if I just I have my heart set on this one thing I want to go and I support them. Unless it's a middle grade, if there's a middle grade that I want, there's another local bookstore that I go to, the Wining Trails bookstore, because they have a good selection of middle grade, I don't like their selection of anything else, they're very very small, and they're very local based, but their middle grade is really good, so if I ever like want a middle grade, whether I know what it is, or just know I want to buy a middle grade, that's the bookstore I go to, and then for anything else, it's been interesting because I recently learned that there is half-price books, and the reason I didn't know about it beforehand was because we don't have half-price books in Michigan, so I have not grown up with it, I didn't know it was a thing, I didn't understand its concept until I moved to Minnesota where we've got like two or three, nice and close by, so while I'm here in Minnesota, I have been trying to use the access to half-price books as best I can, just because like I said, we don't have it in Michigan, which is such a bummer, but when I am in Michigan, the place that I go to to save money on books and try and buy multiple books within my budget is Thrift Books, which is online, also none of this is sponsored by the way, I'm just sharing my thought process when purchasing books, I have not been approached by any of these bookstores saying to say that I buy books from here, like this is completely unsponsored, this is just all from ahead, but I'll go to Thrift Books and I will purchase books online, it's a little more iffy about quality of books because sometimes I think I'll order a book that's like great or like new and I still have some issues and I'm like this is not like new. I don't really always like using Thrift Books, but it is it is really nice though too because they always they always come, I only had one time where my book was just flat out never delivered and it pissed me off, but since then it's it's been okay, so yeah they're kind of books that I don't necessarily have my heart set on having that nicest copies, but you know you take what you can get and then for anything manga related I just go to Write Stuff Anime, like I could buy them from Barnes & Noble, but Write Stuff Anime is pretty cheap, so highly recommend online Write Stuff Anime for all of your manga needs. All that being said now that you know how I decide how I buy my books, let's get right into the actual book haul. So first off let's just start off with Write Stuff Anime. I finally got Volume 3 of Hordomia, so I had placed a big order last year of the first four volumes of Hordomia and the first like six volumes of Spirex Family and as the books came in stock they were shipped to me and so they finally got Volume 3 and so this is the last of that order that I had placed. Now I have all my stuff and I and I can continue to purchase more if I want to but yeah Hordomia is adorable because it follows two characters who kind of have secret elements to their identity so we have like the popular girl who secretly has like a huge temper but also has to take care of her little brother a lot of times so she like acts like a mom at home but she also gets like really angry really quickly and it's kind of funny and then our male main character everyone perceives him as like dark and gloomy and he actually secretly has a whole bunch of like piercings and tattoos that he wears when he is outside of school and so these two characters kind of accidentally run into each other outside of school and learn of each other's little hidden identity elements and it's adorable from there it's they become friends and then become lovers and it's just it's so cute I highly recommend there is an anime out for it but the anime after the first couple volumes tends to jump around within the manga so I just need to sit and read the manga before I can finish the anime and then from thrift books I got the school for good and evil the last ever after by Soma and Chinani this is the third book in the series I have already read this and the fourth book and I'm about to start the fifth book soon I read them over audio and then I buy them from thrift books so this is more about finishing this series rather than like sitting and physically reading it but yep so hopefully the fourth one the next one is kind of on my radar of to purchase soon and then from half-priced books like I said I recently discovered it so I've kind of been going there more often but the first things that I got I finished the ugly series so I have the first one already of the original covers I got it for Christmas like a few years ago and so I finally I saw that oh my word they have pretty specials and extras so I had to get the rest of the series I'm really happy they're nice such a nice condition like I do like half-priced books more than thrift books if I can ever go with it but yeah I'm just really happy to finally have this series finished I read it when I was in middle school I loved it and there's an adaptation coming out so I'm excited for that I also bought Shatter Me by Tara Muffy I own Unravel Me and that was the only one of the series that I owned so when I saw they had Shatter Me I was like I need I need I need to I think I need to reread Shatter Me before I read Unravel Me but we'll see so anyway this is a book haul I'm just gonna keep going then I bought Dour in a Glass by Sarah J. Mass I'm not even gonna go into it but this is the only Sarah J. Mass book I own currently and I will slowly be hunting for the rest of them at half-priced books and then the final book that I got from a half-priced half-priced books is Escaping Houdini by Karey Medescalco I've been slowly buying one of one book from the series every year and then reading it around Halloween so this year I'm up to Escaping from Houdini and I will read it to come spooky season and then next year I can finish with Escaping the Devil I believe yeah so very happy with that like I said lots of continuing series of those were all not all but the last three were purchased in April when I did my continuous on which is all about continuing and finishing series so that's why every book that I bought was like within a series because I was very much influenced by that okay moving on this book I got from book deposit because I are book depository because I wanted the UK cover I don't normally like want specific covers I'm normally perfectly fine just buying the American cover but when I saw the UK cover for this I knew I needed to have it it's also my current read and it is Six Crimes and Cranes by Elizabeth Lim it is beautiful it is gorgeous I love the pastel colors so it's just pure art anyway so this is my current read I'm hoping to finish it today I'm just under halfway through I love it so much and I cannot wait to put it on display on my shelves and then from Barnes and Noble the next of these will be from Barnes and Noble so I have The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie oh this is going to be my next read I've already got a bookmark and I even though as soon as I finished Six Crimes and Cranes I will move right on to this it is Korean mythology again I have been highly anticipating this book really excited for its release it's absolutely gorgeous again I really want to put it on display on my shelves once I have actually read it then this book just came out in April and it is My Dearest Darkest by Kayla Cottingham this is a dark academia and I am so excited for this again I've been very much anticipating its release for a while now so and plus I've just been in like this dark academia mood like I feel standalone kind of new dark academia just feels kind of spring to me just with with all the rainy days and how gloomy it's been I've been wanting to read like a darker book that's not like full fantasy so I was very happy when this came out and I hope to get to it fairly soon especially because then I can recommend it during spooky season if I liked it the first book that I bought in May it may or may not be the only book I buy this month just because I only have a couple dollars left over for my book budget so we'll see if I can actually buy anything but I'm very happy if I just purchased this book this month and that is Book Lovers by Emily Henry so this came out as a filming like a few days ago but this is her third adult romance book I own the other two I've only read Beach Read but I plan on reading people we meet on vacation soon to get me going on the summer vibes maybe not today but hopefully when it's some sunny or outside I will pick it up and just pretend that we are already in summer because temperature-wise it feels like we just skip spring which I am perfectly okay with but yeah this is a literary focused adult romance and I am so excited it's enemies to lovers which is one of my favorite tropes both in fantasy and romance so so excited for this one and then this next one was a gift to me from my husband because he was going on a trip and so I was gonna be alone so he bought a book to come for me and that is out of the unseen and this is by G Willow Wilson and yeah this is this is like I don't know too much about this book but it's definitely in I think our main character like works in tech and then they like find like a gin or something I don't know there's gin in this book and that's really a lot I care about and that's really why my husband picked it for me so I think this will be a great summer read I'm really excited the colors are so interesting just with the like bright highlighter yellow and the green so I'm very excited to get to this and see what the gin is all about I'm done to two more books so this next one I actually bought on our trip to Milwaukee which I believe I vlog to I can have that linked somewhere but there's just a little cart with books costing one dollar so I bought the woman in cabin 10 by with wear because I've been wanting to read more with wear books after ever since I read one by one I very much enjoyed it plus I've been getting into thriller quite a bit more recently so I wanted to start reading some backlisted thrillers that I had been interested in and hearing other people talk about way back when so now now that I like the thrillers I'm going for it so I thought I'd start off with Ruth wear and then the last book I have was sent to me by the author they just reached out over Instagram I was like hey want my book and I was like yes I do um so yeah I am excited to read it it is called touch and this is by Cheryl Khan and this is the first in a five book series I I assume it's five books because each one focuses on a different sense so the first one is touch and then you know we have like sight and hearing and smell and like whatever else um I don't know the names of those books but if I read this one and I really like it then I will continue to go on with the series kind of how that works right um but yeah the cover just looks so cool with like the flame and the bear and the nature in the background so I am really excited to get to this probably in summer so those are all the books that I have acquired so far um I I love doing book hauls so even though I've talked about a lot of these books in other videos or have done come book shopping with me videos I will still save them to be put into a haul video just because I think it's a lot of fun I cannot wait I'll probably I'll be able to do at least one more book haul video I don't know if I'll be able to do two more this year just because we're already almost halfway through the year and I feel like 15 books is a good number to do I just don't know if I'll reach 15 books uh through the end of this year but my birthday is coming up in a couple days and then there's always Christmas at the end of the year so we'll see anyway thank you all so much for watching this video if you liked it give it a thumbs up so that I know that you liked it otherwise feel free to subscribe I make content on Sundays and Wednesdays and hit the bell to be notified so you don't miss when I upload I also have book or social media linked down below so you can follow me there get my thoughts and opinions on these books even sometimes before I release them on YouTube otherwise leave a comment down below if you have read any of these books what your thoughts and opinions were on them or if you've bought any books recently or if you have a strategy of how you buy your books are there specific bookstores you go to for specific things or are you just Barnes and Noble all the way independent bookstore all the way do you buy online do you not like let's chat about how we purchase our books yeah anyway like I said thank you all for watching and until we see you in the next video I wish you happy reading