So here I am back from hiatus! I wish I could say it had been a relaxing one, but unfortunately the plumbing saga continues and I’m still rather overwhelmed. What has happened, though, is that I’ve been able to give myself some reading space and avoid getting too slumpy, and as I’d hoped, it’s meant that I have a little more energy for reviewing. I actually have posts scheduled for the next two weeks already! I may take a few more breaks this year if things continue to be stressful, but for now, I’m happy to be back. Let’s take a look at how things went while I was away!
Books read:
I read 43 books in July, bringing me up to 251 books for the year so far. I’m pretty happy with that – it’s always nice to hit that 250 marker because it makes me feel like I can relax a little about hitting my end-of-year goal! In fact, I’m a little ahead, with 62.75% of my target hit and only 58.3% of the year gone. I didn’t get quite as many older review copies read as I’d hoped I might, but I did end up rearranging my bookshelves quite drastically (from rainbow to genre), which really allowed me to re-evaluate the kind of things I actually have on my shelves, and also helped with some of the review copy chaos on my desk, so I feel a bit more on track.
For August, I’d like to read at least 31 books. That’s at least a book a day, and I think that’s doable at the moment while it’s still the school holidays!
Owned TBR:
A very tiny amount of downwards movement to 293 books – but I really didn’t think I was going to get any movement at all! A lot of the books I read this month were from my Historical Romance Windfall post, which actually aren’t on my official TBR, so although my read number is high, not all of them were tick-off-able. I also took advantage of a Kindle offer to get some ebook credit, so I added a bunch of ebooks to my TBR that I honestly didn’t need (but am excited to read, there’s T Kingfisher in there!). 38 books came in, and I read 14 of them, so there are 24 new July books on the TBR going forward.
I’m going to aim to have the TBR creep down under 285 in August. I don’t think I have a ton of new releases or ARCs on my radar for August, so if it’s a quiet bookpost month, maybe I can finally start to make progress down towards that end-of-year 200 goal!
Reading Challenges:
There was no reading challenge in July, of course, but I’m putting together August’s TBR and it’s going to be quite an intense one! That post will be up on the 3rd August, so keep an eye out…
Blog posts:
Despite being away, I did still have a few blog tours to take part in, so here are my reviews for those in case you missed any:
The Extraordinary Voyage of Katy Willacott by Sharon Gosling
No Sleep For Bear by Duncan Beedie
Mia and the Lightcasters by Janelle McCurdy
So there we have it. What did you get up to in July? Read anything good? I’d love to be linked to your wrap up posts if you have them, or just to hear about your reading in the comments!
A Cat, A Book, and A Cup of Tea 