Wrap Up: August 2018

I had a good reading month but a quite difficult work month. I struggled a whole lot with my PhD the second half of the month and buried myself in quick and easy reads to avoid thinking about it. But I had a meeting with my thesis supervisor last week and now I am feeling like I am on the right track again (for the first time in months, I might add).

Books read in July:

1. Foundryside (The Founders #1) by Robert Jackson Bennett: 4 out of 5 stars
2. Monstress Vol. 2: The Blood by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda: 5 out of 5 stars
3. Can You Tolerate This? by Ashleigh Young: 3 out of 5 stars
4. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner: 4 out of 5 stars
5. I Hate Fairyland Vol. 2: Fluff My Life by Skottie Young: 3 out of 5 stars
6. There There by Tommy Orange: 5 out of 5 stars
7. Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood #1) by J. R. Ward: 2,5 out of 5 stars
8. Lover Eternal (Black Dagger Brotherhood #2) by J. R. Ward: 2 out of 5 stars
9. Everything Under by Daisy Johnson: 4,5 out of 5 stars

Favourite of the month:

There There by Tommy Orange, no competition here. This book just blew me away and every other book paled in comparison. It is definitely one of my favourite books of the year.

I also really enjoyed Monstress Vol. 2 and Everything Under (I will be so cross if that does not make the shortlist).

Stats(ish):

I read a total of 2870 over nine books. Of these nine books, six were written by women and three were written by men. Five books were some form of fantasy, three were fiction or literary fiction, and one was an essay collection. For a change in pace, two of those fantasy books were Graphic Novels, something I have been neglecting for a while now.

Currently reading:

I am currently reading… too many books. I usually find that more than four books does not work for me, so I really should work on finishing a few of those books as soon as possible.

Books I should get to next:

I have a couple of September ARCs that I still need to read, plus one August ARC I did not get to because I took forever reading Red Sister (and only want to read one high fantasy book at any given time):

I also want to finally get to some of the fiction books on my shelves; I own way too many. This month will hopefully the month where I finally read Human Acts. As I am going on holiday for ten days in the middle of the month, I will mostly be reading books on my Kindle (I have saved the last two Kate Daniels’ books just for this occasion). Traditionally, September is my worst reading month, so I will have to wait and see if I get to all the books I want to get to.

(Some of the) blog posts I loved:

Rachel is currently making her way through the Man Booker longlist (a project I am enjoying a whole lot) and her review for The Water Cure was balanced and convincing.

The best non-fiction reviews can always be found on What Non-Fiction, and this review of Just Mercy is a great example.

Laila has started a series of five sentence reviews that I just adore. I am a big fan of short and concise reviews when done right!

Kaleena’s review of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is just wonderfully done (does anybody know why they changed the title for the US publication though?).

Here is another set of wonderful mini-reviews, done by the wondeful bookworm muse. Her blog is really worth checking out!

Jess and Teagan reviewed the first in the Kate Daniels’ series and I am glad to not be the only one who is currently discovering this wonderful series.

Zuky wrote an hilarious blog post on cliche phrases in blurbs that make her avoid the book.

Ashleigh’s review of The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter made me even more excited to get to this book sooner rather than later.