A Look Back on July
July has been a great month. I've torn through a huge number of books, I've discovered the joys and pitfalls of reading self-published work, and I've been on the dream blogger's away trip. The weather has been utterly abysmal here in the UK (which might have contributed to the massive amounts of reading that I've been able to get through) and I'm hoping for more from August. I'm now six weeks away from the family holiday to Florida and I am jumping around at the idea that it's now so close. Simply can't wait! My brother and I went (with Mark from My Favourite Books) to Thorpe Park this month to practice riding super scary rollercoasters, and it was a brilliant day out. I've also been watching tons of cricket - the Tests between England and India have been just awesome - but August brings back the return of Premiership football. More to get excited about. I also receive a PHONECALL, which needs capital letters - it could be the most amazing thing ever, but I'm currently in limbo waiting to hear more. Good times. Exciting times.
Reading
Somehow I managed to get through 12 books during July. Some of them were quite slender tomes, but, honestly, I'm not quite sure how I managed it! Would be nice to know how, since I'd love to replicate the effort in August *grins* I think I am just about on target to hit 100 books by the end of the year.
46) Must Be Love by Cathy Woodman
47) Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson
48) The Sweetest Thing by Cathy Woodman
49) Fulgrim by Graham McNeill
50) Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
51) The Fire Inside by Raymond Rose (self-published)
52) The Double-Edged Sword by Sarah Silverwood
53) Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K Hamilton
54) Mozart's Last Aria by Matt Rees
55) Romanitas by Sophia McDougall
56) David by Mary Hoffman
57) The Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood
- 7 books by women, 5 by men
- 2 chick lit novels, 1 epic fantasy, 1 science fiction/tie-in worl, 1 superhero thriller, 3 YA (within that, 1 dark fantasy, 1 urban fantasy, 1 historical), 1 historical crime novel, 1 alternate history/science fiction, 1 that defies all classification. Huh, it's been a mixed up month!
- 5 of these were from my own shelves and 7 were review copies.
Best Book of July
Actually, there are a few choices. I had a great reading month, with some really awesome books. I could choose The Double-Edged Sword or Fulgrim, but, I think, this month really belongs to:
Pages Covered
A stonking 5,516 pages covered this month, with some large books lifting that total up - and my total for 2011 so far is now 27,085, which seems like a real achievement actually. That is a LOT of pages! Longest novel completed in July was Memories of Ice by a *long* way, while the shortest was The Poison Diaries, which is a very quick little read.
Places Visited
Many *grins* - from London to Talyton St George, from Genabackis to a small island near Wales. I definitely wouldn't want to be a slave in the modern day Rome of Romanitas - but I wouldn't mind staying in one of the plush villas of the aristocracy!
Plans for August
Not a lot, if I'm honest. Just more reading, and more Tor work, and more self-published work. In July I started re-reading a couple of series to review for the blog (Anita Blake and A Song of Ice and Fire) so it would be great to carry these on, and get up to date. We'll see!
Over To You
How did your July go? What did you read? What did you get up to? Spill!
Awesome month! And you did a lot of reading!
ReplyDeleteMy July was pretty productive, too. Not quite so travel-happy as yours (the very opposite of travel-happy, really, since I stayed at home most of the time), but still pretty good!
Sounds like you had a good month. Mine has been the complete opposite! In July I only managed to complete two books and I’m three quarters of the way through a third so quite pathetic really considering my average is normally about one book every 5 days.
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