I am definitely glad to see the end of July. It was a rough month for a lot of reasons, including COVID, shingles, and roof leaks. You can read all about my woes here. Some things have gotten better, but the first part of August has sucked, too. lol. Shingles is no joke, ya’ll. I had the misfortune of developing it on my face/mouth. It is still not 100% better, but most of the sores have healed up. Now I just have to wait for the nerve pain to (hopefully) get better.
On the blogging front, I managed to finish all of my BBNYA round one excerpts despite all of the chaos. There are some phenomenal books in this year’s competition, and I’ve added quite a few of them to mount TBR. I did plan to write a post about my favorites that didn’t make it through round one, but it never happened because I wasn’t feeling well. I might still manage to get something up eventually. We’ll see. I was a bit more consistent with my blogging in July, at least until I started feeling very unwell. My blog hopping and engagement took a nosedive, though, with everything going on. It still hasn’t really recovered, but I’m hoping to be back to normal soon.
What I’ve Read
Books & Audiobooks
July was a slow reading month for me because of everything that I had going on. I finished 11 books for a total of 5,150 pages. I managed to finish reading two series last month and managed to knock off a couple books that have been on my TBR for over a year. My average rating came in a little higher in July at 4.09 out of 5. I had a number of 4.75⭐ and 5⭐ reads this month, which likely helped bump up the average a bit. Luckily, there wasn’t really anything I hated this month, but there were a few meh reads. The books I finished in July are listed below (ratings link to my review, if available):
- The Silverblood Promise by James Logan (🎧 / 4⭐)
- The Misfit Mage and His Dashing Devil by MN Bennet (🎧 / 4⭐)
- The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen (📖 / 5⭐)
- How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler (📱 / 3.25⭐)
- The Bound Worlds by Megan E. O’Keefe (🎧 / 4.75⭐)
- Temptation of the Force by Tessa Gratton (📖 / 4.75⭐)
- Everything for You by Chloe Liese (🎧 / 4.75⭐)
- The Ivory Tomb by Melissa Caruso (📖 / 5⭐)
- Angels Before Man by rafael nicolas (🎧 / 3⭐)
- Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi (🎧 / 3⭐)
- The Reanimator’s Heart by Kara Jorgensen (🎧 / 3.5⭐)
Comic Books
One of my goals for the year is to read more comic books. Specifically, I set the arbitrary number at 100 floppies, but I’d love to read way more than that this year because I am years behind on issues at this point. I read 6 issues in July, all of them from the main Star Wars: The High Republic title.
Progress On My 2024 Reading Goals
This year I am keeping things much simpler. I don’t have as many specific goals to track and am just trying to go with the flow. I do want to keep some sort of record of the trackable ones, though. So, here’s a quick peek at how my year is going so far.
- Goodreads Challenge: 103/100 books (+11 in July)
- Storygraph Pages Challenge: COMPLETED!!
- Read from My Shelves: 35 books [25 physical, 10 audio] (+6 in July)
- Books Unhauled: 27 sold on Pango (+9 in July)
- Read Comic Books: 54/100 floppies (+6 in July)
- Read Pre-2024 ARCs: 4/14 ARCs (+2 in July)
My Pango shop was hopping in July! The sales seem to come in waves, but I’m happy to be able to get rid of some of the books that have been in my shop for a while. I even finally sold the last book from my very first batch of listings from well over a year ago. 🙂
Final Thoughts
I did manage to be pretty consistent about blogging this month, at least for the first half or so. I consider that a big accomplishment given how horrible the month turned out. You can find all of the stuff I wrote this month in my blog archives if you are interested in checking it out. I also added a huge number of books to my shelves in July (yes, again!), which you can see in my book haul post.
Overall, I had a pretty good month of reading. My average rating was 4.09 in July, and my favorite book was The Ivory Tomb. What was your favorite book from July? Let me know down in the comments!
Thank you to everyone who has visited the blog and engaged with comments and/or likes! I appreciate all of you and always enjoy reading your input in the comments. I hope everyone is having a great August!
That is a great average rating! I also love the new feature on Storygraph with giving the covers and rating. I will definitely be using it lol.
I really love the new feature, too. Although, I’ll probably still make my own graphic for Instagram eventually. I just couldn’t be bothered right now.
I really like the calendar feature on StoryGraph now, too. I just need to remember to log everything daily so that it’s accurate.
Hopefully with your roof replaced and your shingles and COVID clearing up, things will start to feel normal/easier again! Also, I didn’t realize you’re doing BBNYA…or maybe I did and I forgot? Either way, cool! Are you going to do the SFINCS competition?
BBNYA was a last-minute decision. I only did it because they reached out to me. I read a lot of great excerpts in round one, though. So, I’m glad I said yes to it.
As for SFINCS, I was considering it until I agreed to BBNYA. One competition is more than enough for me this year, especially since the last quarter of the year will likely be dominated by organizing a move.
Totally understandable to not want to do two competitions! I did BBNYA one year and had a good team. But it was a lot for me. I don’t think I read fast enough to keep up with the competitions that rate full-length books (on top of wanting to have time for my own reading). SFINCS is more my pace since it’s novellas…I felt way less stressed. Maybe next year for you! 😉