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June 2012 Recap

Geoff W

I don’t have any pictures to start this recap, but there are plenty below (at the end).  June was a slow month on the reading front, but it was incredibly rewarding.  I started (and finished) Anna Karenina and thoroughly enjoyed it (even if it took 21 days to finish).  In addition I completed my re-read of Mansfield Park and read The Bird of Night, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Phantom of Pemberley.

Challenge Progress
I made major headway on my challenges as multiple books counted for multiple challenges.  Overall for the year I am 20/31 (65%) on challenges and this past month put me over the 50% level on EVERY 2012 challenge!

  • Mount TBR Reading Challenge
    • May Progress: 2 books
    • Overall Progress – 18/25 (72%)
  • Back to the Classics Challenge
    • May Progress: 2 book
    • Overall Progress – 5/9 (56%)
  • Tea and Books Reading Challenge
    • May Progress: 1 books
    • Overall Progress – 7/8 (89%)
  • The Classics Club
    • May Progress: 3 books
    • Overall Progress – 9/100 (9%)

Random Awesomeness
It was  an interesting month for finding random stuff about books online. I’ve pulled out the three I found to be most exciting/interesting and they are below.

The first really cool project I stumbled across was Unglue It.  According to the website, unglue means “to pay an author or publisher, up front, for publishing a Creative Commons e-book. It’s similar to kickstarter, in that individuals pledge money to pay the rights holder to create a free e-book version.  They’ve recently unglued their first book and have three additional active campaigns going on.

The second was an awesome article about archives and finding things in archives titled Nota Bene: If you ‘Discover’ Something in an Archive, It’s Not a Discovery.  It’s a cheeky quick read that I found to be spot on about how things get lost, but only because they’re not explicitly listed but are right where they usually should be.

And last but not least (and I’m sure I could find more, but these are just the things I noted down). Check out the trailer for Anna Karenina which is coming out in the late fall, but is probably being overshadowed by The Great Gatsby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPGLRO3fZnQ

And to close this off, I encourage you to check out the new banners I made for the site!  I went through quite a few of my old photos and found some that I thought fit the title (The Oddness of Moving Things) and that I really liked, and turned them into banners.  Some are clearly about movement, rushing water and jumping, others are more subtle – the full sails of sail boats or the creaking of a mausoleum door.  If you refresh the page you can see them (there are 6) or you can see all of them below. Click to see a larger version.

The original and beautiful London Bus photo with Big Ben in the distance.
This accidental London bus shot inspired the actual banner (the color one above). Same place within about 10 minutes of each other.
From my very first trip to Europe. I took this shot of the water in the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain.
This is a picture of a small family mausoleum in one of the Parisian grave yards. I believe this is from the Cimetiere de Bagneux, but I can’t remember.
This is from my time in Rhode Island working at a summer camp, where we spent a lot of time on the water. The jumper is my friend Ben.
Also from Rhode Island, this is one of our day trips sailing from the sound out to the ocean. It was quiet and beautiful and those are our sailing students out front.

Sorry for the length, but I couldn’t leave you without a what’s next option!  I’m currently reading John Boyne’s The Absolutist which I am IN LOVE WITH. and will follow this up with a few more library books and galleys from Net Galley and then I will get back to my challenge reads (Great Expectations will be my next challenge read).

9 thoughts on “June 2012 Recap”

  2. I’m so glad we’re both reading The Absolutist–I can’t wait to chat with you about it!

    I love all the banners you made.

    Reply

    1. Sarah (over at Sarah Reads Too Much) is reading it too. It’s funny how we’ve all fallen in at the same time. I’m so desperate to finish it and I have a feeling I’ll just want to turn around and reread it again!

      Thanks about the banners – I was so excited when I found out the random would work with my own banners I had to make a few!

      Reply

      1. How far have you gotten? Because OH MY GOODNESS, THIS BOOK. Oh, my heart is breaking.

        Reply
  3. Pingback: Anna Karenina (2012) | A Room of One's Own

  4. You seem to have had an awesome month in terms of reading. Anna Karenin is such a handful, isn’t she? she took me well over 2 weeks 🙂
    Loved your banners, most specially the first and the fourth ones.

    You have an awesome blog. Following you now!
    Please do visit my book blog, and if you like it, please do follow! 🙂

    Reply

    1. Thanks for stopping by and for leaving a comment! It was surprising to me how much I read, I thought I’d spent the entire month toiling over Anna Karenina (which I loved once I got into it), but apparently I didn’t. The first and fourth are definitely two of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken. I spent two days in various grave yards around Paris – there’s as much art there as there is in many of the major museums around the world!

      Reply

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