July Recap 2014

In case you missed it I’ve surpassed FOUR years of blogging this month! I’ll include links at the end of this post to all four posts, but whoa—four years is a LONG time! Personal and work life have been busy/great and straining, in that order, and I think that’s where I’ll leave it 😉 I’ve unfortunately not made any progress on my 30 x 30 list, but oh well I’ve been too busy doing other things! I’ll definitely have to make an effort in August. (But I did get another Beach day in!)

Books and the Bookish
The most exciting thing to note is on Friday of my celebration week I announced a new podcast! And miraculously I was able to get the teaser/intro episode recorded, edited and on the website so I could start the slow process of getting it on to iTunes! (It doesn’t take that long, but why waste a first episode getting it on there when I can delay and create MORE fan-fare for the first episode—to the mortification of my friend Caroline :-D)

It’s definitely book based and I’m super excited about it. The basic premise is that a friend and I read the same book and have a conversation about it, a post-modern book club if you will. It’s really similar to Hear… Read This!, except I’m pulling from bookish, semi-bookish and non-bookish friends which has been great so far!

As for reading, I read seven books this month:

• One from my TBR shelf – The Devil and Miss Prym, Paulo Coelho
• One loaned to me by a friend – One More Thing, B. J. Novak
• Three library books (one a book group book):
  • Her Dark Curiosity, Megan Shepherd
  • The Bridge Over the River Kwai, Boulle, Pierre (Book group)
  • The Hangman’s Revolution, Eoin Colfer (posted next week)
• And two galleys: The Antiquarian and The Art Restorer both by Julián Sánchez

Recent Acquisitions
I picked up two physical books: Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde (still need to read the first one!) and Notes from No Man’s Land (the summer reading at the college I work for); and I downloaded a few Kindle books: Pride, Prejudice and the Perfect Match by Marilyn Brant and Pray the Gay Away by Sara York

My galley requests are getting out of control again: Oh no! Or oh yes depending! As for the galleys, I was super excited to receive approval for Margaret Atwood’s Stone Mattresses and cannot WAIT to start reading it. In addition I received copies of Confessions from a Coffee Shop by T. B. Markinson (Go TBM go!) and Male Sex Work and Society by Victor Minichiello and John Scott (Eds).

What’s Next?
I’m going to KEEP saying it until I do it: I WILL make progress on my 30 x 30 reading and writing portion, but for the moment I’m reveling in the joy of getting Come Read With Me out there! Hopefully, I’ll make more progress on my TBR shelf, but I have two fun reads on hold at the library that I can’t wait to read: J. K. Rowling’s new Robert Galbraith The Silkworm and Ana Homayoun’s That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week which I heard about on Books on the Nightstand. Even though I consider myself a timely and organized person, I want to read the book for tips and tricks, especially for this blog!

Blogoversery Recap: Four Years! — Day 1 — Day 2 — Day 3 — Day 4 — Day 5