Let’s start my July recap off with a beautiful photo, to the right of Castle Island in Boston. This was a busy month with lots of family, a lot of busy weekends and a lot to do at work. Thankfully (mostly because of Pokémon Go) I’ve had time to just wander around the city and relax.
If you’re not playing, you probably should be. It’s made me go out when I’ve felt like being lazy and I ended up walking six or seven miles! Not to mention it’s made my morning walks a bit more interactive 😀 There are only two downsides: 1) I’ve spent a lot of time doing it that I would generally be reading; and 2) when you go out for an hour walk and then don’t come home for four or five hours, um yeah. Thankfully my morning walks are very structured so it hasn’t made me late for work or anything like that.
Books and Bookish Things
I think the biggest thing I did this month was finally taking the Art and Architecture Tour (BPL website) at the Boston Public Library. I didn’t get a chance to see the recently renovated part of the BPL, but we were walking by when they did the grand opening.
In addition to this The Oddness of Moving Things AKA this/my blog turned SIX years old! It was one of those things where I was like, how have I stuck with it this long? I will be honest and say I am starting to think about winding down, but not any time soon. I want it to be a nice round number: 10 years, 1,000 books or something along those lines. So for now I’m going to keep moving forward.
This month I completed four books (and actually got the posts up and published!): two ARCs/galleys, a book group book AND my 50th Classics Club book. I provided a scathing critique of self-published novels in Daddy Dearest and thoroughly enjoyed the other three books I read.
- Daddy Dearest – Paul Southern
- Whose Mind Is It Anyway? – Leslie and Frank Esile
- Sisters In Law – Linda Hirshman
- Behind A Mask – Louisa May Alcott
Below are some fun links I found this month that are bookish. I’m not sure how to reduce them so you’ll just have to scroll through. The two podcasts, Wait Wait Don’t  Tell Me and Good Job Brain had great sections on the Brontë’s and Jane Austen (really teen movie adaptations of classics) respectively.
This book nerd's tweet to a bookstore's official Twitter account ended in a love story https://t.co/Mcx73EtOOf pic.twitter.com/4tfNqQFfdg
— goodreads (@goodreads) July 19, 2016
Recent Acquisitions
Although review requests in July weren’t as bad as June (13!), I still received six, two-to-four of which were self published which we all know I’m not happy with at the moment. I say two-to-four because people are starting to get more creative and using names/company names to mask it’s been self-published.
The only one I accepted was Textbook: Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I’d added it to my list of books to keep an eye out for in the future after hearing about it on one of the final Books on the Nightstand episodes. When The publisher reached out with an ARC I of course agreed! Hopefully I’ll get to it in a timely manner.
Culture Corner
In case you missed it I finally posted my China pictures here, here and here! I don’t think I’m going to do a recap post. I think I waited to long, but suffice to say it was a wonderful trip and the experience was incredible! Once we got back from China we had a weekend break and then it was off again for family travels.
We went to Texas (my first time) to spend the Fourth of July with Tim’s family. It was another whirl wind trip full of so much food! I’ve decided that every state needs a Torchy’s Tacos (Torchy’s site), we ate there twice (maybe three times) while we were there. We then came back to Boston and the following weekend my mom was in Massachusetts for the week.
We did a lot of stuff including taking a Duck Tour (mom and Tim’s first) and saw a great production of If/Then as part of Broadway in Boston. And since mom has left we’ve gone to the Boston Lego Land Discovery adult night (aka adult access with no kids and booze); I participated in a Panera Test Kitchen taste test which was really cool; and just this past weekend we went to Castle Island again, but this time Fort Independence was open so we had an opportunity to take a tour of it.
What’s Next?
I’m making my way through Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy and thoroughly enjoying it. I’m only about halfway through A Discovery of Witches and can’t wait to see where the story goes. I’m going to wrap up the trilogy and keep trekking through the books on my shelves. I might even grab a copy of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which I haven’t done yet.
Hope everyone has had a great summer! I can’t believe it’s already August, but we’ve got a lot to look forward to. What are you up to?
Sounds like you had a fun July and I hope you have an equally or even better August. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the All Souls trilogy; as I finished it earlier this year 🙂
It was a great July, but busy! I just want time to sleep 😀 I’m thoroughly enjoying it but am only just wrapping up the first book.
Great photos! Looks like you guys had a blast.
That texas cookout is a thing of beauty.
It was beyond wonderful and that BBQ place was delicious. I swear I gained 10 lbs in the three days we were there.