August Recap 2016

The big news of the month is that I’ve achieved my 31 day goal of meeting my exercise, move and stand goals on my Apple watch! It’s not at all book related, but I’m excited because I’m slowly getting back into the habit of walking every day.

I’ve somehow managed to balance this with reading (six books this month), work offices moving to a new location, and two trips out to Tanglewood to see the Boston Pops and the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform. I don’t know if I’m going to keep it up because honestly at some point in the first few days of September I’m taking a rest day, or at least an easy day. I’m pretty sure I can hit all my goals without having to go on a two(+) mile walk but I’m not 100% sure. But what you’re all really here for is the books, so on to the books!

Books and Bookish Things
This cool photo to the right is of the book light my bff Alie got me. She randomly texted a few weeks ago and was like I bought you something. I promptly forgot about it and when I got an unexpected package it took WAY too long to figure out she was the one who sent it. It’s actually really cool. It’s rechargeable and we have it on a table in the living room where we can open it randomly and oh and ah over it. They were on super sale or something, but you can still get them on Amazon. We may or may not be debating buying a few more.

I made a lot of headway on reading this month and boosted my total back up to six books. I started and finished Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy and then followed it up by another recommended book and two ARC/galleys, denoted with an asterisk (*).

452. A Discovery of Witches (All Souls Trilogy #1) – Deborah Harkness
453. Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy #2) – Deborah Harkness
454. The Book of Life (All Souls Trilogy #3) – Deborah Harkness
455. We Should All Be Feminists – Chimamande Ngozi Adichie
456. Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal – Amy Krouse Rosenthal*
457. One of These Things First – Steven Gaines*

We also visited Down in Denver Books in Stephentown, New York. It was a random decision before we headed home after seeing the symphony and it was interesting. I didn’t purchase anything as the collection was fairly limited and honestly to me felt like someone’s overgrown library that they decided to slap in a spare room and call it a used bookstore. It was a unique place though. Zoom in and read the sign on the top right of the photos.

I don’t have as many links as previously, but I have two that made me smile. The first is about a secret library in Syria and the second is a series of beautiful book inspired illustrations.

Recent Acquisitions
Now I might have gone a little overboard on this one. Part of it I can blame on ordering the new Harry Potter book (so of course I tacked on a few more), but part of it I blame on selling back my two bags of books to the local used book store.

The other part can be blamed on clearing a backlog of review requests and deciding I wanted to read far more than I probably have time for, but am excited to check out, denoted by an asterisk (*).

• We Should All Be Feminists – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Courtesan – Alexandra Curry*
• One of These Things First – Steven Gains*
• The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
• The New Alpha – Danielle Harlan*
• Girl Under Water – Claire Kells*
• Young Jane Austen: Becoming a Writer – Lisa Pliscou
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – J.K. Rowling
• Nudge – Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

I do have to say that even though I accepted four galleys/ARCs this month, I turned down FIFTEEN others. I think this may be a record of 19 requests in a month with NINE of those coming in the last five days!

Culture Corner
We were very cultured this month and attended Tanglewood twice! Tanglewood is where the Boston Symphony goes for the summer. The first weekend was John Williams weekend where we got to see him conduct! It was fairly limited because they chose the them of flight, but it was still amazing to see John Williams conduct Star Wars! I MEAN COME ON. 9-21 year old me is still geeking out about it. There was a flash thunderstorm and because it is an outdoor venue we had an extra long intermission so that people on the lawn could go to the storm shelters. It was hilarious how excited people were about the thunder and lightning.

The photo to the right is everyone staring out into the distance (so the exact opposite of the one to the left of the stage) to see the rain, thunder and lightning.

The second weekend we were in Tanglewood we saw Yo-Yo Ma. This is the third or fourth time I’ve seen him live, but only the first time at Tanglewood. It was a wonderful experience. He’s one of those artists that I know as I get older I’m going to be very concerned about their health because I know when they’re gone a little piece of the world that helped create who I am, aesthetically at least, will no longer be around. It’s weird to think about that, but it’s true.

What’s Next?
I have a big event at work in September so I’m hoping that it won’t mess up my reading too much. As you can see above I have a lot of galleys to get through and a bunch of other books I want to read as well. I’m hoping to get to Harry Potter this month, but I’ve managed to avoid spoilers so far and I’m not too worried about them.

Also here’s a great photo of the remnants of our office move in August:

Is everyone else as excited for fall as I am? I mean minus the fact that Pumpkin Spice is already EVERYWHERE and it’s not even September 1st yet!?