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June Recap 2019

Geoff W

June was an incredibly busy month! We traveled to the West Coast for almost two weeks for a wedding and to see friends/family, I read 14 books, and we did some local exploration too. June was also pride month, and shockingly—we usually avoid it because I don’t like crowds and it’s usually too damn hot in June—we actually attended pride in Portland, Oregon. See what I did with the rainbow hop and the intro…yeah 😀

I hadn’t planned to read mostly LGBT books in June, but it just happened to work out that way. This will be a photo heavy post (you’re welcome) because work is crazy with the end of the fiscal year and we’re preparing for a long weekend in Texas for July 4th.

Books and Bookish Things
As I said above, I read 13 LGBT (let’s face it mostly G, but a little bit of B and T, no L) books in June. Mostly it’s because they were all romance novels. If you EVER need to boost your reading numbers for WHATEVER reason, go for romance novels. I cannot believe I read 14 books this month, but when I realize that 13 of them were MM Romances that spanned 150-400ish pages, I can totally believe it.

  1. The Book on Rental Property Investing – Brandon Turner
  2. Served Hot (Portland Heat #1) – Annabeth Albert
  3. Baked Fresh (Portland Heat #2) – Annabeth Albert
  4. Delivered Fast (Portland Heat #3) – Annabeth Albert
  5. Knit Tight (Portland Heat #4) – Annabeth Albert
  6. Wrapped Together (Portland Heat #5) – Annabeth Albert
  7. Danced Close (Portland Heat #6) – Annabeth Albert
  8. Save the Date – Annabeth Albert and Wendy Qualls
  9. Bryan & Jase (Something About Him #1) – A.D. Ellis
  10. Brody & Nick (Something About Him #2) – A.D. Ellis
  11. Barret & Ivan (Something About Him #3) – A.D. Ellis
  12. Braeton & Drew (Something About Him #4) – A.D. Ellis
  13. Ryker & Gavin (Something About Him #5) – A.D. Ellis
  14. Kade & Cameron (Something About Him #6) – A.D. Ellis

By far the best were Wrapped Together and Save the Date. The rest of Albert’s were 4-5 stars, but the Ellis novels were not good. I hate read the last 3-4 of them.

A bunch of ARC/Galley’s came in this month so I’ll need to read them to stay on top of things:

Funny story (not really), but I may have shamed Berkley Publisher into approving me on NetGalley (see Tweet below). It was actually more to shame services like NetGalley/Eidelweiss for being so limited. I’m not going to put Austen/Brontë into a 50-100 word blurb because I have varied interests, but I do have whole sections dedicated to them on my site. They did approve me after I tweeted, and I felt a little guilty, but really I’m just excited to read it.

While in Portland I got to visit the Infamous Powell’s City of Books and it was overwhelming. We probably shouldn’t have gone right after we arrived, we’d been awake for nearly 20 hours and had traveled cross country. I wandered around in a daze that first visit, until I found a map and then wandered around in a directional daze looking at various sections. We went back another day, thankfully, and it was still overwhelming but so neat—I picked up three books:

  • The Stranger’s Child – Alan Hollinghurst
  • Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki
  • Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel

We also stumbled across Backstory Books & Yarn outside of downtown and it was cute. I wish they’d had more yarn, but it was a cool little find. [I actually ended up pitting up an afghan pattern book from a satellite of Powell’s later the same day 🙂

Being so busy, I didn’t have a lot of Social Media time this month, but I did stumble across this. I’m not sure how much I agree with it though:

Culture Corner aka Photos from all our trips
And here are the photos you’ve been waiting for. Portland and the West Coast were incredibly beautiful and the only thing I could think to compare it to was Alaska. It’s not as big or as wild, but the coast is definitely reminiscent in how big it is and how open it is. I even got the nod to all of the breweries up top (Double Mountain Brewery – delicious sandwiches and interesting ciders).

Photos:

  • Mt. Hood from Lavender Valley
  • Mt. Hood from Draper Girls Country Farm
  • Oregon Coast Line
  • Tillamook Creamery
  • Bridal Veil Falls
  • Haystack at Cannon Beach
  • Monoliths hidden behind Haystack
  • Portland Japanese Garden
  • Portland International Rose Test Garden

And then to cap the month off I discovered Halibut Point State Park in Rockport, Massachusetts and we went up and explored it on the 30th:

The quarry was stunning and the coast was too! I’d definitely go back and do the walk and explore the rocks again (especially at high or low tide to see a difference).

What’s Next?
Sleep—I wish 😀 We’re heading off to Texas the day this posts and once we’re back we’ll have time to relax and enjoy summer in Massachusetts. I’m part of the way through Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer and just picked up copies of Gengoroh Tagame’s My Brother’s Husband Volume 1 and Volume 2 from the library and I have to get to those ARCs before they are archived on NetGalley or published and I’m reading them weeks/months late.

4 thoughts on “June Recap 2019”

    1. I remember when I first started some of the first book bloggers I found were reading hundreds of books a year. I didn’t realize they were mostly romance novels for a few months.

      Reply
  2. Pingback: Book 637: The Vanished Bride (A Brontë Sisters Mystery #1) – Bella Ellis – The Oddness of Moving Things

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