July Wrap: A Slow Month Where I Bought A LOT

I can’t believe it’s already the end of JULY and as of right now, I haven’t even gone to the beach.  Once.  Like, who even am I? I’m not sure anymore and I’m having an EXISTENTIAL CRISIS about it because the beach is actually my favorite place in the whole world and I’m… not going!?!?!  Not that that has anything to do with books, or writing, meaning that you guys don’t care at all, so to the real post (which is markedly shorter than my normal wrapups but idk):

Physical Books

1. Lola (4/5)— This was an ARC that I won from LibraryThing, and I was super excited to finally get around to reading it.  The plot lived up to expectations and beyond, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the actual style of writing.  I would recommend, but I’m not sure I would run out to buy something else by the author.

Audiobooks (weirdly there’s a lot of these)

1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian (4/5)— I listened to this book in the car on the way out to Colorado with my family, and thought it was the perfect family read.  The narrator was the author, which was cool because then you knew it was being read exactly as it was supposed to be, and although it took me a bit to get into the Native American Accent, once I did it was really enjoyable.
2. Behind the Beautiful Forevers (4/5)-– This book took me FOREVER to read just because I kept forgetting about it, and you need to listen to it for long periods of time in order to get into it/understand, but I adored it once I got into it.  There’s so many characters and you hear lots of different people’s stories all intertwined, but if you’re willing to pay attention it’s worth the read.
3. Save Me (3/5)— wtf happened to this book.  It started off SO STRONG and I was going to give it a much better rating, but then it went all magical unrealistic mom save the world big conspiracy that only she can uncover save the world.  Like, ummm, no.  just no.  So 4/5 for the first half, 2/5 for the second. Hence the three.

This is a new section that I’m adding to the wrap up, since I realized it’s kind of weird that I didn’t have it already.  Basically, “New books” just means all the books that I’ve gotten, one way or another, over the course of the month.  This month especially was a really good one for book collection!  Of course, that only means that it’s been especially good for drowning in my own TBR, but yanno, you can’t win everything.

Kindle / eARC

1. Until it Fades, by KA Tucker
2. Carnegie’s Maid, by Marie Benedict
3. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, by Katarina Bivald

Physical Books

1. The Girl In the Spider’s Webm by David Lagercrantz
2. The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M Auel
3. Those Girls, by Chevy Stevens
4. Firefly Lane, by Kristin Hannah

1. July 2017 Book Releases— There were SO many good books coming out this month, and although I didn’t have the chance to read any ARCS (I’m still behind from June) I can tell that I’m going to be scouring bookstores for months for cheap copies
2. Genre Shaming Discussion— I wrote a post about why we shouldn’t shame people for reading genres that they enjoy, and I was happy to say that most people agreed with me! Make sure you weigh in on the discussion!
3. Books that Need Sequels— For one of the BroodyBFF challenges, I wrote about books that I want to have sequels, but that don’t currently.  All the books I chose will probably never have sequels, but I WANT THEM SO AUTHORS ARE YOU LISTENING? but in all seriousness, it was a fun post to write.
4. One by One Book Tour— I brought book tours back to the blog for this month, since they are quick and I didn’t have time to write a lot, and I really liked the sound of One by One, by Robert Germaux!

Posts from around the blogosphere that you totally need to head over and check out

1. May has been blogging FOR 6 WHOLE MONTHS. And it’s life changing.  And there’s a survey you need to fill out.
2. Apparently July is a popular blogiversary month, because Teacher of YA had her 1 year blogiversary and wrote a post about it!  I’m super happy for her!
3. Isla (formerly known under another name that I will not say because I don’t know if I’m supposed to) launched her brand new blog and said hi to everyone and I’m super excited.
4. Nia compared some books and movies and told us what books to read if we like that movie and vice versa which is super helpful to all of us TV and movie nerds out there!
5. Sarah wrote an interesting perspective on “reading” audiobooks, which although I somewhat disagreed with I loved reading.

How did your July go? What books did you read? Have you read any of the books that I just got? Let me know all the thoughts

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~ Now Venture out and Change the World ~