August Wrap Up

Can you even believe August is done? I know I say this every month, but it always feels like the month is flying by, and now we are for sure over with half the year. There are so many things I want to do, so many milestones I wanted to read. But I’m getting ahead of myself and causing anxiety. So let me just reflect back on this month.

Personal life

This month I read a book a day, for now a grand total of three months that I’ve done that this year. And I really don’t like it. It’s very stressful and it means a review a day, but I’ve done it out of desperation, so there. I also made a big move in my life, mainly back across the ocean to NY again. I’m not sure how long this will be, and that is anxiety provoking enough, but it meant a lot of stress, sadness (I couldn’t take nearly all my books), and more and more of both really.

Books I Read

In which I show you on Goodreads all the books I read. Are we Goodreads friends yet? If we aren’t we should be, because that’s where you can get a sneaky peak at the books I’ve finished reading before the reviews are posted.

Favorite Book

This month is such a tricky month because I read so many fabulous books. So since I am lame and cannot pick a favorite, I’m going to pick one ARC favorite and one review favorite.

My ARC favorite would have to be Starfish. This blew me out of the water. I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I ended up doing. Like I knew I would love it, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t anticipate HOW GOOD it was going to be. I am so happy I am on the Blog Tour for this fantastic book. The way Bowman explores the multi-racial identity and subtle racism was game changing for me. I want more YA fiction like this – and just pile on to of it adoption narratives too please. I need them all, like this book would have been so amazing for me when I was younger.

My favorite review is Little Fires Everywhere. I won’t spoil you too much about your review, go check it out, but let me just say that this book majorly clicked for me. There were so many instances where I was like, ‘Damn, Ng, you just get me”. The way Ng talked about motherhood is just everything to me. As someone who was an orphan and never knew their birth mother, as someone who wants to be a mother one day, and as someone who loves mother/daughter books, this was an all around win for me. I even loved this so much I emailed Ng to tell her, because this book just made me so happy.

This month was fantastic for books that just got me, books that transformed how I see literature, and that explored racism and erasure. So all in all this month of books was the bomb.

Favorite Instagram Post

This is tricky, because they are all like my babies, and I’ve been on a mental roll. But I’ll have to go with this one.

On this note, and the others, this month I wrote a series of Bookstagram advice posts. How to Start a Bookstagram Part 1, Part 2, and my favorite photos + advice. If you ever wanted to know about how I take my photos, from start to finish, then check out part one and two. If you wanted to know my favorite photos, broken down by month since I started, check that FLYTIP post out!

Outstanding Posts

This month there was a lot of things going on, so I wanted to feature my favorite reviews and discussion posts.

Review: Tiger’s Watch + Giveaway (last days to enter), The Seafarer’s Kiss, The Vegetarian, The Kite Runner, & Girls Made of Snow and Glass. I wrote tons of other posts, but these were just my favorites.

Discussion Posts: Introductionary Reading to SF, How to Start a Bookstagram Part 1, Part 2, and my favorite photos + advice

Challenge Updates + Bingo Board Progress

So I have basically finished my challenges, the book I read for this month’s diversity was Non-Western Setting so for that I read the Kite Runner and The Vegetarian.

ARC August

I finished up the Make me Read-a-Thon, you can see my wrap up here, but I wanted to update you on my goals for ARC August and which ones I managed to read. So commence the gallery of books I ended up reading.

Summer Bingo

So I managed to almost completely finish my Bingo Board. I was going to finish it, but life got in the way completely. It was intense. If you are wondering, the one book that’s not on there but I want to read is Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo. I figured that’s easier to say then all the books I read. There are reviews for all of those as well, except I am Alfonso Jones & Woodcutter & The Crystal Ribbon, so I will put them here.

Every Heart a Doorway, Mapping the Interior, More of Me, Aristotle and Dante, Sovereign, The Space Between Stars, Huntress, This Impossible Light, Lambs Can Always Become Lions, Dragon Springs Road, Infomocracy, Some Kind of Happiness, Under Rose-Tainted Skies, The Girl with the Red Balloon, Tyrant’s Throne, Hum if You Don’t Know the Words, Ensnared, The Kite Runner, & The Golden House.

The Reading Quest

For this particular game themed board, I have read all of my mage path books: Want, The Girl with the Red Balloon, The Dark Wife, The Black Tides of Heaven, and the Girl from Everywhere. I have also finished the Rogue path: Persepolis, The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf, Thin Places, Addicted to Death, and Want. Today I should almost finish the Knight track by finishing Infinity Wars, but I’ve read: Before She Ignites, The Girl From Everywhere, The Red Thread of Fortune, and Hello Moto. The only one I have left is Sea Foam and Silence. That leaves these books: Artemis, 1Q84, Illuminae, Wonder Woman, Strange the Dreamer, Rebel Seoul, Sour Sweet, and Before Tomorrow. I will attach my TBR board for the Reading Quest.

The Wonder Week Read-A-Thon

I am not quite done with this either, I still have to read Artemis and I just finished The Ship Beyond Time yesterday but I didn’t add it to the board yet.

Giveaways

I do want to feature a Twitter giveaway I am doing where I am giving away one pre-order for Girls Made of Snow and Glass. All you have to do is Retweet that tweet and follow me. If you’re already following my blog here, you even get an additional entry (just write a comment saying so).

Discussion

How was your month? I am anticipating September to be even busier.

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