July Wrap Up

Illustration by Nicc Balce

 

July is already over and summer is slipping by way too fast. This was a pretty busy month for me. I've been doing a lot of work in preparation for the new school year, and my new position means that I'm suddenly on so many different projects that my head is spinning. It's meeting after meeting and assignment after assignment. I'm getting paid though, so at least I'm making a little extra money! I was also officially accepted into my master's degree program, so registering for classes and taking care of things like medical forms and ID cards is taking up my time too. I've got so many changes just on the horizon and I'm feeling a lot of emotions. There's a desire to prove myself, but there's also a lot of anxiety. I just have to remember to stay organized and take things one step at a time.

I was still able to keep up with my reading, and my 100-pages-a-day streak has stayed alive! I read a total of nine books and totaled 3,119 pages. My feelings on this bunch were more mixed than usual. I didn't love everything. I did find one new all-time favorite though, so I was excited about that. Here's what I finished:

Across the Desert by Dusti Bowling (4 stars)

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsal Faizal (3 stars)

We Free the Stars by Hafsah Faizal (2 stars)

When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller (3 stars)

Tales from the Inner City by Shaun Tan (5 stars)

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (3 stars)

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo (4 stars)

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel (3 stars)

Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman (4 stars)

My favorite read of the month was definitely Tales from the Inner City, a collections of illustrated short stories and poems about interactions between humans and animals. The stories were weird and the illustrations were beautiful. I loved every page of it. 

My least favorite of the month was We Free the Stars, the second and final book in a YA fantasy duology. I found the pacing to be awful and a lot of the dialogue to be too cheesy. It's a shame too, because I found the first book in the duology to be fairly entertaining. 

I also finished my Middle Grades Mission challenge this month! Over the course of the year so far, I have read a total of 24 recently published middle grades novels. Honestly, these books have been among my favorites of what I have been reading, so I definitely plan to continue adding books to this challenge and see how many I can get to by the end of the year.

I ended up hauling just one book this month - Lore Olympus Vol. 2. I'm doing pretty well limiting how many books I acquire lately, although the amount of everything else I've been buying is still not great. I really enjoyed the first Lore Olympus volume back in December of last year, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the story continues. 

My mixed reactions to a lot of what I read this month meant that I ended up putting several books on the donate pile. I'm letting go of Across the Desert, We Hunt the Flame, We Free the Stars, When You Trap a Tiger, Such a Fun Age, Clap When You Land, The Test, and Dry. A total of eight books will leave my shelves.

Once again, I did not keep up with my physical reading journal beyond just listing what I read. I love the idea of it, but I think I have to face up to the idea that I just don't have the time to devote to it right now. I still want to keep some pieces of it though - maybe I can incorporate challenge pages and book logs into my regular planner. I'll have to think about it.

My TBR for August is below. The plan is to just keep trucking along and powering through my stacks. I want to read a few more middle grades books and cross a few more titles off my 22 in 2022 Challenge list. Here's the plan:

Anne of West Philly by Ivy Noelle Weir

Isla to Island by Alexis Castellanos

Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake

One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake

Two Dark Reigns by Kendare Blake

Five Dark Fates by Kendare Blake

Sadie by Courtney Summers

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

I worked on ton of puzzles this month. First up was a set of four 500 piece puzzles based on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney. I love the ride and I loved the art on these, but the quality of these puzzles was just not good. There were many false fits and one of the puzzles had a missing piece (it was a corner one too!). They were still fairly fun to work on though, so I can't complain too much.

I also finished my first every wooden jigsaw, this 192 piece Betta Angel puzzle. I really enjoyed how these pieces felt to put together. It was a unique challenge and I definitely want to try another one sometime.

After that I completed a 750 piece shaped puzzle called Blooming Books. The crazy shape was a little bit challenging to put together, but it wasn't too bad. What was the most difficult was the flowers part. All the pieces looked the same to me, so it was a lot of trial and error. I figured it out in the end and it made for quite an impressive finished piece.

Next up was this little 300 piece image from Blanc Puzzles. I still absolutely love this brand. This was a very pretty picture and it was very calming and satisfying to put together.

I was on a roll with smaller puzzles, so I worked on this crazy fantasy one from Buffalo Games next. It was also just 300 pieces and it was very quick to solve. This is part of their Vivid Collection, and the colors actually were really bright and pretty. My puzzle aesthetic is really over-the-top cheesy images, so this one was perfect for me.

The last puzzle I completed was this 1,000 piece Little Mermaid puzzle from Ravensburger. I have a whole bunch of these Disney movie puzzles with the little film strip running across the bottom. I finished the Lion King one last year sometime and enjoyed it. This one was fun too, but all the blue pieces were tough to figure out. Between the water and the background there were a lot of very similar looking pieces! I actually made the frame last on this one, as almost all of those pieces looked exactly the same. It was faster to build the middle first then guess and check with the edge pieces.

I continued practicing my uke too this month. I picked up a nice new blue one on a Prime Day sale, and I really like the sound of it. I got pretty good at You're So Vain by Carly Simon and started working on Dream by Johnny Mercer. I always feel so good when I'm playing. I wish I had gotten into music earlier in my life.

That about sums up my July. It was busy, but I got a chance to relax too. August will be my last bit of calm before the storm of my new job and my return to college. I have a ton of work to get done, but I still plan to spend some time relaxing and getting myself into a good routine before the craziness begins. I'm very curious as to whether I will still be able to keep up my reading pace once all this starts. I really hope so, but I have a feeling it might take a bit of a hit in the coming months.