July 2020 wrap up

Hello bookworms!! Welcome to the July 2020 wrap up!!

Did I completely forget that July is over and I haven’t done a wrap up yet? Yes, I did. Along with not doing all the other things I meant to do in July… (like that challenge update… which is still coming…)

July… was a month. I do feel a bit like the whole world is going to shit right now. That’s pretty much all I have right now… so let’s just get stuck in.

I read a fair chunk in July. I was pretty close to filling in the entire board for the Pop Culture readathon (image and checklist below), although I did fill a lot with graphic novels… (they still count, Fletcher!!)

But by far the weirdest part of July was going back to this list and seeing that I started the month with Meet Cute Club and ended it with Meet Cute… which are, weirdly, different books.

books read

Book	Author	Series	Symbols + ? prompt	Rating	Cover
Meet Cute Club	Jack Harbon	Sweet Rose #1	❤️ ? ? ?️‍? ?‍? ?	3
City of Bones	Cassandra Clare	The Mortal Instruments #1	⚔️ ?‍♀️ ? ? ? The Mummy	3
The Stonekeeper	Kazu Kibuishi	Amulet #1	⚔️ ? ? ? ? ? ? “Light as a feather, stiff as a board”	3
The Stonekeeper’s Curse	Kazu Kibuishi	Amulet #2	⚔️ ? ? ? ? ? ? Practical Magic	4
Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts)	L. C. Rosen		⛱ ? ? ?️‍? ♿️ ?‍♀️ ? ? ? “Everybody’s a suspect”	5
The Cloud Searchers	Kazu Kibuishi	Amulet #3	⚔️ ? ? ? ? ? ? Buffy the Vampire Slayer	3
Hands Down	Mariana Zapata		❤️ ?‍? ?	3
Fence: Rivals	C. S. Pacat, Johanna the Mad	Fence Vol #4	⛱ ? ?️‍? ?‍♀️ ? ? ? ? The Blair Witch Project	4
Love, Creekwood	Becky Albertalli	Creekwood #2.5	⛱ ❤️ ?️‍? ?‍♀️ ? ? Scream 2	4
The Last Council	Kazu Kibuishi	Amulet #4	⚔️ ? ? ? ? ? ? Jurassic Park	4
Prince of the Elves	Kazu Kibuishi	Amulet #5	⚔️ ? ? ? ? ? ? Nancy Downs	4
Loveless	Alice Oseman		⛱ ? ?️‍? ?‍♀️ ? ⏰ ? “What’s your favourite scary movie?”	5
Sass and Sorcery	Kurtis J. Wiebe	Rat Queens #1	⚔️ ❤️ ?️‍? ?‍? ? ? ? ? “It’s just a bunch of Hocus Pocus”	4
The Far Reaching Tentacles of N’Rygoth	Kurtis J. Wiebe	Rat Queens #2	⚔️ ❤️ ?️‍? ?‍? ? ? ? ? Sidney Prescott	4
City of Ashes	Cassandra Clare	The Mortal Instruments #2	⚔️ ?‍♀️ ? ? ? Candyman	3
Meet Cute	Helena Hunting		❤️ ?‍? ? ? I Know What You Did Last Summer	4

I’m having difficulty picking my favourite book of the month, so I’m taking the easy way out and giving you BOTH of the candidates:

• Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) was a surprise fave. I didn’t expect to absolutely love it as much as a I did (for a debut YA contemporary novel) but even as I was reading it, I knew it would be up there for books this year. I also felt compelled to write the review as soon as I finished it, so if you’re interested, check that out!
• Loveless was pretty much guaranteed to be a fave. I have loved every other Oseman book I’ve read, and I assumed this would be no different. My review on this is still coming as it came out in Australia last week, and I’m having issues putting my thoughts into coherent sentences!!

challenge check-in

Final look at the prompts ticked off for the readathon is below. Just quietly, I’m pretty proud of myself for hitting so many prompts!! The final tally was 14 out of 16, and all the ones below with stars are the ones I completed.

General

I took a week off work in July to paint and do some more things in the apartment. This… did not go as planned… I painted about a third of my room, and then all hell broke loose and both husband and I ended up having medical appointments (unrelated to each other, and also unrelated to COVID) and then I spent the last weekend of my ‘break’ lying on the couch feeling sorry for myself and watching a lot of tv shows.

Gaming

I started July playing lots more of The Sims 4: Eco Lifestyle which was the new pack that came out in June. I’m really enjoying it, and I’ve been splitting some of my bigger families into smaller households so I can concentrate on playing more of the actual content as opposed to it just being a small part in the overall game.

Towards the end of July I re-caught the Animal Crossing bug (specifically after the diving update) and I have definitely been playing more of this recently. There are fireworks every Sunday night in August in case anyone doesn’t know!!

Dungeons & Dragons

We are BAAAAACK, baby!! Yes, the team has started Season 2 of out Ebberon campaign, and I am loving it. I have definitely been flexing more of my “don’t you know who I am?!” Princess Iseult of the Eldeen Reaches, snobby and snooty b!tch muscles, and we’ve had some good wins. Combat has been slow so far in this campaign, but that’s on us as we’re trying to do more storyline and subterfuge, which has been a lot of fun!!

I said I would let you all know if we do decide to stream the games, and we are!! There’s a bit of backstory from season 1, but if anyone is interested, I’m happy to give an overview in next month’s wrap up?! We stream through Trent’s twitch account (https://www.twitch.tv/trentbroggy) on Saturday nights at 7:00pm AEST (which is around Saturday morning in Europe, or just very early/may not have gone to bed yet from Friday in the US).

TV and movies

Things I watched in July were (pretty much all of this was on Netflix):

• Sweet Magnolias season 1
• Chesapeake Shores seasons 1 to 3
• The Kissing Booth (rewatch)
• The Kissing Booth 2
• Let It Snow
• Eurovision: The Story of Fire Saga
• Camp Rock (rewatch)
• All the Bright Places
• To the Bone
• Mortal Engines
• Suicide Squad (rewatch)

Music

I’m not even sure what I listened to for the first 3 weeks of the month, but I DEFINITELY listened to folklore on repeat for the last 7 days.

Wow… I don’t know about you guys, but when I do my monthly wraps I always read the previous month’s wrap to see if it can trigger memories of what I actually did in the previous month…

In June I wrote about how I ended up doing my own Top 5 Tuesday posts while Shanah was on hiatus, and I wrote this line:

Of course, if you know me at all, you’ll know that I didn’t stop at 5 for them… there’s no one to police me any more so I can do what I like!! MWAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… ok, I’ll lower the evil now!!

… this is funny to me because in July Shanah reached out and asked if I would like to take over Top 5 Tuesday as the host. (Spoiler: I said yes.) Which means… I now have to police myself?!! I’ve just realised that this is not going to end well at all!!

This is also such a huge thing for me (hosting, not policing myself), because I have been participating in T5T for over two years (6 March 2018 was my very first post!) and I’ve always felt like my weekly Tuesday post is an anchor for my posting as it’s so rare that I skip a topic. Anyway, I’ve yelled a lot about how much I appreciate Shanah’s trust in me to take on her baby – and I am truly honoured and grateful. So… I hope you join us!!

I’m about a week behind on blog hopping at the moment because I’ve been sitting on my couch doing NOTHING, but I have read all of your July posts! Plus I found a list of June posts that I meant to include in last month’s wrap up… and I’m not sure why I didn’t?!! Regardless, these are some of your recent posts that I enjoyed:

• Nyx @ Drizzle and Hurricane Books wrote a post on song lyrics that she would love turned into books – and I agree!! I would totally read all of those, Nyx!!
• The Orangutan Librarian talks about what makes important books
• Kay @ Hammock of Books talks about separating the art from the artist (and reclaiming HP)
• Chana and Malka @ Paper Procrastinators gave their thoughts on book tags – and I 100% agree with all of it!! Although, I am also one of those people who’s tag post is 800 words long because I do like to say why I pick each book… and I have a list of tags I still owe responses to as well… *hides*
• Michelle @ Michelle Likes Books lists her favourite queer books
• Marie @ Drizzle and Hurricane Books listed 20 queer YA books that you should read
• Kathy @ Pages Below the Vaulted Sky is hosting a reading challenge you can join (goes 6 July to 6 Dec) that celebrates BIPOC authors
• Evelyn @ Evelyn Reads wrote about how her reading habits have changed
• Ally @ Ally Writes Things made a “what to read next” flowchart with some great recommendations!!
• The Orangutan Librarian also posted about recent new releases they are loving!!
• Marie @ Drizzle and Hurricane Books talks about why trigger warnings in books are important

Finally, Cait @ Paperfury just writes the most amazing posts, and I love them all… I actually had FIVE on my list, so instead of pretending there aren’t that many and slipping them in between the others *cough*, I’m going to own up to this and put them all together:

• 10 things Cait (and I) want to see more of in YA books about mental health
• how to keep supporting diverse books and authors
• how to edit book covers (you don’t own) into your instagram photos
• 5 things Cait (and I) want to see more of in YA books about disability
• 10 YA books that feature characters with disability that you should read

How was your July 2020 wrap up??