Monthly summary – August

This month has been half lazy and half reading break. Well, I did try to make up for all the days without books, so I kind of speed up my reading and ended up with the amount you’ll see bellow. It helped that I used many types of reads :).

So what did I accomplish in June?

• Finished 19 stories: 3 graphic novels, 5 short stories, 5 audio books, 6 novels. Together a rather nice 3962 pages. I’m back on track! And 7 of these were finished or read during the last sunny weekend!
• Average rating: 3.6
• But the most important part of this month were my vacations :D. You know, the two weeks during which my blog was so silent and I was barely responsive :P. I had some good time biking, kayaking, gaming (board games are awesome!), sightseeing.
  Pity it always ends so fast.
  And even though I published so little this month, I still have almost as many visits from you guys as I had last month!
  You guys are fantastic!

• I almost gave up coffee after vacations, but then they’ve opened Coffee Point in my office… with 50% discount for the first week… evil!

• Let’s add some statistics for this month – here are the sources of this month’s reads. As you can see NetGalley rules – it’s the short stories from Gelineau and King and the graphic novels.

• I had a moment of weakness at a supermarket – they had a book promo and I ended up with 6 books… I went only to buy bread and some sweets…
• Oh, and I’m 14 followers away from the magical 500!
• Goodreads still says I’m 14 books behind schedule… I really need to add these BBC reads that I’ve listened to this year.
• Even though the weather is still warm and sunny during the day, morning got a bit cold and when I’m coming home late it’s getting too dark to read on the way…
  WINTER IS COMING!
  [couldn’t resist]
• We finally got back to RPG’s! It’s been ages since our last adventure so we’ve decided to switch to D&D. I’m currently killing monsters with my fantastic blue-haired thiefling warlock! And oh look, I even got a not-so-good but at least my own drawing of her! Aaaand I even made an awesome summary of the last session… which will [hopefuly] never get in public :P. But it was fun.

Favorite book of the month

Heroes or Thieves by J.J. Sherwood

Totally, fantastically awesome! The second part of a great series with elves, magic, politics, action, deception, fantastic heroes, plenty of unexpected events and all the goodies you could expect from a great fantasy series.

Book 1 review | Book 2 review | Author interview

Biggest disappointment

How To Think Like Sherlock by Daniel Smith

With a shining 1,5 stars! Yes, I had some hopes for this one. Maybe if the title was different I could enjoy it a bit more, but the way it was I was not impressed.

All the other stories I’ve read:

As usual – from worst to best and links (click on covers) lead either to my reviews or to Goodreads page.

          

Five-star reads:

  

Oh yes, four 5-star reads this month! How awesome is that?!

I was surprised I liked this Star Trek novel so much. I’m always afraid to reach for one of these in case they aren’t as good as the TV-show, but this one was great! I’ll write a review soon(ish).

This Little Prince edition was something I bought just because of yet another book promo and I’m so happy about it! It looks lovely and it’s just as good as I remembered it from my childhood. The only problem with it is that it doesn’t fit even on my tallest shelf.

And I finally re-read Harry Potter – the lovely illustrated version. It was one of my goals for this year, so YAY ME! I still love the story and the illustrations make it worth the time and money :).

As for the last one, you probably read about it already :P.

Not only all of these books were awesome, but also all have fantastic graphic either straight inside or on authors web (Heroes or Thieves).

Currently reading / listening to:

 

A few first thought about the last one since it wasn’t my intended read at the moment. I’ve started this book out random thinking it’s something else and that I’ll put this one down anyway when I get home. So I’ve read the first chapter.

Damn, that’s a tough case of love at first sight and forbidden love. Really, that’s what I bought? What was I thinking? Romance books are not for me, I’m getting bored and pissed off way too easily reading them.

But since I had about 20 more minutes to get home, I might as well read another chapter. After all, I have to check if this book is something I’ll finish reading one day.

Curious… it’s actually rather nicely written and not as bad as it could be. Well, let’s check one more chapter, just to be sure…

Hmm… it feels a bit like Illuminae, but it will pass…

Then why can’t I stop reading?

And that’s where I’m now… first 20% into the book and I already can’t put it down. Maybe all the people who gave it such a nice reviews were right? We’ll see when I’m finished.

Working on reviews:

Ummm… let’s just say I have a lot of reviews to write including some DNF’s [although I need to read few more pages of these books before I’ll say a definite ‘goodbye’ to them]. But I’ll be trying to write a few words about these stories at least:

Thank you all!