I’m linking up with The Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up, hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight.

Goings-On

I didn’t plan a blog hiatus for July and August, but we had a very spontaneous “let’s have a trip before wave 4 hits” holiday, that involved a lot of last minute planning, and left me jet lagged for more than 2 weeks after. I didn’t set out to take a break but I ended up taking one more than a month long. Holiday was great, did lots of sightseeing, and I’m counting book shops as sights. If you want to see the massive pile of books I got, check out my latest Sunday Post. 

To be honest I was tired, even in June I was barely dragging along, always behind on reviews, I think I was a little burned out from Wyrd and Wonder (which I loved, I just gotta plan a little more ahead for it) and other stuff.

I also did a lot of last minute sewing before we left, I made 2 skirts and a dress, with pockets. And I ended up wearing the skirts almost all the time they were so comfy. The weather’s gone from 35 to 15, almost over night, so now I’m feeling in the mood to make some wintery stuff too. I failed to take a picture of the second skirt while finished, but that was the fabric for it.

I had a burst of mini-painting that was fun, I go all of these down over one week, but now I’m stuck on a Skelly I’m not in love with.

Because I had so many reviews piled up, I haven’t been in the mood to read much, or well, I’ve started plenty of books but didn’t want to finish them. So I watched a lot of TV, can’t remember the last time I watched so much stuff:

• The Snyder Cut of League of Legends – bf inflicted this upon me. Gosh that was long, and they spent the entire movie with the lights off, it hurts my eyes. Flash was the only character who was fun in this movie. I dunno why we had to watch the 4 hr version of this, while there were some fun parts in between (mostly the Flash ones), I just, no, it’s too long, it has 5 long ending scenes, it’s ridiculous.
• The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina – seasons 3 and 4. Wow, loved this, these two seasons are WILD, they’ve got everything, they’re lots of fun, outrageous plots. I strongly appreciate Caliban never knowing how shirt buttons work. And the sapphic middle aged power couple we got for a while was amazing. I’d say even if you weren’t so sold on continuing after season 2 (I remember being kinda take it or leave it), totally do continue it gets awesome.
• WansaVision – I know I’m behind the hype on this one, but I finally got round to watching it and I loved it. So much fun, so pleasing aesthetically, so well plotted and put together, very yes.
• The Chair – I binged all of this yesterday and I loved it, I also hated parts of it, mostly in the “that is too true” sense. It was also bittersweet for me cause my mom was in the English dept. here and I kept thinking how I would’ve liked to watch it with her.

20 Books of Summer

20 Books of Summer is an annual challenge hosted by Cathy of 746 Books. This is all about reading and reviewing your backlog over the summer – just set a target of 10, 15 or 20 books and declare a TBR (you can always change it later). I saw imyril’s post @ There’s Always Room For One More and decided to join in.

It very much feels like summer is over here, so I figure it makes sense to see how I did, with the weather having gone so suddenly cold and soggy. I’ve actually been spending more outside this past week cause I was just so done with the heat and sweating, this is a relief. For now, I know I’ll grow to hate it.

I’ve read 11 of the 20 books I wanted to read this summer, with another one DNF’d and one currently reading. Here was my original plan. 

Books read for the challenge:

• Murder by Other Means (The Dispatcher #2) by John Scalzi – sequel
• Abhorsen (Abhorsen #3) by Garth Nix  – sequel
• The Relentless Moon (Lady Astronaut Universe #3) by Mary Robinette Kowal – sequel, bingo and Hugo read!
• Pet by Emezi, Akwaeke – bingo, book club
• The Obelisk Gate Jemisin, N.K.– bingo, Broken Earth Readalong hosted by Thistle & Verse 
• Act Your Age, Eve Brown Hibbert, Talia
• Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota #1) by Ada Palmer – Para @ To Other Worlds in raving about this so I’m curious
• Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky #1) by Rebecca Roanhorse – bingo, Hugo readalong (thought I missed the discussion)
• A Master of Djinn (Dead Djinn Universe #1) by P. Djèlí Clark  eARC, bingo
• The Ruin of Kings (A Chorus of Dragons #1) by Jenn Lyons – Hugo readalong -dnf
• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke – Hugo readalong
• Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger – Hugo readalong – currently reading
• Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey – Hugo readalong

Other books read:

• The Eternal Champion (Eternal Champion, #1) Moorcock, Michael
• Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker, Wendy Xu – reread
• Invisible Kingdom, Vol. 2: Edge of Everything Wilson, G. Willow
• Age of Myth & Age of Swords  (The Legends of the First Empire, #1 &2 ) Sullivan, Michael J. – reading books I already own (had these for a looong time)
• Season of the Witch (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, #1) Brennan, Sarah Rees
• Night Shift Dragons (DFZ, #3) Aaron, Rachel – finishing a series

Blog Posts

Reviews:

• Mini reviews – Black Sun, The Left Hand of Darkness, Abhorsen, The Legends of the First Empire, Too Like the Lightning, Piranesi, The Relentless Moon, Season of the Witch

Other posts:

• Top Ten Tuesday: Books I wish I could read again for the first time
• Sunday Post: Back from hiatus (hopefully) with a lot of books
• Top Ten Tuesday: Book Titles That are Questions
• Sunday Post: July 11th
• The Sunday Post: June Round-Up