Rearview Mirror // July 2022

Only six months behind, not too bad!  LOL

Favorite July Read

My favorite book of the month was my reread of Wodehouse’s The Girl on the Boat, but out of the new books I read, I think Nightwork by Nora Roberts takes the slot.

Most Disappointing July Read

I read a lot of 3* meh kind of reads in July, but I think the one I disliked the most was probably the short story collection Summer Days and Summer Nights.  It was really disappointing that there wasn’t a single story in the entire book that I would have given more than 3* to.  They were uniformly pretty poor.

Other July Reads

• 3*
  • Harbor Lights by Sherryl Woods
  • Her Mother’s Keeper by Nora Roberts
•  3.5*
  • A Chesapeake Shores Christmas by Sherryl Woods
  • Escape From Warsaw by Ian Serraillier
  • Island of Flowers by Nora Roberts
  • Lost Lake by Phillip Margolin
• 4*
  • Black Hills by Nora Roberts
  • Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
  • The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson
  • The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  • A Tangled Web by L.M. Montgomery
• 4.5*
  • The Girl on the Boat by P.G. Wodehouse

July Stats

• Total Number of Books Read:  21
• Total Pages Read:  6821
• Average Star Rating for June:  3.71
• Longest Book: Black Hills (439 pages)
• Shortest Book:  Her Mother’s Keeper (169 pages)
• Oldest Book:  The Picture of Dorian Gray (published 1891)
• Newest Book: Nightwork (published 2022)
• Top Genre: Romance (14 books)
• Top Format: Hardcover (10 books)
• Top Source: Library (10 books)

July Challenge Updates

• New states visited: Hawaii, Oregon, South Dakota, and Virginia
• Chunksters read (800+pgs): 0
• Almost-a-chunksters read (450-799pgs): 0
• Classics read: 2
• Nonfiction read: 0

TBR Update

This is current as of today, not the end of July!!  However, I did note down my stats at the end of 2022, so if I ever get to the point where I can review the year as a whole, I’ll be able to compare it to the end of 2021 and see if I made any progress!!

• Standalones:  490 (up a tragic 20 because I actually moved over books from various “wishlists” onto my TBR where they belong haha)
• Nonfiction:  132 (up one)
• Personal (which includes all books I own (fiction and nonfiction), but lists any series I own as only one entry…):  601 (down three)
• Series (each series counted separately, not each book within a series):  250 (holding steady)
• Mystery Series (each series counted separately, not each book within a series): 110 (down one)
• New Arrivals – (I have a lot of books that I have been gifted or that I pick up somewhere and they get put on my “oh I’m so excited about this shiny new book” shelf… and then of course don’t actually get read.): 167 (down one)

Current Reads

• Middlemarch by George Eliot – Still try to work my way through some classics, so when a group on Litsy decided to buddy read this on start January 1, I went ahead and jumped in.  So far, it’s astoundingly boring.  Just.  So.  Boring.  Only 711 pages left to go!!
• Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder – Another Litsy buddy read, this one through the Little House books.  I’ve been meaning to reread these for eons, so it’s been quite enjoyable to get back into these.
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley – As I did last year, I’m utilizing my BookSpin challenge to start a classic every month and read at least a chapter a day until I’m through it.  I got through several books I never would have read otherwise this way last year, and I’m excited about my fresh new list!!  Frankenstein was first up on the random draw.  Interesting-ish so far, but really different from what I was expecting.
• The Shape Shifter by Tony Hillerman – I’m still working through the Leaphorn and Chee series – this is book 18!!  It’s also the last one that Hillerman wrote before he died.  The series has been taken over by his daughter, so I’m interested to see where she goes with the characters.  Sometimes having the next generation works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
• Cold War by Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing  – you may or may not have noticed that my nonfiction list never seems to get any shorter!!  Another thing to work on this year!!!

Last Time on “Up Next”

Did I actually read my probable next five reads from last time?

• Full Moon by P.G. Wodehouse – Yes!  As always, a very fun romp.  I absolutely love his Blandings Castle books, and this one did not disappoint.
• A Treason of Thorns by Laura Weymouth – Yes!  This was definitely a case of I wanted to like it more than I did.
• The Fallen Man by Tony Hillerman – Yes!  A solid Leaphorn and Chee installment.
• Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik – Nope!  Still hoping to make some progress on this series, though.  Someday.
• Greywaren by Maggie Stiefvater – Nope!  Definitely planning to read this concluding book one of these days, but it just hasn’t happened yet.

Up Next

The probable next five(ish) reads –

• Spider Woman’s Daughter by Anne Hillerman – the next Leaphorn and Chee book, and the first written by Tony Hillerman’s daughter.
• Frederica by Georgette Heyer – this month’s traveling book club book is a reread for me, but one I love and am looking forward to revisiting.
• Not That Kind of Guy by Andie Christopher – I absolutely LOATHED Not the Girl You Marry by this author.  However, I already had this one on my shelf.  On of my random StoryGraph challenges I am doing this year is “Read Your TBR by Color” – with one color for each month; find a book on your shelf that color and read it haha  Since January is pink, I picked this one. Time to either DNF or read it!
• Murder at the Piccadilly Playhouse by C.J. Archer – my sister started reading this historical mystery series, and decided that I should read it with her, so this is the second Cleopatra Fox book.
• Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford – a random TBR book that has been on my list forever.  Not sure if it’s going to end up being “my” kind of book or not.

Alright!! July is checked off the list!  On to August… hopefully before February!!