Tag: Monthly Wrap-Up

December is basically over, which brings me to another monthly book blog wrap-up post! Since I plan on spending time putting together some 2022-related posts, I’ll keep this one rather brief. Part of me wants to apologize for a light and heavier month of book reviews and memes, respectively. But I won’t. I needed to take some time for myself. And the days around Christmas ended up busier than expected. Which brings me to the topic at hand: my December wrap-up. Let’s go!

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I’ve been in a somewhat funny mood for most of November with respect to blogging. Suffice it to say the whole Twitter takeover and people “jumping ship,” so to speak, kind of triggered my grumpiness. I have *~*thoughts*~ about the exploration of other social media platforms. (Even though I understand everyone’s reasoning.) But I’m not sure I want to put the effort into sharing them unless others want to hear what I have to say. If you do, let me know in the comments.

A shining light amidst my grumpiness was that Tor unexpectedly shared a couple of my book reviews on their Twitter account. The first was a complete surprise and it was a nice confidence boost. It rekindled my raison d’être for book blogging.

I’m also getting back into working out. This really fell off the wayside after we moved house a year ago. It’s tough to motivate myself when these days I’d rather read. But my goal is to do some form of exercise four times per week. I look forward to not feeling sore the next day after a workout!

We also got our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. Wow, I think this is the prettiest tree we’ve ever bought! Our local nursery chain names the trees. This year we have a Hades.

Anyway, that’s my little life update. Here’s what I was up to in the bookish world.

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As you may (or may not) know, I took an international vacation in October for this first time since February 2020. My husband and I have a tradition of going on a big trip abroad each year. So this was our first one in a while. I felt a little rusty packing and doing all the things one does in an airport. We went to Switzerland first for a week followed by a second week in southern France.

In Switzerland we spent nearly all of our time in and around the Lauterbrunnen valley, which apparently inspired Tolkien’s Rivendell. So that was a fun fact to learn. The mountains there are gorgeous and we got super lucky that the clouds held off, for the most part, at the top of the ones we wanted to visit. In France we stayed in Orange and did various day trips from there. We tasted Rhone valley wines, took a scenic bike ride, and visited a lot of Roman ruins.

The only downer is that we paid the “travel tax” in the end. After evading THE THING for 2.5 years, we caught it despite our masking precautions and eating outdoors everywhere. However, as of writing this, what made me feel bad was actually a co-infection of strep throat. (So when you see those headlines saying people are now getting co-infections, hi, it’s me, I’m the problem, it’s me. See what I did there?) Trying to get a doctor’s appointment was interesting because even their virtual appointments were booked 5 days out. So that was a whole other thing, but in the end I got a house call and some antibiotics. So I guess that’s a new thing now?

Anyway, let’s talk book stuff…

Continue reading “Monthly Book Blog Wrap-Up: October 2022” →

Despite feeling super busy, I surprised myself by finishing six books in September in addition to my eight BBNYA 2022 extracts. I don’t know how I did it, but I’m very happy about that. I suppose it’s called avoiding-the-world-by-reading-all-the-time. 😉 It’s a great habit. I approve. Also, no plant injuries to report this time around, so another positive in my book.

I think the biggest life thing I’ll share is that our family vacation house in southwest Florida is still there! It’s on one of the barrier islands, so we had no idea what to expect after Hurricane Ian moved on. But we finally found aerial footage from NOAA that shows it didn’t wash away. We’re feeling very fortunate about that fact, though it will take a very long time to repair everything. The only way to access that part of Florida now is by boat or air, so that will definitely add to the restoration timeline. We don’t have any boots on the ground since those individuals are first and foremost tending to their own lives, as they should. We’ll learn more with time. Lots of good memories at that house.

Anyway, let’s see how September went on the blog!

Continue reading “Monthly Book Blog Wrap-Up: September 2022” →

August was a fantastic reading month for me in terms of quantity of books. I managed to complete six books, all of which I assigned to various Common Challenges in the August Trope-ical Readathon. While it was a great reading month, I felt a bit overwhelmed for a number of reasons. I had three ARCs to read; one book to read so I could give it back to a relative this weekend; and one book I needed to read before returning it to the library. I also decided to join Jordyn’s Sabriel read-a-long; even though it’s casual, I felt a little stressed to read the first 10 chapters by the end of this week.

Additionally, I dealt with an allergic reaction to a plant, which wasn’t fun. At first I thought it was oak mite bites (an after effect of the presence of periodic cicadas…Google it). Then it got way worse, so I thought it was poison ivy. But that didn’t line up because I hadn’t gardened near poison ivy. After more internet sleuthing I decided it was caused by a hyacinth bulb. Yes, you read right, a hyacinth bulb.

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