Reading Life Review: July 2021

July 26, 2021

The following post includes affiliate links. More details here. As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!

Do you have a book that you remember staring at on the family book shelves growing up? One that taunted you but for some mysterious reason you never opened? For me, that book is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. I think it was required reading for my older brother, and for some reason, I was intrigued by it, but not enough to open it. And it continues, as Amazon tells me I borrowed a copy from Prime Reading on November 1, 2019, but only for so long, as we’ll be discussing this book, and it’s 30+ year younger follow up, The Testaments on Friday, September 17 at 7:30 p.m. CST. Sign up here to join in our conversation, and share your thoughts on this “inappropriate,” and sometimes banned, book.

Ashley IN MEDIAS RES

Nikki IN MEDIAS RES

Ashley FIN

Nikki FIN

In case you aren’t aware, (and if you aren’t, then please slide into our DMs so we can fix this), bookish friends are the best! I had THE BEST TIME chatting all things ACOSF and ACOTAR with some of our readers in July at Virtual Book Club! I just finished my reread (yes, after book club, but it was a reread, and yes, it does bring down my book club stats for the year, whatever), and I loved it more than when I read it the first time! Some books are just like that, and they’re among my favorites!

Other bookish friends are amazing highlights include a special former roommate who introduced me to Jenny Lawson’s books years ago (I consumed her writing as the bloggess years ago, but missed her transition to books). When Lawson’s latest book, Broken (in the best possible way) was due out, I requested an ARC from a Goodreads Giveaway, even though it was a physical book, and I won! Well friends, that book showed up mere days before I was leaving to meet the aforementioned friend who was dealing with some really hard things. What’s a girl to do? Start the ARC, and pass it to said friend with love and hugs ASAP! That’s exactly what I did, then I dutifully got in line for my library’s copy and finished the book this month. Jenny Lawson is a delight, full of vulnerable wit, real life, and sarcasm. If you or someone you love experiences depression or chronic illness, please pick up one of Lawson’s books! I really enjoyed reading about how she battled with her insurance company to get the treatment she and her healthcare professionals thought would benefit her, won, and then experienced her best life afterwards as a result of that hard fought, successful battle for some amazing treatment. If you like real life with a healthy dose of sass and ridiculous comedy, put this on your TBR.

Said friend also read and loved The Shadow and Bone Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. She isn’t the first to recommend this trilogy, but she is the first to have them magically (ok, Amazon) appear on my doorstep! See also: Adam, coming back from the mailbox: “you got something big and heavy and not shaped like a book.” Me: “The joke’s on you!” A: “It’s two books?” Me: “Three!” This amazing friend is also involved in our bringing you Mexican Gothic, a double Heart.Wants.Books 2020 favorite read, and perhaps another title or two yet to come (they’re at my house, but you all know I struggle with a lack of a deadline!). Thank you S for being amazing, and doing life, and books, with me! I hope you love ACOSF as much as I do!

Who are your bookish friends and what do you like to do to celebrate that special piece of your friendship? (If you’re questioning your answer to this, sign up for virtual book club and make some new bookish friends!)

~Nikki

Dear Readerly Friends, I have decided to take The Electric Heir (Feverwake #2) by Victoria Lee off my In Medias Res because I haven’t opened the book in months. I’m at 5%. It’s fine, I own it, pre-ordered the kindle version, actually, but I just can’t seem to settle in with the characters again, and that’s ok. You know what I am loving however…Shadow and Bone! Has it been on the TBR for ages? Yes. Did I buy the digital version on the cheap in November 2019? Yes, yes I did. I might also be consuming the entire trilogy in the next week or so because I, too, got some dead tree copies (from the library) so that I can binge the series in preparation for binging on Netflix. I am SO EXCITED about the prospect of BOTH binges. [Nikki here: Cosign, and also, Adam is excited about the show!]

I’m finally caught up with Nikki on her Harry Potter re-read as of the beginning of this month. There was also a hockey TRN that was not a buddy read and the additional non-fiction of You Need a Budget. YNAB was also an inexpensive kindle book purchase from many many moons ago that I was finally getting around to reading. I didn’t learn a whole lot about the hows of managing money, but I did learn some new vocabulary on how to talk about what specific savings categories are for. YNAB is a program as well as a book, and I’m not interested enough in the way the system works for me to learn a new system, but I am abiding by the major principles so I appreciated that internal atta-girl!

All of my other reads for July you’ve already heard about or will hear about in the future, so sit tight and get ready for some go-go-go in August! (There’s a solid pun here if you know where to look for it.)

~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW:

Related Posts

Reading Life Review: February 2020

Reading Life Review: January 2022

Favorite Books of 2020

Reading Life Review: April 2021