Well that was a hell of a month. To recap, the States are a goddamn shitshow, but things have been looking up for the last couple of weeks, and, well, I am both excited and cautiously optimistic. Obviously we’ve all been hurt before, but this year is not like that other year. I live in hope, because the alternative is joining the cat under the couch blanket.
I’m not saying it’s the most productive solution, I’m just saying I’d be in there with her if I didn’t have shit to do. And, of course, the beginning of July saw a completely unexpected scandal of a different kind, which naturally dropped on my head on the first day of the holiday weekend.
I won’t pretend this isn’t gutting – not because I’m particularly attached to Gaiman’s books (I’m pretty hit or miss with him), but because he seemed like a genuinely good guy and now it turns out he’s just like all the rest of the “good guys” who haven’t actually been good or even mediocre. I’m not sorry to part with these books because I could use the shelf space anyway, though in full transparency I am keeping Neverwhere and Good Omens because I am in the end only human. Still, it sucks. Is everyone I admire secretly garbage?
July Reading Stats
Books Finished:
- Cat + Gamer 5 – Wataru Nadatani
- Black Sun – Rebecca Roanhorse
- A Dictionary of Maqiao – Han Shaogong
- Summers End – Juneau Black
- Fantastic Mr. Fox – Roald Dahl
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
- Matilda – Roald Dahl
- The Pagemaster – David Casci, David Kirschner, and Ernie Contreras
Total Pages Read: 2,749
Politics and Gaiman aside, I am thrilled with how this July went because I finished the Bookshop.org summer reading challenge with flying colors. I technically could’ve ended the challenge July 28, which was its official end date, but I really wanted to go for the gold and somehow managed to read at least a few pages every day of July. Considering I really thought I would bottom out in the middle of the month, this is seriously euphoric. I have officially earned myself 20% off my next Bookshop order, and it feels fuckin’ awesome. I do not plan to read every day for the rest of the year and in fact have yet to read at all this current month, but I’m still riding that high.
The obvious highlight this month was Summers End. I worship this series, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I love it so much that I preordered both the eBook and the paperback well in advance, and I blocked off the entire July 13/14 weekend to devour it because I was ready to bite anybody who got between me and this book and that tends to be frowned upon at work. And, having read it, I now also have the audiobook and have listened to it all the way through, and I am in wait mode once again for book 6. Literally this picture is making me want to reread the entire series, only on Kindle this time. I haven’t yet cracked open my Kindle copies, but I SHOULD.
A couple of unexpected highlights: my favorite Roald Dahls were this month’s Comfort MVPs, given that I picked them up around the time U.S. politics exploded, and, though I’ve unhauled my physical copies, I have all three on Kindle and am considering keeping my physical copy of Matilda. I make no excuse for Roald Dahl, who I have since found out was anti-Semitic trash. (Are literally all of my favorite authors assholes? If anything is wrong with Margaret Atwood, Yangsze Choo, Tamsyn Muir, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Madeline Miller, and/or Travis Baldree, I’m going to have a nuclear meltdown. Oh give me one amazing author I can worship without the accompanying liberal guilt, I am begging.) But Matilda fucking slaps, even more than she did when I was a child. I love the book. I adore the movie. They are both so cozy and so comforting, and they soothed my book-loving soul during a very bumpy July.
And, though I didn’t love it as wildly as I love Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is still a nostalgic favorite, as well as the sole reason for this very embarrassing candy haul. I have been looking for those caramel Reese’s cups for months, and now that I’ve found them I am very sad I didn’t like them more. It turns out they’re too sweet for me. ;_;
As for the other unexpected highlight, here’s something I didn’t know before this year: the Pagemaster movie came first. I normally assume books precede movies, but in this case the book was based on the movie, which certainly explains why the illustrations are so spot-on. The copy that has been in my family for decades (and which I have now stolen from my parents because The Pagemaster never made it to Kindle) is the edition that was cobbled together from the movie script and sold in the F.A.O. Schwarz Christmas catalogue. Could the writing be better? Sure. But I am obsessed with this book because at the end of the day I’m just a girl who loves books about books, though to be fair I am also a professional designer and I do have a few notes about the layout. Anyway, the ultimate message here is that you should always listen to your friends. I would never have thought about The Pagemaster if one of my friends hadn’t mentioned it out of the blue. Having reread the book, I have rented the movie, and I’m looking forward to watching it. I honestly don’t remember if I’ve actually seen it, or if I’ve only ever read the book.
Currently Reading
Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Still stuck in The Sign of the Four, lol. No progress.
Alias Grace
Margaret Atwood
Current rating: 4 stars, mostly on account of Simon being a gross son of a bitch with a gross mother and a gross landlady. I knew in advance that he is in fact gross because I have read this book before, but I had forgotten his habit of imagining every woman in the world as a prostitute. Grace’s story is fascinating, as it should be; I just wish it weren’t balanced by Simon’s.
Fevered Star
Rebecca Roanhorse
I FUCKING LOVE THIS BOOK. Iktan is still my favorite. That is all.
Fire & Blood
George R.R. Martin
I suppose this was inevitable during Dragon Season. Gyldayn is no more enchanting as a narrator than he was the first time, but the read in general is going much more quickly because now I have it on Kindle and I’m not trying to configure myself comfortably with a giant paperback that’s like to fall on my face and kill me.
Into the Wild
Erin Hunter
This one is totally random, as all the best finds are. I am in a Kindle Girl group on Facebook (as far as I can tell, predominantly female), and it so happens that one fine day I saw a comment that mentioned the Warrior Cats series. I investigated, and found out that Warrior Cats has several sub-series, of which at least one is currently available on KU. The rest is now history. I’ve been enjoying the book so far; I’m not at the wild-Redwall-worship level at the moment, but it’s got me interested.
Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
I have been a Nezhukumatathil stan since I read World of Wonders, and she’s back at it with Bite by Bite, a food-themed memoir presented in essay format. The writing is gorgeous and the stories captivating, and this is going to be one of the easiest five stars I’ve given this year. I will be attempting to meet Nezhukumatathil later this summer, and I will try my very best not to cry all over her when I ask her to sign my book. Let’s hope the signing line doesn’t defeat me.
Self-Indulgent Capitalism
Some days you’re doing real good with the leftovers and the book ban, and some days you stuff the nearest friend into your car and drag them out for dinner and book shopping. Look, I couldn’t help myself. I got taken in by the siren call of the books. Shame on my ancestors, dishonor on my fucking cow. Don’t care. Too busy rearranging my bookcases to make room for the new books.
In other ancestor-shaming, cow-dishonoring news, I have just this week become a two-Kindle household because I got completely suckered into the idea of a purse Kindle, as introduced to my obsessive ADHD ass by the aforementioned Kindle group. I was wavering between the basic Kindle, which has the advantage of being smaller and more portable, and the Paperwhite Kids, which comes with a choice of case designs. And I’ve gotta be honest, I so nearly went with the Kids model until I realized you can’t remove the ads if you turn off child mode. (On a side note, the Warrior Cats books came up in a post about the Kids model, because one of the case designs is based on the cats.)
Anyway, the ads thing ruled out the Kids model, but I also found that I wasn’t really into the basic Kindle either because I don’t like the raised edges around the screen. I am accustomed to a completely flat screen on my 10th gen Paperwhite SE, and that raised edge was going to drive me crazy. I am a Paperwhite girlie at heart. The other problem is that I ordered my first Paperwhite right before Amazon launched the current line, which included the unspeakably adorable agave green, and I have spent the last three years repenting in leisure. Long story short, I ended up ordering the 11th gen Paperwhite SE because go big or go home and at the end of the day I am exactly the kind of person who will buy the device with the most storage space even if I don’t actually need it. I even did a reasonable job installing the screen protector, considering I suck at anything requiring fine motor control, though there is a recalcitrant air bubble in the lower left corner that is making me a little bit unreasonable. Time to hit up the ‘Tubes for tutorials.
It was originally my intention to keep the old Paperwhite at home and carry around a cheaper model that wouldn’t shatter the earth with its potential loss, because I have been reading lots of horror stories about Kindles getting left behind on planes and I can’t really see myself doing that but the chances are never zero, but obviously that bombed so now the new Paperwhite is the home Kindle and the old Paperwhite is the purse/travel Kindle. Got it? Cool, me neither. Just to amp up the confusion, I’ve got two cases for the new Paperwhite, one clamshell and one clear, because I am a sucker for all of those pretty inserts people have been selling on Etsy. My fall-themed insert is in the mail (or possibly has just arrived, I just got a package notification), and will be put into use the minute September hits.
The Kindles also swapped names. The new one is called Soboro, because of the calico on the cover and because I have ordered her a calico dust plug to match. The old one is now Spring Moon. Funnily enough, I wasn’t into the idea when I started my list of Kindle names earlier this year, but now I love it.
Cookery and Cattery
New ramen technique: Today I tried cooking buldak in milk because YouTube told me to. I never thought I’d say these words in this order, but YouTube was right.
New favorite food: stuffing-topped casseroles.
Newest outrage: I thought I’d adopted a cat, but apparently I got a dead pillbug instead. I’ve been fucking catphished.
Happy August. We are SO CLOSE to fall.
