July Round-Up
Here are the reviews posted during July. Please note, this is not a comprehensive list of books I read in July, but rather the books I had the time to review before month's end.
1) Ken Liu: The Man Who Ended History: Excellent
2) Heidi Ruby Miller: Ambasadora: No Rating
3) Leigh Bardugo: Shadow and Bone: Worth Reading, with Reservations
4) Elizabeth Wein: Code Name Verity: My Precious
5) Grant Morrison: WE3: The Deluxe Edition: Worth Reading, with Reservations
6) Mira Grant: Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box: Good Read
7) James S.A. Corey: Leviathan Wakes: Couldn't Put It Down
8) Mira Grant: San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats: Good Read
9) Bill Willingham: Fables: Deluxe Edition: Book 5: Good Read
10) Jo Walton: Among Others: Worth Reading, with Reservations
11) Stina Leicht: Of Blood and Honey: Worth Reading, with Reservations
12) Rae Carson: The Shadow Cats: Good Read
13) Cherie Priest: Ganymede: Good Read
Total Number of Books Reviewed: Technically, it's 9 books and 4 pieces of short fiction
Total Number of Books Read: Technically,14 books and 3 pieces of short fiction
Big month, with only a few short stories to pad out those numbers. I've been a reading machine, especially since my Hugo reading ended and the Olympics started, and I've also been catching up on some graphic novels. Definitely a productive month.
Favorite: Obviously, since Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity earned the first "My Precious" rating since . . . 2010? It deserves top billing. But a close runner-up was James S.A. Corey's Leviathan Wakes.
Most surprisingly enjoyable: Nothing really stands out as a surprise. Stina Leicht's Of Blood and Honey started out surprisingly enjoyable, but by time the book ended, I was grumpy with it.
Biggest disappointment: Saying this was a disappointment doesn't mean it's a bad book; it just means my expectations were way too high thanks to the Hugo nomination, the Nebula win, and all the wonderful reviews I'd heard about before reading Jo Walton's Among Others. I'm not sure what I was expecting, in hindsight, but the book ended up being far too ambiguous for me to really trust the story. That being said, I still see myself re-reading it in the future!
Mount TBR Stats: 25 books accomplished! Mount Vancouver! I'm officially raising my goal to 50 books, which is Mt. Kilimanjaro. Where am I on this noble quest? At this moment, 33 books.
Reading Goals: (if you need to refresh yourself on my personal 2012 reading goals, click here) As I mentioned last weekend, I'm tweaking my goals to the following:
1) New
2) Old
And since I made that decision, I got a little stubborn and decided that once I ran out of new books to read (which I did this past week), I'd just wait on my pre-orders and keep reading the "old" stuff. That doesn't mean you won't see new-to-me titles reviewed, but I have a block of books that I've been dying to get to, and I really want to get through them now that I have the opportunity. :)
Anyway, what were YOUR favorite reads from July? Which books did you love most? Which books, if any, were huge disappointments? Got a review list? Lay it all on me! :)2012's resolution is to RECEIVE no more than 72 books a year, which means if I want to keep a monthly status, no more than 6 books a month! I did well in July, especially considering two of the pieces were short fiction! This brings up my total for the year to 29, with it breaking down like this:
January: 6 books
February: 4 books
March: 4 books
April: 2 books
May: 5 books
June: 4 books
July: 4 books
I'm still well within my resolution, so that's a good thing.
1) Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (Kindle) REVIEW HERE
2) San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats by Mira Grant (Kindle) REVIEW HERE
3) The Shadow Cats by Rae Carson (Kindle) REVIEW HERE
4) Eon by Alison Goodman (WalMart)
This list does not include Jo Walton's Among Others and Stina Leicht's Of Blood and Honey, which were available as .mobi files in the Hugo Voter's Packet, and I bought that a few months ago.
As a whole, I feel good about July. I've read everything except one purchase, and because that's our September read, I'm waiting to read it. The only reason I even picked it up was because WalMart had it cheaper than the Kindle version, and there's a lot of maps and whatnot inside that might've been tricky or even missing on the Kindle version. So it's waiting patiently for September to roll around for me to read it.
August looks like a light month. I've definitely got one preorder coming in, but there's two books that are going to be available August 28th that Amazon won't ship to me until September, so we'll see. There's a part of me that's not wanting to buy anything that isn't a pre-order or a book club pick this month, simply so that I can make a real dent in the TBR pile. We'll see how that goes!
That's my July. How'd you all do?
1) Ken Liu: The Man Who Ended History: Excellent
2) Heidi Ruby Miller: Ambasadora: No Rating
3) Leigh Bardugo: Shadow and Bone: Worth Reading, with Reservations
4) Elizabeth Wein: Code Name Verity: My Precious
5) Grant Morrison: WE3: The Deluxe Edition: Worth Reading, with Reservations
6) Mira Grant: Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box: Good Read
7) James S.A. Corey: Leviathan Wakes: Couldn't Put It Down
8) Mira Grant: San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats: Good Read
9) Bill Willingham: Fables: Deluxe Edition: Book 5: Good Read
10) Jo Walton: Among Others: Worth Reading, with Reservations
11) Stina Leicht: Of Blood and Honey: Worth Reading, with Reservations
12) Rae Carson: The Shadow Cats: Good Read
13) Cherie Priest: Ganymede: Good Read
Total Number of Books Reviewed: Technically, it's 9 books and 4 pieces of short fiction
Total Number of Books Read: Technically,14 books and 3 pieces of short fiction
Big month, with only a few short stories to pad out those numbers. I've been a reading machine, especially since my Hugo reading ended and the Olympics started, and I've also been catching up on some graphic novels. Definitely a productive month.
Favorite: Obviously, since Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity earned the first "My Precious" rating since . . . 2010? It deserves top billing. But a close runner-up was James S.A. Corey's Leviathan Wakes.
Most surprisingly enjoyable: Nothing really stands out as a surprise. Stina Leicht's Of Blood and Honey started out surprisingly enjoyable, but by time the book ended, I was grumpy with it.
Biggest disappointment: Saying this was a disappointment doesn't mean it's a bad book; it just means my expectations were way too high thanks to the Hugo nomination, the Nebula win, and all the wonderful reviews I'd heard about before reading Jo Walton's Among Others. I'm not sure what I was expecting, in hindsight, but the book ended up being far too ambiguous for me to really trust the story. That being said, I still see myself re-reading it in the future!
Mount TBR Stats: 25 books accomplished! Mount Vancouver! I'm officially raising my goal to 50 books, which is Mt. Kilimanjaro. Where am I on this noble quest? At this moment, 33 books.
Reading Goals: (if you need to refresh yourself on my personal 2012 reading goals, click here) As I mentioned last weekend, I'm tweaking my goals to the following:
1) New
2) Old
And since I made that decision, I got a little stubborn and decided that once I ran out of new books to read (which I did this past week), I'd just wait on my pre-orders and keep reading the "old" stuff. That doesn't mean you won't see new-to-me titles reviewed, but I have a block of books that I've been dying to get to, and I really want to get through them now that I have the opportunity. :)
Anyway, what were YOUR favorite reads from July? Which books did you love most? Which books, if any, were huge disappointments? Got a review list? Lay it all on me! :)2012's resolution is to RECEIVE no more than 72 books a year, which means if I want to keep a monthly status, no more than 6 books a month! I did well in July, especially considering two of the pieces were short fiction! This brings up my total for the year to 29, with it breaking down like this:
January: 6 books
February: 4 books
March: 4 books
April: 2 books
May: 5 books
June: 4 books
July: 4 books
I'm still well within my resolution, so that's a good thing.
1) Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (Kindle) REVIEW HERE
2) San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats by Mira Grant (Kindle) REVIEW HERE
3) The Shadow Cats by Rae Carson (Kindle) REVIEW HERE
4) Eon by Alison Goodman (WalMart)
This list does not include Jo Walton's Among Others and Stina Leicht's Of Blood and Honey, which were available as .mobi files in the Hugo Voter's Packet, and I bought that a few months ago.
As a whole, I feel good about July. I've read everything except one purchase, and because that's our September read, I'm waiting to read it. The only reason I even picked it up was because WalMart had it cheaper than the Kindle version, and there's a lot of maps and whatnot inside that might've been tricky or even missing on the Kindle version. So it's waiting patiently for September to roll around for me to read it.
August looks like a light month. I've definitely got one preorder coming in, but there's two books that are going to be available August 28th that Amazon won't ship to me until September, so we'll see. There's a part of me that's not wanting to buy anything that isn't a pre-order or a book club pick this month, simply so that I can make a real dent in the TBR pile. We'll see how that goes!
That's my July. How'd you all do?