Bookwyrm Breakdown: July 2024

Part of me debated midway through July whether I should scratch the monthly wrap-up for this month and instead post a mid-year wrap-up, but then I realized while I could spend hundreds of words rambling everyone’s ears off, it’ll probably be repetitive.

And then I remembered 2 hours later that I already talked about some of my goal progress that I made 2 months ago in my June wrap-up, which, while it seems like a lifetime ago, was definitely not long ago in retrospect.

Also, I still ramble anyway.

Let’s ramble chat about this “short” and yet long month, shall we?

July’s Musings

I genuinely thought I would post less in July since I’ll be busy working six days a week in capitalism, but I somehow kept up? I don’t know what August would bring, though, but that sounds like a Future Soph Problem.

• [2 Jul] Bookwyrm Breakdown: Maybe I Won 2024 A Little Despite this Gross Summer Humidity
• [12 Jul] Funny Story by Emily Henry ★★★★½
• [16 Jul] Never a Hero by Vanessa Len ★★
• [26 Jul] Red String Theory by Lauren Kung Jessen ★★★★
• [30 Jul] The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik ★★★★

Books Hoarded

I got two eARCs this month:

• Zodiac Rising by Katie Zhao – I’m super excited to dive into with Isabelle from Nine Tail Vixen if/when she gets approved for her copy.
• Breath of the Dragon by Fonda Lee and Shannon Lee – Funny story: I was looking at this one on Netgalley when I was sending my review for Wrath of the Talon by Sophie Kim, but I resisted requesting and just kept it on my radar (for work purposes!) since I’m on a bit of a self-imposed Netgalley ban. But clearly, the universe had other plans for me.

Books Devoured

I checked on my Goodreads Reading Challenge* and I shockingly got back on track with my goal somehow. I don’t know when it happened, because all I’m seeing now is I’m one book away from finishing my goal of 30 books this year. Reading 3-6+ books for the past few months probably did the job.

(Okay, maybe it was the copious amounts of manga and graphic novels, too.)

*I try not checking my Challenge goals too much because I know what I set at the beginning of the year, and I also don’t want to pressure myself or beat myself up too much for not making it. Because if I read even just one book, it’s still something, and something is better than nothing.

July had a very nice 14 books (!!!) read (that contributed to my catching up), with the majority being manga and graphic novels.

• The Promised Neverland Vol. 1-7 by Kaiu Shirai – I borrowed the first one on a whim on Libby without reading the synopsis really (kind of just went in blindly based on the title and the cover), and somehow I’m almost halfway through (though by the time this post goes up I’ll probably be halfway there if not more).
• Never a Hero by Vanessa Len (DNF)
• Red String Theory by Lauren Kung Jessen
• The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
• The Faint of Heart by Kerilynn Wilson – This was a little weird, but it was the good type of weird? I did feel like the ending was rushed a bit, though.
• The Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu
• I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf by Grant Snider
• Fake It ’til You Make It by Laura Carter (DNF) – Fake dating (it’s more like impromptu bumped into ex, the other person is there and comes makes things less awkward for like 40% of the book), promises of LOLs that ended up being a disappointment. I wish I could have enjoyed this truly.

I’ve also gotten half of my Summer TBR done, which is a delightful bonus since my goal was to get through one book.

Despite my many plans to watch a show in July, I ended up not watching anything after all other than Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (super fun) and A Prince in Paradise (cute, but typical Hallmark romance movie vibes). But I did keep up with music kind of? Here’s some songs that stuck out to me during the month/have been on loop:

• distraction by AleXa – honestly, this reminds me of a few 2000s songs, and I feel like that applies to some of AleXa’s recent releases (I also feel like they’re underrated and that saddens me because I love her music).
• Undefeated by XG – I actually listened to this and like it back when it was released in April but it wasn’t until this month it’s been on loop along with distraction.
• 2 Rings and Fireflies by Dreamcatcher – I liked Justice as well from their new mini album [VirtuouS], but it’s not my favorite compared to 2 Rings and Fireflies.
• Ate by Stray Kids – my favorites would be Mountains, twilight and stray kids with Chk Chk Boom being a close favorite (it’s not my type of song but somehow it just works).
• Rockstar by Lisa – I don’t think I would’ve listened to Lisa’s latest without Spotify just shoving it onto my playlist after my actual playlist ended and it started playing suggested songs. But I’m glad it did, because it’s super catchy.

The Breakdown

What catastrophes have the universe handed us throughout the month? Let’s find out. 🧐

On Blogging

One of the fun things about blogging is sometimes figuring things out on your own after spending a lot of time figuring out how to format a post the way you’ve want to. I finally found a work around with book series TBR post I wrote years ago after messing about with multiple different WordPress gallery plugins because the block that’s given is incredibly limiting and doesn’t provide many options.

None of the plugins did what I wanted them to do, though, but at least the post is no longer bothering me. Seeing the post does make me want to write a new series TBR post, though, because I’ve got a few that I keep meaning to get to (like the final book in the System Divine trilogy, which has been about roughly 3 years since it came out). But I think that’ll be harder to keep up than the seasonal TBRs I make.

The not so fun part about blogging is finding out something broke at some point, which turned out to be the case for blog posts not being sent out via email. I didn’t think too much of it at first because it’s normal to have a slight delay when I use a cache, but after nearly a month, it’s a little sus.

But hopefully things should be working now (the most recent post sent out successfully), though I feel bad for everyone who got like an entire month’s worth of posts in one email. That’s like 3-4k words?

On Life

Friends, working six days has been exhausting.

But while I might be physically tired and flop down within my blankets and boba plushie after work for a few hours, I’m at least mentally doing better. At least in comparison to last year, which is truly a plus, because at least I have the mental energy to read and I can do that in bed.

It’s just that sometimes two hours turn into a whole evening of scrolling when I fully planned on starting a new show or continue reading whatever book I’m reading, totally ignoring the 3-4 books sitting in purgatory for the past two years and the task I intended on doing.

I’m reading more, though! I love that for me.

My tote bags came in July, which is perfect timing because working at the library part-time means I gravitate to getting physical books more again. They fit my books and Rocketbook nicely without having to lug them around in my arms.

More on life, but I talk a lot about e-readers that it deserves a whole section

I also got a Kindle, which was something I’ve been deciding about for the past few years, but didn’t really have a reason to since working hybrid meant I didn’t travel around as much and I had my iPad I got from college if I really need to use it. Most of the time, I just used my phone since an iPad feels bulky and too large for me to carry around. As tempting as the Kindle Scribe was during the Prime sale, I probably wouldn’t use it because of the size and having a Rocketbook (reusable notebook) I’ve had since my college years that’s still going strong.

(I also just forget my iPad exists because while I respect Apple, I’m not an Apple girlie and probably never will be. I forget about that charger completely, and if you ask me where I put that long lightning-to-USB cable I found on sale while I was in college, I could not tell you. It’s in a tote box somewhere? Maybe?)

I spent way too long trying to decide if I wanted to a Boox because I’ve been reading more webtoons and manga lately, and it’s nice not to be locked into an ecosystem. But at the end of the day, a Boox feels like an Android tablet with e-ink technology that’s more expensive, so the battery life probably won’t last for weeks.

So then I thought about a Kobo but that’s locking myself into a different ecosystem that I don’t even use with the bonus of having direct access to my library. I also have to go through extra steps to get my Kindle books to a Kobo and read eARCs from Netgalley. If I primarily read from my library and didn’t have years of freebies and sale-priced books on Kindle already, I’d probably overlook the extra steps for getting an eARC to a Kobo. But alas.

It looks nice, though, and it’s honestly the perfect size – if the Scribe were the size of the Kobo Libra Color, I’d actually get that. I like the thought of directly annotating my books, which the Scribe offers selectively — typically I’ll use page markers and sticky notes for my physical books, though lately I’ve been using the Read More app instead.

But anyway, I put my accumulated Amazon Gift Cards to use finally* and settled with a Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition with a cute case. The last time I had a Kindle was from winning a giveaway many years ago, and the screen started turning white from the bottom up and just gradually got worse. By the time it got bad enough, I was three months out of the warranty and shit out of luck. But this was about ten years ago and hopefully my luck with a Kindle is better this time around or I’m probably going to riot.

*Is it really spending money in this instance? Girl math says no.

It’s about the size of my phone height wise, which is perfect for reading one-handed in bed. If you’re curious about a size comparison, I plopped my phone (Samsung Galaxy A52) onto the Paperwhite SE so you can get an idea:

Section tangent aside that’s probably better off in a separate blog post and not a wrap-up, you’ll probably never see me again. It’s been incredibly nice not to be tempted to look for funny memes and get sucked into scrolling about; I’m usually pretty good at ignoring all messages when I’m really into reading a book, but now I have to be so much more intentional.

And I’ve noticed I’m reading more, but with so much change in the past couple of months, it’s hard to tell if it’s actually giving Kindle another try, or if I just have more energy to read these days. I think only time will tell with this one, though.

Let’s talk!

Funny enough, I ended up rambling for a few hundred words, but 1-2K words seem to be the norm for blog posts lately for me, so it’s just another day of musings.

But I hope your July was decent, and you’re making sure to take care of yourselves — tell me about your month and what you’ve been reading/playing/watching/listening! I have sadly not been playing much of anything unless we count the 5-10 minutes of Clicker Heroes and completing quests on there.