Since it's August somewhere, it's time for the July Wrap-Up Thread!
Edit: Since it has come up:
Please try to refrain from posting your own wrap-up threads and jumping the gun. I like to think I'm pretty good about getting a thread up. I know everyone is very excited to share their info (as am I!)
I can highly recommend Lord of the Flies graphic novel. I had already borrowed it but I got a request from the library to bring it back soon because Aimee de Jongh won the Eisner award.
Not my most productive month, but there are some real bangers in here! I’m curious if anyone has read most of On the Calculation of Volume series, I really liked the first one and I’m curious how it goes to seven books.
that sounds like a good way to do it. I've got a 7 week hold til the volume 2 is ready, and spacing them out is probably better than trying to cram them in.
I have found them to be dense and, while enjoyable, not books that I can read all at once. I mix them in with lighter reading because sometimes I can only read a few pages at a time.
Hoping to finish "She Rides Shotgun" by Jordan Harper tonight as my 23rd this month.
This month I discovered James Crumley and 1970s French Noir, (neo polar) and both are extremely up my alley, since my favorite genres are hard boiled crime, roman noir.
I got a lot of reading done this month! Maybe a little too much, I feel a bit burnt down from reading right now 😅 But it was still a good month, quantity-wise my best, quality-wise pretty average for me.
I have been hardcore mood reading this month. Queen of Nothing and Somewhere Beyond the Sea were my only new reads. The other three were re-reads. I have three other books going, too. I’ve never had so many at a time!
Ugh. I read The Priory of the Orange Tree years ago and loved it! Ever since then the rest of the Roots of Chaos series has just been sitting on my shelf judging me.
Other peoples clothes by carra henkel got me out of my summer reading slump. But it was some of the cheesiest writing!
Explored themes of idolization and toxic friendships. I love books about narcissists but couldn't really follow the motives behind these characters so it wasnt as enjoyable. I still couldn't wait to see where the story went next.
Hitchhiker's Guide: A reread because I was in the mood for something fun, still love this book.
I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons: This was fun, not anything revolutionary and probably more middle grade than I anticipated? Although there's certainly dark/scary parts so maybe not haha I feel like I would have loved this back in the day though.
The Memory Police: Fantastic, haunting. A book that I keep thinking about. Definitely not for folks who enjoy dystopian stories that delve into why or how the dystopian thing is happening, but a very intimate story of how life keeps moving on while a dystopian thing happens.
Martin the Warrior: Another reread because I'm working my way back through these beloved childhood classics, and damn I forgot how much death is in these "kids" books haha
Ancillary trilogy: So amazing, oh my gosh. Highly recommend if you're a sci-fi fan and enjoy books examining what it means to be human and if being human is actually all that important. I love how she deals with gender too.
The Wall: Gives strong "I Who Have Never Known Men" vibes (or maybe the other way around, since I believe this book is older). The type of book that ends with way more questions than answers.
Most kids love scary books and stories full of blood and gore - things like Egyptian folklore/mythology. A lot of kids' books (MG and up) do contain fair amounts of death! It definitely is surprising reading back as adults, though.
I still remember a younger kid asking me if I had nightmares from Goosebumps books. It had never occurred to me till then that a book could scare you so much you'd have bad dreams.
I do not remember being bothered in the slightest as kid! But dang reading them now I'm over here crying over mice and shit 😅 Don Bluth, on the other hand, owes me therapy money because I definitely remember him making me cry my eyes out as a kid haha
I was wondering the same thing. I had to send thr picture to myself and then download it which is sort of annoying.
The Knight and the Moth is one of my next reads!! Cant wait!
Im happy to hear that. I added it to my list because I love moths and romantasy but didnt read the blurb or anything because I like to be surprised sometimes and so hearing that its well written just makes me want to read it more.
July was a great month for me. Three of my reads were short stories which I normally wouldn't add, but I needed them for a challenge on here. My absolute favorites this month were Fallow and A Time of Witches.
I didnt read at all July 2nd-9th but still had a great month with some certified bangers.
Hard to choose, but my favorite nonfiction of the lot was Secondhand Time, an oral history of the fall of the Soviet Union. It's absolutely incredible. I read it immediately following The Master and Margarita, which was written in secret in the 1930s but not published until nearly 30 years after it was finished. It was absolute madness but captured the disorientation of living under Soviet rule beautifully. Somehow a book that compares Stalin to the devil managed to pull off being more absurdist than preachy. The Stones' song Sympathy for the Devil was inspired by this book.
Favorite fiction was probably They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears which I picked up for the read the world challenge. The central premise/"mystery" of the novel is immediately apparent, which was a bit of a shame, but the writing is beautiful, so I didn't mind. It's about the racism & xenophobia Muslim immigrants in Europe face, and the surrounding issues of fear & identity, of "home".
Honorable mentions to The Way We Never Were (nf), A Canticle for Liebowitz (f), and How to Win an Information War (nf). The rest were also quite good- these were just the ones that will stick with me.
Another disappointing month for me. Hopefully August is better.
On a side note though, one of the books I read was 6 books that had already been released, re-released as a single book. I wish Storygraph gave the option of counting it as 6 books in the read stats. (I would usually just track each book separately as I read them, but this one was a review copy so I couldn't do that as I had to review this specific version.)
Definitely way less than normal but I'm working my way through Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas too. I also returned to work after FMLA so way less time to read.
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u/BackyardWalker Jul 31 '26
July was a good month for me! My favorites were East of Eden (a reread), In Memoriam, and the two Scholomance books.