Dancing out of May 2017

May brought me a bunch of books (too many), sunny weather, Harry Potter things and a son who developed quite rapidly.

The Reading Challenge

The Numbers

# Read 60 Books
Read this month: 17
Total: 50/60

1. Fire (The Ninth Circle 1) by C.A. Harland – 3,5 stars
2. At Fire’s End (Champions 1) by – 2 stars
3. Om Nooit Te Vergeten by Thomas Olde Heuvelt – 4 stars
4. Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies (Pottermore Presents 1) by J.K. Rowling – 4 stars
5. Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists (Pottermore Presents 1) by J.K. Rowling – 3 stars
6. The Dark Prophecy (The Trials of Apollo 2) by Rick Riordan – 3,5 stars
7. Locke & Key (volume 1 to 6) by Joe Hill – 4,5 stars
8. Drug & Drop volume 1 by Clamp – 4 stars
9. Adulthood is a Myth by Sarah Anderson – 5 stars
10. The Emerald Blade (Landkist Saga 2) by Steven Kelliher – 5 stars
11. Hogwarts: A Incomplete and Unreliable Guide (Pottermore Presents 3) by J.K. Rowling
    – The Terracotta Bride by Zen Cho – 4 stars – novella
12. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians 1) by Rick Riordan – reread
13. Truthwitch (The Witchlands 1) by Susan Dennard – 3 stars
14. Ewan Pendle and the White Wraith by Shaun Hume – 3,5 stars
    – The Runaways volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughan – 4 stars
15. The Love Interest by Cale Dietrich – 3 stars
16. The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl  – Dutch childrens audiobook
17. Sinner (The Graveyard Queen 5) by Amanda Stevens – 4 stars

Well it looks like quite the list but there are some shorter books and graphic novels in there. But whatever, I get to count them if I want to, haha. I read them. The weird thing is, is that I feel like I read absolutely nothing.

I was able to borrow Locke & Key (and The Runaways) from a friend so I finally got to read that. ❤

The TBR and Backlist Challenge

# Unread Books
Total unread books on shelf end of April – 144
Books read in May (that count – no ebooks or classics) – 6
Books bought/received in May (no ebooks or classics) –  11
Total unread books on shelf end of May – 149

Oops. I shall blame this on my husband who gifted me like 6 of these. To be fair I am reading a lot of these as soon as I can and I have been reading a lot. Just not of my physical tbr.

#Beat the Baclist
Backlist books read in May – 7
Total -31/50

How Was May for Me?

⌘ Well this month started off with hauling some Harry Potter things at Primark. I had to. Of course I also got some things for Merijn. But my stuff was cuter, haha. I am totally in love with my niffler pj.

⌘ This month was a big month development wise for Merijn. He got three tooths through (and fairly certain the fourth is coming soon), he can sit on his own, crawl forward (and fast too) and he can pull himself up to stand. His babling is also topnotch at the moment. All of this showed though in how often he would wake up throughout the night. So some days I was a bit exhausted, also because sometimes I could not fall back asleep. But I am so proud of how quickly he developed himself this month. It’s amazing. Now 9 months and he can stand….and he took a few steps holding my hands.

⌘ Finally, Merijn and I went to the hairdresser. Merijn did fine. I got my hair a bit shorter again and then colored it  when we visited my parents. Slight red hue to it.

⌘ I hit 400 WP followers. So thanks for that lovelies!

⌘ I had a good Mother’s Day. It was also our 3 year wedding anniversary which felt a bit odd. But we exchanged some gifts. And if you follow me on bookstagram you will know I got about 6 books from my husband. May’s bookhaul is out of control. Excuse me as I grin about this.

⌘ Over on twitter I hosted a giveaway for the timeturner necklace I had double. I have since picked a winner but it is mind boggling how many don’t follow the follow and retweet, and only retweet. Shame on them though.

Reading during the Blossom Books Read-a-Thon with company.

⌘ Nearing the end of the month we got some great weather. Even some days that were truly too hot. For here anyway. 30 Degrees Celcius is too warm here.

⌘ And coincidentally the Dutch publisher Blossom Books had their yearly read-a-thon during a very hot weekend. It was fun to try and read every empty moment. Our cat enjoyed the moments I spend with her outside in the evenings.

What Happened on the Blog?

Reviews

⌘ American Gods (American Gods 1) by Neil Gaiman
⌘ Ink and Bone (The Great Library 1) by Rachel Caine
⌘ Heartsnare by Steven B. Williams
⌘ Wintersmith (Tiffany Aching 3, Discworld) by Terry Pratchett
⌘ The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli
⌘ At Fire’s End by Charlotte Jain
⌘ Stalking Jack the Ripper (Stalking Jack the Ripper) by Kerri Manisculco

Top Ten Tuesday
Covers With Dragons // Things I Wish to See More in Books // Books to Get This Mom // Adult Summer Reads That Are Not Contemporary // Adult Summer Reads That Are Not Contemporary // Most Anticipated Releases for the Second Half of 2017

Other Posts
Dancing out of April 2017 // Let’s Boekie Together – Bookstore Day 2017 and Marieke Nijkamp // Balancing Act – Keeping the Blog Going // Unboxing – BookVault May 2017 // Bookish Moms // Two Years of A Dancing with Books – Q&A // Intro Book Shelf Tour 2017 // Bookshelf Tour 2017- Playing the Number Games With My Shelves // Questions and Answers Book Tag

What Did I Watch?

⌘ Scooby-Doo: The Mystery Begins / Movie
A while ago they made two teens Scooby-Doo movies. This was the first but I had never seen it before. It is so bad but yet so Scooby and quirky.

⌘ A Monster Calls / Movie
I actually loved it. Almost crying here.

⌘ Defiance / Season 3 / Episode 7 to 13 / Finished
Fiew, finally finished this. I have to say that I thought it was picking up and then episode 9 comes along and messed everything up. I hate those kind of episodes.

⌘ 12 Monkeys / Season 1 / Episode 1 to 4
I am interested by the idea but not quite taken with the characters just yet. But there is potential for that.

⌘ Jordskott / Season 1 / Episode 1 to 6
This is so weird but interesting. Like a Scandanavian fantasy detective. I have no idea where this is going to go. I’m so confused.

⌘ The Magicians / Season 1 / Finished
⌘ The Magicians / Season 2 / Episode 1 to 4
As you can see I binged The Magicians a bit. They started showing season 2 here midway through May and the Sunday before that they did a season 1 marathon. So I finally got to see this. I have to say that I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I mean I had low expectations really. I only read the first book and the first 100 pages of book 2. They clearly changed things, especially the ending of book 1. And Julia’s journey is in book 2 so I didn’t read much of that but obviously that was changed. Still I enjoy these changes. Julia is so much better in this show than she was in the book up to where I read. I also think her actress is by far the best actor of the bunch.

Best of My Bookstagram

Honestly I don’t know what is up with instagram. I see old posts from days ago in my feed and a lot of my posts aren’t doing as well as they were at the start of the month. They are really taking the fun out of doing this. Also I am barely gaining followers. Like at all. Maybe I should go back to posting every day? I don’t know if I could keep that up though with the amount of picture taking I had to do. But I’m going to try that again starting June 1st.

Best liked

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Other

Elsewhere

Blogs

⌘ Cait from Paperfury shared 10 type of covers and a quiz. And 10 types of reading moods and a quiz.
⌘ The Bookavid says if you loved this young adult book you will love this f/f young adult book.
⌘ Jane the Raincity Librarian shared her bookish wishlist and it focuses on diversity.
⌘ Kristen from Metaphors and Moonlight shared her tips for Goodreads

Dutch Blogs

⌘ Tineke from Ogma shared a DIY to make your own Harry Potter wands
⌘ Emmy from Zon en Maan explains to us how a thin hardcover is bound and shares how to fix a tunnel in your candle.

Booktube

⌘ Hailey from Hailey in Bookland shared her Alice in Wonderland collection and it is big!

What Is Up Next Month?

⌘ I’ve closed review requests for the Summer. While I enjoy reading and reviewing books I would not otherwise have heard of and giving them attention here, I was also feeling rushed as I got a few in a short period of time but also wanted to read all my own books. June to September seems like an acceptable time to not have to worry about finishing books for other people.

⌘ With reviews I’ve changed the genre section to tags because I want to be able to add adult, graphic novel and such things as well there. I think a lot of people look at that quicker than the actual wordpress tags when they open a review.

⌘ As for what I will be reading next month, I’d like to get to Flame in the Mist, I Wear Midnight, Red Seas under Red Skies and rereading the Sea of Monsters. But I also have an itch to binge read The Farseers trilogy so we’ll see what I end up doing with that. I have so many series still to continue but not all are grabbing my attention at the moment. I’ll look for July to see which ones I can finish and read those over the Summer.

Linking Up

The Sunday post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. This is a bit of a recap post of the week (or month) where you can link to the posts you made this week, share news and wrap up your reading.

Links

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