Dancing Out of August 2017

Despite my anxiety kicking in, August was a rather good month. Meeting new and old book buddies, finally meeting Zwartraafje and Merijn’s birthday were all great things and totally worth my anxiety in the end. The weather on the other hand was not the greatest for most of the month.

The Reading Challenge

# Read 60 Books
Read this month: 16
Total: 95/60

1. Shadowfever (Fever 5) by Karen Marie Moning – 3,5 stars
2. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz – 4 stars
3. Iced (Fever 6) by Karen Marie Moning – 3 stars
4. At Water’s Edge (The Water Rushes 1) by S. McPherson – 3 stars
5. Air Awakens (Air Awakens 1) by Elisa Kova – 2 stars
6. Stardust by Neil Gaiman – 3 stars
7. Immortal in Death (In Death 3) by J.D. Robb – 5 stars
8. The Last Namsara (Iskari 1) by Kristen Ciccarelli – 4 stars
9. The Greek Heroes (Percy Jackson companion) by Rick Riordan – 3,5 stars
10. Replica (Replica 1) by Lauren Oliver – 3,5 stars
11. The Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet (Wayfarer 1) by Becky Chambers – 5 stars
12. Het Laatste Licht by Jen Minkman –
13. The Stonekeeper (Amulet volume 1) by Kazu Kibuishi – reread
14. The Stonekeeper’s Curse (Amulet volume 2) by Kazu Kibuishi – 4 stars
15. The Cloud Searchers (Amulet volume 3) by Kazu Kibuishi – 4 stars
16. Ruined (Ruined 1) by Amy Tintera – 4 stars

The TBR and Backlist Challenge

# Unread Books
Total unread books on shelf start of August – 152
Books read in August (that count) – 8
Books bought/received in August (no ebooks) – 13
Total unread books on shelf end of August– 157

# Unread Ebooks
Total unread ebooks at the end of July 2017 – 10
Ebooks read in August – 5
Ebooks bought/Received in August –  0
Total unread ebooks end of July – 5

# Beat the Backlist
Backlist books read in August – 12
Total – 50/50

#The Reading Quest Update

Books Read: 7 + graphic novel
Level: 3
Paths Finished: 1 (the mage path)
Bonus Quests Finished: 2 (timewarp and mini game)
EXP: 135
HP: 264

How Was August for Me?

⌘ At the start of the month I had a lot of anxiety about going to the Deventer book market on my own and to travel to Belgium for Zwartraafje’s high tea. Lots of people and meeting new people, and leaving Merijn behind for a full day, plus some physical pains made me have a bit of a meltdown. So my start to the month was not so great. Anxiety stinks.

⌘ In the end my husband went with me to the Deventer book market and I had a great day there as you could already read in my post about that. Merijn stayed with his aunt.

⌘ Training and bussing or driving myself in Belgium smelled like a disaster. So I was very happy that on the 12th I could go to Breda by train and tag along with Ellis from Cinderellis  and Annabel from Het Leven van een Boekenworm in Ellis’ car to Liesbet’s high tea. ❤ I still had to be in the train for 3 hours to get to Breda and the car ride was another hour or so. So I left at 7.15 in the morning and was home at 22.30. But it was worth it to see Liesbet and the other girls.

Next to the above mentioned I also saw Vanessa from Mijn Brein is een Boekenkast again who is the author of Tweedehands Vleugels.  And met Marcia from Oog op de Toekomst, Audrey from The Confessions of a Book Nerd, Annelies from Boekboetiek, Jolien from Lolita Goes Places and a good friend of Liesbet. I drooled over the high tea pastries and Liesbet’s bookshelves.

⌘ I’ve been taking Merijn outside a lot. He loves it. There is a playground at the end of the street and he loves watching other kids or exploring the playground himself. Crawling or walking by hand with me. He has made a friend a few months older that lives really close by so that is great. There are days where he only has one nap but a long one of 2 to 3,5 hours or so when he sleeps longer in the morning so that is a bit of a change.

⌘ After debating back and forth for a bit I’ve decided to make a private instagram account for pictures of Merijn, our cat and other things. But mostly Merijn, haha. If you want to see you can add me but I’d prefer it if we have communicated back and forth a bit.

2 days / 3 months / 6,5 months / 11 months

⌘ This little mister is 1 now. Can you imagine that? And he is walking. Insert gasping here. We celebrated his birthday the whole weekend. On the 26th we celebrated his actual birthday (and the start of his fathers vacation) by going to a monkey zoo where there are areas with some free ranging monkeys which was a lot of fun. Merijn didn’t sleep at all when we were there though. Like, we’d see these olders kids napping in their strollers but not Merijn, lol. He was too busy looking (at other people). He also had some pancakes in the evening.

The next day we celebrated his birthday with friends and family in the afternoon. He got too much toys (and hardly any of my suggestions were taken into account). But that is okay I guess. A friend also made this cute Bobo cake. ❤

⌘ Have you seen the giveaway?

What Happened on the Blog?

Reviews

⌘ The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee
⌘ Etched in Bone (The Others 5) by Anne Bishop
⌘ The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
⌘ The Republic of Thieves (Gentleman Bastard 3) by Scott Lynch
⌘ Flame in the Mist (Flame in the Mist 1) by Renee Ahdieh
⌘ The Bone Season (The Bone Season 1) by Samantha Shannon
⌘ The Tiger’s Watch (Ashes of Gold 1) by Julia Ember
⌘ Because You Love to Hate Me: 13 Tales of Villainy. Edited by Aimeriie
⌘ Ms. Marvel (volume 1 -5)

Top Ten Tuesday
Some Book Recommendations for Minion/Despicable Me Lovers // TTT #103 – Books That Start at a High School Setting But Turn Into an Adventure // Fantasy Hidden Gem Books

Other Posts
I Want To Be a Publisher! // Dancing out of July 2017 // Deventer Book Market 2017 With a Book Haul // Good Covers for Dutch Translated Books // Reading Journal For My Son // Dog Days of Summer – Dog Tag // Beauty and Brains // Today Merijn Turns 1 and I though I’d Celebrate with You! // Why Do I Pre-Order Books?

What Did I Watch?

⌘ The Magicians / Season 2 / Episode 13 / Finished
Well that was the last episode! I hope there will be a season 3. They can’t leave it there…
⌘ Once Upon a Time / Season 4 / Episode 6 to 23 / Finished
We clearly sped through this one. Like I said last month, this show is just easier for us to pick and watch than some others. While I don’t think the plots are as great as they used to be, they are still entertaining to watch. We have season 5 ready.

⌘ Cars / Movie
Apparently I had never watched Cars. I know.  I discovered this when I picked them out on a rainy day to watch with Merijn. Well more me as Merijn has zero attention span for that.
⌘ Meet the Robinsons / Movie
Another rainy day. Another Disney movie I apparently hadn’t watched. I think I might move our Disney and other animations downstairs soonish. Swap out some movies and tv shows we have downstairs we don’t watch often.

#BBBookstagram

Instead of a best of my bookstagram I decided to show what bookstagram challenge I’ve been participating in all month. Blossom Books, the Dutch publisher, hosted an instagram challenge again like last year and of course I had to participate. When publishers do these kind of things to get more people interacting and excited about reading, it is great. So below is the challenge and all of my pictures.

 

TBR / ALLTHEFEELS
#shelfie / Best Villain
#postsomepride / Favorite book +5 facts / Title Page / Finished in One Day

#uglycryalert / #summerreading / Bookstore ❤
#Ilikebigbooks / #classic / Pretty Spines Wanderlust / Favorite Series

Signed Books / Book Buddies / Favorite Author
Colored Books / Last bought
#kissmequick / Books and Flowers / Favorite Cover

Sidekick / Reread
Not Enough / Sock Sunday
Favorite Quote / Book Haul / Wrap Up

Elsewhere

Blogs

⌘ Aila from Happy Indulgence explains why she loves non-european fantasies and shares a few recommendations.
⌘ Cait from Paper Fury advices on how to get people to read your blog. And she talks about how we are all weird. Thanks Cait.
⌘ Linda from Linda’s Little Library shares her TBR bingo for the rest of the year.
⌘ Ava from Bookishness and Tea listed 30 diverse YA sci-fi books and shines the spotlight on Warcross.
⌘

Dutch Blogs

⌘ Kwante in Wonderland posted a post about a day in her life and admits something quite shocking… 😉
⌘ Marcia from Oog op de Toekomst talks about sexuality in the young adult genre
⌘ Liesbet from Zwartraafje wrote a blog post about her high tea!
⌘

Booktube

⌘ Regan from Peruseproject reccommends books for Ravenclaws.

What Is Up Next Month?

⌘ I was going to open up review requests again until I ended up with 5 review copies in a week so I’m keeping that firmly locked up for a while.

⌘ My husband has vacation until September 17th so I expect we’ll be doing some fun things and work on the house a little here and there. This means that there will likely be less commenting and reading. I’ll try and plan in moments though but time with the family is important too.

⌘ Reading wise I’m focusing on the reading quest until the tenth and hoping I can get somewhere with the knight path still. I also have pre-orders coming in and obviously a few review copies to get to. And my own books… Some books on my list are: The Mime Order, The Empty Grave, The Language of Thorns, Revocatie and so on.

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. Starting now I will also link up with Monthly Wrap up from Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction.

Links

Instagram // Twitter // Goodreads // Facebook // Tumblr