How is it August already? Lots of things happened throughout July. Mostly good things as it is Summer vacation. But most of all was the market for my etsy shop I did of course. It was fun and I’ve written a post about prepping for it so you can see how that was. I also finally hit the midpoint of my reading challenge. Normally I am way ahead at this time. You all know by now though that this hasn’t been my year reading wise.
The Numbers
In July I read a total of 8 books which makes the total of 2021 61 books read.
Of the 8 books 7 books were fantasy and 1 book sci-fi. .
Out of the 31 days of july I read 11 days which amounted to a total of 2343 pages.
The rating average of this month was 3,6.
- Prose and Cons (Magical Bookshop 2) by Amanda Flower | 4 stars
- Nora and the Sacred Stones by Laura Hatch Rupper | 4 stars | ARC
- Rea and the Blood of the Nectar by Payal Doshi | 3 stars | ARC
- A Strange and Brilliant Light by Eli Lee | 3 stars | ARC
- The City of Lost Time (Duftapotheke 5) by Anna Ruhe | 4 stars
- The Witness for the Dead (The Goblin Emperor 2) by Katherine Addison | 4 stars | ARC
- The Mortal Word (Invisible Library 5) by Genevieve Cogman | 3 stars
- What We Devour by Linsey Miller | 3,5 stars | ARC
⌘ July was all kinds of interesting with of course first the market I did! On July 10th I was busy from 8.30 to 19.00. It was a long day and I was so tired afterwards. But I did enjoy doing it. I can’t see myself doing this weekly or anything, and certainly I have too much of a niche. But every now and then while finding bookish markets to sell at should be great. It was a good experience nontheless. And I’ve signed up for my next stall at a Dutch YA event in September. Go me.
⌘ Afterwards I spend a lot of time on getting all the new products onto my etsy shop. I’ve now also got some metal bookmarks, elastic bookmarks and fun new cards and stickers! Cute stickers of my cats might I add. And if you order two or more items now, you get a cute sticker of a blue cat for free with your order (next to the free sticker you always get along with your order, lol). I just love giving things.
⌘ Merijn’s vacation started July 9th and husband’s started July 11th. So I’ve had two guys around me all day for July. As usual Summer vacation is hard on Merijn because he falls out of the normal day to day structure of going to school and having his days filled that way. But I think he’s doing okay. We went on some day trips to zoo’s, palace loo and forest areas. Certainly a lot of fun. We also went to my parents for a week near the beach and that was fun as well.
⌘ Less fun was the neighborhood cat. A few months ago his owner died. His family did not care for him so I and some other neighbors looked out for him. But he was an old cat and placing him with us or elsewhere was out of the question. Twenty years old! Can you believe that? I fed him every day and tried to give him some attention. He bit my finger because he was going blind and thought it was candy, lol (I had to get a shot and antibiotics though, not fun). Living in the home of a passed away hoarder is not the best place. I also could not change his litter box because I couldn’t get into the house for obvious reasons. And he would never use ours. He was showing signs that it was coming to an end and we put him to sleep. The family didn’t respond at all to our outreach so we just did what we thought was best for the cat and paid for it ourselves. But it was hard because I’d gotten attached to him a little. I mean I’ve known him since we moved here in 2011 and he would always let himself be heard. Would often stare at me from the fence or look through the upper kitchen window. Or try and mount our Aiko when it was that time of the year.
Wrap Ups and Other Memes
⌘ Dancing out of June 2021
⌘ Reading Challenges and Goals | Quarter 2
Reviews
⌘ In the Ravenous Dark by A.M. Strickland | ARC
⌘ Hard Reboot by Django Wexler | ARC
⌘ A Strange and Beautiful Light by Eli Lee | ARC
⌘ Fire with Fire by Destiny Soria | ARC
⌘ Witches Get Stitches (Stay a Spell 3) by Julliette Cross | ARC
Top Ten Tuesday
⌘ Book Titles That Are Questions That Interest Me
⌘ Ten Recent(ish) Books I Read In One Day
⌘ Ten TTT Topics I Really Enjoyed Doing
Discussions, Topics and the Like
⌘ Book Haul 63 | May, June and a bit of July
⌘ Prepping for My Very First Market with In Line with Annemieke
⌘ If You Would Come and Visit Us
⌘ Miss Marple | Season 6 | Ep 1-3
I kind of missed that they were showing season 5 but I’ll be catching up with that when they do reruns. But I did catch the start of season 6. I still prefer the previous actress (she was in every way what I imagined Miss Marple to be) but I’m getting more used to this one.
⌘ Olympics 2020|2021
The Olympics started and I’ve been trying to catch things here and there. But it is hard with the timezone since a lot is during the night and morning. And either I’m asleep or I have a Merijn lol. Has anyone else been watching?
Blogs
⌘ Kal from Reader Voracious shared a list of 18 queer books to read during Pride and always.
⌘ Sammie from The Bookwyrm’s Den shared fantastic LGBTQ+ Books that left her wanting more.
This monthly wrap up will be linked up with the monthly one by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction. This so we can blog hop to each others wrap ups easier.
A Dance With Books 
How exciting to go and sell your things at an actual market! It’s one thing to have an Etsy or other online shop, but now you get to actually meet your customers and browsers. Hope your September event will be just as exciting for you. The blue cat sticker looks adorable btw.
The cat thing indeed sounds sad. But also very brave. I don’t know if I would have dared to put someone else’s cat down, but since it’s owner has died and no family has turned up yet, it of course is sort of a stray cat. Twenty is a mighty old age for a cat to have all these changes happening to it. Not weird at all that it suddenly went so bad!
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Yes and I kind of wanted to have that.
Honestly them not taking care of him made him into a stray and because I did care for him made me sort of his owner. I did discuss this with various vet places for the legal aspect. But none of them have asked about him and its been a few weeks now. Its kind of sad.
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It sounds like you did the right thing for the cat, though I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision to make. I’m glad that your family has been finding fun things to do over the summer vacation!
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It was so hard but ultimately the best decision.
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Nice art! Any fabulous scifi you read recently? I really enjoyed Project Hail Mary: https://wordsandpeace.com/2021/07/23/book-review-project-hail-mary/
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I’d say Hard Reboot by Django Wexler. Been saving up some of my scifi for november’s scifimonth 😉
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I am so happy you did the outdoor market! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Hopefully things will calm down and you can get some more reading in. 🙂
Here’s to a fabulous August! 🌞
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Fingers crossed. I’ve been reading a bit more so far this month (and it’s only the 3rd so far hah).
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That outdoor market looks like it was a lot of fun, though I can imagine it was indeed super tiring too. Yay for vacation though. Also, that blue cat sticker is super cute! Sorry to hear about the neighborhood cat, but it sounds like you did the right thing for the animal. Hope you’ll have a great August.
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It was for sure!
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Hallo, Hallo, Annemieke,
The first thing I wanted to say is how sad I was for you and your family for having to take-on the care of the cat and not having the family there to support those hard choices you were forced to make on its behalf. Sometimes families do not step in when their needed and I’ve had my own experiences with those circumstances myself; not with a cat though but in other areas where you’d think a family would not yield to a neighbour. For cats, I still remember caring for a stray as in our area strays are protected as they help keep the rodents at bay, etc. We left a box out for him when it was cold and gave him a bit of food whenever he came round. I do miss him.
Your artwork is wicked awesome! One of these days, I promise I’ll get my tail into your Etsy shoppe as I haven’t been on there in such a long time. I used to always browse Etsy and purchase bits and bobbles of things but life took me away from it ever since Dad’s stroke. Plus, how lovely you’ve gone to a live market and found customers there! I know the work involved with those markets and how gruelling the day can get — esp if it were a hot day, my sympathies!
You’ve managed to read more than I. I only could share 3x posts this July as I was bounced offline consistently due to the lightning storms — I pray, all my plans get to fly this weekend onto my blog as we’ve seem to caught a break in the storms! They just have been chaotically crazy this year! In June, 29 out of 30 days were lightning storms (meaning: over 24 hours we’d avg 4-5 different storms per day!) and in July, it was nearly the same average with August trending to do the same as July. We might have had 7 days in July without storms but those were days I worked, so not exactly helpful, eh? Oy.
I’m picking up a Fantasy read today which I’m reviewing tomorrow on my blog as I had to push my review forward for the blog tour. I’m hoping to interview the author lateron this Summer. Plus, I am going to start Persuasion as I’m joining the RAL for it via #AustenInAugustRBR which I think will be good for me as I’ve never actually finished reading this one! I’m reading it in print and listening to a newer adaptation of it in audiobook. I decided I needed the dual perspective as I’ve not read in such a long time, sometimes audio helps me re-transition into harder texts as much as audio helps me re-align into reading after a long absence. I have more Austen on the docket, too and hope August will be a well-rounded month for me.
Do you have any plans for certain stories/books/series? Are you participating in #SelfPubFantasyMonth in September? I’ve been putting together plans for that event as well before I co-host #SpooktasticReads in October with my co-hosts Imyril & Lisa via @WyrdAndWonder.
Thanks for checking in with me today. Posting those updates on Twitter felt good to finally say “hey, everyone sorry I’ve been absent but I’m coming back!” I’ve missed our community!
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I kind of miss him too, his random meowing or how he started at me when I wasn’t quick enough to fill his bowl (seriously, he knew who was feeding him).
Oh wow those are a lot of lightning storms. Do you always get so many at this time of year? We’ve had more but not as many as that for sure.
I have little specific plans. I just want to get through most arcs haha. And since I am reading less it is hard to make plans beyond that.
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Ik vind het nog steeds super chique dat je die markt hebt gedaan én er nog meer wil gaan doen. De familie van je overleden buurman vind ik dan weer allesbehalve chique. Zo triest hoe ze dat beestje straal genegeerd hebben en zelfs niet op jullie wilden reageerden.
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Ja ze zijn nu alles aan het opruimen daar achter en ze hebben nog steeds niet gevraagd naar de kat ._.
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You warmed my heart with the stray cat story. I loved how you fed him and showed him attention after he was left alone. You are a brave and kind soul. I enjoyed reading about your creativity and selling your creations at market and on Etsy. I’ll have to check out your shop.
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He was here before we moved here 10 years ago so we were so used to him being there. Walking over our wall and spraying my kitchen window when I was cooking haha.
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Thank you so much for sharing my post!
GO YOU for doing the market stall and I am glad it was a good enough experience to sign up for another one in September! I love seeing the new artwork you’ve got and will have to check out your etsy shop
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You are welcome 🙂
And thank you! 😀
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