August Reading Round-Up

Can't believe it's nearly 2021! And here I am backtracking all the way to August... but in August I did a lot of reading 😊 I finished three whole actual books, and bookmarked a whole bunch of great stuff I found online!

First, the books...

July Reading Round-Up

Playing catch up again, because life has got away from me a bit recently... No books in July, but I can tell you there will *definitely* be finished books in my August post! And yes, that's books - plural 😃📚

Anyway, here's what I read and bookmarked online in July:

Lockdown Crafting

Look, a post that's not about reading! (Not that there's anything wrong with posts about reading, of course.)

I thought I would share a little bit about some other creative pursuits I've been indulging, of the crafty variety. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a very sporadic crafter and also easily distracted by shiny new crafts, and I have a bad habit of doing nothing at all for months on end and then taking on a massive, complicated project (usually with a tight deadline) - example: I made my own wedding dress, and a few years later made a wedding dress for a friend (way more nerve-wracking than making your own, believe me!)

Anyway, ignoring the fact that I have a heap of WiP craft projects, I thought I'd start with something I *have* finished.

June Reading Round-Up

June was a pretty full-on month work-wise, so didn't finish any books (although I did squeeze in some reading along the way). 

The problem(/benefit) of following a lot of wonderful writers and small/indie presses on Twitter is that I keep coming across new and exciting books and adding to my TBR pile (it's getting pretty precarious), so I really need to make some quality reading time and dig in to some of them! I have this week off work, so this will be me for some of the time at least:

But I did still collect some links to things I stumbled across and loved, to share here, so without further ado here are my June recommendations for stuff you can read online...

May Reading Round-Up

Falling behind again, but circumstances still being what they are... you know!

Part of the point of documenting what I'm reading (even if it's only for me) is an attempt to read more widely and finish books on my TBR list (I have a tendency to re-read old favourites a lot), read outside of my default comfort zone (which is SFF/speculative), and also read more deliberately around the genre(s) I want to write in, which currently includes interesting/weird short fiction and books that draw heavily on folklore. You can't write a genre you don't read!

So, in May I finished two books, and while I haven't wandered very far from my comfort zone yet, this month I did cover the last goal: both folklore and short fiction.

April Reading Round-Up

I do plan to use this blog for more than just book/story reviews, and I have other things (like updates on my own writing, and various crafting projects) that I will hopefully manage to share with you soon, but frankly I'm quite pleased with myself for getting these posts done, as historically I haven't done very well at sticking with blogging!

Anyway, April was the month in which we all realised that all of this *waves hands expansively* was likely to go on for a while... I've been working from home since lockdown began, so in theory I've gained back the ~2.5 hours a day I usually spend on my commute, but we all know that doesn't necessarily translate, especially in such weird times. But I have done some reading, in spite of all that, and here it is.

March Reading Round-Up

Will I ever catch up and post these in a less delayed fashion? Who knows. Does it matter? Probably not. What day is it anyway, the 413th of Quarantinuary?

Right, March. March was that weird month that started out sort of normal and ended up with working from home in lockdown. Yeah. But... I did read some stuff. So here goes:

February Reading Round-Up (a month late!)

I'm now well over a month late writing this, but I think I can be forgiven with everything that's going on! I suppose I could have conflated February and March together, but having only started this in January I thought I'd try and stick to the format I wanted...

I actually finished two books in February (!), so let's start with those.

January Reading Round-Up

In an effort to get through more of my endless TBR pile, and rebuild my reading habits a bit, I thought it might be nice to blog about what I read each month. Turns out, in spite of having several books on the go in January, I haven't actually finished any of them yet... D'oh! Best intentions and all that 😳

However, I also read quite a lot of flash/short fiction and poetry online these days, so I decided to make a note of things I came across this month that jumped out at me, moved me in some way, or were just downright brilliant! Obviously there is a huge amount of great writing out there, so this is just a short personal selection of things I happened to read and enjoy.

Slightly Belated 2019-in-Review Post

Before it gets completely too late to do so, I thought I should try to sum up how 2019 went for me in terms of writing stuff.