May Wrap-Up and June TBR

Hey all, Dani here.

We have almost made it halfway through 2019, and I am both looking forward to and dreading my wrap up for this month. Because after we’ve made it through June, I get to write up my Top Ten Reads of 2019 (Jan-June), and I already have a dozen contenders on my list…plus whatever I end up reading in June. I’m going to end up with quite a few honorable mentions. But that’s okay; it just means I’m reading some darn good books.

Anyway, before I get fully into my wrap up for May, let’s first do a check-in on how I’m doing with my overall goals for 2019.

• Reading – I read 21 books in May, which is pretty darn good overall. Quite a few of the books I read were fantasy reads, because I was participating in Wyrd & Wonder, but toward the end of the month my mood swung over to contemporary romance, which ended up working because of Books & Munches’ Moody May. Actually, I should check to see if I have all of those books logged in Goodreads because my reading challenge total might be wrong. Okay, yeah, my Goodreads was missing 7 books, so my total books read thus far in 2019 is 90 books, which is honestly a bit mind-boggling. I just increased my reading goal from 75 to 100, and I should be achieving the 100 mark in June, so I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. Obviously I need to work on reading some more of my Big Books, so we’ll see how that goes.
• Blogging – At the beginning of the month I had my blogger burnout weekend, but since then I’ve been back at it and there’s been a post on the blog every day. And Damian got back into the swing of blogging as well, so in total we had 35 posts go up on the blog in May, which is awesome. I also decided to finally start up Discussion posts, and to bring back my Recommendations posts. Oh, and I got back into doing some book tags–and I’m thinking of creating a couple book tags so look for those in the next couple of months.
• Writing – I made it one of my big goals for the year to get back into writing, and so far I’ve pretty much failed at it…because I don’t count all of this blog writing in this category. I’ve written a lot of words for the blog. I need to get back into creative writing, and I really want to, but I’m just not feeling completely in the right space to do it. I think I really need to get myself a writing space set up in the house. That way I can actually have a space where I sit in it and that is where I do my writing.
• Conventions – We bought our hotel room for Gen Con, and we also went through all of the panels and events and got our tickets for the ones we’d like to do. Damian is doing a lot of crafting events, which is really cool, and it is something he will definitely enjoy. I will be spending most of my time at the Gen Con Writers Symposium, so I will hopefully be learning more about the craft of writing, as well as how to make a writing schedule and stick to it, and also how to get out of this writer’s resistance/writer’s block I’ve been in for a while. And of course, when we aren’t at events, we’ll be wandering the show floor and play testing some tabletop games, which should be a lot of fun.

All right-y then. Now that we’ve looked at the overall 2019 goals, let’s get to wrapping up everything I read in the month of May–wow, I almost typed March instead of May, lol. It was a pretty good month of reading for me, and I managed to tackle some anticipated releases and read some pretty awesome fantasy reads. As always, I will link back to the review if I have one written.

Dark Shores by Danielle L. Jensen — 4.5 stars

How to Treat Magical Beasts Vol 3 by Kaziya — 5 stars

The Tiger at Midnight by Swati Teerdhala — 5 stars

My Hero Academia Vigilantes Vol 4 by Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court — 4 stars

Fruits Basket Collector’s Edition Vol 1 by Natsuki Takaya — 4 stars

Ran and the Gray World Vol 1 by Aki Irie — 3 stars (Damian’s review is at this link too)

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Vol 1 by Taiki Kawakami — 4.5 stars (Damian’s review can be found here)

Fruits Basket Collector’s Edition Vol 2 by Natsuki Takaya — 4 stars

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang — 5 stars

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal — 4.5 stars

The Missing of Clairedelune by Christelle Dabos — 4 stars

Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff — 5 stars

My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren — 5 stars

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren — 5 stars

Dragon Goes House Hunting Vol 2 by Kawo Tanuki and Choco Aya — 4 stars

Delicious in Dungeon Vol 3 by Ryoko Kui — 4 stars

Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes — 5 stars

She Just Wants to Forget by R.H. Sin — 3.5 stars

How Not to Summon a Demon Lord Vol 4 by Yukiya Murasaki and Naoto Fukuda — 4.5 stars

Lover Unbound by J.R. Ward — 4 stars

Whew, that was a lot of books. Now onto what we watched in the month of May. We realized that since we get satellite internet that isn’t the greatest, we can’t stream videos anymore without eating up all of our data allotment pretty early in our monthly cycle, so we’ve been watching a lot of DVDs, and we also cancelled our Netflix. It didn’t make sense to pay for something we weren’t going to be able to use. We’re hoping that some other internet providers will look to expand their service options because this is not an ideal situation for us. We literally had to leave our old internet provider because they service out to the 1300 “block” and we live in the 1400 “block,” so if they find a way to extend out a few extra miles we’ll be able to go back to our old unlimited data provider, which would be pretty awesome.

Anyway, we watched “Push” (4 stars), season 5 of “Game of Thrones” (4.5 stars), “Detective Pikachu” (4.5 stars), season one of “Eureka” (5 stars), season 6 of “Game of Thrones” (4.5 stars), “Deadpool” (5 stars), “Aladdin” (5 stars), season 2 of “The Big Bang Theory” (5 stars), “How to Train Your Dragon” (5 stars), “How to Train Your Dragon 2” (4.5 stars).

With the reading and watching wrapped up, it is time to move in to book haul and OwlCrate unboxing time.

The photo with the Magic the Gathering book and the manga and the photo with the geek dad book are both Damian’s haul–and no, we aren’t expecting. I just know that Damian loves crafts and this book was on a shelf of books to get dad for Father’s Day. It’s about doing geeky crafts with your kids, so I thought it would be cool for the future.

I really like the Howl’s Moving Castle sticker, and the passport holder. The only thing I’m not happy with in this box is the art print. It is two sided and has one of the main characters on each side, so if you put it up on your wall or something you have to choose which character to show off. It was still a really nice box, and I’m looking forward to June’s box (that special edition Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson is going to be excellent)

Finally, it is time to talk TBR. I’ve already mentioned my tentative and not complete TBR for #AGameofBooksathon, but I also need to mention that I’m also participating in Books & Munches Jazzy June, wherein we re-read old favorites or give a second chance to books we’ve read before and were on the fence with. There are a couple of books I’m wanting to read again, so this works for me. I also have a couple ARCs I need to read and review, so it should be a pretty good month for reading. Plus, June is GLBT Book Month, as hosted by the American Library Association (ALA), so I’d like to have a few Pride focused reviews and posts on my blog this month.

All right, well I think that is all from me today, but I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.