Weekly Wrap-Up (69)

Hey all, Dani here.

We’re halfway to the weekend. Woohoo! I guess that means that it’s time for my mid-week wrap up of everything I’ve done and read and watched, as well as a sneak peek at what I’m hoping to get into next.

I guess I’ll start off with talking about video games…or rather not really talking about them, because I haven’t played much. I think I did like 10-15 minutes of Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on my Switch, but I’ve been pretty busy so playing video games has been pushed on the backburner. I do think that I’ll take my Switch with me this weekend, just in case I want to do a little bit of gaming while we’re at the cabin.

Okay, next let’s talk about watches. We finished our re-watch of “Legend of Korra,” and man, that is still such a good show. It is different from “Avatar: the Last Airbender,” yes, but they are both still excellent shows that still hold up all these years later. And then Damian and I finally picked Season 4 of “The Legends of Tomorrow” up again. We had watched like 3 episodes and then set it aside for no real reason, but jumping back into the Legends adventures reminds us of why we enjoy their amazingly ridiculous shenanigans. This is a show that isn’t afraid to make fun of itself, and that’s great. Oh, we also watched “Sonic the Hedgehog” again. That’s like the third time this year or something; I don’t know; we really like the movie, okay? Let’s be honest, we’re probably going to watch “Onward” again at some point very soon. Damian actually bought himself Barley’s shirt and vest from Hot Topic so he can do a Barley cosplay. It’s pretty great.

Now we’re to the book portion of things.

So…I went on a little bit of an e-book buying binge this afternoon. There were a couple of books I wanted by black authors, just in case I wanted to read them this weekend. But then I started browsing and I found a free book to pick up. And then I decided to download the first book in a quintet by R.A. Salvatore set in the Forgotten Realms and following a cleric. Finally I decided to pick up all of the released books in the Soulwood series by Faith Hunter, because I only own the first book, and I’m on the blog tour for the upcoming fifth book’s release at the end of July…so I need to read them so I’m ready for book five.

Oh, and I guess I should mention that A Song Below Water and All American Boys were purchased as part of #BlackoutBestsellerList and #Blackpublishingpower initiative. They encouraged purchasing any two books by Black writers between Sunday June 14-Saturday June 20. With the addition of these two books I think I am now up to 10 books purchased this week. I sincerely hope it helps. I would love to see the bestseller lists filled with all of these amazing authors’ books.

Now, before you get excited about how much I’ve read in the past week, let me point out that 6 of the 9 books are single issue comics that come in at like 24 pages each, so they don’t take much effort to read. I have not gotten to read as much as I would have liked in the past week, but I’m going to make up for that this weekend, so it’ll be fine. Overall though, I guess I still did have a pretty good reading week, which I’m happy with. I did end up increasing my Goodreads Reading Challenge Goal, since I’m at like 140 books read, which definitely surpasses my original goal of 125.

Basically I wanted to re-read the first 5 issues of the second series of the Vox Machina Origins comics so I could read the recently released sixth issue. It was well worth the re-read, because the first issue came out in August 2019. Then I flew through a couple of contemporary stories by black authors, both of which I’ll be reviewing soon, and can definitely say that I enjoyed. I actually almost picked up the next book in Jasmine Guillory’s series when I was at Barnes & Noble over the weekend because I want to read more, but I talked myself out of it because I already had a pretty big stack of books. Now I’m kind of regretting that decision. So…do I see if my library has it available? Do I buy the e-book for book two even though I have the paperback of book one? Or do I wait and get the paperback next time I go book shopping?

All right, now there’s the books I’m currently reading. I’ve had my copy of We Set the Dark On Fire for a few months now and was just waiting to be in the right mood to read it. Well, it’s Pride month, and this book is apparently focused on rebellion, which seems pretty appropriate and accurate right now. Hopefully it ends up being as great as its cover.

I’ll be honest: I picked up The Gilded Ones because I thought it still had an early July release, and I wanted to get it read and reviewed before release day…well that’s definitely going to be true. The pub date has been pushed back to Feb 2021. I’ll probably have my review up next month.

I’m at work as I’m writing this, so I don’t exactly remember all of the books I’ve packed up for the cabin getaway this weekend, but I’m pretty sure these books are all in it. Then there’s the fact that I’m thinking about taking some manga volumes with me so I can read some more of those as well. I’m thinking maybe Fairy Tail, maybe Edens Zero, maybe Akame Ga Kill or possibly That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime. We have so many options for me to choose from.

Anyway, most of the books I have packed are continuing with my reading for GLBT Book Month and my reading of books by black authors. But there’s some other books I’ve also had on my TBR for a little while and I’d like to read them too. And then there’s so very many e-books that I’ll have access to as well, since I’m taking my new NOOK Tablet with me to the cabin as well. There are so many books to read, and not nearly as much time as I would like to read them all and then gush about a vast majority of them.

Oh well.

That’s all for today. Let me know what books you’re excited to read soon in the comments below. I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.