August Wrap-Up and September TBR

Hey all, Dani here.

Wow, somehow we have already reached September. This whole week I’ve been on a special assignment backup job at work, doing the company’s daily newsletter, and it is seriously my favorite job that I’ve done in the seven years I’ve worked at this company. So it has been a nice and somewhat fun week, but it has also been a lot of work and a lot of hours, which can be a bit stressful.

As usual with my monthly wrap-up, let’s start off by checking in on my overall goals for the year.

• Reading: Hey, so I think this was actually a “slow” reading month for me, especially compared to pretty much every other month in 2020. Yep, I just flipped through all of my other monthly wrap-up lists, and this is the fewest books I’ve read in a month. That being said, I did still read 18 books this month, so it was still a really good month. Overall I have read 197 books so far this year…which is honestly a lot more than I thought I would be reading, so thanks pandemic and not being able to go anywhere, so I escape into books as frequently as possible. 
• Blogging: In direct contrast to the reading, I did not accomplish much blogging in August. In fact, I made the difficult decision to take a step back when it comes to my blog schedule so I can reduce my stressful to-do list, and also hopefully dedicate more time to working on my novel again.
• Writing: I have done some writing…just not on my novel. I wrote up the backstory, including something like 30 journal entries, for my current D&D character, which amounted to about 20 pages of writing. It isn’t a super amazing word count or anything, but it was really nice to get some writing done, and apparently my Dungeon Master is really loving reading everything my character is writing, so that’s pretty cool. I hope to actually accomplish some novel writing in September.
• Conventions: Ohio Renaissance Festival has been cancelled, Cincinnati Comic Expo has been cancelled, and Damian and I have decided to postpone our wedding until next year. It has not been a fun year for the con and event circuit. 

Okay, with the general check in on my goals for the year over with, let’s go ahead and go over everything I read in the month of August. I’m pretty sure that I need to write up reviews for pretty much all of these books, so hey, I guess that’s something to look forward to. If there’s a particular book on this list that you really want my opinions for, then let me know in the comments and I’ll put it at the top of my blog to-do list.

Edens Zero Vol 3 by Hiro Mashima — 4 stars

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty — 5 stars

Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust — 4 stars

Vox Machina Origins: Series II by Jody Houser, Matthew Mercer, Olivia Samson, Ariana Maher, and Msassyk — 5 stars

The Candle and the Flame by Nafiza Azad — 4 stars

Seven Deadly Shadows by Courtney Alameda and Valynne E. Maetani — 4 stars

Rat Queens Vol 6 by Kurtis J Wiebe and Owen Gieni — 4 stars

Bookish and the Beast by Ashley Poston — 5 stars

Where Dreams Descend by Janella Angeles — 4 stars

Forest of Souls by Lori M Lee — 4.5 stars

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade — 5 stars

The Faithless Hawk by Margaret Owen — 5 stars

My Hero Academia Vol 25 by Kohei Horikoshi — 5 stars

The Dark Tide by Alicia Jasinska — 4.5 stars

Ignite the Sun by Hanna Howard — 4 stars

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune — 5 stars

Queen of Coin and Whispers by Helen Corcoran — 4 stars

The Lost City by Amanda Hocking — 4 stars

Overall not too bad of a wrap-up, and I enjoyed everything I read. Plus a couple of those books are definitely on my top reads of the year list.

Moving on to the book haul and Owlcrate unboxing portions of this wrap-up post. I actually didn’t buy as many books as I have in the past few months either, which is fun and feels a bit weird, to be honest.

Okay, so I got the 2020 Fantasy Convention Mystery Box from Penguin Random House, which came with a journal, two released paperbacks, an ARC, and a few pins. I’m actually pretty happy with this box. I also won an ARC giveaway on Twitter and all of those books sound rather interesting. And then there’s the B&N online order I made that my local post office took about 8 days to deliver after it made it to them, which should be a clear show of how much trouble the USPS is in right now. It used to receive a package and process it along in just a few hours, perhaps a day (or very rarely two) at most. And now a package can sit untouched for over a week.

Now for the OwlCrate unboxing.

I actually do like the original cover design better; I feel like the yellow just makes it stand out more, but I do really like those sprayed edges. I’m also really excited about having another book sleeve in my life. These book sleeves are immensely helpful for when I’m bringing a book or two with me to work. My bag gets tossed around quite a bit, and the sleeve helps keep my pages and covers from getting dinged up.

Finally, I guess it’s time to talk about my September TBR.

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I always have pretty big plans for what I want to read in the beginning of the month, and some months I can stick fairly close to the TBR, but other months I pretty much ignore the plans I make at the beginning of the month. I’m also thinking of possibly re-reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline to get ready for the release of the sequel, Ready Player Two, but then a part of me sort of wants to read through The Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson, so I can be ready for the release of the fourth book soon…I don’t know. I guess I’ll see where my mood takes me.

Well, I do suppose that is all from me for today. I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend. How was your reading month in August? What books are you hoping to read in September? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.