Saturday, July 1, 2017

June Wrap Up

June was a crazy month. Most of the month was spent in a weird comfort reading/reading slump thing because of all that first trimester fun. You know what I mean, anxiety attacks, morning sickness, extreme fatigue. It's been a fun ride...
But as I'm nearing the second trimester and starting to feel better I'm getting back into good routines, and forming new ones in the new house, including having some scheduled reading time each day. Usually it's early morning after The Husband leaves for work and before The Toddler wakes up, afternoons during outside play time because I can sit in the lounger on the porch and read while The Toddler plays. and right before bed. I'm still reading pretty slowly but it's something.
I also made a crazy decision. I talked to my doctor about my anxiety. I've been down the road of uncontrolled anxiety and depression with a new baby and I don't want to go there again. On top of that, as my hormones and body get more and more out of whack, so does my anxiety. My intrusive thoughts are back with a vengeance and I can't deal with this on my own any more. However, the doctor I saw at my last appointment was one I've never met before and I feel like she kind of gave me the brush off. She wants me to talk to a social worker before we talk about medication and she promised to email the social worker, but we'll see if that actually happens. I know all to well that doctors say a lot of things they don't mean or intend to follow through on.

But back to the books! The last wrap up I posted was April so I'll cover May and June, try and set some new goals for going forward, and at the end I'll update on some fun stuff that might be coming up.

Books I Read in May

1. Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch
2. Balanced and Barefoot by Angela J. Hanscom (Review coming soon!)
3. The Falconer by Elizabeth May (Review here)
4. 10 Things I Can See From Here by Carrie Mac (Review here)
5. The Shoemakers Wife by Adriana Trigiani 
6. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Six books doesn't seem bad. But, exactly ZERO of those books counted for the RMSC. So as of May I was still at 10 out of 25. 

Books I Read in June

1. The Cat Who Played Brahms by Lillian Jackson Braun
2. The Cat Who Played Post Office by Lillian Jackson Braun
3. The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare by Lillian Jackson Braun
4. The Color of Water by James McBride

That's it. Just the four, And again zero of them counted for the RMSC. On the plus side I met my Goodreads goal for the year of 35 books and have officially upped it to 50.  

As for goals for July, I think 5 books is a good goal. Two RSMC books at a minimum. I think that's a do-able goal for the next month. I have six months left to meet my RMSC goal of 25 books, so I'm going to need to pick up the pace but I think it's still possible. I just need to get back to reading regularly.

What I'm Reading Right Now

Image from Goodreads
1. A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas - I want to get into to this one so badly, but I'm just not feeling it right now. I went though this when I was pregnant with The Toddler too, this inability to read fantasy books. I'm going to keep trying with this one though because I really love Feyre and Rhysand.

2. Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne - I've been making an effort (once again) to simplify things in our home to A) help with my anxiety and B) make things easier to clean/maintain and C) make more time for family and less time for cleaning. I've done pretty well so far and this book was recommended on several minimalist and simple living blogs that I follow so I decided to give it a try. 

Image from Goodreads
3. Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, The Duchess of Lancaster by Alison Weir - I know I've written about how much I love Alison Weirs writing before. During this reading slump I had an urge to read some history so I turned to her. And (BONUS!) this one counts for the RMSC. Katherine Swynford was first the mistress and then the wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and her life, although we know little about her, was very interesting. She was the mother of the Tudor dynasty, she and John of Gaunt had several illegitimate children who were then legitimized by the Pope after their marriage, founding the Beaufort line, And Henry VII's mother was Margaret Beaufort! Of course Henry VII was born 100(ish) years after Katherine died but still, without her no Tudors. I could go on about family trees and the Wars of the Roses forever because I really love this stuff but I'll just say this; Read the books!

Upcoming (Maybe) Stuff

I've kind of taken a break from reading ARC's for the last couple of months but now I have a lot of really good books waiting for me on Netgalley and I'm going to try and get back too them. For one of those books I've been invited to participate in a Blog Tour, which I've obviously never done before. It would include a giveaway for my readers but I honestly don't know if I have enough readers to bother participating. So if you read my blog and want to enter a giveaway for a book let me know so I can let the publisher know I'd like to participate in the Blog Tour. 

Next, I got an email today that I'm being sent a box from a marketing company in California. It says it should be here by July 11th but I'm kind of nervous about this because I have no idea what it could be for, the email gives no details whatsoever. I'm assuming it's for the blog but I really don't know. So as soon as I get that I will be opening it and post on here about whats in it, regardless of what it is. Unless it something embarrassing like diarrhea medicine or underwear or something, in that case I'll spare you.  

Book shelf organization post! I unpacked all my books without taking pictures, however they are in no way organized yet, as my motivation to do anything but watch Gilmore Girls and eat watermelon has been nonexistent. So I'll be taking some pictures and doing some organizing in the next couple of weeks. 

Book Club for June! It was my pick for June and I think I picked a good one. I'll be writing the Book Club post in the next couple of days.  

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