I suppose I could say this has been a steady month. In regards to blog stats, it’s been my best month so far, beating my records of most views and most likes in a day. You might have noticed that I’ve tried to be more active in the book blogger community, by joining in with WWW Wednesdays. I’m going to have a look round for more memes like that for me to latch on to and become even more involved. You might also have noticed that I’ve had a bit of an overhaul of my blog theme and design. It wasn’t very personal before, so I’ve created a proper header, and gone with a tropical theme (taken from a picture of the tissue box on my desk!). Hopefully you’ll agree that it looks a lot better, although I’m not the most creative person and don’t really do well with photo editing stuff, so I can probably do better!
I’ve also tried to develop my bookstagram (@bathtimereadsblog). I’m not very good at photography, and I don’t have the time (or money for strange dried flowers/candles/weird book character dolls etc!) to make my picture as lovely as lots of those out there, but I am trying. I’ve been trying my best to post a new photo every day, and they’re getting around 40 likes on average, which I think is pretty good to start with. I’ve slowly started building up my followers and have around 125 now, which is steadily increasing. I’m going to do one of the special monthly hashtags in August to hopefully give me a bit of inspiration and a bigger platform, although I haven’t decided which one to do yet!
Moving on to the real reason we’re all here: the books. I’ve read five full books books this month, along with DNFing one. They are:
- The Accident by C.L Taylor (I know this was included in the June post, but I did finish it in July!) – 8/10 Solid
- Tell Us Something True by Dana Reinhardt – 7/10 Something Missing
- The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins – 8/10 Solid
- Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty – 6/10 Alright
- A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness – 10/10 Perfect
- Everything Love Is by Claire King – DNF
It’s been a decent mix, with my first 10/10 since I started my blog, and since The Help in January! Two very decent thrillers with The Accident and The Girl on the Train, one cute YA ARC with Tell Us Something True, and one annoying, insulting ‘thriller’ with Big Little Lies.
A Monster Calls was my first 10/10 since I started my blog, and also since I read The Help in January! Click on the link above to read my gushing review. I also read one and a half ARC. I’m trying to read more, and I have a one or two sitting on my NetGalley account, but I also have so many other books to read. Because I’ve only just got back into reading in the last year or so, I feel like I’ve got lots of catching up to do, and there’s so many good books from the last few years that I’ve missed. I’m trying my best to read at least one ARC per month.
Regarding August, my plans are to squeeze as much as I can in to my final full month before I start my masters. I’m giving myself a target of 6 books this month, which I don’t think will be too difficult to do. I am already around a third of the way through I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak, and I am absolutely loving it. The Book Thief is my all time favourite book, and this is written in the same beautiful style, despite the story being completely different. As seems to be the case with all of Markus Zusak’s books, the story could be anything – he could rewrite the phone book and I’d read it cover to cover, loving every word. He just uses the most stunning descriptions.
I also plan to read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah next. I’ve been putting it off for a while, but I think now is the right time. I also have After You by Jojo Moyes and The Girls by Lisa Jewell to read. I think I’ll read both of those quite quickly, so they’ll probably be next. I also have a couple of thrillers and We Need to Talk About Kevin to get through. Maybe I’ll save that for September.
bathtimereads.wordpress.com 