Bookmark Lit Bulletin – July 2015

Posted July 31, 2015 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 4 Comments

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The Bookmark Lit Bulletin was created to wrap up each month and prepare for the next. I share my life happenings, book haul, books I read and reviewed, posts I shared, challenge updates, and more from the previous month. I also let you know what may be coming up on the blog in the coming month. You can read past bulletins here and learn more about the feature here.


last month

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July books completed: 22 (Listen: 8 | Read: 14)                         Number books reviewed this month: 16
Books completed so far in 2015: 113                                            Number of other posts this month: 15
Goodreads Challenge Status: 65% complete                             Guests on Inside & Out: Dahlia & Andi1Overall, not a bad month over here! I got A LOT of reading done and am very ahead on my Goodreads challenge. At the time of writing this, I’m 12 books ahead of schedule! Woo!

readsAverage rating for books read in July: 3.8 stars
Highlights of the best and worst…

Dumplin'     Everything, Everything     Young Widows Club

Best of the Best  |  Pleasantly Surprised  |  Disappointed


reviewsAverage rating for books reviewed in July: 4.0 starsfloral

hauljuly haullPhysical copies

From my Uppercase Box: The Witch Hunter by Virgina Boeker | Purchased at Books-a-Million: Two Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt + Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid | Preordered and delivered from Amazon: Jesse’s Girl by Miranda Kenneally

ARCs

Giveaway from Gone Pecan: Tonight the Streets are Ours by Leila Sales
Sent to me from the publisher: Firewalker by Josephine Angelini (not pictured)

eARCs

Has to be Love by Jolene Perry The Sister Pact by Stacie Ramey

Bookish Swag

Rusk University preorder swag: Coozie and pen | In my Uppercase Box: Novel Tea, Paper Towns bookmarks, Out of Print Library Socks | Books-a-Million Purchase: Quote bookmark | Sent to me From the Author (thank you Marci!): The One Thing bookmarks (not pictured)

postsfloral2Discussions and Memes: Top Ten Tuesday (Hyped Books I’ve Never Read, Stacking the Shelves, Diverse Reads, Books with Fellow Bookworms), Love Affair with Scribd

Book Tags: Burrito Bowl Book Tag, Find Me Tag

Challenges: Make Me Read It – Read-a-Thon Sign-UpTBR, and Wrap-Up; ARC August Sign-Up/Potential TBR

Wrap-Ups: Mid-Year Blogging Update and Goals, Reading Recap

Personal Posts: One Year Blogiversary Celebration, Currently – 7/9/15real lifeYet another insane month for me! With each passing month, I realize we’re getting closer and closer to football season. I’m going to welcome August with open arms because PRESEASON STARTS and when preseason starts, it means regular season is right around the corner! EEEEEK. Okay, I’m obviously getting ahead of myself but WHATEVER. Let’s see. Our Fourth of July was boring. The day before, we had lunch and hung out with Chris’s cousin and sister. That was kind of our celebration for the holiday even though not really… On the actual Fourth, we went to see the new Avengers movie… which was AWESOME. The following weekend was intense. I went to a going away party for my friend in Providence, because she’s moving to Texas for grad school. It was sad, but also a lot of fun. The next day, I had two birthday parties that overlapped with each other: one for Chris’s aunt and one for my friend. I somehow pulled off attending both. I even went back to Chris’s aunt’s party to see the town fireworks. The following weekend, we had a ConnLUG meeting (the local Lego Users Group in our state), which was a LOT of fun. It was the first meeting we got to actually go to with more than two other people there. The club is really up and coming, so that’s exciting. We also got up early-ish on Sunday to go see Ant-Man, which was surprisingly awesome too. Last weekend, I had yet another birthday party for some friends. We also went to the Book Barn in Niantic, which is the BEST place. I’ll share a recap of that soon! Honestly, the thing I’m most excited about this past month? The fact that we now have a functioning TV in the bedroom and an Amazon Fire TV Stick! We’ve been watching shows before bed and overall its just easier to enjoy TV from my favorite spot. We’re super excited because the Lego Brickumentary premieres tonight!pics

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mediaI have finally gotten back into watching TV! Woohoo! I won’t lie, the major reason is because I’m super ahead on my Goodreads challenge at the moment… like, over 10 books ahead. Yeah. If I wasn’t so far ahead, I know I’d be beating myself up over it (which is stupid and annoying but I can’t help it for some reason). So, what have I been watching?

EEK I love this show. It’s so funny and those maids are sassy AF. Especially Carmen. My coworker got me into this show because it’s kind of reminiscent of Desperate Housewives (RIP, I miss you). It obviously has a lot of soap-opera-level drama, but I don’t care. I love em.

Orange is the New Black - Opening Credits - NetflixWe’ve been very slooowly watching the new season for some reason. I don’t know if we’re not into it as much for some reason, or we just don’t give ourselves enough time. We’re more likely to put on a 20 minute show before bed instead of 40 minutes, because we have a tendency to stay up too late otherwise! Regardless, hopefully we’ll start watching this more now that we have a new TV set up in the bedroom with an Amazon Fire TV Stick!

Arrested Development Opening

I already love this show and have watched it many times, but Chris is watching for the first time! Honestly it kind of took him a while to GET. It has a very specific (but perfect) type of humor that can take some time to get used to. I love watching more and more of this show because every time you see it, there’s something new that you never noticed before. Get rid of the seaward! 

I shouldn’t even bother putting this on here, hehe. You all know how I feel about this show. I’m in the middle of my millionth rewatch, so its worth putting on here! I’m currently in season 7 so it’s going to be coming to an end soon 🙁  My goal is to TRY not to rewatch it again too soon, so I can focus on some other shows. No promises.

Younger: This Season on YoungerOkay does anyone else watch this show?! I love it so much! Hilary Duff in a TV show about the publishing industry?! Sign. Me. Up. When they mentioned Goodreads, I pretty much squealed out loud. This show should definitely be our shit. It’s pretty funny too!chall

Year-Long

Fairytale Challenge| 0 books this month | I’ll be picking up with this one through the end of the year, when I do the Lunar Chronicles read-along!
Reread Challenge| 0 books this month | I needddd to reread Paper Towns  before I see the movie!
105 Challenge| 2 books this month | Behind the Scenes by Dahlia Adler covered a book owned on my Kindle already, and Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon covered a YA debut
TBR Pile Challenge| 6 books this month | I read quite a few this month, since I read the entire Lying Game series by Sara Shepard – The Lying Game, Never Have I Ever, Two Truths and a Lie, Hide and Seek, Cross My Heart Hope to Die, and Seven Minutes in Heaven
Library Challenge| 1 book this month | I took out a lot of books, but only got around to reading one of them: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Flights of Fantasy Challenge| 0 books this month | Whoops? Summer is not a fantasy time for me!
Audiobook Challenge | 7 books this month | Thank you, Lying Game again! I did a mix of audio and ebook for these, but they count in my book. I also read Get Dirty by Gretchen McNeil.
Series-a-Month Challenge | 2 series completed this month | Yes, again, Lying Game. Plus, I read the Daylight Falls duology by Dahlia Adler.

During this Month

Make Me Read It (Read-a-Thon) July 20th through 27th | I did fairly well with this one. I made it a point to read (or at least start) a good portion of the books people voted for! I went SLIGHTLY out of order, but not too bad. I just know I don’t work well with reading schedules. | Sign-UpTBR, Wrap-Up

 Seasonal

Summer of Series Challenge | June, July, and August | I did a great job and read The Lying Game series completely in July! It wasn’t on my proposed TBR, but oh well. I also read the Daylight Falls duology, if that counts 🙂 | Sign-up
Summer Bingo
| June, July, and August | I am kicking ass and taking names at this Bingo challenge! I still have a month left to go and I only have five more of them to go. I’m pretty sure that I’ll get to AT LEAST 2 or 3 more of these boxes in August (especially the beach read one!). | More info/books

summer bingo july 22nd update

next month in my lifeLet’s see. Tonight will be the premiere of the Lego Brickumentary, so our local Lego group will be putting together a display and attending this weekend. August will hopefully have some vacation time in my future. I’m planning on taking a few random days off next month to relax, read, and maybe go to Six Flags with Chris. We were thinking of taking a weekend trip but I’m not sure anymore, because we should really save up for our trip to Charlotte in September. That’ll be a good chunk of change. Otherwise, I have a Jack & Jill for my friend’s wedding that I’ve been planning and will be attending. I’m hoping to spend some more time reading by the pool at Chris’s parent’s house because my life has had an utter lack of summer reads, which are my FAVORITE. I always save them for the actual summer and luckily I don’t have a lot of bookish commitments next month. I need to read, read, read summer things.

on the blogTomorrow you’ll see all about my trip to the Book Barn! As usual, I have the Top Ten Tuesday plans, reviews, and wrap-ups planned for the monthly features. A new Cover Colors is coming featuring A Court of Thorns and Roses, so I know you’ll love that 😉 I have two posts planned to cover my progress on ARC August: a wrap-up and a halfway point check-in. For discussions, I have an updated version of my previous post called How Do You Buy Books? In it, I talked about how I decide what books to buy, when to buy them, and in what format. This update post will share my new book buying habits. My review with Cristina for Book Buddies will feature Nantucket Blue, which is one of my most highly anticipated summer reads… so GIMME. I’ll also have two new people coming to share covers and bookmarks for Inside & Out.

love lauren

4 responses to “Bookmark Lit Bulletin – July 2015

  1. I always love reading your recaps! It’s fun to catch up on anything I missed on your blog AND see what you’ve been up to in real life. I can’t wait for your update on your book buying habits — those are some of my favorite posts to read! I’ve been curious about Younger, but now I’m sold. I’ve GOT to check it out! I hope your August is just as wonderful 🙂

    Hannah @ So Obsessed With recently posted: July 2015: Recap + On My Shelves
  2. Lauren, I envy your ability to read 14 books this month and post so many reviews. I have a love hate relationship with reviews. I know I have to write them but they just take so long. When I am finally able to publish the post, it does give me a sense of achievement. Girl, how do you keep up with so many shows? Haha I can never do it and it’s so sad because I can never watch the good shows. The only time I can watch shows is when I marathon them. You had a great month, thanks for sharing! 🙂

    ~Kaitlin

    Kaitlin @ Next Page Please! recently posted: Let's Talk!: Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins
    • Haha I know what you mean about the reviews. I am VERY bad at keeping up with shows actually, I’m kind of in the middle of all of them and only watch an episode of each per week (sometimes less). It helps that I use an app (iShows) to track which episode I last watched for each.

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