Sad July 2020 Wrap Up and BIG August TBR

Happy August everyone! We’re more than halfway through the year! How did that happen? Time has still been going by fast for me despite with all the crazy stuff going on in the world. While I am glad that time has gone by fast, my reading in July SUFFERED! I hardly accomplished anything from my July TBR and I just couldn’t bring myself to read a lot. One reason for that is a video game that I’m OBSESSED with and I’ll talk about it down below. But yeah July was a sad reading month but let’s jump into that!

Total Books Finished: 5

Audio Books: 2

Library Items: 4

Re-reads/Re-listen: 1

ARCs completed: 0

DNFs: 3

 

Read on July 12th & 13th

Library single issue comics

Rating: 5 stars 

This is the next Avatar story line that I read! So I didn’t complete a single thing in July until the 12th! But these comics were exactly what I needed! I love these stories and how they effortlessly continue the story where the TV show ended. This is one of the best story lines so far, since it dives into more tension, Zuko as a person and more danger. This was pretty much perfect and I want to keep going on these comics in August!

Listened from July 3rd-13th

Library Audio Book

Narrated by Robin Miles

Rating: 4 stars

I am so glad that I read this book. It was raw, horrifying, heartbreaking but a story that needed to be told and needs to be read. Zora Neale Hurston interviewed Cudjo (Kazoola) Lewis back in 1927, since he was at the time, the last “Black Cargo” aboard the ship Clotilda in the 1860’s, when slavery was illegal. But Kazoola was one of the Black men that still remembered his roots in Africa. This book was also only published in 2018 and now many years later, the introduction talks about how much we know now since Hurston interviewed Lewis. But this book was short but packed a punch with how Kazoola recalls in such detail his tribe in Africa and the rest of his life. I applaud Hurston for how she wrote in dialect like Lewis told it and that authenticity stayed. If you’re looking for a short but powerful non-fiction to read, pick this up! I didn’t give it a full 5 stars, since I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get more information about Kazoola’s descendants and current information about AfricaTown that Kazoola had help established. But regardless of information I wished that I had, I am still glad that I listened to this book. Robin Miles did such a fantastic job of bringing this necessary story to life.

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black” Cargo Review

Listened from July 15th-23rd

Re-listen, originally listened to in January 2019

Narrated by P.J. Ochlan & Laurie Catherine Winkel

Rating: 5 stars

Oh yes I finally got back to this book! Since it had been a year and a half since listening to this first book, I figured that I needed a refresher since I was going to dive into the sequel soon. And I’m SO glad that I did; there was lot of stuff that I forgot about. But this is a gem of a YA historical fantasy that’s an alternate 1889 London. This has a diverse cast of characters, with my favorites being Enrique and Zofia, as well follow them try to find an ancient artifact. I love this book so freaking much! I learn a lot of the terrible things in history like colonization, how white people stole history and things from other cultures and also there’s the fantastic Babel fragments and the Forging magic. I was beyond overjoyed to be back in this world and reliving the first book. After finishing this book, I was so ready for the sequel.

 

Started, Didn’t Finished

Both of these ARCs are ones I started at the end of the month, but sadly I didn’t finish them. I got 18% through The Silvered Serpents and only 8% through Crownchasers. I am really loving both of them so far, but the reading slump was still winning in July. But these are on the docket for August 🙂

DNFs

This month wasn’t a great month for finding more future favorites. The one I’m sad about the most is A Golden Fury, since the historical fantasy with possible curse surrounding the Philosopher’s Stone was a fantastic and alluring plot point. But I thought the protagonist actually didn’t do any alchemy herself! She talked the talk but didn’t put her words into action. Plus, the plot felt slow and didn’t feel like much happened. So I ended up putting this down at the 65% mark. Then, with Girl, Serpent, Thorn, I tried to give this book another chance. I had originally read 18% of this back in December. But in the end, I never went past that point. While I like the idea of this book being based on Persian myth and liking the mythology itself, I couldn’t relate to the main character. I felt like she’s held at a distance from the reader that I couldn’t dig into her character and care about her. Then finally, I simply hated Set Fire to the Gods. I only read 3 % which is hardly anything, I was appalled at the lameness of the “elemental” magic and the awful writing that felt like a rough draft. The dialogue was terrible and the prose was too clunky to follow. So, not a great month for ARCs unfortunately.

 

My Video Game Obsession

I picked up Horizon Zero Dawn and I.AM.OBSESSED! I had seen my husband play bits of this game and the concept of nomad type tribes and a primitive setting with deadly machine animals looked pretty awesome. And yeah it’s epic in every way! You play as Aloy, a BAD ASS girl who is raised as an outcast but truly becomes her own person on her journey! If you haven’t head of this game on PS4, do watch the trailer. This game was amazing in its plot execution, fighting the machines, the different tribes and also how Aloy grows as a character made this a practically perfect game. Plus the sequel is coming out on PS5 soon. But this was the only thing I wanted to do for the last few weeks leading into the beginning of August. I loved every second of this game 🙂

 

BIG August TBR

This feels pretty big to me, since not only was my reading slump HUGE in July but I just hope my motivation comes back. Luckily, I have started a few of these books and I should finish them really soon. The ones that have the biggest priority are: Chasing Starlight, The Silvered Serpents, Soulswift and The Other Side of the Sky since those are ARCs that come out very soon or ones I’m on personal deadline about. I am on the blog tour for Soulswift and there is a traveling ARC that I am waiting for and I have about 10 days to read it so that other people can read it before the tour starts later in the year. All the others I have mentioned are ones I own, have from the library or have pre-ordered. I especially want to get to Star Daughter, since it really gives me the best vibes and it sounds fantastic! So wish me luck that I can accomplish my goals this month 🙂 And hopefully with a couple of these, if I can at least start them by the end of the month to finish in early September, that works for me!

 

What did you read in July? Any favorite books in July? Have you read any of these or plan to read these books soon?