We are finally in August!! Thankfully July is over. It was one of the worst months this year. I fell ill and I haven’t fully recovered yet, I had some personal stuff to deal with, and work was so stressful. So it feels nice to start a new month like turning to a blank page. I also have been quiet around here because I didn’t want to add blogging to my list of causes of stress. Although this little break left my head booming with new ideas for future posts that aren’t book related – I know that is everything I’ve been posting about lately. But today is not the case.

Wrap-Up

If you didn’t know, last week was The Reading Rush, formerly known as The Booktube-A-Thon, a week-long readathon that happens every year. I patiently wait all year for this week to come, and I couldn’t miss out. I tried to clear everything out of my schedule so I didn’t have any reason not to read, and yet I only finished two books – more on that later. I’ve been in a reading slump for the past couple of months, and it is killing me slowly. It’s draining all my motivation to read and stressing me out. So to complete as many badges as I could during the readathon, I decided to test out speed reading. And it worked so well that it might be the key to finally kick the reading slump out of my life.

Even though I only read two books for the Reading Rush, they completed a couple of challenges each, which means I completed more than 50% of the challenges – that should be a win right?! The easiest things to read during readathons are comic books. They are small, heavily illustrated, and short on text. Give it an hour or two, and you got yourself the first book read. I chose Monstress by Marjorie Liu to complete the challenge of reading in the same spot and a non-human main character – the hardest challenge of all. The story wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I tip my hat on those DAZZLING illustrations. Seriously, take a moment to look at them. They are gorgeous!!

The other book I finished was Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, which completed the challenges of reading an author’s first book and a book with five or more words in the title. This was also the book that I speed read to bare me through those long descriptive paragraphs. I didn’t find this book to be as amazing as everyone was raving about, but it was good. The only thing that annoys me is that none of these books had purple on the cover or I had them on my shelf since last year, otherwise I would have nailed this readathon.

And if it wasn’t for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, my only reads would have been the ones I completed during the Reading Rush. I’ve been taking so many breaks while reading it that I don’t know if I started it at the beginning of this month or at the end of June. Can you start to see what is my problem here? I’m taking too long to finish the books. And don’t get me started on Game of Thrones. That poor thing is gathering dust waiting for me to open it again – don’t worry baby, mommy will read you in August, I promise!

Haul

Some things never change and buying books is one of them. You can call it retail therapy, I call it bargains! People need to know that in Portugal a “normal” book (around 300 pages) can cost between 16€ to 18€. There are some exceptions, but that is usually the price range. So when I see The Heist by Daniel Silva translated into Portuguese at half of the price, I don’t turn my back on it. And when a book fair comes to my town, I also don’t miss the opportunity to get books in English for 3,50€. Not even the bargain section of Book Depository can manage that some times.

So I come out of the book fair with my hands full of books and a slight disappointment in my heart. There weren’t any books that I recognized that I wanted to read. Last year, I found Snow Flower and The Secret Fan by Lisa See on a complete lucky strick, and I was hoping to have another one of those moments this year. Now for the books that I actually bought: Looking for Andrew McCarthy by Jenny Colgan was the first one I spotted and I wasn’t going to leave a Jenny Colgan book behind; The Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett, I’ve always heard so much about him but never read anything; The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey, which sounds like I’m going to cry my eyeballs out, but since it’s a vintage book it should be good; and finally two books by Cecelia Ahern, The Gift for me to read this Christmas, and Thanks for the Memories that is actually an ARC and not a final copy.

TBR

So now with August starting so is the N.E.W.T.s for the Magical Readathon – you can learn more about it here. I’ve participated in the O.W.L.s in April – it didn’t go too well – and now I’m back at it again, but this time I’m going speed read my TBR to try and read all the books. If I’m successful, I’ll have read 6 books which is as much as I’ve read in the past three months. As per my TBR, I’m continuing with the wizarding career that I chose in April: Herbologist

To complete the N.E.W.T.s I have to have an Outstanding in Herbology, so I have to read:
– a book with a green cover – I have an eARC of Cold Woods by Karen Katcher that needs to be read this month and the trees on the cover have some green between all the snow
– a book between 350 and 390 pages – Freefall by Jessica Barry since I’m in the mood to read something sci-fi
– a book with flowers on the cover – Snow Flower and The Secret Fan by Lisa See, it’s time to finish it.

Then I’ll have to have an Excelente in Potions:
– read a friend’s favourite book – I asked a friend and she told me any book from John Green so I went with one of Books and Lala favourite book that I own, Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
– read a book with my Hogwarts house colour, which is yellow – I picked up the yellowest book in my shelf from a Portuguese author José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis.

And finally I need an Acceptable in Care of Magical Creatures:
– a book title beginning with an A – I chose A Muralha de Gelo the second part of the Portuguese edition of Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, so I can read the entire first book.

If this wasn’t ambitious enough I also want to finish reading A Thousand Beginnings and Endings by Ellen Oh that I started in May, and Lady in The Lake by Laura Lipman, her newly released book that I should I’ve read in July. I feel that I’m placing my expectations on myself too high, but part of me still believes that I can read all of this. We will see next month.