July Book Report

July 2022

I finished 16 books last month.

A quote from this month's reading:

“We love Jane Austen because her characters, as sparkling as they are, are no better and no worse than us. They’re so eminently, so completely, human. I, for one, find it greatly consoling that she had us all figured out.”
― Natalie Jenner, The Jane Austen Society

Here is my progress toward various goals and challenges:

• 4 were non-fiction (toward my goal of 25 non-fiction books this year) and 2 counted toward the NonFiction Reader Challenge 
• 3 were books I own but hadn't read before (inspired by The Unread Shelf project) 
• none was poetry (toward my goal of reading 4 poetry books this year)
• 3 counted toward the the 16th Canadian Reading Challenge which began 7/1/2022. 
•  one was from my Classics Club List and it counted toward Back to the Classics

• 6 counted toward the Cruisin' Through the Cozies challenge 
• 3 counted toward the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I have now completed
• none counted toward the Turtle Recall Challenge
• one counted toward the TBR Pile Challenge
• none were for my Century of Books project
• 7 were from my 20 Books of Summer list 

 Here are the books I finished in July 2022: 

1. 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown (4-stars)
2. Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert (3-stars)
3. The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner (5-stars)
4. A Deadly Grind by Victoria Hamilton (audiobook, 3-stars)
5. Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie (4-stars)
6. Fluke by Christopher Moore (3-stars)
7. The Power of Regret by Daniel H. Pink (4-stars)
8. Cheddar Off Dead by Korina Moss (4-stars)
9. Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt (audiobook, 4-stars)
10. Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie (4-stars)
11. Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller (4-stars)
12. Pushing Up Daisies by Rosemary Harris (3-stars)
13. Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood (4-stars)
14. Bowled Over by Victoria Hamilton (audiobook, 4-stars)
15. The Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Blends by Megan McArdle (3-stars)
16. The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquart (4-stars)

This was a good reading month overall and I am pleased to have completed my first challenge for the year. I am also ahead of schedule for the Canadian Reading Challenge which is nice for a change. 

My "Unread Shelf "reading is still going in the wrong direction. I had 126 books "owned but not read" back in March and I now have 133. I have been reading from my shelves, but I have also been acquiring books -- mostly from library book sales. Limiting my unread book collection to 50-60 titles may be an unreasonable goal.