July was a great reading month for me! I finished 18 books which is a lot for me.

I only DNFed one book which is pretty amazing.

The Star Side of Bird HillThe Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson

This sounded like an interesting book. Two sisters are sent to Barbados to live with their grandmother and have two different takes on life on the island. There was getting to be a lot of teenage foolishness though and I just wasn’t in the mood at the time.


I did a huge purge of my Goodreads TBR list. I didn’t have a big one compared to others I hear about but I cut my TBR list to 77 and cut my International TBR list and Nonfiction TBR list in half too. I cut anything that I knew I would just never get around to reading no matter how good the book sounded.

I’ve been requesting a lot of books from the library off my lists and praying they don’t all come in at once. Sometimes all the stars align and this happens.

A photo posted by @dvmheather on

These were four books I’d been waiting for a while to read and they all came together. Best library book haul ever!


Here are the books I read this month.

They were set in The United States (5 states), England, Nigeria, Somalia, Ancient Rome, Egypt, Scotland, Canada, and various imaginary places. Three were nonfiction. Two were on audio. Two were written by men and three were written by black female authors.


And then this happened…

Great talk by LeVar Burton tonight. A photo posted by @dvmheather on

I follow him on Twitter and he tweeted something about “See you tomorrow Cleveland.” I looked it up and he was appearing at the library.

 

He talked about the story telling mentors in his life – Alex Haley, Gene Roddenberry, and Fred Rogers. He read his children’s book. There was a question and answer session which always makes me embarrassed to be part of the group.

I don’t ever do book signings because I think it is horrifying. It would be ok if I didn’t have to stand in line with a bunch of other people who are asking the most cringe-making questions. I’d feel the need the apologize for all of humanity before I could get a picture so I just use the zoom lens to take them from afar like a proper stalker.

Does anyone else find book signings uncomfortable or is it just me?