It feels like a lot happened this month! Along with a ton of fantastic reading, I made the big jump to self-hosted WordPress from Blogger. I still have a lot of things to figure out, but I’m getting there. I’m sad that I seem to have lost some Feedly and Blogger followers. I don’t have so many, but every one matters to me.
In real life, summer is really here. School is out, vacation from work starts in less than two weeks, and we’re headed to Switzerland. I have plenty of content scheduled but I might be slightly out of touch for a while, since I won’t always have Internet access. Please, comment away, and I’ll be sure to respond when I get back.
Reviews
- Good Daughters – My first book by Mary Hocking, which I hunted down for Heavenali’s event.
- The Golem and the Jinni – I enjoyed this fantasy about two very unusual immigrants to New York.
- The Valley of Song – A nearly plotless paean to the divine creative power in the world, in the form of a children’s fantasy set in an 18th century shipbuilding town. By Elizabeth Goudge, of course.
- Three childhood memoirs that share a Victorian connection: Period Piece by Gwen Raverat, Three Houses by Angela Thirkell, and My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt.
- The Fellowship – An excellent new group biography of the Inklings (CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and co.)
Other features and events
- I asked, “How do you find under-the-radar books?“ If you have any ideas, please join the discussion!
- I was excited to be part of the “book breakdown” of Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins over at The Socratic Salon.
- I listed Ten books I want to read this summer.
- I participated in the blog tours for In a Dark Wood and The Lover’s Path, two very different books that share an Italian connection.
Other books read
- The Aspern Papers by Henry James – Back to the Classics Challenge (novella)
- Seacrow Island and Mio, My Son by Astrid Lindgren – Review to come in Shiny New Books
- The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton – Review to come
- The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth – Blog tour and giveaway, July 3
- The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff – Review to come
- Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf – Back to the Classics Challenge (Twentieth century classic)
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
- The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Black Hearts in Battersea, Nightbirds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken – Reread
- Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Favorite posts from other bloggers
- A timely reminder from These Paper Hearts to Always Test All Aspects of Your Blog and Design.
- Ten Paperback Picks for Summer and Ten Nonfiction Paperback Picks from Books on the Table.
- A thoughtful discussion on Faith in Blogging from Feed Your Fiction Addiction.
- Another discussion on What Is a Book Review Worth? got me quite riled up at River City Reading.
- Book Snob went to the Carnegie and Greenaway Awards with her class. What a great experience!
- At A Gallimaufry, Reading Boys as Girls proves to be a fascinating experiment.
- A thoughtful discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird at The Midnight Garden.
How was your month? What does summer hold in store for you?
Linked in the Sunday Post hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer
The Emerald City Book Review Archive 
Thanks for the posts around the blogosphere. I really liked Reading Boys as Girls. Enjoy your trip to Switzerland, another place I’d love to go.
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Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the links.
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I’d like to move to WordPress but am I little scared too in case I break my blog, yours look fantastic thought!
New Follower!
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I don’t think there’s a risk of breaking your blog. From what I hear it’s not all that hard to do it yourself, but I had Ashley of Nose Graze do it for me (it was free with my hosting package), and it was so quick and easy. I did have to go back into old posts and fix some formatting problems. And as I mentioned above, the old Blogspot link on Feedly doesn’t work any more so I lost those followers. That was the only major drawback. If you’re seriously thinking about it, I think sooner rather than later is best!
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Awesome week! The next few weeks before you head to Switzerland will fly by. I hope you enjoy your trip. You’ve read so many lovely books. I have the Golem and the Jinni on my TBR list can’t wait to see what you thought. Thanks for sharing! Have a great week reading. My Sunday Post
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Thank you for the good wishes. I need to start packing, and most importantly, planning what reading to take along. : )
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Congratulations on making the switch to Blogger! From what I can see, the design carried over beautifully. I had Ashley port mine, too, though she wasn’t hosting at the time so I am on GoDaddy hosting instead. Are you using UBB version 3? I need to update to that one.
Thanks for the links – I missed some of your reviews while I was away, and I want to check them out. The Valley of Song is a Goudge book I’ve never encountered – I didn’t even know about it!
Have a lovely time in Switzerland!
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You just reminded me to check whether my UBB was upgraded yet (all upgrades come for free with my hosting package) and it was! Including support for multiple books in one post, yay! I will have to play around with that soon.
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In regards to you losing some followers, if it is any help to you, I had some trouble with your new feed and my blog reader. I use The Old Reader. When I attempted to enter your new feed into it I was getting error messages. At least for my blog reader, In can put the actual link to a site in and it works fine . That is what I ended up doing to get add your site.
IT looks like you finished lots of interesting books this month. I am jealous as to the number that you managed to complete in a month 🙂
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Thank you for that info about the feed. I’ll ask Ashley about that. Glad you found something that worked.
I read a lot of books this month — I have to say that I intentionally picked out some that were short (like Mrs Dalloway, The Matchmaker and The Aspern Papers) so I could make some headway on my Classics Club list. The Lindgren and Aiken children’s books were also quick reads.
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Looks like you had a great month! Thanks for linking up to my discussion!!
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It really was! Thank you for another great discussion topic, and for hosting the challenge each month.
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You’ve been quite busy. I love my self hosted sight but am still working out the kinks too. Have a wonderful vacation. Mine starts on the 18th and can’t wait!
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It’s great to be more in control. Enjoy your vacation too!
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Sounds like you had a great month. June seems to have flown by for me, and as a lot of my reading came at the end of the month I have quite a few reviews to catch up on in July. I hope you enjoy the holiday and happy reading 🙂
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My reading is outpacing my ability to write reviews at the moment. I’ll have to do some catch-up posts soon. Thanks for stopping by.
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Congrats on your move! I know you can be so much more creative with a self-hosted WordPress. You’ve shared some great links that I’ve missed so I’ve got to go check up on those. I want to read Mrs. Dalloway but Virginia Wolfe scares me a bit. Hopefully I’ll work up the courage soon. Have a great week!
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I was scared of Virginia Woolf too, but I loved Mrs. Dalloway after I got used to the writing style.
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I hope you enjoy WordPress. I switched very early on in my blogging life so have been using WP for 5 or so years now and I really enjoy it.
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I am enjoying it — there are so many helpful features.
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Thanks for sharing some of your favorite posts from others. I loved the Golem and the Jinn so glad you did too. WordPress rocks, Hope you have a wonderful week!
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Glad to hear from another fan of one of my favorite books so far this year.
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Hope you have a wonderful time in Switzerland!! (And what books are you taking with you?)
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Good question! I have a ton of classics on my e-reader that I can use as backup, but I’ll see what else I have on my list that can be conveniently taken along.
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How do you like self-hosting? I’m still thinking about it. I’m also curious to hear your thoughts on Uprooted. I keep hearing that it’s a great book, but is it heavy on the fantasy elements?
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Self-hosting is good! I’m actually on shared hosting from Ashley of NoseGraze, which means she did the installation and handles all updates etc. I love having someone else take care of all the technical stuff.
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Uprooted is VERY heavy on fantasy elements, with lots of magic and monsters. If you don’t like fantasy, you would have to get past that (and I don’t know if you really could). I am a fantasy nut, so I loved it.
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Hmm, now I have so much to think about for both the blog and book. Thanks for your thoughts!
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