2009: The Sunday Salon – July Wrap-Up

July was a HUGE reading month for me, partially because I was on vacation for a week.  In July I read:

• #80 – Spook (Mary Roach)
• #79 – Ms. Taken Identity (Dan Begley) 
• #78 – A Man for Amanda (Nora Roberts) 
• #77 – Killer Takes All (Erica Spindler) 
• #76 – On Writing (Stephen King) 
• #75 – Courting Catherine (Nora Roberts) 
• #74 – Fluke (Christopher Moore) 
• #73 – Naamah’s Kiss (Jacqueline Carey) 
• #72 – Finger Lickin’ Fifteen (Janet Evanovich) 
• #71 – Do Not Deny Me (Jean Thompson)
• #70 – Night Play (Sherrilyn Kenyon) 
• #69 – The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl (Belle de Jour) 
• #68 – Skin Trade (Laurell K. Hamilton) 
• #67 – The Accidental Human (Dakota Cassidy) 

14 books! Plus 3 or 4 more that didn’t get reviewed until August (the last of those reviews will be up this week).  Out of these books, my favorite was definitely Naamah’s Kiss.  On Writing was also quite good, but obviously for different reasons.  Disappointments? Skin Trade. 

I also finally posted some challenge wrap-ups.  Marked completed were:

• 1st in a Series Challenge Completed 
• 2009 eBook Challenge Completed 
• The 2009 Pub Challenge Completed 
• 2009 Audiobook Challenge Completed 
• Spring Reading Thing Wrap-Up

Additionally, I updated the 2009 ARC Reading Challenge and joined two more!  The Sookie Stackhouse Reading Challenge and the Random Reading Challenge.

Right now I’m reading Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason and listening to The Memory Collector by Meg Gardiner, which I have to admit I’m quite disappointed with.  Not completely disappointed, but it’s not as good as I’d hoped. I just finished (and need to review) Unnatural Exposure by Patricia Cornwell.  The next book up will be The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson. 

I’m trying to be more even about what ARCs I choose to read when, so I’m dividing them into 4 categories — books from Amazon Vine, books from LibraryThing, books from publishers/publicists, and books from authors.  I’m going to be rotating through each category. I find that I tend to neglect some of the publicist/publisher books, so I need to work those in more.

Around the house, I’m nearly finished with my “put every book I own and every book I’ve read (in the past several years) into LibraryThing” project.  I had a lot of books in LibraryThing (1000+), but some of the stuff I owned I’ve now swapped, a lot of the stuff I own and have read was not catalogued (especially if I read it more than 4 years ago), and a lot of the books I’ve brought into the house recently were also non catalogued.  I also took the opportunity to weed some books out of my TBR collection that I’m no longer interested in reading.  These went directly onto my PaperbackSwap shelf (room). SO, I’ve physically touched every book in the house and have taken note of what LT collection(s) they belong in, and now I just need to put that info into LT.  I expect that will take me at least another week or two, and then I have some reshelving to do.

Is a book lover’s work ever done?