2009: The Sunday Salon – June Round-up

June wasn’t a hugely prolific reading month for me, but 9 books isn’t bad!

• #66 – I Smile Back (Amy Koppelman)
• #65 – Kitty and the Midnight Hour (Carrie Vaughn) 
• #64 – High Noon (Nora Roberts)
• #63 – Bad Things (Michael Marshall) 
• #62 – Doomed Queens (Kris Waldherr) 
• #61 – City of Thieves (David Benioff) 
• #60 – Breathers (S.G. Browne) 
• #59 – The Secret Life of Prince Charming (Deb Caletti)
• #58 – April & Oliver (Tess Callahan) 

Out of these, I’d say my favorite was City of Thieves, though April & Oliver and Kitty and the Midnight Hour were also stars.  Doomed Queens was fun, and I expected more from Bad Things.  I Smile Back probably appeals only to a narrow audience.

I’ve got three main reads on the go right now.  I went to the library last week, and the last borrowed book I have left to read is Do Not Deny Me by Jean Thompson, a collection of short stories.  I don’t read short stories very often, so this is a change-up for me.  On my phone I’m reading Night Play by Sherrilyn Kenyon.  I tend to put guilty pleasure reads on my phone.  The audiobook I’m listening to is the new Stephanie Plum book, Finger Lickin’ Fifteen.  It’s pretty great so far, and I’m a little over halfway through.  Lots of Ranger (rowr).

I’ve been trying to do some clean-up around the blog now that we’re halfway through the year… mostly closing out finished challenges.  I still have a few of those posts to write, hopefully soon enough to be posted next week. Cuz we’re going on vacation! Nothing fancy, just a day at Niagara Falls, and then 4 days in Maine with my family. It’s my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary, so there’s going to be a big party.  Other than that, we’ll probably hang out with family and play golf. There’s going to be a lot of time on the road, so I expect I’ll get some reading done, plus at least one audiobook. I doubt I’ll be posting much, if at all, because I expect my internet access to be spotty at best. I’m just hoping to have cell coverage!

Speaking of “clean-up”, I’ve taken on a new project.  I’m not sure about its chances of success.  Several years ago, before things like Shelfari, GoodReads, and LibraryThing came along, I built my own online book database application.  My purpose was not only to inventory everything I had, but to keep track of what I’ve read.

Since then, I’ve started using Shelfari, GoodReads, and LibraryThing, and my little database is starting to seem redundant. I also haven’t been very good about removing things that I no longer own, since I now swap a lot of stuff when I finish it.  So the whole thing is somewhat out of date.  On top of that, right now I have it built so that I can put in an ISBN number and it will pull a lot of the pertinent information about the book out of Amazon for me.  I think that function is about to break, because Amazon is changing their system in August.  I’m not sure I understand it enough to fix what I’ve got.

SO.  My main goal is to get everything into LibraryThing, into its proper collection.  To do that, I need to go through all my shelves again and make sure the things I own are listed and the things I don’t are not (or at least are listed as read but unowned). As I’m doing this, I’m going to try to weed down my ridiculous TBR list by pulling out books that I’m not excited about reading anymore. 

I started this yesterday, and have been wandering around my living room and bedroom with a clipboard, which I find rather amusing.  So far, I’ve pulled out 10 books that I either have on audio and prefer to listen to rather than read or just don’t care about anymore.  Only 600 to go!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed your weekend!