I’m not ready yet to say goodbye to summer, but it’s time to do a recap on my ’20 books of summer’ challenge. This challenge is hosted by Cathy of 746 books and the idea is to create a list of 20 books to read and review between the 1st of June and the 31st of August. Here you can read my sign-up post with my original list of twenty books.
I’m happy to announce that I managed to read 12 books during the last three months. Ten of them are from my original list, I also read two extra review copies. Last year, I stranded at 14 books, but that was because my holidays got cancelled, while this year I went abroad for two weeks during this three-month-period. And when I’m on holiday, I tend to read a lot less than usual. So, in the end I’m quite happy with my result. These are the books I’ve read:
My favourite reads were ‘That bonesetter woman’, ‘Stone blind’ and ‘The price of blood’. I enjoyed participating in this challenge (thanks Cathy for hosting!) and I’m looking forward to join again next year.
I’ve been looking forward a lot to Cathy’s announcement of 20 books of summer. Not only because summer is my favourite season and reading while trying not to spill my sun cream, or even better ice cream, on my book is one of my happy places. This is just such a nice challenge in which a lot of other book bloggers are taking part and encourage each other.
Have you never heard of 20 books of summer before? Well, the good thing is that there are almost no rules 😅. The concept is to compile a list of 10, 15 or 20 books. And then read and review these books before the 1st of September.
All the fun is off course in creating the list and in not sticking to it 😛. But well, I created my list at the beginning of May and decided to list 20 books. And then aim to read at least 10 of them. Last year I finished 14 books during summer, which is A LOT. Mainly because I didn’t go on holiday in 2021 and thus spent a lot of my free time to reading. This year, I know I won’t have the same amount of time, so I’ve set the bar a lot lower for myself. 10 books will do.
This is my full list of books, in a random order.
Mrs England by Stacey Halls (Kindle copy)
Cloud cuckoo land by Anthony Doerr (physical copy)
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (library)
The price of blood by Patricia Bracewell (Kindle copy)
City of masks by S.D. Sykes (Kindle copy)
And then there were none by Agatha Christie (for the classics club, physical copy)
The house with the golden door by Elodie Harper (Netgalley ARC)
The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (library)
Heartstone by S.J. Sansom (library)
The heretic wind by Judith Arnopp (Kindle copy)
The honey and the sting by Elizabeth Fremantle (physical copy)
The devil and the dark water by Stuart Turton (library)
Anne Boleyn, a king’s obsession by Alison Weir (library)
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (for the classics club, Kindle copy)
The puritan princess by Miranda Mallins (Kindle copy)
The royal secret by Andrew Taylor (library)
A column of fire by Ken Follett (physical copy)
Stone blind by Nathalie Haynes (Netgalley ARC)
The reindeer hunters by Lars Mytting (library)
Circe by Madeline Miller (physical copy)
I’m curious to see where this challenge will end for me. Bring on the summer.
Have you made your list yet? With which book do I need to start my challenge?
I can’t believe that summer is already over (or almost, I’m still hoping at an Indian summer). I don’t really mind going back to work, as I need some routine to function properly, but I’m a bit sad that autumn is here.
This also means I must look back at my first participation of #20booksofsummer. This challenge is hosted by Cathy of 746 books. In May, I made a list of 20 books of which I have tried to read as many books as possible by the end of August. I aimed to read somewhere between 10 and 20 books during the three summer months and I hoped to finish around 10 of the 20 books I originally chose. This means that there was some space to pick up other books not on the list. And haha, of course I didn’t stick to the list completely. But how did I do? Let’s look back, month by month.
June
I started off strong, finishing four books in June. And you won’t believe it, but all of them appeared on my original list! 🤩 That wasn’t too hard as ‘The vanishing witch‘ and ‘the crimson ribbon‘ were part of my library haul in May, I read ‘Far from the madding crowd‘ for the Classic club and ‘Cecily‘ was a review copy. But still, not bad at all.
Round-up June: finished 4 books in total, 4 from the original list.
July
And then came July. Bad weather forced me to read inside and I did read a lot. I finished 5 books, which is the highest number of books finished in one month this year. So great, this challenge is really helping me to read more. Or was it the weather? 🤔
Just one little comment: only 2/5 (The last daughter and ‘Plague land’) books appeared on my original list from May. But shht, I still did read a lot. And I have found some good excuses 😅. I was only approved for ‘Daughters of Sparta‘ after having made the list and both ‘Animals of Lockwood manor‘ and ‘The city tears‘ are from another library haul. So it just went a bit out of hand in the library. 🤫
Round-up June + July: finished 9 books in total, 6 from the original list.
August
And then came August, the month were I finished another solid 5 books and started a sixth one. I had two weeks off from work and as my boyfriend became ill, I did have much more time to read than I anticipated. 🤷♀️ I even managed to pick up three more books from my original list. ‘Captive queen’ and ‘A thousand ships’ were available at the library. As was the newest Tatiana de Rosnay (title not yet available in English) which I finished in one day.
I finally managed to read ‘The scarlet contessa’, one of the books I was looking forward most to read, but other books always took precedence. Not this summer, I enjoyed it a lot! ‘Treasure island‘ was my classic clubs spin result and in the meantime I’ve started another classic novel, ‘Lolita’ from Nabokov.
Total round-up:
14 books finished, one started
I finished 9 books from my original list (so not the hoped for 10, but I was almost there :))
I have written the reviews of all the books I’ve finished so far, they will be published in the upcoming weeks.
I highly enjoyed participating in this challenge. Thanks again to Cathy for organizing and I hope to rejoin for the summer of 2022!
Ok, we’re already more than halfway with this challenge and thus with summer! Can you believe it? Weather was terrible so far, so I didn’t read much in my happy place in the garden. But the forecast for the coming days and weeks looks promising—if you ignore the rain.
For the ’20 books of summer’ challenge (hosted by Cathy of 746 books) I made a list of 20 books at the beginning of June of which I try to read as many books as possible by the end of August. We’re now the 21st of July as I write this and I’ve already finished 8 books this summer. Which is a lot for my doing. Five of them are from the original list.
The whole thing of this challenge is about making a list and then not sticking to it, yes? :D. I especially read some library reads that weren’t mentioned on the list. I just needed to read on with Mosse’s ‘City of tears’ and I was also surprised to find ‘The animals of Lockwood manor’ available so I didn’t hesitate to take it home with me.
My favourite so far is certainly ‘City of tears’, closely followed by ‘Cecily’. It will not surprise you if I say that Hardy’s Far from the madding crowd proved my biggest disappointment.
Next up I’ll start ‘The last daughter’ by Nicola Cornick, a review copy I still need to pick up. Followed by my spin result ‘Treasure island’, which didn’t appear on my list but I’ll be happy to have read at least two classics during summer. And who knows what will be next? I hope to pick up one of my owned kindle reads as there are some books I’m really looking forward to reading. And I hope also to visit the library again in August.
If I keep up this pace, I will have finished around 14 books maybe at the 31st of August. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Hi everyone, it’s time for me to sign up for another infamous challenge in the world of book bloggers. It will be my first participation in ’20 books of summer’, hosted by Cathy of 746 books!
These are the rules:
Compile a list of 10, 15 or 20 books that you’d like to read this summer
Read and review them between the 1st of June and the 1st of September
It’s as simple as that!
Now 20 books in three months is a lot for me, even during summer when I tend to read more often but I usually also select thicker books. So I hope to end up somewhere between 10 and 15 books.
Since I’m picky on which books make it to my TBR, I’m quite good at sticking to that list, but I’m not so great at making up a list for the next three months and read no other books than the list 😅. I borrow more than 50% of the books I read from the library and so I depend on which books are available. And sometimes a random books grabs my attention. However, during summer I always feel like less people visit the library and more popular books become available. I don’t know why this is the case, since a lot more books are read during summer compared to the winter period, but well, maybe people don’t take library reads with them on holiday?
That’s why I have chosen to make a heavy list of 20 books, knowing I’ll not be able to read and/or borrow them during this challenge, but this gives me the flexibility I need.
My current library haul
I’ll have read some of these before the 1st June, but not all of them.
Netgalley reads for this summer
From my physical shelves
Kindle reads
For the classics club
Other possible library books
This are 20 books, and I’ll not read them all this summer, but I hope that by September 1st I’ll have read at least half of them 😄.
Will you be joining 20 books of summer? I’m curious to see your lists!
In Another Era 