June 2012 Wrap-Up

Here's a summary of my book-related activity for June 2012. It was a busy month, and therefore a rather sad month as far as reading goes. (Note: I didn't really buy so many books! This includes a few books I bought right near the end of last month, so they didn't make it into last month's wrap-up.)

Books I read (linked to the reviews)

Final Crossing by Carter Wilson (NetGalley)
Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides by Ariel Meadow Stallings (library)
The Invasion (Animorphs #1) by K.A. Applegate (reread)
The Visitor (Animorphs #2) by K.A. Applegate (TBR pile)
The Marrying Kind by Ken O'Neill (NetGalley)

Books I bought

The Nightmare Room, #1-3:
The Nightmare
Begins! by R.L. Stine

The Horror of the Black Ring
(Goosebumps Series 2000 #18)
by R.L. Stine

Headless Halloween
(Goosebumps 2000 #10)
by R.L. Stine

Lost in Stinkeye Swamp
(Give Yourself Goosebumps #24)
by R.L. Stine

Good Places to Live: Poverty and Public
Housing in Canada by Jim Silver

The War in the Air by H.G. Wells

These three are all from Jamboree 2012, a genealogy conference I went to this month:

Getting the Most Out of
RootsMagic 5 by Bruce Buzbee

Tracing Your Cork Ancestors by
Tony McCarthy and Tim Cadogan

Researching Canadian Uncommon Sources
by Michelle Labrosse-Purcell

Then I bought this one in the Toronto airport on the way home, to cheer myself up during a rather unpleasant overnight trip. (Is it healthy to buy yourself books when you're feeling down? I don't see why not!)

The Girl in the Steel Corset
by Kady Cross

Books I've been approved for on NetGalley

Quarantine by John Smolens

Progress on challenges

The Visitor was my June book for the Read Your OWN Library! Challenge.

I failed to read my June Random Read, which was Ghostlight by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

I completed the following letters for the 2012 A-Z Book Challenge: F and O

I read 1 book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

I read 0 books for the 2012 Anne Rice Challenge. You can still sign up!

Operation: TBR Reduction: I added 11 books to my to read list and only removed 3, so my pile increased by 8 this month! Yet another epic fail. Seriously, this challenge is really showing me that I have a problem! :(

The 6th Canadian Book Challenge

It's just about time for the 6th Canadian Book Challenge to begin! The Canadian Book Challenge, run by The Book Mine Set, starts each year on Canada Day (July 1, in case you didn't know), and runs until the next Canada Day. This will be my first time participating, because I hadn't started this blog yet last Canada Day, and I don't like to jump into these things in the middle.

The goal is to read at least 13 Canadian books. Lots of people give themselves more specific challenges than that, like reading a book from each province and territory. My personal mini-challenge is to read as many as possible non-fiction books about Canadian issues, for example books about Canadian politics, Aboriginal issues, the environment, etc. (Note: I will still be counting all Canadian books I read for the challenge.) I was inspired to do this when I realised that I had a few such books piling up on my to read shelf.

I'm really excited about this challenge, because I've been wanting to feature more Canadian books on this blog, but I feel like I'm limited by what I already have in my TBR pile, to an extent. So this challenge will at least give me a way of highlighting Canadian content.

Let me know if you're also participating, eh?

1. The Living Room by Bill Rolfe
2. 7 Generations: A Plains Cree Saga by David Alexander Robertson
3. The ABACUS Protocol: Sanity Vacuum by Thea Isis Gregory
4. Dime Store Magic (Women of the Otherworld #3) by Kelley Armstrong
5. Industrial Magic (Women of the Otherworld #4) by Kelley Armstrong

WWW Wednesday - June 27

WWW Wednesdays is a meme hosted by Should Be Reading. To participate, simply answer these questions three:

1. What are you currently reading?
2. What did you recently finish reading?
3. What do you think you'll read next?

1. I am currently reading The Marrying Kind by Ken O'Neill.

2. I recently read the first two books in the Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate: The Invasion and The Visitor.
3. Books I'm planning to read soon include The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Auraria by Tim Westover.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

Title: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Millennium #3)
Author: Stieg Larsson
Publication Date: 2009 (English translation)
Length: 563 pages

Warning: This is a review of the third book in the series, and may therefore contain spoilers from the first two books.

The third and final instalment in Stieg Larsson's brilliant Millennium trilogy, this book starts with Lisbeth Salander in critical condition with a bullet in her head. Meanwhile, Mikael Blomkvist struggles to prove her innocence, all while exposing the huge governmental conspiracy that has resulted in Lisbeth's rights being violated since she was a little girl.

I think this book is actually the best in the trilogy. As all the different threads that have been going on throughout the story start to come together, the conclusion is quite intense. A big chunk of this book is Lisbeth's trial, and it is epic. A lot of the time you don't know what's going on, what people's strategies are for the trial, etc., so it really keeps you on edge, and when Annika would whip out surprise defences for Lisbeth, I was alternating between laughing hysterically and saying "holy crap!". It's probably good that I didn't read this book in public too much...

5 stars!

This book counts towards the Read Your OWN Library! Challenge (hosted by The Beauty of Eclecticism) for April (whoops, slightly delayed in posting this one!). For May, my book for the challenge will be The Mummy by Anne Rice. This book also counts for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

Happy news!

So, I have an excuse for not posting in a little while. I'm engaged!!!

So, I've been a little wrapped up in wedding planning lately. I'm not getting married until September 2013, but it turns out that venues book up like a year and a half in advance, so already there are places with no free Saturdays in that month! Therefore, finding a venue is currently the urgent part of my planning!

If you're interested in seeing my ideas, I've started pinning some things. If I come up with cool bookish wedding ideas, I'll definitely post about them here! (But don't worry, I promise that this will not become a wedding planning blog. I have my journal on the wonderful Offbeat Bride for that.)

June Random Reads selection

It's time to select my Random Read for June! Last month, my Random Read was Jesus on Mars by Philip José Farmer, which I did indeed read. Review coming soon!

So it's off to the random number generator. I have 692 books on my TBR shelf at the moment (yikes!!), so I enter 1 as the min and 692 as the max, and hit Generate.

Drum roll, please!

Well, it took a lot of tries before I got something that wasn't in the middle of a series, but eventually I got one:

For June's Random Read I'll be reading Ghostlight by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It's been on my TBR shelf since March 26, 2011.