Sunday Summary – 21st October 2018

It’s Sunday night and the end of another week. Whereas in previous weeks I have been delighting in the fact that I have time off work to enjoy, rest assured karma is biting me right now. Yes, I’m back to work tomorrow.

I can hear you all laughing at me now – and good for you! I would too… were I not in my shoes.

No really, I do enjoy my job. It may come as a surprise, but working with numbers actually strikes up a good balance against my love of reading and writing my blog.

So, what have I been doing with my time off? Well, reading of course! That… and talking about books. On Wednesday I reviewed Breachers by Anthony Thomas for the Blog Tour organised by Fiery Seas Publishing. As I stated in my review, it’s one of the easiest five-star reviews I have given this year! If you haven’t taken a look at that review yet, I’d appreciate it.

On Friday, I published a long overdue review of The Relic Guild by Edward Cox. I read this book back in August, but since I have had so many blog tours on the go, I just haven’t had the time to commit my thoughts to… webpage. You get the idea. This is another positive review and a book I would really recommend for anyone who loves Fantasy (particularly magic).

I’ve also been doing a lot of work behind the scenes on my blog. When I say a lot, I mean A LOT. When I migrated my blog to a self-hosted site earlier this year, I came across problems – 260(ish) broken links to media files that didn’t import properly. Yep, it was that big a problem.

Well, those are all fixed now! It took hours of manual changes, but it’s done! I also noticed a lot of the formatting on those pre-migration posts isn’t great so I am fixing a lot of those too. That’s a work-in-progress at the moment, but less urgent. I’m pleased anyway! It’s kept me busy and I had no way of making time to fix the links otherwise.

 

Books Read

Ahead of Wednesday’s blog tour review I was due to post for Breachers, I finished reading this book on Monday. I don’t like to have things so last minute for tours. If there is one thing this worked out well for though, was keeping everything fresh in my head for the review. I think maybe I should be better at making notes as I read, or drafting reviews sooner, because on this occasion this review was incredibly easy to write!

This week also saw me return to reading The Hidden Face by S. C. Flynn. I put this book down about a third of the way through last week to ensure I could review Breachers on time. Once I re-commenced reading this book, I finished it within a few days. It is a fast paced book, whilst still managing to fit in plenty of history behind the events taking place in modern day.

The next two reads this week weren’t on my list for this month. I confess I picked them up rather on impulse. First, I started reading The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. I received an ARC of this book from Orion Books a few months ago now, in anticipation of publication in February next year. You have to get a copy. I devoured this book in less than 24 hours, no word of a lie. I am so glad I picked it up.

My next unplanned read is Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett. Yes, folks, I’m back to reading Pratchett again. I just love the Discworld series so much that I need to pick up one of these books occasionally. In borrowing an ebook copy of this title, I also got to test out my new Kindle tablet, so it’s a win-win situation really! I’m 90% though this book as we speak, but I’ll finish that tonight no sweat.

 

Books Discovered

After last week’s performance of binge buying books, I have been far more restrained.

I saw an offer for Stephen King’s Bag of Bones, advertising the e-book as only 99p for a limited time. So, I bought it. I justified it by arguing that by using by gift card balance, I wasn’t TECHNICALLY spending my actual money.

Not strictly true I know, but I needed something… okay?!

 

Coming Up…

This week I have a little breathing space on the blog tour front – yay! Haha! For a bit of a change, I have decided to take a look at my ever-growing TBR again and potentially weed out some books I no longer want to read. It feels like it’s been a while since my last post, so this is definitely overdue!

I will be posting another book review this week; however, this will be a throwback review of an old book or series. I have so many books that I’ve read before starting my blog – it doesn’t make sense to omit featuring them!

 

 

In addition to the posts I am planning on publishing this week, I’ve decided I am also going to trial setting some reading goals here. I want to see if that works for me anyway. Compared to last year, I have read quite a bit less. I know it isn’t a competition, but I feel I need a little kick up the backside encouragement some weeks. Maybe accountability might work for me!

So, tonight I am going to finish Interesting Times. I’ve already committed myself to that. In terms of reading progress, I am aiming to pick up and finish Another Kind of Magic by Elizabeth Davies. I am reviewing this book in the upcoming Blog Tour, so I want to give myself plenty of time to read this in advance (and make notes!) As the cover isn’t being revealed until the 25^th October, I can’t share this with you now. You’ll just have to wait and see!

In addition to Another Kind of Magic, I am also looking to make a start on The Swan Keeper by Milana Marsenich. This is the last book on the list for this month; if I can manage to make a start on this by the end of the week then I’ll be in a good position to read this before the end of the month! It’ll be the first time I’ll have made it through all the books on my list in a month for a little while, not to mention the couple of extras I picked up too!

I look forward to updating you next week! Happy reading!