It was impulsive: about a week from the end of June, I decided that I was tired of seeing the same old books on my stack, and something had to be done.

Oh, poor things. It wasn’t their fault. “It’s not you, it’s me.” I said.

But I realized, even as I said it, that nobody ever really believes that line.

So I had to prove it. And, it actually was me, not them, after all.

Both Kristin Lavransdatter and A Game of Thrones were wholly enjoyable. And my reading stack weighed only a fraction of what it had before, when I finished these two.

And, then I got carried away and finished Lawrence Hill’s A Book of Negroes, which I had started only in mid-June, but I thought I would try this whole one-book-at-a-time thing that so many readers swear by.

Turns out that I like it, with some adjustments.

Meaning, that I always have a book of poetry, a book of short stories, and a book of non-fiction also on the go.

Wait a minute, I hear someone saying: that’s not one-book-at-a-time. And maybe that’s true: but it’s as close as I get.

And, at least in mid-summer, when the humidity has been so atrocious, that suits me well.

Highlights for July?

* Finally squeezed my affection for Carrie Snyder’s The Juliet Stories into a Spelling-It-Out post

The High Summer read-a-thon, hosted by Michelle, which kept my nose in the books more evenings than I seem to manage when the heat is intense

* My belated celebration of Dutch Lit Month, hosted by Iris, which was a full weekend at the end of the read-a-thon with four books in total

Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s Crow Planet, which changed the way that I walk in my neighbourhood

* Only 46 magazines still on my reading pile (there were about 70 when I started my catch-up project)

* Another Orange Prize nominee, Aifric Campbell’s On the Floor, for Orange July

And in August?

* More Alice Munro, currently The Moons of Jupiter, next The Progress of Love

* George Elliott Clarke’s George and Rue, a novelistic exploration of the events that he wrote about previously in Execution Poems: The Black Acadian Tragedy of ‘George and Rue’

* catching up on the books in my library stack that I’ve already borrowed once before and still haven’t read (why do I do this?)

What about you? How was your July?
What are you looking forward to in August?