The Bibliollama

The Book Blogger Hop was originally created by Jennifer from Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and ended on December 31, 2012. With Jennifer's permission, Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer relaunched the meme on February 15, 2013. Check out the hop here!

Each week the hop will start on a Friday and end on Thursday. There will be a weekly prompt featuring a book related question. The hop's purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers to your own blog.

The Question of the week is: July is the month for reading by the pool or on the beach. What's your favorite summer beach book, and why is it suitable for a sunny day?

I'm not a seasonal reader, to be honest, and don't think of books in terms of being a beach read or anything similar. So my pick of a book for reading at the beach would be basically whatever I was currently reading when I head for the beach - it could be a chick lit, it could be a horror, a sci-fi, or a European History textbook. I've been known to take my study materials and notebook and sit and read in the park, just as much as I have any other fiction book.

What makes it suitable for a sunny day is that it's a book I'm reading in the sun. *g*

And heading for the beach with a book is something I'm hoping will happen much more with the amount of time I'm spending down in the South West. I'm not quite back to the beach I grew up reading on, but I'm not far away at all which is so awesome

June was not a great reading month, if I'm completely honest, as you can see from this graphic. I finished a whole 3 books - but I did also read the BBC Science Focus magazine, July 2023 edition but that isn't something I can log on Storygraph

Unfortunately, June continued not being a great time for my mental health - My car needed another couple of hundred pounds of work after its service, I was very stressed with work, Li's ceiling was being fixed so there was lots of moving of furniture and I ended up completely losing my daily rhythm because of it all. I fell hard into a couple of different mobile games as well.

Milly Johnson - The Teashop on the Corner
5 stars
I absolutely loved this book, which reduced me to tears on multiple occasions. The characters all had very distinct personalities and initially, as each one was introduced, I couldn't see how they would interact. The way Johnson weaved their stories in with the teashop, and how they met and friendships started blooming was fantastic

Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere
4 stars
Li's been re-reading Gaiman, and she was enthusing over Neverwhere so I picked it up as well. I read it like 10 years ago, there were bits I remembered perfectly and bits I'd completely forgotten which is always interesting how that happens. I did thoroughly enjoy the re-read (even if I started it in October and promptly forgot about it, whoops!)

Joanne Fluke - Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder
4 stars
That wonderful feeling when you fall in love with the first book in the series, read it in a couple of days and discover there's over 30 more books to read! I saw the first Hallmark movie based on the series ages ago, and we know I love a good cozy mystery! I'd been wanting to read this for a couple of years so was thrilled when I spotted it on Borrowbox

Looking more at the stats side of things:
3 books, 1,21 pages – 33% <300 pages, 33% 300-499 pages, 33% 500+ pages (and I couldn't have done that if I'd tried LOL)
The main mood was mysterious
100% medium paced
100% fiction - which is very unusual or me
Genre wise romance, mystery, fantasy & contemporary
My average rating was 4.33

I do still have a lot books in progress, and they all have about the same number of pages left so July should hopefully have more books finished in it!