Merry Wanderer of the Night + weekend

Sunday Salon: June Wrap-Up
The Sunday Salon.com

First off, Happy 4th of July to all of my American friends! I watched some fireworks in my hometown last night so I kind of feel like the holiday is over for me already. This is actually the first 4th of July I haven't had to work in six years! And I'm not doing a very good job of celebrating, but I do plan on doing a lot of reading today. I had an awesome reading month in June, check out all these books I read:

Books Read in June
1. The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell (C)
2. Talking Up: Young Women's Take on Feminism edited by Rosamund Else-Mitchell (C)
3. Ariel by Sylvia Plath (A)
4. Shadowland (Mediator Series 1) by Meg Cabot (C)
5. Admit One: My Life in Film by Emmett James (C)
6. The Best American Essays 2009 edited by Mary Oliver (B)
7. What the Librarian Did by Karina Bliss (C)
8. The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan (C)
9. Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody (B)
10. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (A)
11. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman (A)
12. Orlando by Virginia Woolf (B)
13. The Passage by Justin Cronin (B)

13 books! That's more than twice of what I read in May. Being home for the summer has really increased my reading pace and I've enjoyed watching my list of books read this year grow. I'm at 57 now, in case you were wondering. The month of July is going to be a little bit different for me. I'm participating in several read alongs and the one I'm most excited about is Capricious Reader's To Kill a Mockingbird Challenge. I'm going to join her in posting my thoughts on a section of book every Monday, starting tomorrow. You might be wondering why we're doing a To Kill a Mockingbird challenge right now. This month is the fiftieth anniversary of the book. I remember reading the book five years ago and absolutely falling in love with it so I'm really looking forward to finishing it for the second time around. I'm about a third of the way through it right now and it's just as good as I remember it being.

I also wanted to mention that in the month of July I will be participating in the Iowa City Book Festival as a speaker on July 17 at 1:00 pm. If you're in the Iowa City area or just in Iowa and are looking for something fun to do that weekend please come out and see me! I'm going to be sharing five books that I love. For those of you who can't join us I will post my list on my blog and will also do a post about the awesome things I see at the festival.

best, happy, iowa city book festival, LIFE, sunday salon, TIME, and more:

Sunday Salon: June Wrap-Up + weekend