As this global pandemic continues, so does the somewhat epic readathon I’ve apparently embarked on.
I didn’t read quite as much this month as I did in May, but then, that would be difficult. I don’t think I’ll have a month like that again, honestly, now that things are starting to get vaguely on the path towards normal (just a barely-cut dirt path, really, nowhere near to being an actual road to normal). I’m going to have more hours at work next month, with things picking up enough that I’ll actually have to interact with people instead of hiding in the back with a book. Plus, we’re looking at trying to move house in the next couple of months – which would mean having to actually clean the one I’m living in, for a start.
This month, mostly by accident, my Instagram has turned into a bit of a Bookstagram – there’s more posts about books on there than about anything else, which is unusual for me. Usually I’m an utter floozie for social media, posting anything and everything that comes to mind. I quite like this new Bookstagrammy direction, though, and I think I might continue.
Books, selfies and Popsy dresses. Yeah, sums up my Instagram.
And so for some numbers: I have read twelve new books this month, and reread three. That makes 72 new books read in total so far this year. The rereads were all my slightly grim, forensic-y, death-y books from last year – I saw one of my colleagues pull one out (Working Stiff) and the resulting discussion led to me rereading my three favourites from last year and ordering two more. You can see the two new ones on the Instagram collage above – the Val McDermid and Forty Years of Murder – but I haven’t started on them yet. I was a bit death-ed out after the rereads and a couple of others that I’ll discuss in a minute.
Scrolling down my list of books from this month, there is – for once – not a lot I can really complain about. It’s been a fairly good month for reading; I think there’s only three on there that I gave less than four stars on Goodreads. Even though there’s fewer books on the list this week, I’m going to stick to my plan from last month and only do my potted reviews on a few of them – more might start to appear on my Instagram as time goes on, but we’ll see how that goes. We all know how good I am at making a plan and sticking to it!
So let’s start, as always, with the best of the month – and just like last month, I can’t make a choice between two…
But anyway. The advantage of this being the longest month since time began is that I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I know the world is absolutely falling apart right now and I could wax lyrical about it for the best part of another month if left to it, but I don’t want this to become a political blog. And I don’t think I have the eloquence to sufficiently express my feelings anyway: rambling about the books I’ve been reading is pretty much the extent of my brain at the moment (even though I have been writing too, but that’s another story for another time). I’ve mostly been expressing myself through the very refined manner of, er, 
Jessica Leather 