Weekly Reading Update #8 – June 26, 2022

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Welcome back to my weekly reading update! Is there ever going to be one of these that isn’t a chaotic mess? I highly doubt it. I actually enjoy exposing my messy reading life to you like this! It’s strangely cathartic to be fully honest about my reading in our culture of picture-perfect everything. So join me in talking chaos and reading slumps in this weekly reading update…

What I Read This Week

I haven’t exactly been in a reading slump as much as I’ve been in a state of reading overwhelm. There’s just so many books I could read, a bunch of ARCs and ALCs I really should read and my brain hurts thinking about it. Over the last weeks, I kept picking up books only to put them back down again, always hunting for “the right book”.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t found it. But I did the next best thing: I just kept reading anyway. I listened to an ALC of The Midnight Ride that’s been sitting among my audiobooks for months now. It’s a thriller but not the scary kind. It’s more of a vaguely heist-ish adventure story with a big portion of American history. I wrote a full review that you can find here!

And while this wasn’t the perfect book, it reminded me that reading is fun and that having some momentum really matters for my reading habits.

What I’m Currently Reading

And because occasionally I do learn from my mistakes, I used that reading momentum to continue reading Hell Followed with Us! This book is phenomenal and I’m only a few chapters into it. It’s eerie and full of trans rage, it’s anti-fascist and filled with poetic body horror and honestly, it’s just incredible.

I browsed my online library’s selection of YA thrillers and came across A Good Idea which I promptly downloaded as an audiobook. Set in the 90s, it follows Fin who returns to her hometown after her best friend was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Except his confession was thrown out and the whole town pretends it didn’t happen. As a lover of angry and imperfect girls, I am enjoying this a lot so far!

I’m still making my way through An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth as my bedtime read! It’s definitely one of the more enjoyable non-fiction books I’ve read. Getting an insight into the making of an astronaut is very fascinating but it has also reminded me of what I already knew: I would be a terrible astronaut.

I’ve removed a few other books from my currently reading list (I keep a “not now” shelf on Goodreads just for this purpose). However, I am keeping Pretty Dead Queens on the list to remind me to set aside a day to devour it.

The Week Ahead

It’s time to try and divine what my reading might look like next week…

I’m currently stuck in exam-prep hell for my final theatre studies exam! Luckily, it’s a half-hour oral exam about two topics I got to choose, so it could definitely be worse. I am however cursing all academics who write in too-long unintelligible sentences. Fuck you.

Subsequently, I won’t have much time for non-academic reading until that exam is over on Wednesday! But afterwards, I am going to reward myself with a few days off before I have to get a move on with my dissertation research. The work never stops, huh? Maybe I’ll try to do another mini-readathon that weekend!

Overall, I’m hoping to squeeze in reading wherever I can, but I won’t be mad at myself if I don’t get any reading done.

Let’s Chat!

Thank you for reading this weekly reading update, writing these is always so much fun! I’d love to hear what’s going on in your reading life, so let’s have a chat!

📚What have you been reading recently?

📚Is there a book that’s been on your currently reading list for a while?

I hope you have a lovely day,

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