July has been fairly miserable weather-wise, we’ve hardly had any days without rain! But we are the intrepid-ish kind, so armed with waterproofs and umbrellas we get out and about anyway.

What I have read

Not as much as I hoped during my holiday (the hot tub was too tempting), but not bad the rest of the month. I was at 80/100 books read by the end of July so it’s looking good for my reading challenge.

What I have read:

• Keeper of Enchanted Rooms (Whimbrel House #1) – Charlie N Holmberg
• Mrs Porter Calling (Emmy Lake #3) – A J Pearce (I hope there are more of these to come!)
• Mary Anne and the Haunted Bookshop (Baby Sitters Club Mystery #34) – Ann M Martin
• The Mystery of the King’s Ransom (Adventure Island #11) – Helen Moss (I found this on the very eclectic bookshelves of our holiday house)
• Something New at the Borrow a Bookshop (Borrow a Bookshop #3) – Kiley Dunbar
• Another Time, Another Place (Chronicles of St Mary’s #12) – Jodi Taylor
• The Queen’s Nose – Dick King-Smith
• Heir of Uncertain Magic (Whimbrel House #2) – Charlie N Holmberg
• Winters Gifts (Rivers of London #9.5) – Ben Aaronovitch
• Marking Time (Cazalet Chronicles #2) – Elizabeth Jane Howard
• The Sheep-Pig – Dick King-Smith

And I’m still working on:

• The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels (Dangerous Damsels #1) – India Holton
• The Sword in the Stone (Once and Future King #1) – T H White (the book that the Disney movie is based on.)

What I have watched

• We finished Lego Masters US and began the new New Zealand series.
• Only Connect began its 19th series and so far  this year they have really stepped up the difficulty in the early rounds!
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which was weird but good fun
• Instead of a film on Tuesday nights my sister and I have been watching Is it Cake Too? which is the second series of Is It Cake?
• On holiday we found a DVD of Wallace and Grommit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit, and I caught a bit of Face/Off when the others watched it. I also watched one episode of The Great British Sewing Bee (mum’s choice) and an episode of Love Island (Kirsty’s choice).

What I have done

• We had a week in a house just outside Kinloss. We had a day at the beach and a day in Inverness where I got to go to Leakey’s (one book bought) and browse some charity shops (six… or maybe seven books). We also visited Logie Steading which had a lovely cafe and bookshop (two more books) as well as a riverside walk, Morayvia an RAF museum complete with a load of old helicopters and aeroplanes you can sit in, and Brodie Castle. We also visited the ruins of Duffus Castle where we watched a couple of Typhoons practicing their take offs and landings at RAF Lossiemouth, and the ruins of Kinloss Abbey.
• We visited several different libraries as part of the summer reading challenge. There are 14 in total and even I haven’t been in half of them before.
• I printed off some cool book-shaped things for an event – a bookmark holder and a business card holder.
• We helped my sister do a lot of painting in her new flat – thankfully all white so far so it didn’t matter quite so much if it got on the skirtings or ceilings.
• We had another visit to the transport museum for emergency vehicles day.

More photos than usual this month as I actually used my proper camera for once!

What I bought

Nothing Blyton!

In Leakey’s I got a Nancy Drew paperback which I had never read before, and in the charity shops I picked up a bunch of Angel novels. They had what looked like every single Buffy and Angel novel, and for a moment it felt like looking at my own collection. I didn’t buy every Angel novel I don’t have, though, as I thought 12 was a bit much at one time.

At Logie Steading I got a couple of vintage Collin’s Seagull Library titles as I love the spines on them.

Pam, Pot and Kettle is by Marie Muir (I have a couple of her Torridons books but I haven’t read them yet) and The Key of Rose Cottage is by Margaret Baker.

What did your July look like?