That’s us halfway through 2024 already!

What I read

I hit my 100 books target in July, so I had to up my goal. I went for 150 which seems very doable at this point.

What I have read:

• Me vs Brain – Hayley Morris
• The Librarian – Salley Vickers
• A Dead and Stormy Night (Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries #1) – Steffanie Holmes
• The Perfect Cornish Murder (Nosey Parker Mysteries #3) – Fiona Leitch
• Old Kingussie and Badenoch -Ann Glen
• Midsummer Mysteries – Agatha Christie
• Love and Other Wild Things (Mystic Bayou #2) – Molly Harper
• The Treasure Hunters (Brodie’s review to come)
• Around the World in 80 Days – Michael Palin
• The Bookish Life of Nina Hill – Abbi Waxman
• The House at the Edge of Magic (The House at the Edge of Magic #1) – Amy Sparkes
• The Enchanted Castle – E Nesbit
• The Lighthouse Library  – Rachael Lucas
• The Hunter (The Forbidden Game #1) – L J Smith

I ended the month still working through:

• The Sea of Adventure (Brodie’s review also to come)
• The Back of Beyond Book Club – Angela Britnell
• The Chase (The Forbidden Game #1) – L J Smith
• A Novel Love Story – Ashley Poston

What I watched

• We are up to ER season 13 (only two to go!), and we watched a few episodes of Richard Osman’s House of Games when we needed something shorter.
• I’ve returned to Green Wing to finish it off, though I’ve also started re-watching Charmed as Shannen Doherty (Prue) sadly died in July.
• On Tuesdays my sister and I watched the recent remake of Mean Girls (which is a musical), and The Duff.

What I did

• We’ve eaten lots of strawberries from our plants, but not picked our potatoes yet. We planted our sunflowers outside but they are still weedy little things and show no sign of flowering.
• Brodie started the Summer Reading Challenge and so we have been visiting libraries to collect flags and puzzle letters.
• Headed off for our family summer holiday to Newtonmore. There we took part in the Wildcat Trail, finding 83 of the 130 cats which are in gardens and windows all round the village. We also visited the Highland Wildlife Park where the wild horses tried to eat our car and we saw several red squirrels and Landmark where Brodie bravely tried out everything he was able to. On the one really rainy day we took the train to Inverness to do a bit of shopping and visit the museum. We also squeezed in a visit to the shops in Kingussie, Ruthven Barracks, The Highland Folk museum, the ospreys at Loch Insh and the Speyside ‘beach’ and finding some geocaches. On the way home we stopped at Pitlochry to look at the dam.
• When the weather has been good enough we’ve played in the garden and put the paddling pool up.
• We made our first visit in a long while to the transport museum for emergency vehicles day.
• My parents took us on a trip to Perth to do the Highland Coo trail and do some geocaching, and to Forfar to look at a hidden castle and find more geocaches.
• We had a proper beach weather so we headed to Monifieth for a dip and a lot of burying each other in the sand.

What I bought

Sadly I bought nothing in Leakey’s (though Brodie got a Thomas the Tank Engine book), but I did get a few things in more unexpected places.

There’s a good second hand bookshop in Kingussie which I’ve visited before so of course I had to go again. There I found a load of the Adventure Island books by Helen Moss and was able to get the last of the ones I haven’t read – for £1 each!

We had a look in the gift shop in Landmark and to my surprise I saw these little jigsaws of the Famous Five for Grown-Ups covers. I didn’t know such a thing even existed! While I don’t particularly like the books themselves, the artwork by Ruth Palmer is lovely (the best part of the series!) so I had to get them.

I mentioned this a few Mondays ago, but I also treated myself to a book with Eileen Soper illustrations, and a Blyton-ish title – Six in a Caravan by Bridget Mackenzie.

How was your July?