What I read

I hit 100 books in July which is good considering my year goal was already set at 150. After take a Val McDermid break I returned to her books, but I read other things too!

but I only read two BABALS (and one about publishing.)

So I read:

• Deadhead (Sweetpea #3) – CJ Skuse
  The Distant Echo (Karen Pirie #1) – Val McDermid
• Everyone on this Train is a Murderer (Ernest Cunningham #2) – Benjamin Stevenson
• Love Theoretically – Ali Hazelwood
• Cross and Burn (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #8) – Val McDermid
• The Adventurous Four
• Report For Murder (Lindsay Gordon #1) – Val McDermid
• A Darker Domain (Karen Pirie #2) – Val McDermid
• Splinter the Silence (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #9) – Val McDermid
• Old Ellon – Linda Birnie
• Old Collieston and Slains – Ellie Ingram
• Old Cruden Bay and Port Erroll – Jim Buchan
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot #1) – Agatha Christie
• Dead Beat (Kate Brannigan #1) – Val McDermid
• Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her – Melanie Rehak
• The 39 Steps (Richard Hannay #1) – John Buchan
• Stone and Sky (Rivers of London #10) – Ben Aaronovitch
• N is for Noose (Kinsey Millhone #14) – Sue Grafton
• A Novel Way to Die (Nevermore Bookshop #6) – Stephanie Holmes

I ended the month still working through:

• Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
• Mr Galliano’s Circus
• O is for Outlaw (Kinsey Millhone #15) – Sue Grafton

The Adventurous Four, 1st Edition Cover by E.H Davie

What I watched

• We are still on Supernatural season 5 and have also started on the new series of Only Connect – being the first round we generally manage to get some right answers.
• I finally chose my next watch – Byker Grove! I was going to start with the series I remember watching but couldn’t really remember what I had seen so I started back with series 1 from 1989. So far nothing is familiar except the Grove building, Geoff, Alison and (a younger than I remember) PJ and Duncan, but sooner or later I will start to recognise the plots I’m sure!
• My sister and I are still subjecting ourselves to season three of And Just Like That. Last time I said it was season two, but I discovered this week it’s actually season three and I can scarcely believe we have made ourselves watch so much of it!
• We watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with Brodie which scared him a little.

What I did

• Failed to protect our strawberries from slugs and snails but have managed to pick a few uneaten ones for ourselves. Our peas grew huge and we picked them before we went away – the pods were a bit too stringy to eat sadly but the peas were good.
• Ewan and I have continued to play Blue Prince – a puzzle game on the Playstation (for some sort of explanation see last month’s round up). We have passed day 100 now and are hopefully closing in on the final objective – reclaiming the throne. We just need the scepter, the crown of blueprints and the cursed idol all on the same day and enter the throne room with them… this could take a while.
• We had our family holiday in Collieston (hence the reading of the books about the area). We had fantastic weather and visited lots of nice places including Dunnottar Castle,  Aden Country Park, Hackley Bay, Ellon, New Slains Castle, Cruden Bay, Newburgh Beach, and Haddo House. We also spent time in Collieston at the harbour which is now a popular place for swimming, and did some geocaching and rockpooling.
• I did a jigsaw of a bookshelf where all the book titles/authors were puns, and did a little more of the Famous Five Colouring Book.

Old Slains Castle

Old Slains Castle

Old Slains Castle

Old Slains Castle

Old Slains Castle

Old Slains Castle

Aden House

Aden House

Aden House

View from our holiday home balcony

Newburgh Beach

Newburgh Beach

Collieston

Collieston Harbour

Collieston Harbour

Bookshop in Ellon

Bookshop in Ellon

Dunnottar Castle

Dunnottar Castle

How was your July?