It's Monday! What Are You Reading? | 8/7/2017

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week.  It's a great post to organise yourself.  It's an opportunity to visit and comment, and er... add to that ever growing TBR pile!  So welcome in everyone.  This meme started with J Kaye's Blog and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey.  Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at the Book Date.  And here we are!

I sometimes fall off the grid of blogging for a few days at a time.  Whether for real life business or just because I'm not feeling up to blogging... or maybe I just don't have anything to blog at the moment.

This time around, it really was just a combination of things:

I didn't feel like blogging anything, but I also didn't really have anything to blog.  I probably would have had something to blog, but I had made a decision to commit a combined series review for the last three Steele Street books I just finished reading.  So no book updates or reviews were scheduled for posting.

Not even for the one audio book I also finished, Mystique by Amanda Quick... mainly because I wasn't in a reviewing mood and couldn't really think of much to say about Mystique except that it had it's flaws and I got frustrated with some of it, but it was enjoyable overall.  How do you even create a formal, or even informal, review for that?  (Although to be fair, every time I say that I can't think of what to say, I sit down and start typing, and the next thing I know, I've got at least three paragraphs.)

Anyway, I'm still sort of nursing a Book Game Hangover with the ending of Booklikes-opoly.  And even while COYER is still in play, I hadn't really felt like writing anything since those last few posts on July 31st.  My monthly wrap ups are usually pre-drafted, so they don't really count.

So here I am, hijacking a book meme for the purpose of updating anyone who cares about what's been going on... which really has been a whole lot of nothing, but working and reading and sleeping, and generally just lazing around when I'm not working or reading or sleeping.

I probably won't continue this meme on a weekly basis, but there's no doubting that it's a nice way to make an update on the blogosphere!  The 'It's Monday!' meme might make another appearance if I ever seem to be on a blogging slump.

What I Read Last Week

I'm including all the books I had read starting last Monday to this Sunday.  Technically, I started reading Cold Memory prior to last week, but I spent a good portion of my time finishing it over that weekend and didn't quite finish until last Monday.

And as I'd stated, I just recently finished the last three Steele Street books, an audio book that was quite intriguing (Amanda Quick, after all), and a short story I squeezed in last minute on the 31st.

Cold Memory and Dream a Little Dream (in the A Christmas to Remember anthology) are the only two books I've posted a review for so far.

What I'm Currently Reading

I have a thing about having at least one audio book, one physical book, and one e-book going simultaneously.  It guarantees me options no matter where I am.  Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt is an audio book I decided on as a last minute whim after finishing Mystique.  Thicker Than Water by Maggie Shayne has been on my TBR and a specific planned read for August since last week.  I still need an e-book, which brings me to what I plan to read next...

What I'm Planning to Read Next

I've had Once in a Lifetime sitting on my Kindle as a borrowed library e-book for about a week now, and it's probably past time to get it read.  I'd been holding off on it for a while because my main goal was to get the last three Steele Street books finished first.

If I manage to do so, I will be starting the next Mordecai Young book, pending my completion of Thicker Than Water.  Since my average is usually about three books a week, I don't expect that I'll be able to start the third (and last) Mordecai Young book this week, but if I do, it'll be a bonus.

Other Plans On the Blog

I haven't done a whole lot of planning for my blog in a long time--Booklikes-opoly was a very "blog as you go" type of reading game, and pretty much all my book selections were unplanned and a lot of blog updates and book reviews weren't exactly scheduled.

Nonetheless, I'm going to try to give my blog more of a structure once again, although the only real post I have planned is my review for the Steele Street series.  And then, depending on when I finish Thicker Than Water, or Once in a Lifetime, I may have a review out for one or both books this week... maybe not.

Once again, the truth is, I'm really using this weekly bookish meme as a reason to post an update.  If I had thought of it ahead of time, I would have done a Sunday Post yesterday.  But I didn't, so we get this "It's Monday!" post instead.  Which really works the same way, right?