August End of the Month Wrap Up Post

Okay, since my posts are always all about how I'm doing with my challenges, I wanted to  make sure to get everyone's attention over to my 5th Annual September is for Sequels Challenge and see if anyone wants to join in. There is a giveaway that goes along with it, and I see some people have entered, although they haven't posted a link to a sign-up post yet that I can tell, so not sure how they are entered.  You can check it out by clicking on the button below. Sign ups are open till September 15th, and it fits in with a lot of other challenges, like the one I'm doing, Series Enders, and then of course the TBR Pile could always tag along as well.

Of course I'll let you know how well I did at my end of September post!

So, this month I didn't quite reach my goal of 11-20 comments, I think I only got 8 in.  I had an awesome partner though, but I think she ended up like me having too much going on to get all of them done.  I still enjoyed checking out Marilag's posts at Story and Somnomancy during August.  She even tagged me for a post that I need to do pretty soon!  I'll miss not having this challenge the rest of the year, but will look forward to hopefully participating again  next summer.

My August post had to do with the books that everyone loves, but I  just couldn't get into.  You can go chime in on the discussion if you want:  I'm Yes Then I'm No, I'm In Then I'm Out - Or The Beloved Books That I Just Couldn't Seem To Love.

Only one new to me book this month:

• Poison Princess (The Arcana Chronicles #1) by Kresley Cole

 

Nothing from my TBR pile this month. Guess I'd better work at rectifying that!

I got one, although not sure why I didn't include it in last month's wrap up post as I actually did it then.  But I'll share it  now!  My score is still 70%.

• Wake the Hollow by Gaby Triana

Okay, let's see how I did about completing this challenge.  I needed 10 more, but I only got 5 from the list done.  However, since the goal was basically to read 20 books this summer,  I've added 5 more that weren't on my list to complete the goal.

• Ink and Bone (The Great Library #1) by Rachel Caine - Review to come in September - didn't get to book 2 yet
•  The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich - Review to come in September
• Finding It (Losing It #3) by Cora Carmack
• Wake the Hollow by Gaby Triana
• Pure (Covenant #2) by Jennifer L. Armentrout
• Play (Stage Dive #2) by Kylie Scott
• Too Many Rockstars by Candy J. Starr
• Leveled (Saints of Denver #0.5) by Jay Crownover
• Built (Saints of Denver #1) by Jay Crownover

I've got a couple to share this month!

• Finding It (Losing It #3) by Cora Carmack
• Asa (Marked Men #6) by Jay Crownover

Very quick, short, short version!

• Still keeping up with not downloading from Edelweiss and Netgalley.
• Still posting every day.
• Didn't meet comment goal for challenge, and not as great with commenting once school started back up this month.
• End of month post - check!
• Still getting at least 2 reviews a week, although I'm still behind on reviews, I have at least 12 books sitting in a pile waiting to have reviews completed and posted, so may bump up to doing more than one review a day on review days, or combining them on days with other posts, just to try to get back on top of that.
• I had money saved, but have had to pull from it a couple times to make it through the month, well, for things not necessarily needed. But I did get my carpet cleaned, and that was necessary.  Haven't done much with my new laptop.  Probably need to make that a goal.  
• Walking goal of three times a week wasn't met every week, but I did get at least 2 per week. Being back in school has totally messed with that.  Had to get a new Fitbit, so am enjoying that as well!

Some statistics from the past month:

• # of books read:  19 
• # of full reviews posted on blog:  11
• # of mini-reviews posted on blog:  10
• # of DNFs:  4

Possible August TBR:

• The Portal to Kerberos (Elementals #4) by Michelle Madow
• Redeeming Trust (sequel to Broken Trust) by Michelle Sodaro
• Torn (A Wicked Saga #2) by Jennifer L. Armentrout
• Endless Night (The Arcana Chronicles #2) by Kresley Cole
• The Giant (Quarantine #4) by Lex Thomas
• Elixir (Covenant #3.5) by Jennifer L.  Armentrout
• Swan Riders (Prisoners of Peace #2) by Erin Bow
• Ice-Out (sequel to Frozen) by Mary Casanova
• Like a River Glorious (The Gold-Seeker Trilogy) by Rae Carson
• Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco and James Patterson
• Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige
• The Women in the Walls by Amy Lukavics
• Legal by Bree Dahlia

Now that doesn't include all the ebooks I'll be fitting in as well, or any audiobooks.  NOt sure what all I'll be doing for that.  Speaking of which, I am off to the library website to pick out some new audiobooks for when I finish my current one!

How was your August?

Cover Characteristic: Balconies

The Cover Characteristic meme is hosted at  Sugar and Snark.   Here are the guidelines:

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite covers with that characteristic. If you want to join in and share your 5 favorite covers with the weeks particular characteristic, then just make a post, grab the meme picture (or make your own) and leave your URL in Linky (so we can visit).
You don’t even need to participate, just stopping by and saying hi would be great! Don’t forget to stop by the other participants!     

This was a really hard week!  I could only find one that I had actually read. There was one that was a book I had started, and then I had to pick 3 from my TBR list.   My favorite will of course be the one I had already read, because it is actually one that I thought of with the topic right away.

TBR list:

DNF:

And my number one favorite, the only one I've read:

Those are the only ones I could come up with!  Crazy hard week.

Cover Characteristic: Circus

The Cover Characteristic meme is hosted at  Sugar and Snark.   Here are the guidelines:

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite covers with that characteristic. If you want to join in and share your 5 favorite covers with the weeks particular characteristic, then just make a post, grab the meme picture (or make your own) and leave your URL in Linky (so we can visit).
You don’t even need to participate, just stopping by and saying hi would be great! Don’t forget to stop by the other participants!

This week was really hard!  I could only find three that I consider circus vs. carnival.  So I also have two that I didn't read, but are on my to-read list.

To-read circus books:  

  And the books I've read:

  And my favorite, from the books I have read:

So, those are my circus covers.  Can you think of any you've read that are your favorites?  I do have The  Night Circus on my TBR list, but I figured other people probably would pick it, so I left it off. 

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Most Anticipated 2015 Debuts

Top Ten Tuesday is sponsored by The Broke and The Bookish.  I wasn't sure if I knew of 10 books for this year that would be debut, but turns out I found 10 when I looked through my TBR list on Goodreads.  Here goes, in no particular order.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Now to come up with 10, I actually had to throw one in that I've already read, Red Queen, but that's okay.  I can't wait until everyone else gets to read it and hopefully loves it as much as I did!  I'm guessing that a lot of the top 10 lists will have several of the same books, will have to see what it looks like when I start visiting the other posters this week.  Which of these are you anticipating?  If none of them, what is your most anticipated debut of 2015?