July Reading Wrap-Up

Posted August 2, 2026 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Photo of lavender in flower

Here we are in August already! I can’t believe it’s my birthday this month: I feel like I’ve only just got used to saying it’s 2026. But yep, here it comes: on 20th August, I’ll be turning 37.

…But we’re not there yet, so let’s take a look back at July first!

July in general:

We’ve had another more heatwave in the UK since I posted last month’s pic of the bunnies in their temporary housing in an air conditioned room, and Eclair wasn’t pleased to hear that the heat was coming back…

A white rabbit with brown patches around his eyes, brown ears and a brown smudge on his noise looks sternly out through a grating

He’s been totally fine, though! Both of them have, though they’re in full shed at the moment and everything is fluff. Thanks, bunnies, I surely needed a fur coat in this weather…

I’ve been working away at my bookcase blanket, through some goofs, fumbles, and uncertain attempts at designing things for myself. I need to sit down with a chart and work out if one thing I had in mind will actually work at all, but mostly it’s going really well! It looks more complicated than it is, and often I can just sit and chill, following the obvious pattern from the row before, rather than needing to pay tons of attention.

Photo of a blanket made in mosaic overlay crochet. It shows three "shelves" of a bookcase so far, mostly filled with books, with a cat sitting in the lower right on top of a book. The background colour is a deep purple-red, while the book/cat details are in cream, and the actual shelves are a tan colour. A hardback book is included for scale, about 1.5 "shelves" high.

Luckily, all those raw ends will just need to be neatened up and trimmed, but will get enclosed inside a border — though I really should start on the tidying up work, or I’ll have to handle ~500 of them at once.

Other than that, let’s see. I’ve been gaming as always, including in FFXIV. An old friend rejoining my raid group, and we’ve really started making some progress again with the consistent group. We’re about to start working on a mechanic called “Idyllic Dream”, which is absolutely nuts and will definitely take us some time. If you’re curious, you can check out the guide we’re using. (Thanks, Hector!)

I’ve also been continuing my love of hidden object games with A Building Full of Cats and the sequel, dipping my toes into horror anomaly games with the free The Queen’s Gondola (which had one jumpscare but otherwise was more unsettling vibes — I enjoyed it, despite being a wuss), being deeply absorbed in the pretty unique puzzle game Gorogoa, and overly invested in the very silly racing sim, Wabisabi SushiDerby. It’s not all been new games, though: my wife and I have returned to a classic for more co-op fun, getting our asses served to us in Overcooked! All You Can Eat, and I replayed (and finally 100%ed) the beautiful game Pyre.

I have a bunch of new games to dig into, and several others in progress, so there’s no doubt I can keep myself busy!

Oh, and I finally got my degree certificate: now I am most definitely and officially and provably the holder of my fourth degree, an MSc in Infectious Diseases (with Merit). I haven’t yet decided on another course of study, before anyone asks…

Reading stats:

Here’s the bit you’re all really interested in, right?

StoryGraph reading stats for July 2026: 24 books, 6,220 pages, average rating of 3.46. My top rated reads included Afonydd, After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine vol 1, and The Wife Comes First vol 3. The number of pages I read per day was pretty variable, with big peaks each weekend. More reading stats for July 2026: I read 50% fiction, 50% non-fiction, and 63% of my books were under 300 pages long, with 38% between 300 and 500 pages. I read 96% in print and 4% in digital editions, and my top genres were poetry (6), fantasy (6), romance (5), LGBTQIA+ (4) and history (4).

Total books read: 24
Total pages read: 6,220
Rereads: 0
ARCs: 2
Series finished/up to date: 3
Books owned pre-2026: 2
Books owned from 2026: 13
Borrowed books: 9

Fiction: 11
Non-fiction: 7
Poetry: 6
Comics, manga, manhwa, etc: 2

Still not as much reading as I’d like, really! The numbers mean I’m slipping ever further behind my original reading goal for the year, and while I try to be flexible with goals and not care too much about hitting a certain number, it’s a bit weird for me to be reading so little, and generally suggests I’m not getting enough free time or something is otherwise going on. I’m not honestly sure, though, because it’s fairly common for me to hit a slump from March through July, and start picking up again in August.

Sooo… I guess we’ll see?

Progress on reading goals:

Overall total books: 195/400 (38 books behind)
Overall pages read: 45,446/100,000 (12,910 pages behind)
Books read from backlog: 32/100 (26 books behind)
Books owned since 2026 and not yet started: 20/20

20 Books of Summer: 10/20 (0/5 bonus)

I’m still way, way behind on my reading goals, which is a bit of a shame. As mentioned above, it suggests I just haven’t been able to make enough time for reading… or maybe I’m still just a bit flattened by last year, which featured several big life events like moving, the final year of my MSc, and my grandmother’s death. Plus I have a new client that I’m working for, so that takes time.

I’m not going to adjust anything until after my holiday at the end of August, at least — but after that I’m definitely thinking about dropping the goal just to avoid letting it influence me into feeling ick (there’s no point in that). I think in the past I’ve always ended up exceeding my low-ish goals by a lot, often reaching my original higher goal anyway, though, so I’m a little curious what happens if I just let myself be without changing my goal, and live with being “behind”.

Blogging stats:

Views: 18.8k
Visitors: 17.8k
Likes: 412
Comments: 501
Reviews: 26
Other posts: 29

All stats were up this month! I’ve been feeling more engaged with reading and blogging, and have been prepping stuff at the weekends to free up time during the week to socialise on other blogs more, so I think it makes sense. It’s been a pretty good month, all round.

Most viewed posts:

My own favourite posts:

Stuff I loved from elsewhere:

I really had difficulty with restraining myself from including some more links, but ten really seemed enough!

This month I did start drafting this post ahead of time, but goodness, it still seems to have taken forever. I need a better template, maybe. But at least we can say I’ve seen July out properly now.

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