August 2011 Recap

Here is the list of books I read & or reviewed in August: (The links will take you to my reviews)

1. Fury - Elizabeth Miles (read in July, reviewed in August)
2. Guilty Pleasures - Laurell K. Hamilton (read in July, reviewed in August)
3. Six Days - Philip Webb (read in July, reviewed in August)
4. Texas Gothic - Rosemary Clement-Moore (read in July, reviewed in August)
5. Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper (read in July, reviewed in August)
6. The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater (read in July, reviewed in August) (originally posted as a guest review on Book Chick City here)
7. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling (read in July, review coming soon)
8. Nightshade - Maryrose Wood (read in July, reviewed in August)
9. Hunting Lila - Sarah Alderson (review coming soon)
10. Too Small to Fail - Morris Gleitzman (review coming soon)
11. Blood Bound - Rachel Vincent (review coming soon)
12. Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione (review coming soon)
13. Dragon Bound - Thea Harrison (review coming soon)
14. The Soft Edge of Midnight - Stella & Audra Price (review coming soon)
15. Wolf Tracks - Vivian Arend (Novella) (review coming soon)
16. Touched by an Alien - Gini Koch (review coming soon)
17. Send No Flowers - Sandra Brown (reviewed on Goodreads here)
18. Dearly Departed - Lia Habel (review coming soon)
19. Crypt: The Gallows Curse - Andrew Hammond (review coming soon)

August Guest Posts:

Things were a bit different around here in August as I was away on my holidays for most of the month so there were less reviews than usual but I had some fantastic guest posts from other bloggers, authors & even a publicist.  I'm going to include links to them all below in case you missed any of them.  I'd like to say a massive thank you to everyone who took the time to write a post for me - I really appreciate it!

1. Mark Walden talks about the inspiration behind his H.I.V.E series
2. Read an extract from Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur
3. Catherine Bruton talks about the inspiration behind her debut novel We Can Be Heroes
4. A fab post from Hannah of My Book Journey about steampunk, including her top 5 steampunk recommendations
5. A blogging debut from 12 year old Kain who talks about his favourite books and authors
6. Sammee from I Want To Read That talks about hot boys in YA (one of my favourite subjects!)
7. Andy from The Pewter Wolf guest reviewed The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
8. Amanda from Floor To Ceiling Books gave some fantastic recommendations for upcoming fantasy science fiction books
9. Kirsty from The Overflowing Library guest reviewed The Memory Cage by Ruth Eastham
10. Emma from Bloomsbury talks about some of the upcoming books she is most excited about
11. Last but by no means least Sophie from So Many Books, So Little Time talks about her favourite YA series

I had an amazing holiday and will definitely be posting about our American adventures over the next few weeks (I'll try not to bore you all to death with a million pictures though!).  I've only been back home for a week but things have been more than a little crazy around here & I've just not had time to do a write up yet.  Not only have I had a stinking cold but I've also had a broken stopcock that caused flooding in the kitchen while we were away.  The stopcock was fixed only for the plumber to discover a burst pipe in the empty house next door that has continued to flood my kitchen all week.  Then yesterday I came downstairs to find that there has been a problem with the drain that has left me with sewage all over the kitchen floor (I'm beginning to think that someone has cursed my kitchen lol).  I had the drain guys round for 7 hours yesterday & the problem still isn't fixed, they're coming back today to hopefully finish the job!  I'm keeping all my fingers crossed that since trouble is supposed to come in threes I've had my fill now & things can get back to normal around here.

August Books of the Month:
(Choices are made from books reviewed this month)

My top YA read in August:

Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore (read my review here)

My top adult read in August:

Blood Bound by Rachel Vincent (read my review here)

Event Reports:

• Back in July I was lucky to be invited to attend the Orion preview for their new Indigo imprint.  We got to meet Marcus Sedgwick, Kate Harrison, Sara Grant and Sally Gardner and hear readings from their new books and also find out about the amazing new books Orion are publishing soon.  You can read my write up of the event here (including videos of the authors reading from their new books)
• While we were in America I was so excited to attend the Author's After Dark convention in Philadelphia.  I had the chance to meet some of my favourite authors (Lara Adrian & Larissa Ione!!), authors I've come to know and love through Twitter (Stella Price & Jaime Saare) and a lot of fabulous new to me authors (Dakota Cassidy, Leanna Renee Hieber, Lia Habel plus many, many more) and I even got to meet some of my favourite international bloggers.  It really was an amazing experience and I'll be doing a full write up soon to tell you all about it.

Author's Animal Antics:

The Author's Animal Antics feature is kind of on hold at the moment, I am planning on bringing it back as a more regular feature soon but I just don't have as much time to organise it right now.  If you are an author who is interested in taking part though please get in contact (you can find out more about the feature here).

Challenge Updates:

So these are the challenges I've decided to sign up for in 2011 (I may well end up adding others as the year goes on but we'll see what happens)

2011 100+ Reading Challenge - Read 100/100 COMPLETE

2011 Horror & Urban Fantasy Challenge - Read 24/24 COMPLETE 

2011 Support Your Local Library Challenge - Read 13/25

2011 Debut Author Challenge - Read 12/12 COMPLETE

2011 British Books Challenge - Read 37/50

2011 New Author Challenge - Read 50/50 COMPLETE

NAC Mini Challenge - Steampunk (Feb 2011) - Read 2/5 COMPLETE (This challenge was to read up to 5 steampunk books in February, I knew I wouldn't have time to read 5 so I'm happy with my total of 2)

NAC Mini Challenge - TBR Newbies (April & May 2011) - READ 6/6 COMPLETE (I actually managed to read 8 books for this challenge but only the first 6 count)