I can’t believe half of the year is gone and that this blog is now half a year old. Life has been pretty busy & overwhelming and you might have noticed that with the lack of blog posts throughout the month. And if you’re following me on Goodreads you also might have noticed that I only read 2 novels and 1 novella this month.
I feel like my TBR is growing at a rate where I don’t feel like I can ever catch up to it, but I don’t want to stress about it too much. With that said, let’s take a look at my 2022 reading goals and see where I am at now that we’re halfway through the year.
halfway check-in on my 2022 reading goals
This year, I set out a goal of reading 40 books which honestly seemed really daunting at the beginning. For someone who was just getting back to reading regularly, setting this reading goal is helping me build new healthy habits. In the past, I had trouble sticking to my new year goals. I’m one of those people who sets a goal in January only to fall through it by February. Yup, guilty!
But with reading it’s been extremely fun and I’m happy that I’ve been on track with my goals almost every month. So far, I have read a total of 22 books out of 40 so I am more than half way through!
At the beginning of this year I also created a rough list of books that I want to read this year. But as I keep growing my TBR and adding new books to my shelf, I had to revisit my list and push some out to 2023. Below are a few books that I definitely want to read before the year ends:
- Where The Crawdads Sing
- Pachinko
- People We Meet On Vacation
- One Italian Summer
- Station Eleven
- How To Stop Time
- Us Against You
- Mrs. Everything
And some anticipated new releases that I absolutely want to read this year:
- Love On The Brain
- Carrie Soto Is Back
- It Starts With Us
highlights in june
My first highlight this month is reading Lessons In Chemistry! This was an absolutely delightful read and I rated it 5 stars! I cannot believe this was a debut because the writing was just too good.
First of all it features a woman in STEM so that’s already a win for me. This book was full of humour, quirks, romance and heartbreak all in one. Though the story takes place in the 60s, I feel like I can relate to Elizabeth in many ways, especially with the struggles of being a woman in a man’s world. This book reminded me of The Love Hypothesis in some ways, but Lessons In Chemistry just won my heart by a landslide. This book has some romance element to it, but it’s not the main focus, which I love. The moment I started reading it I knew I was going to love it. I highly recommend you read this!
Some other highlights – I found a new quaint coffee shop around my neighbourhood, Found Coffee. I’ve gone back a couple times because they just have one of the best cortados. As I was walking around in the area, I also found this cute little free library! I didn’t really get anything but I thought this was so cute.
book haul
I think I was just really stressed this month so I kept getting more books even though I know I shouldn’t. I bought 4 new books, thrifted 4 more and also got 2 free books from the Aesop’s Queer Library event.
what I actually read this month
Let’s take a look at some quick statistics:
- Total number of books read: 3 books
- Total number of pages: 868 pages
- Book formats: 2 physical, 1 e-book
- Average rating: 4 stars
Lessons In Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus
SYNOPSIS: Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with–of all things–her mind. True chemistry results.
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.
Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.
Daisy Jones & The Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
SYNOPSIS: A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous break up. Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the real reason why they split at the absolute height of their popularity…until now.
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.
Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
Evidence Of The Affair, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
SYNOPSIS: A desperate young woman in Southern California sits down to write a letter to a man she’s never met—a choice that will forever change both their lives.
My heart goes out to you, David. Even though I do not know you…
The correspondence between Carrie Allsop and David Mayer reveals, piece by piece, the painful details of a devastating affair between their spouses. With each commiserating scratch of the pen, they confess their fears and bare their souls. They share the bewilderment over how things went so wrong and come to wonder where to go from here.
Told entirely through the letters of two comforting strangers and those of two illicit lovers, Evidence of the Affair explores the complex nature of the heart. And ultimately, for one woman, how liberating it can be when it’s broken.
The Boundless Reader 