Reading Round-Up: 21st – 27th August

Yet again, despite best intentions, I barely finished this book by the skin of my teeth.

I blame work. Wholeheartedly.

Unpredictable times means unpredictable circumstances for me and everyone I work with at my day job. Getting back home past midnight because we’re short-staffed, sometimes because colleagues have emergencies they have to run home to. Waking up at 4am to get in for that 6am shift.

Did I mention that I work retail? Tantrums about not having the right brand of BBQ sauce and snide comments about how I should find a man to help me lift those boxes are more or less daily. Don’t even get me started on the “I want to speak to a manager” brigade.

I might moan but I’m actually a very lucky duck. I work part time so I can spend the rest of my time working towards full-time author-hood. It’s a great arrangement and I’m very grateful for it. But retail and author work are two sides of the same coin. Retail is an occupation that drains you for all you’ve got, whereas writing feeds you energy that you can ride all week. The weeks where I’m at a till more than I’m at my laptop are the weeks that make the dream seem much further away.

So to try and balance everything out this week I had to do a little less reading which is a mighty shame because it’s a Kyoshi novel!

You can read yesterday’s review to see just what I thought of The Shadow of Kyoshi, which is, sadly, the last in the two-part series. But long story short, this book was as amazing as its predecessor! With any lucky, the gang behind the Avatar series will look for new stories to publish, hopefully in hardback format.

Though I still have work for the next half a week, including a bank holiday Monday (someone, please save me), I have a bit of holiday to use in the latter half of next week. What with all the rain lately, that’ll mean curling up in bed with whatever I choose to read next. I still haven’t quite planned which book that will be!

I have a book or two in my inbox which I need to get around to reading. The only reason I’ve put those off is because I’ve been trying to finish reading books ahead of schedule so I have a bit more time in case they are particularly long. But I really need to start reading those, so even though things are a bit crazy right now, let’s dive in!

Thanks for indulging my mini-rant, this post actually turned out to be more of a moan than a reading update. But after last night’s catastrophe of a shift, it’s nice to get things off my chest. (My husband has suffered enough, bless him).

Let me know about what you’ve been reading lately and I’ll be sure to check it out – I love recommendations!

Thanks for reading!