Today’s Sip: Heavily iced decaf black sun tea with a splash of Limeaid (Picture taken after several refills of ice)
Today’s Quote: Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. ~Okakura Kakuzō
Today’s Treat: Sadly, none
This post is also partly made for participation with the following blogging events that happen on Sundays and Mondays: The Sunday Post hosted by Kimberly at the Caffeinated Reviewer, It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, The Sunday Salon hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz, and What’s On My (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand hosted by Reading Reality.
Sundays also just happens to be the day where I have the least time commitments and my husband and I are both usually home hanging out.
What I’ve Been Up To
On a personal note, early in the week one of my cousins was visiting us from Arizona. She’s an artist and was exhibiting her lovely pottery and artwork at Artwalk Ventura 2026. When she was at our place, we spent most of the time talking each other’s ears off – in a good way – and also did some work on a jigsaw puzzle.
I’ve been spending time working on my blog and trying to figure out what I want to do in this space. Since I returned to blogging last month, I’ve joined some reading challenges that I’ve enjoyed working on.
I’m currently playing in a Cozy Mystery Bingo game on Goodreads, which always adds a ton of new books to my TBR. I’ve played a number of games with this group over the years and they are always a lot of fun. It amazes me that, after all these years, there are still more authors and series to discover just in the cozy mystery genre, with new authors arriving all the time. And I still have so many traditional/classic authors yet to read.
I have been working again on my cozy mystery, which I hope to finish this year. I haven’t decided if I plan to publish it or not though. For now, like all the other stories I’ve written in my life, it’s something I do because I enjoy it. I wasn’t expecting this one to mirror a bit of my own life, but somehow my character also took and failed the California Bar. Well, as they say, write what you know, I guess?
My crocheting is going very slow. I’m hoping when the weather cools down, I’ll start getting more done. Later today I plan to make some colorful paper using gel printing. I plan to use some for holiday decorating and bookmarks this time around, along with some beads.
What I Read & Posted About This Week
Can’t Wait Wednesday – Where I discussed looking forward to the Liars’ Book Club by Ellery Adams. It’s the 9th installment in the Secret, Book & Scone Society. It’s one of my favorite series.
Cozy Ghosts are the Best Ghosts – A list of four cozy mystery series that I loved that include ghosts. I read the entire series of the The Haunted Yarn Shop (Molly MacRae) and Haunted Home Renovation (Juliet Blackwell) and loved them both. I do want to get back to the Haunted Vintage Mysteries and finish more of those. Fashion is not a big interest of mine, but I enjoyed the way Ross Pressey incorporated it into her series.
Prepping for 13th Annual Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon – I rarely get through as much holiday reading as I dream about doing, so when I saw this event at Kimberly’s Caffeinated Reviewer site, I had to join. Plus there is something soothing about thinking about winter-based books during a heatwave.
What I Read This Week
Urban Fantasy: Some Girls Bite (Chicagoland Vampires, #1) by Chloe Neill – I really liked this book and I plan to continue the series. Unlike real life, I enjoy some politics in supernatural/paranormals. I find it fascinating for reasons I haven’t tried to figure out. Merit’s humar father is extremely wealthy and controlling. Her uncle is a former cop who now works with monitoring the supernatural. Meanwhile, Merit is now a vampire and struggling to learn how to navigate her life among the vampires, shapeshifters, fairies and humans.
Request for book recs: The politics remind me of what I liked about Laurell Hamilton’s Anita Blake series before Anita “came into her powers” and ventured towards erotica.
I’d love to find more like this, so if you know of a series that fits this description, I’ve love to get some recs.
What I’m Currently Reading
I normally do not try to read/listen to more than one novel at a time. This week I decided to try it, thinking if one was on audio and one was an ebook, I’d be fine. Nope! At least not with these two books, mostly because the ebook is likely going to turn into a side-read and research into Finnish culture.
I am enjoying this book, but I am generally not a big fan of books that have main characters who have celebrity status, even minorly. The main character was once on a reality TV show and I thought she was through with that after book one. While she is no longer on TV in this book, she’s being roped back into doing things related to the show and I’m just not here for it. The book itself is great: good characters and the mystery is intersting so far. I know my issue with the celebrity status is a personal preference for me, so my rating for the book won’t reflect that. It just may determine whether I go on to book three or not.
Do you have any pet peeves or tropes you prefer to avoid in books?
Most of mine seem to involve culinary novels, which is weird because I love to read about food and can fall into a food-related rabbit hole as deep as the Grand Canyon sometimes. I even have my own food blogs. But still, I’ve realized I am just not a fan of food competitions, celebrity chefs coming to town, etc. popping up in a series. And, I know this simultaneously makes no sense to me, since I can absolutely see why these tropes/themes happen in these books and would probably do it too, if I wrote culinary mysteries. Some of my favorite series are culinary mysteries! I’ve also been known to binge watch those types of shows on TV. So why does it make me roll my eyes at least 85% of the time, especially since stories with these tropes can also be seriously funny and good sometimes? I do not know. I just have to laugh at my own silliness and say, “Humans be weird sometimes and you are no exception.”
I started this one, but I am waiting until I finish The Hidden Corpse to continue it. This is the first book I’ve read based in a Finnish community (in Michigan), so the names are new to me and the author discusses cultural food dishes, knitting, and other details that I want to savor. I was only a few chapters in when I realized I am going to have a lot of notes of things I want to look up online and via the library for more info. I *LOVE* when a book makes me want to do that.
What’s Coming Up This Week (and Ahead)
My reading plans are not soldified yet. I know I am at the point where I need to be more selective about books so I can complete some challenges. Holiday and season related reading will be taking preference wherever possible.
For the blog, I want to get some lists started. I have notes all over the place, on paper, in Google/Excel sheets, Word files, etc. and I’d really like for them to all be in one place. Since the information is related mostly to cozies and mysteries, I plan to put it somewhere on the site since the info might be interesting/useful for others. This will be an on-going process.
I’m also looking forward to challenges for next year. I want to make some homemade journals for tracking my reading. I bought the tools for making books and I thought that would be a good place to start learning more about that.
Reading Challenges
I didn’t add much to my challenges this week, other than adding a new one to take part in. I need to focus though or I am not going to finish a few of them.
How did your week go and what do you have planned for the week?
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