June has felt like the longest month for me, I’ve hardly posted to the blog, I’ve lost my review writing mojo and I’m honestly just tired of it all, yes I’ve reached that time of year where I’ve become disillusioned with blogging – it will pass, it always does but sometimes it’s hard to see past the fog you know? June started out in a bad way, an unfortunate exchange on Twitter – totally unsolicited in my inbox, shook me. I replied flippantly but then looked into things and realised I was in the wrong with my response – but then calling people out in a DM isn’t always wise either. The thing is that whilst well meaning, be kind, sometimes gets forgotten, and you never know what issues other people may have. This exchange sent me into a panic attack, I cried and then having spoken to my husband, decided to deactivate my twitter account for a couple of weeks to regroup.  When I returned to Twitter, I was met with a wave of cancel culture and book tour company drama – It’s made Twitter a difficult place to be around and I’m struggling to find anything positive – I know that I have to re-assess some authors, thankfully hardly any of them appear on my shelf.

I’ve not read as much as I’ve wanted and I’ve really struggled to articulate my feelings in reviews, I just feel pretty sad at the moment and I know that will unfairly reflect on anything I write, I started reading A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes this week and honestly it’s the first book all month that I’ve found myself desperately wanting to pick back up, I’m hoping that this will be the turning point!

But June hasn’t been all bad, things have been good personally, we’ve had some amazing family days, an especially glorious one at the beach, we’ve finally been able to get our fence fixed so we’ve been able to use our garden and make it look inviting again. Mr Paperbacks got a promotion which is so well deserved and the money we’ve saved on childcare during lockdown, means that we’ve been able to finally buy a new computer as our 10 year old work horse is ready to be put out to pasture. Now we’re focusing on making Biba’s room more grown up and I played my first ever game of D&D yesterday! I’m really hoping that all the positivity we’ve had this last week will reflect on my blogging moving into July!

So what about my reads this month, sadly no 5 stars for me this month, but I’ve had some close one’s!

My 4 and 4.5 reads

My 3 Star Reads

My Unrated Reads

Honestly I feel really bad putting these next to each other as they are unrated for 2 completed different reasons. Why I’m no longer talking to White People about Race is probably one of the most important books I’ve ever read – It’s given me a whole new understanding about a number of issues that are at the front of the worlds hearts at the moment. I’ve already started using what I have learnt to educate others and will continue to do so. I don’t have a rating system for non fiction as this is the first I’ve read in about a decade, if not more and part of me feels like it’s a little in bad taste to stick a shiny star on something which tackles such serious issues.

Once and Future just wasn’t the book for me at all, I should have DNF’d it but I kept reading because it was a gift and I was hoping that it would get better but it sadly didn’t grab me the way I wanted it to.

So that’s my June, It’s a much longer wrap up than usual so I’m sorry for rambling! I’m now heading off to put together my reads for July!