After careful consideration and thinking, this will probably be my last post on BL. I just can't deal with sub-service and unstable this website has become and nobody giving a damn. I will be part of The Outpost on GR and work on my account on Library Thing, Story Graph, and my personal WP blog. I am also on IG a lot. 

My last Friday Reads here will be those novellas for the Revolutionary RAT for COYER. I am still reading One Person, No Vote and The Ghost Map. Then there is my summer reading project.

I want to tell you there is a new book site called The Story Graph; right now it is in beta form. I signed up and imported my GR books to TSG. I haven't done much else except to finish filling out my profile (same handle I have here and same profile pic). Thanks to author Beverly Jenkins for letting all of Twitter know about the site.

This week I spent most of the time I could have been reading writing all these book reviews. I should be all caught up now; sorry for the tsnuami of reviews. Now that I am planning to write reviews on the regular, I should have more time to read. I am still reading A Search for Refuge for BL-opoly. I need to get to Proper English and work my way through Beneath the Ruthless Sun. Today is all about getting the two graphic novels, Wytches and Warbringer done. Time to buckle down and read all weekend long. 

Stay safe, stay healthy my BL friends. Kansas growing in COVID-19 cases and our school district sent out a parental survey yesterday, asking for feedback/input about how to go about doing school for the upcoming school year. I want my kids in school for their mental and emotional health, but I just want to keep them home for their physical health. My anxiety is high right now.

It's Juneteenth, the day the last enslaved person was told the war was over and they were free. Yesterday, I attended (via Zoom) a panel discussion organized by Next Gen Climate Action Committee, a political action group my friend works for, on Celebrating Juneteenth and Ensuring Black Voices in Progressive Spaces. It was a great discussion and I am glad my friend invited me, considering I live in Kansas and the group works in VA on VA matters/policies. Rep Don Scott really spoke to my head and heart and he was on for just a few minutes. 

It's rainy and much cooler here, so no poolside reading today. I've got a beef soup simmering in the slow cooker for dinner; just have to whip up some cornbread to go with it and I am good to go. Spending the day reading and tonight I am going to watch Soledad O'Brien's documentary on the early days of COVID-19 in the US (it is airing on Hearst stations, so I am hoping to catch it streaming online).

Tomorrow is Litha/Summer Solstice and I have plans: including a hamburger picnic (using a plant-based "ground beef") and making Lemon-Ginger-Raspberry Zinger sun tea, while reading in the sunshine. Sunday is Father's Day, so I making a special easy breakfast for the hubby to enjoy, followed by pool time and a nice dinner. 

I'm finishing up Birth of the Butterfly for BL-opoly, then taking the weekend off from the game; right after that I want to knock out finally Proper English by KJ Charles. For COYER #BLM RAT, I am reading The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole and New Year, Same Trash by Samantha Irby. That's my weekend. 

Next week I will be working my way through Beneath a Ruthless Sun and One Person, No Vote for the library's adult SRP prompts. I swapped out Once Upon a Wedding anthology (that first story is a slog and I am still not done with it) with Love by the Letters anthology which I should get done by the end of the week (it is only 3 stories). I might just skip to the Sonali Dev's and Pricilla Oliveras' stories in the Wedding anthology and call it good - those were the reasons for picking up the anthology in the first place. And then whatever the BL game goddesses decide for me to read. 

Happy Juneteenth! Happy Father's Day! Happy Reading!

I'm doing romances today. One contemporary YA and one historical. I have yet to meet the love interest in Only Mostly Devastated, so I don't know how that romance will go, but I've met the two main characters in Rebel and I love them both.

Man this site is running slower than a turtle walking through peanut butter this morning. 

Anyway, happy Friday everyone. My goal today and tomorrow is to finish the COYER Diverse RAT and then on Sunday start the next big anthology. I discovered the world of flosstube, so part of my time was spent going down the rabbit hole of fellow cross stitchers' vlogs. Through flosstube, I found my mojo to stitch again - since moving last summer I haven't felt the urge to pick up my needle and it has been almost a year. So I sit and half-watch the videos while I stitch. Reading has been done mostly when the sun starts to set and the light isn't good enough to continue stitching. With stitching, reading, and just focusing on not being on social media so much - I am feeling more light. Granted the pandemic news here in the US is getting worse and I am worried about this autumn and another looming shutdown/stay at home orders. I've insisted both the kids and I have our masks on whenever we go anywhere. My husband's work provided fabric masks to use in the offices (they have to wear specialty masks when working on the aircraft due to the chemicals) and he doesn't go anywhere but home, grocery shopping, or work. 

Speaking of the kids, they finished the first goal (read for 200 minutes) of our library's virtual Summer Reading Program and earned a free book each. Joshua picked up I Survived True Stories: Five Epic Disasters by Lauren Tarshis and Sophia picked Whatever After #7: Beauty Queen by Sarah Mlynowski. For those not into MG fiction, the I Survive series is a fictional series about real historical disasters (the fictional part comes from the MC) and it is HELLA POPULAR with the 3rd-5th graders. The Whatever After series is about two siblings who visit different fairy tales and help out before returning to our world/time. Another series my kids are really digging is the Owl Diaries by Rebecca Elliott - we have read seven of these books in the course of 12 days. I'm just happy Sophia is out of the Junie B. Jones phase. 

Here's what I'm reading this weekend/week:

The Diverse RAT reading has Where Snowy Owl Sleeps (also for BL-opoly) and Birth of the Butterfly by Mimi Milan and Proper English by KJ Charles.

The next anthology is the one with the second most amount of stories - Once Upon a Wedding. 

For the adult SRP requirements, I will try to get to On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder.