Well, due to only somehow reading eight books last month, even though I had a week off work (although to be fair, the Henry II one, the editing one and “The Old Ways” were all pretty substantial), five of which came off the physical TBR, and having made some acquisitions, the TBR shelf is not looking all that tiny and delicate at the moment.

Oops! Still, as you can see, I can still fit the Pile on the shelf, with a bit of room to spare (the last book on the front row is the red one with a band of black across it), and Christmas 2017 is now almost all on the front, which is exciting.

I haven’t been doing brilliantly with #20BooksOfSummer – you can see the full list and progress here, but basically it runs 1 June – 3 Sept and the book pictured here is Book number 11. I wanted to have finished Book 12 by now and be ready to go into All Virago (and Persephone) / All August. Anyway, this is a fab read that I’m half-way through already: Becky Wade graduated from university and got a travel scholarship to go around the world visiting different running cultures and she’s in Switzerland at the moment, having visited the UK and Ireland, and it’s as much about the club and competition structure as it is about running styles, so really interesting.

Coming up soon will be my IMReadalong project book for this month, the deliciously weird and creepy “The Time of the Angels” (failed priest runs deconsecrated church in foggy London: scared me silly the first time I read it in my teens). This is Book 10 in my Iris Murdoch readalong and I’m SO enjoying it and am really glad I’ve done it again. There’s plenty of time to join in; I’ve made a collection of all my reviews and roundups on this page and I really don’t mind when people read the books as long as they read them! I think I’ll try to get to this fairly soon, as I do like to leave a nice lot of room for debate and discussion.

After that (or around that), we have this lovely lot for All Virago (etc.) / All August. I did panic a bit when I reviewed their size, but actually all except one (OK, the heftiest tome) are novels, and two of them are Angela Thirkells, for goodness’ sakes! I think I can do it, do you? Then there will be one slim novel left to do right at the beginning of September as the 20th Book of Summer. Hm.

Did you have a good reading month in July? What are you getting up to in August? I know a fair few other people are dipping into AV / AA even if they’re not doing it totally, and lots of people are doing Women in Translation month, while I appear to have precisely no Women in Translation on my TBR shelf!

Happy reading!