Books

July 2023 Monthly Wrap Up!

August 8, 2023 by Mackenzie 8 Comments

Yet again, we come to the end of a month, which means…yes! You guessed it! It’s wrap up time woohoo! I read a lot of great books this month, and watched a few interesting things. Let’s get into it so I can tell you more of the specifics!

Books I Read

I had some REALLY great reads this month!! My top read is probably A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. This novella series is just so dang good, and really comforting. I could probably read about Dex and Mosscap for the rest of my life. Other standouts were a handful of YA fantasy books. Flowerheart, Night of the Raven Dawn of the Dove, Sing Me to Sleep, and Threads That Bind were all amazing. They each felt very unique to me, and I would definitely recommend all four for any YA fantasy fans. Also, the first two are both standalones, if you don’t want to start a new series!

Movies and TV I Watched

First up, I watched Nimona, which released in June on Netflix. I had read the graphic novel a while ago and enjoyed it, but didn’t really remember much of the story going into the movie. So I can’t really compare the two, but I absolutely loved the movie!! It was so good. I watched it with a friend of mine (virtually) and we had a great time chatting throughout watching.

As I’ve mentioned in previous monthly wrap ups, my partner and I watch films by the directors that the podcast Blank Check covers. Most recently they’ve been discussing the films of Park Chan-wook, a very well known South Korean director. He was the most recent winner of the “March Madness” bracket that the podcast puts on, and this year the theme was non-American directors. He and Bong Joon-ho (well known for directing Parasite) nearly tied in the final round! And by nearly tied, I mean that Park Chan-wook won by a SINGLE vote out of >20,000 total votes.

Anyway, this month we watched two of his films, Lady Vengeance and I’m a Cyborg But It’s OK. Lady Vengeance is part of a trilogy of his movies that are loosely thematically related. It was a very well done movie, but it was very violent and disturbing, as were the other two movies of this “Vengeance trilogy.” So I’m not sure I really “liked” it, but I appreciate the craft of the movie. Cyborg was quite a different movie! It’s a romcom set in a psychiatric facility, and I honestly really enjoyed it. It was definitely weird, but it was funny and cute too.

Last but not least, I *finally* started watching Star Wars Rebels!! My friends who are also SW fans have been getting on me for forever to watch this. So here I am, finally doing it. So far I’m definitely having fun with it, and it has a great found family aspect (the best). I’m excited to continue!

Things I Did

Honestly I didn’t really get up to too much this month! I had a little bit of a rough time in the beginning of the month, but luckily things turned around. One thing I did do was go to a nice little pool party potluck with a handful of friends! The heat where I live is unbearable, so being in the water is really the only way to survive outside haha. I love being in the water, and it was really nice. There was also a lovely collection of food and people!

Otherwise I’ve been mostly doing inside activities to stay in the air conditioning haha. So that means lots of reading (as you can see) and video games. I didn’t dedicate a whole section to games this time since I’m only playing two games which I’ve talked about before. Those are Teamfight Tactics and TLOZ: Tears of the Kingdom.

How was your July? Did you have any standout pieces of media you consumed? Any fun things that you did?

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