Alessandra is reading…

August 2023 Wrap-Up

For this wrap-up, I’d like to compare this August to August of last year. Since I’ve made 1) a goal to write every day and 2) a goal to read at least as many books as I did last year (which was 95).

I read 5 books both in August of 2022 and 6 this past month. However, after calculating the page numbers, I’ve just skimmed under the total pages that I read and had about 40 pages less than last year. That’s kind of annoying, but maybe it’ll put a fire under my ass for my September reading.

(Although, I am getting married next month with a big wedding so I’ll be busier than last September. We’ll see how this goes.)

By this point in 2023, I have read 62 books and I had finished 55 books by the end of August last year. So I’m kicking ass in that regard. If I do want to beat my 2022 total of 95 books read and read at least 96 this year, I need to read at least 8 and a half books every month for the rest of this year. With learning how to homestead and having the wedding next month, good luck to my mental health.

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What made me think:

• My Family, A Symphony by Aarok Eske 
• Meat Eater by Steve Rinella
• The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam

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What I enjoyed:

Christine by Stephen King 

• Christine by Stephen King
• The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

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What I also read:

• Improve Yourself by David Brinkley

This book felt like a partial waste and pop self-help. I did gain a couple of tips from it and I also gained knowledge of some tips that I personally would not implement into my life.

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I abandoned Child Catchers by Kathryn Joyce because I felt like I got the gist of it in the first 30 or so pages. I may revisit at some point, but it is time to take a break from the books on child trafficking. 

I did get a good more amount of info about Laura Silsby trafficking children out of Haiti and learned about voluntourism, a term that I hadn’theard of before.

“We shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way.”

Samwise Gamgee, The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien 

I am currently reading

• Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
• The Veteran by Dustin Carter

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Read on and kick September’s ass.