June started the 2025 20 Books campaign off brilliantly with tons of you linking, commenting and tweeting etc giving Emma and I, and you, of course, loads of wonderful reviews to explore. It’s been particularly lovely making so many new blog connections.
If you still need to pick up the logos for the different numbers of books, or the bingo card, do visit the original post HERE.
Also this month, Emma is hosting #parisinjuly2025 – so why not cover 2 tags in one post with something French. More info here.
🩱🍦🍹🏝️🩴😎 HAPPY SUMMER READING! 😎🩴🍹🏝️🍦🩱
Now here’s the place for your JULY reviews...
Hah, first in the queue! I’ve just reviewed Patrick Modiano’s novella ‘Ring Roads’ for #15BooksOfSummet and for #ParisInJuly2025! I’ve a Maigret lined up for later this month.
Okay, where do we leave the links for June reviews? I don’t think I realized there was a separate post for that.
https://lisalovesliterature.bookblog.io/2025/06/25/l-l-l-little-reviews-77-june-2025/
It doesn’t really matter. You can leave them here. No hard and fast rules! 😀
I see Chris has wisely followed your advice!
Thanks bunches for hosting and warm hospitality! Linked up at #2.
Sending have a great July wishes your way.
I’m keeping on keeping on, using the hashtag but forgetting to add to the linky!
No worries. You can add them any time.
I highly recommend Manya Wilkinson’s Lublin, for those who have yet to read it. It’s funny and sad, capturing a time and place that has disappeared and foreshadowing a time that should never be revisited and yet, in so many ways, here we are again. The main characters are three Jewish boys in 1907 Poland, on the road to Lublin, each with a different reason for leaving home.
Lublin won this year’s Royal Society of Literature Encore Award.
I’ve just added a review of Elizabeth Beresford’s children’s fantasy Awkward Magichttps://wp.me/pezD85-yN while George’s Simenon’s Mr Hire’s Engagement will be up soon!
I’ve added a link to my halfway update using the Linky, I think. Some people manage to add the name of their post, but I’m never quite sure where to fill that in. Belt and braces time; here’s my link again.
https://marketgardenreader.wordpress.com/2025/07/17/june-and-mid-july-update-halfway-for-20booksofsummer25/
You just write whatever you want to put in the blank line above the one where you paste your URL. Don’t worry though – we’ve got you!
Hello, I am back!
I’m halfway through my list of 10! Tice Cin’s Keeping the House was an unusual read – it’s crime fiction treated as contemporary fiction. The author is a multidisciplinary artist and played with the layout on the page. She has a lot of affection for the Turkish Cypriot community in North London, despite the grimness of the crime world she depicts.
Ooh – I’ve been meaning to read her for a while.
Last day of July ! Where did that go? Still clearing mother’s house. Partner of 11 years suddenly decided to depart in the middle of that (he wasn’t helping anyway!). My conclusion: men are just strange. I see from my list I have read 14 books since I made my 20 Books list but as I go through boxes of books I haven’t seen for years, I keep changing the list. Dear Miss Lake, the last part of AJ Pearce’s four-parter on the wartime world of women’s magazines, was a treat and I look forward to seeing what AJ comes up with next. Her new blog on Substack is worth following if you like vintage, she is a great addition to my long list of favourite bookblogs. https://ajpearce.substack.com/ Also found in a box my Virago copy of The Misses Mallett by EH Young, someone I have always meant to read. Her Wiki biography will make you reach for her books, a lady climber like Ann Bridge. My last find was Bicycle Thieves by Luigi Bartolini, the complete antidote to Alba de Cespedes’ Forbidden Notebook, a glimpse of the hardships and survival tactics during the war years in Rome as the GIs replaced the Germans. Speaking of longlists, what do people think of the Booker Prize list this year? For someone fairly dependent on libraries for new stuff, there isn’t much to go on. Happy reading for August !
Adding my posts belatedly here!
Appreciate you hosting. I have a few more reviews to write but got to a good number of books in July 🙂
I mostly read Frankie Miren’s The Service in July, so I’ve linked it here. It wasn’t my best read by a long chalk – too cluttered with characters and clichés for my taste.
I’m trying to catch up with reviews from last month by doubling up on two of Elizabeth Strout’s novels. Also remembered to add my review of Scoop by Evelyn Waugh.