Sunday Synopsis: July 31, 2011

Where did my weekend go?!?  Where did my summer go?!?  How can it already be the end of July?!?  I simply cannot believe it!  I cannot believe that I am already doing school shopping for my kids and that my son will be going back to school in only a couple of weeks.  I had so many expectations for this summer and it is already almost over!  And, on top of it all, we won't even talk about my reading goals!  Actually, we will in order to see just how much reading I have not done this year as I had hoped!  This second half of the year had better be picking up if I am going to even get half of my reading done as I had set my goals for!

Wow!  Okay, I am done with the venting for now!  :)

On to the fun stuff . . . I attended an author event this afternoon at one of my local independent bookstores!  As I was sitting there waiting for the event to get started, I started thinking about how many times I have been introduced to new-to-me authors because of these such events.  Though I seek out names that are familiar to me, I also just like to pop in to events of authors that I have never heard of before, books that may grab my attention, or just to support an author local to me.  Thanks to this little habit, I can say that I am very excited to have found a new author to me once again this afternoon!  Of course, I'm not going to be sharing much about the event right now because it is part of my big surprise coming up next week!  So for now, I will just leave you in suspense, thinking about how your local indie can bring about some new authors to you!

I started reading In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson this week.  I have not made it far, but so far, I am enjoying it.  I will be finishing this one no later than Friday (if not earlier), so I will then be joining in Kristen over at We Be Reading for her Fforde-a-thon with Eyre Affair.  I have yet to read these books, but picked up the first in the series a couple of months ago after hearing such wonderful things about it.  I don't know if I will read the entire series right away as I do have some other books I have to get to this month, but I am very excited to be introduced to it for now!

I will now leave you with my latest Reading Challenge Check-In since it is the last of the month.  I have done well on a couple of the challenges.  A few others, on the other hand, I really need to work on.  I think I am going to try to focus on the Off the Shelf Challenge the rest of the year.  My TBR piles are toppling!

• The Stephen King/Richard Bachman Challenge (Perpetual)
• 2011 Graphic Novels Challenge (7 of 3-10 Books)
• Off The Shelf Challenge (7 of 30 Books) 
• Young Readers Challenge (9 of 12 Books)
• Take A Chance Challenge 3 (0 of 3 Books)
• 2011 Young Adult Reading Challenge (10 of 50 Books)
• The Dewey Decimal Challenge (1 of 4 Books)
• 100+ Reading Challenge of 2011 (25 of 100 Books)
• Fairy Tale Challenge  (1 of 12 Books/Movies)

That's it for this week!  Have a great one and happy reading!  And, don't forget to share your reading plans for the week with me!