July's Monthly Recap

Inspired by Faye of A Daydreamer's Thoughts's Weekly Recap, here is a recap of my posts over the last week, and anything else I found interesting.




Reviews:

• 5 to 1 by Holly Bodger - Oh my god, this book was so good! A brilliant feminist dystopian YA novel where the matriachy are in charge, and still screwing everyone up.
• Horns by Joe Hill - An awesome dark fantasy that really gets you thinking about good and evil, and the depravity of human thoughts.
• The Awesome by Eva Darrows - A great urban fantasy novel about a teenage monster hunter, but I found Maggie too snarky, and didn't like her crappy attitude towards women.
• George by Alex Gino - A beautiful and incredible powerful LGBTQ novel about a ten-year-old trans girl. SO, SO GOOD! (Not pictured - I borrowed this book, and have given it back.)
• Fool's Assassin by Robin Hobb - An incredible new high fantasy novel about such beloved characters! It was wonderful being back in this world again with Fitz, and seeing how his life gets turned upside down, again.
• I'm a Girl! by Yasmeen Ismail - A wonderful picture book that challenges gender-roles for children!
• Creative Coloring Inspirations by Valentina Harper  - My first colouring book review! Full of photos! I enjoyed this colouring book, but I think it's more the kind I'd want to dip in and out of, than complete before moving on; some of the illustrations are a bit samey.

Other posts:

• Movie Review: Boy Meets Girl - An incredible LGBTQ love story about a transgender woman. It was brilliant, so sex positive, and so funny!
• The Top Ten Tuesday topics I took part in are Ten Books That Celebrate Diversity/Diverse Characters and Ten Characters Who Are Fellow Book Nerds.

Elsewhere online:

Inspired by Cait at Paperfury and the awesome links she shares.

• This month I was interviewed by the Jasmine Denholm of Wenlock Books in their Seven Questions With... series, talking about book blogging and reading.
• Cait over at Paper Fury gives a tutorial on how to create black and white photos with a colour accent on PicMonkey.
• Check out this awesome review of Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill over at The F Word.
• Book Riot talks about Five Novels That Illustrate Rape Culture. And Tammara Webber writes a fantastic response about Easy being on this list.
• Twitter shared an article on the US' Huffington Post, How Young Adult Romance Novels Are Giving Young Girls a Misguided View of Romance, written by an actual teen. In response to this, YA author Holly Bourne share her article from 2013 on the subject, Are Happily-ever-afters in YA Novels Bad for Teenagers'  Love Lives? Both really interesting!
• If you didn't attend YALC and missed the live tweeting, there's an article on the BBC that has a summary of the main points of one of the panels, Let's Talk About Sex - in Young Adult Fiction.
• For her 50th Birthday, a beautiful profile has been written about J.K. Rowling in the Irish Examiner, by YA author Louise O'Neill.
• Candice at O Ye Scribbles talks about the bookish wreaths she creates, and they're just beautiful!
• On Free Word, Sarah Odedina, former managing director of Hot Key Books and now publisher of the children's list at Oneworld, writes a fantastic post about the importance of YA fiction in young people's lives and why YA isn't afraid to tackle heavy subject. "YA fiction is more than a story. It is the opportunity to find out who you are and what you believe in from the safety and security of a book."
• Courtney Summers' YA novel, Some Girls Are, has been banned from West Ashley High School's summer reading list after a parent caused an outcry about it. Read the post, read the book, and support.
• As I'm starting to review adult colouring books, and have been reviewing a few more movies, I decided I wanted to create pages for those reviews separately, and have a drop down menu from my "My Reviews". A quick Google search led me to Monika at Lovely Bookshelf's post, How to Create Drop-Down Menus in Blogger - it's easy to understand and very easy to follow. If you want a drop down menu, I'd highly recommend this post.

My writing:

As you may or may not know, I have another blog, Jo's Journal, where I write about topics that are important to me, and I'm trying to get my writing out there to be read by more people. I was at The Coven this month, asking if offensive jokes can be funny. I also blogged about body shaming slim girls in We're Real Women, Too: On Sizeism and Skinny Shaming.