Reading Hard gets harder when you're under a surprise deadline

While I started strong on my July challenge reading, as the title of this post suggests I then found myself under a surprise deadline for another reading project (state book award committee) and ended up having to hustle to read many, many children's chapter books, which took a lot of time. I thought I had until the end of September, but noooooo.

I did still manage to make SOME progress - primarily finishing my To All the Boys I've Loved Before reread and reading Where You'll Find Us, which drug in the middle but had a beautiful ending. I'm still working away on Uncommon Grounds, which is proving to be very interesting. For example, did you know that the inventor of Grape Nuts, who also sold a coffee substitute that he made wild health claims about, advertised that Grape Nuts could cure appendicitis and then in his 50s ended up getting appendicitis, for which he had to have surgery? He died by suicide shortly after, and many believe he did so because he couldn't get past the humiliation of having to have surgery for something he claimed his products could cure.

I'm also about a third of the way through The Ocean Would Paint Me Blue, which is so beautiful and emotional and infuriating and heartbreaking. I've been reading it before bed, but I finally had to break down and bring it downstairs because I want to read more than a chapter at a time.

Books I've not yet started but will, at some point: Warrior Girl Unearthed (still, yeesh. I'll get there!), Worst-Case Scenario, and Wild Beauty. I've got them all sitting in my immediate TBR pile, ready to go as soon as I have time.

In August, I'll be working on challenge #3, read a YA book by a Latine author, and challenge #18, read a nonfiction book about AI or social media. It was really hard to narrow down my options for three, but I finally whittled it down to Does My Body Offend You by Marie Marquardt and Mayra Cuevas, which my sister read recently and recommended, and Hear Ye Mortals by Yamile Saied Mendez, which just looks super good. It was harder to find an appealing option for eighteen, but I finally went with Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble and Revolutionary Algorithms by Torey Akers.