Books Read in June

Book By Book

Well, this will be a short summary! My Big Book Summer Challenge began at the end of May, and my first Big Book weighed in at 950+ pages, so that’s most of what I read in June! I did manage a Big Book audio, too, and slipped in a quick re-read of an old favorite. Here’s what I finished in June:

• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (GA) – classic adult fiction
• Harry’s Trees by Jon Cohen (PA) – adult fiction on audio
• The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (MA) – adult fiction (re-read)

That’s it! June was short on quantity but big on quality!  It was an all-fiction, all adult month for books so not a lot of variety. I enjoyed Harry’s Trees, and A.J. Fikry is a favorite of mine, but I have to pick Gone with the Wind as my favorite of the month. It took me 5 weeks to finish reading it, and I never got tired of it or bored. It’s an complex, compelling story, and it’s easy to see why it has remained a classic for so many decades.

Progress in 2019 Reading Challenges:
This is my favorite part of my monthly summary – updating my Reading Challenges:

Mount TBR Reading Challenge – 2 of my 3 books were from my own shelves.

Monthly Motif Reading Challenge – June was Diversify Your Reading month, and I chose Gone with the Wind, perhaps a contentious choice given its racism, but there were plenty of major black characters and their perspectives were included (though from the mind of a white 1930′s author!).

Back to the Classics Challenge – Woohoo! Two classics in the past two months! I’m on a roll. I counted Gone with the Wind as “written by a female author.”

Monthly Keyword Challenge – I didn’t read a single book with any of the monthly keywords in the title…again, for the 6th month in a row! Clearly this challenge wasn’t a good choice for me!

Nonfiction Reading Challenge 2019 – No nonfiction last month.

Diversity Reading Challenge – Just 1 of my books was diverse (and that’s arguable).

Travel the World in Books Reading Challenge – No new places – everything I read was set firmly in the US!

2018 Literary Escapes Challenge – I added just 1 new state: Pennsylvania (and have already read 8 books this year set in Massachusetts)

2019 Big Book Summer Challenge – I added my first two Big Books of the summer!

Finally, Bookish Bingo hosted by Chapter Break – not really a challenge per se, but a fun game that I play each month. I filled in 18 squares in June – pretty darn good for just 3 books:

Squares filled in:

Gone with the Wind – bride, twins, not a new release, steamy romance, garden/gardening, accent
Harry’s Trees – free book, moving/relocating, audio book, not in a series
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry – shelf love (TBR), police, book gifted to me, small town, secret crush

Free space 

What was your favorite book read in June? 

And have you joined the Big Book Summer Challenge yet? There’s still plenty of time to read a 400+ page book before September!