Easy summary–I only read seven books this month. Between remodeling the bathroom and some hiking and a mini-vacation (involving other people and being sociable), not much time for reading.

What was good this month? The LGBT Mystery Anthology Footsteps in the Dark was very good. A variety of stories–some with boinking, some without–and a variety of mysteries. I found some new authors I am very interested in reading. The only other new-to-me read was That Kind of Guy by Talia Hibbert. It’s the third book in a series, has a women of color as the heroine, and the hero is demi-sexual. I’m going to go back and read the first book (I think it’s the first) because the heroine is a woman of color and probably on the autism-spectrum. PLUS she’s a geek. I NEED to read this story.

Mystery, Historical

The Holy Thief (1992) Ellis Peters  (Rating: 9/10)

Mystery, LGBT

Footsteps in the Dark (2019) L.B. Gregg, Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Dal MacLean, Z.A. Maxfield, Meg Perry, C.S. Poe and S.C. Wynne (Rating: 9/10)

Fantasy, Supernatural

The Rook (2012) Daniel O’Malley (Rating: 9.5/10)

Romance, Historical

These Old Shades (1926) Georgette Heyer (Rating: 9/10)
Love for the Spinster (2019) Kasey Stockton (Rating: 6.5/10)

Romance

That Kind of Guy (2019) Talia Hibbert (Rating: 8/10)

Audio Books

The Naming of the Beasts, Audio Book (2009) Mike Carey narrated by Michael Kramer (Rating: 7/10)

And now, the statistics!

eBook: 6
Audio: 1
Multiple Formats: 3
Re-read: 4

Half the books I read this month I own in multiple formats, and more than half were re-reads. Those things are not unrelated.

Genre-wise a variety. Romance is actually ahead this year by a few books. But I do get into a groove and want to read MORE like the book I just finished. We’ll see how the rest of the year goes.

Fantasy: 2
Mystery: 3
Romance: 4
Boinking: 2
Anthology: 1

Female authors are still significantly ahead of male authors. This number is not significantly related to the number of romances I’ve read, since much of the mystery and fantasy I read has been written by women.

I just pretend to prefer the style of female authors, but go ahead and tell me again how you can’t find any female SFF authors to read.

Male: 2
Female: 3
Anthology: 1
Male Pseudonym: 1

Finally, the gender of the main characters was pretty evenly split, but not a lot of minority characters this month. (Reading historicals has something to do with that.) And a third of the books had LGBTQ main characters. The historicals theoretically should have something to do with that, but one of the first LGBT characters I fell in love with was in an historical. So–who knows.

Male: 3
Female: 2
Ensemble: 2
White: 6
Minority: 1
Minority 2ndary: 2
Straight: 4
LGBTQ: 2
LGBTQ 2ndary: 1

And that’s what I read in July. Anyone read anything fantastic last month? I’d think that with the heat more people would want to be inside, huddled in front of the AC, moving very little, which is a good way to read.