July was a busy month, I have been with my mum to a Rolling Stones concert in Warsaw, which was amazing despite absolutely horrible acoustics in the stadium (but then who came up with the idea of stadium concerts is beyond me, clearly they are designed to echo). Then on the following weekend I happened to go with my Bigger Half to a flea market in the music studio where his band usually has rehearsals and guess what happened?… I bought four books for the lovely price of 3 GBP (scroll down to see them). Then a week later we went there again, an again I got tempted.

I also more or less continued with my exercises, which was not made easy by the weather, I love sunny hot summer, but doing 50 min HIIT or cardio or strength routines with no AC in the apartment is no fun, even at 6 am. Not to mention permanent soreness in one or another part of my body. On the other hand I start getting used to daily dose of endorphins.

My first vacation is coming close, I could not be happier about it. Two more weeks and off I go for two weeks! I rarely needed it as much as this time.

Here are the books I bought:

The Helmet of Horror – Viktor Pelevin – I do not read enough Russian authors and I’m thinking it is because English translations tend to grate on me (I do not know Russian, but I do know another Slavic language), so if this doesn’t work I will switch to reading Russian books translated to Polish.

Complicity – Iain Banks – no idea, probably the cover

And the Ass Saw the Angel – Nick Cave – I have been on his concert in June, so that was an obvious choice

No Logo – Naomi Klein – it feels like it has been published forever ago, but it’s been only 19 years, the world changed a lot in this time, so I want to see if it stood the test of time.

Vacant Posession – Hilary Mantel – I never read any of Mantel’s books, and it felt like a good one to start with

By Nightfall – Michael Cunningham – I read The Hours years ago and liked it a lot, so when I came upon this one I didn’t think for long

The Bookseller of Kabul – Asne Seierstad – this rang a bell, I must have heard about it somewhere, I have no idea if what I heard was good or bad, but why not give it a shot

The End We Start From – Megan Hunter – this one I bought when I was buying a gift for my friend, I liked the cover a lot and it’s about flooding of London (which at this time precisely does not feel very realistic, with pretty much no rain in 3 months, but let’s be honest, water is never really far off from here).

Here’s what I read this month:

45. The End We Start From – Megan Hunter
44. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood (r)
43. A Minor Apocalypse – Tadeusz Konwicki
42. The Magician of Lublin – Isaac Bashevis Singer (r)
41. WTF? – Robert Peston
40. Czekoladki dla Prezesa – Sławomir Mrożek (r)
39. Warto Żyć – Lejb Fogelman (r)
38. East of the West – Miroslav Penkov (r)

Have a lovely August! Do you have any reading or vacation plans?

Photo by Violetta Kaszubowska