August 2026 Reading Recap

It’s amazing what you can do, read, and accomplish when you have absolutely nothing else to do. At the beginning of August, I moved across the country and without the structures of a job, major event commitments, or even like…packing, I got SO MUCH READING DONE! This month also featured a 14 hour train ride, a 4 hour plane ride, and a lot of reading in the pool. At the end of it, I read a whopping 33 books in the month of August.

Let’s break it down:

10 Audiobooks

I vascilate widely between binging non-fiction kidlit audiobooks and listening to every second of daily NPR, and this month the audiobooks won! I listened to 10 audiobooks this month, all but one of them kidlit. I did 3 Who Was? books, WOMBAT WAITING by Katherine Applegate, DIAMOND FEVER, the 4th MAC B KID SPY book, a one-off fairy early chapter book I’d been wanting to listen to, the new BAT book by Elena K. Arnold, a essay thingy from a kidlit author, and the novella AND EVERY MORNING THE WAY HOME GETS LONGER AND LONGER by Frederik Backman for my DAR Chapter’s book club. Most of these were under 90 minutes, but a couple were 3 hours or so.

1 Book Longer Than 450+ Pages

My goal this year is to read 12 books longer than 450 pages, which was largely to make it through some of the long books I already owned. This month I read BY ANY OTHER NAME by Jodi Picoult, which I had an e-ARC of, but I ended up getting a hardcopy of it for FREE in late July when I claimed my Arlington Library Summer Reading Prize, which was a coupon to their Friends Book Store. Now I am all caught up on Jodi Picoult books ahead of her new one coming out in September, which I have on hold at the library, and which is more than 464 pages according to edelweiss.

The 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Winner

One of my goals this year was to read the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Winner, as well as the Carnegie Fiction winner. Well, this month I finally read ANGEL DOWN by Daniel Kraus, and while I was reading it I didn’t HATE it, but the more I talk about it with others, the more I think I did in fact hate it. That’s a run-on sentence in honor of the book itself. Oh well. At least I did it haha.

1 Longer Essay Collection

One of the audiobooks I listened to was an essay, but this month I also read STEEPED IN STORIES by Mitali Perkins, which is an essay collection exploring the virtues in historic children’s titles, like Heidi and Little Women and The Hobbit. It was interesting, especially since I hadn’t read several of the books.

1 Book of Adult Poetry & 1 Novel-in-Verse

This month, I read HOMELAND OF MY BODY by Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco, who was the keynote speaker at the Carnegie ceremony the year I was chair, and I also read the novel in verse FORCE OF NATURE, which was about Rachel Carson.

2 Graphic Novels

I got rid of mostof the graphic novels I had but hadn’t read, but brought 2 with me to Texas and read them this month: THE BOOK OF MURMURS and VISITATIONS. Visitations was a five star read for me–really good.

2 BOTM Books

I gave up on BOTM awhile back, but I’m still working through my backlog of books…and my newer books of them. This month, I read YOU’RE INVITED, which was an older mystery, and ROMANCE REVIVAL, by one of my favorite authors Christina Lauren.

1 Book to Review for Booklist

I had one non-picture book book to review this month, a new novel by a well-known YA novel that blends prose, poetry, and graphic novel formats. It was fine. More impressively, I did my review over a month earlier than it was due!

11 Other Kid-Lit /YA Books

I did a mix of e-ARCs, e-books and physical books this month, reading the e-arcs of HARROW HOME FOR WAYWARD GIRLS (5 star read!) and LICORCE, a new retelling of Rebecca but with cats. I read a few books I’d owned for awhileee, A BEAR CALLED PADDING, BLUISH, AND MY BROTHER SAM IS DEAD. I did e-books of the third SHERMY AND SHAKE book which comes out in November, and YARN IS EVERYTHING, which I had been highly anticipating. I also did e-books of the 32nd DRAGON MASTERS book and the fifth LAST FIREHAWK Branches books. I also read MYSTERY OF THE MERMAID, which is the third book in a series I read with my 1st graders last school year. I also read a hard copy of ONE WORD, SIX LETTERS, which I would say is best for kids 7th grade and up.

And 2 book club books

This month, my Princeton book club read SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, which I had never read before. Didn’t LOVE reading it after Angel Down, but glad I read it. My DAR Chapter’s book club read THE FROZEN RIVER and it was amazing–a five star read for me.

So that was August–impressive, right? Amazing what I can read when I have nothing else to do! As of right now, I am 177 books through my 250 books reading challenge. I think my goal for September will be to get to 200 books read, and to cross off another 450+ page book or two, if I can.