State of the ARC is a monthly meme temporarily hosted by Sarah at All The Book Blog Names Are Taken meant to motivate you to finish up your long overdue ARCs (Advanced or Early Reader Copies). This is its original intention, while some bloggers have tweaked it a bit for their own purposes, such as just keeping ARCs in order by due dates. Or you can just be a hot mess like me who sometimes misses publishing dates (or ignores them altogether) and needs a way to stay organized on what has been read, reviewed, or is still begging for attention. Thank you to Evelina @ Avalinah’s Books for coming up with this super helpful monthly meme.

I finished June with 13 ARCs left to be read. 

Let me start out my first post of August with a little update while I share my Cheez-Its with my dogs (they only get a few). I have been talking about prioritizing my health, both physical and mental, and adjusting to taking care of my mother, who needs a lot more help than she did even over the winter. It has been a journey, involving a lot of tweaking and adjusting so that we can help her have more routine to make it easier to remember, as well as ensuring that I can not only attend all of my own appointments, but be around to take her to her own appointments and social engagements. Unfortunately, it has taken a lot of time away from reading and blogging, but I have found it easiest to listen to audiobooks, and finally feel like I’m getting back to a place where I will be able to devote more time to blogging agin. Mom and I are starting to get into a routine, and I found the coolest item to write notes for her each day, about what day of the week and the appointments we each may have, or if there is anything else that we need to focus on that day. You can see it below and find out more about it by clicking on the picture. 

In good news, my tongue has healed almost completely from the biopsies, and everything came back normal. My shoulder has a small fracture and I have no idea how I got it, but I’m back in PT for it. Back to being Bob Dole for a little while to ensure that I don’t reach for things with my dominant hand (IYKYK). However, I’m in really good spirits, and Mom has been too, for the most part.

I still had some June releases that I was behind on, but I did my best to get caught up. The next few months are going to have a lot of release dates, so I have to really stay focused. I didn’t read nearly as many books as I got approved for in July, but in my defense, some of these are duplicates of ebooks just in audio format. My NG ratio went down slightly, but even so it’s still at 96%, so I have zero complaints about that. While the number of ARCs went way up, I didn’t do so great on the reviews front, and ran out of time to review one book I finished right at the end of the month. I’ll be sure to post it as soon as I can. 

I read 4 ARCs, but only reviewed three so far. In addition, one of the reviews isn’t going to be posted anywhere other than NG, but there’s more information about that below. It’s a shame because it was a five star read by an author I love, but I can’t justify supporting the publisher. Aside from that, all of the NG ARCs were really good, and none were rated lower than 4 stars.

Here’s how this month went for my NG ARCs:

I got approved for 9 new books in July:

1. Edam and Weep by Linda Reilly
2. The Seven Rings by Nora Roberts
3. The Fair Weather Friend by Jessie Garcia
4. A Land So Wide by Erin A. Craig
5. The Tattered Cover by Ellery Adams
6. The Witch’s Orchard by Archer Sullivan (audiobook)
7. Joy Moody is Out of Time by Kerryn Mayne (audiobook)
8. Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher (audiobook)
9. High Season by Katie Bishop (audiobook)

These are the ARCs that I read and reviewed, with links to my reviews:

1. The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club by Gloria Chao — see my review here.
2. School of Shards by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko — see my review here.

These are the ARCs that I read but haven’t had the chance to post my reviews for yet:

1. Totally and Completely Fine by Elissa Sussman | Amazon

This is the ARC that I read but won’t post anywhere but NetGalley:

1. A Del Rey book which I’m not posting my review for, because I’m boycotting promotion of the publisher due to ongoing double standards in how they address harmful representation and ignore antisemitism. For more information about that, read my post here.

Here are the ARCs I still have to read:

1. Edam and Weep by Linda Reilly | Amazon
2. High Season by Katie Bishop | Amazon
3. High Season by Katie Bishop (audiobook)
4. The Witch’s Orchard by Archer Sullivan | Amazon
5. The Witch’s Orchard by Archer Sullivan (audiobook)
6. We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter | Amazon
7. Joy Moody is Out of Time by Kerryn Mayne | Amazon
8. Joy Moody is Out of Time by Kerryn Mayne (audiobook)
9. The Tattered Cover by Ellery Adams | Amazon
10. Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher | Amazon
11. Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher (audiobook)
12. Cammy Sitting Shiva by Cary Gitter | Amazon
13. A Land So Wide by Erin A. Craig | Amazon
14. Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World by Mark Waddell | Amazon
15. The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah by Jean Meltzer | Amazon
16. The Seven Rings by Nora Roberts | Amazon 
17. The Last Vampire by Romina Garber | Amazon
18. The Fair Weather Friend by Jessie Garcia | Amazon

Which ARCs are you excited about this month? Do we have any in common? Have you already read any of these?

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