#WhatILearntFromBooks-June Edition

Flaming June!
Instead of writing about the books I have read this month, or that hit my radar, I decided not to bore you by rehashing these titles cos being a good subscriber, you can see all the books I read in June by looking at the calendar, right?

So, I borrowed a GREAT idea from a fellow blogger(with her permission of course, no one like to pass someone else’s idea off as their own!)and decided I would round the month up with a ‘What Have I Learnt From Books This Month’.

Follow the excellent Kelly Van Damme at https://t.co/yKaDOpnsJe for more excellent bookish chat and blogposts or on Twitter @kellyvandamme.

Right, now that I have paid my dues, here is what I learnt in June-

• Approx 1000 people are found dead and alone in the UK, anually,because of social isolation and fragmented families which made me feel incredibly humbled and sad,in ‘Something To Live For’, Richard Roper’s stunning and moving debut novel.
• How to hire a private investigator when your teenager goes missing in ‘The Lies We Tell’ by Niki McKay
• The ins and outs of producing a local radio show in ‘Bring Me Sunshine’by Laura Kemp
• That my childhood nightmare of books being made illegal is eerily brought to life in ‘The Disappeared’ by Amy Lord
• Each and every single body part (and fluids!)has a price tag according to ‘Chop Shop’ by Andrew Post YUK!
• Absolute power corrupts, absolutely, in scaryily prescient ghost writing tale,‘What Lies Around Us’ by Andrew Crofts
• I thought that she had put me through the ringer with her last books, but  in ‘Someone Is Lying’ by Jenny Blackhurst,  I found new levels of sitting on the edge of my seat (ended up finishing it lying down so I didn’t fall off my chair!)
• I learnt about Scottish real estate laws, including that you can split an inheritance 50/50, even if the one party is missing presumed dead in Lexie Elliott’s ‘the Missing Years’
• The California Spotted Owl is a vengeful bird when their home is cut down , especially with the ghost of a dead man, a dog and a witch at its back in Jo Perry’s ‘Dead Is Beautiful’
• It’s ok and sometimes necessary to throw a book away so that no one else has to suffer the agony of reading it. As a result I made an ‘abandoned’ shelf on Goodreads, I made peace with that choice and also with leaving a book unread.
• ‘The Art Of War’ by Tzu Sun is on my hitlist after reading ‘The Sunday Girl’ by Pip Drysdale, should I ever need to wreak revenge on an enemy, I will be prepared!
• Vampires are still my scariest make believe monster. Well that’s if they are make believe but after reading ‘Dust Devils’ by Jonathan Janz I remain unconvinced. Will carry on shoving garlic into as many of my cooking dishes as I can just in case #shudders!

Phew!
That’s a lot of reading, with high probablility of much more in July!
Just to finish, I’d like to highlight a bookstagrammer and booktuber whose feeds are an inspiration and a joy!
Hope you had a great June, C’MON JULY LET’S HAVE AT YOU!!