Hello, everyone! Today we are linking up with:

• The Sunday Post hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer
• Stacking the Shelves hosted by Reading Reality
• The Sunday Salon hosted by Readerbuzz

This past week really got away from us and we are now trying our best to catch up, alas The Sunday Post is being posted on a Monday. Hope you enjoy it!

Olivia Update 🐾

A major update of our week is reading the book, “I am a Cat” by Sōseki Natsume. When we started the book, she was very happy to have found a feline protagonist. As the book went on, unfortunately, there was less and less cat in the book and she had quite a few issues with that. The book instead started to revolve around our cat’s owner and his friends, at times with very little cat insights thrown in.

While we certainly agree that Sōseki is a great writer, we are highly conflicted about this one due to the lack of cat content in the book. We also found the book difficult to read because of some of the content warnings which we should have read beforehand – there was a whole lot of body shaming and misogyny in the book (while we understand that this book was written over a century ago, we were very alarmed by the high volume of this sort of content). Most alarmingly, there was animal cruelty, so you can imagine my dismay reading these portions with Olivia (I was at a loss of how to comfort her – all I could do was provide her with her favourite tuna squeezie treat while I skipped these parts.) The plot was very minimal as well and it could be a bit tiresome to read at times. However, it is not all bad – Sōseki is able to blend silliness with beautifully analytical and philosophical writing. We laughed out loud so many times during this book that we made a thread of some of our favourite quotes!

A thread: our favourite quotes chapter by chapter from “I am a Cat” by Sōseki Natsume. #iamacat #catbook #chapterbychapter #bookishquotes pic.twitter.com/dK7ImtbG2Z

— Sara’s Reading Nook ☆ 🇨🇦🇵🇹 (@sarasrdngnook) July 25, 2022

As well, some of the philosophical questions had Olivia and I deeply invested. Through both our nameless feline protagonist and the various characters, the book discusses a wide range of topics: God, creation, death, Westernization, and existence, to name a few. So I will sit with our thoughts on the book for some before committing to a review and star rating. We are comfortable saying that this book is not for who are looking for cat content since it’s so sparse, or for those who have a difficult time reading literature with any of the issues mentioned above.

In other news, Olivia also had a good time being on bird watch this week! There were quite a few spottings, which she alerted me of with a few cackles and chirps to sound the alarm.

Life Update

What a busy week this was! Our entire week of blogging and booktube went straight out the window, but for a good reason. This month we had a family member visit us so we had a marvellous time eating at cafés, attending some highly important events, visiting the ice cream shop (they have some vegan flavours!), and exploring the city together. With work thrown into the mix, all of our days were full with varying degrees of business. We are so happy to have hosted our family member and the outdoor plants have really enjoyed the sun! Temperatures should be a bit cooler this week – I hope they are going to drop for you all in the hot destinations as well.

A major help this week was ordering some vegan salads from a local shop nearby. Here you can see a few of them: Kale Tabouli Salad, Summer “Pasta” Salad, and Beet Poke Salad. Of these, the Summer Pasta Salad was such a win! And the selection really inspired us to get creative with our salad combinations moving forward.

Reading Update

Recently Finished

As you can see from the Olivia Update, we read I am a Cat by Sōseki Natsume and had a very conflicted feel about the book.

I finished Always Never by Jordi Lafebre, read via my Hoopla app. Last week, I mentioned that I was very lukewarm about this read, and that feeling never went away. My biggest issue with the book again lies within the content warnings (I’m starting to think that I really need to pay a bit more attention to those moving forward) and the illustration style. However, my opinions are not necessarily what the majority of readers thought as the book is very highly rated on Goodreads and Storygraph, so don’t let my review throw you off too much!

We also stacked our NetGalley shelf and read several books, focusing on children’s literature! Look out for reviews this week. We enjoyed and recommend all of them but especially loved With the Right to Fight – Planting Peace, How Science Saved the Eiffel Tower, and Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls!
(Galleys are provided via NetGalley – all opinions are my own).

Currently Reading

We started A Lot Like Adiós by Alexis Daria and we are enjoying it so far! It is a second chance romance and is book #2 in the Primas of Power series. I’ve only read the first chapter, but have found it intriguing so far and can’t wait to learn more about Michelle and Gabe.

We are so happy we were approved for A Treacherous Tale by Elizabeth Penney! This is book #2 of the Cambridge Bookshop Series and it follows our protagonist Molly Kimball who runs a bookshop in England. Thrilled because we very much enjoyed book #1, Chapter and Curse. We’ve only read the first chapter but are loving it so far. Olivia especially loves cats Puck and Clarence!

Next Read

Immediately next, we want to finally start Lore by Alexandra Bracken! Our TBR game has been difficult to complete this month, and we are afraid that some books will have to be read in the month of August. We will be doing a TBR game in August as well! Haha but at least it should be fairly quiet this month and so we hope to finish all of our books – crossovers and new additions, alike!

We’ll see … but The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is looking pretty enticing right about now … how can I possibly focus when there are so many great books to read? I supposed you could say we’re overbooked 😹. We are so happy we received this gorgeous book mail earlier this week!

This Week on the Blog

• Book Mail | The Daughter of Doctor Moreau
• The Sunday Post #4 & More!

Next Week on the Blog

• Weekly memes (hopefully) for TTT and Stacking the Shelves/Sunday Post/Sunday Salon
• ARC reviews for books published on Aug 1st – now live!

QOTD: Did you have a good weekend? Let us know!