Hello friends!

August was a short month for me – I had something on pretty much every Saturday so all the days felt like it was compressed together. In fact, towards the end of the month, I felt so busy I decided to take half the week off. I’ll probably continue on a more relaxed posting schedule for this week.

August in Books

I read twelve books this month, which is less than July but still not too bad! Especially since The Fellowship was a beast of a book and took me quite a long time to finish.

My biggest book-related thing in August was the series of related reviews on influencers! I have been wanting to see what else I can do with reviews and somehow I have never tried grouping them together. It does make sense, though, because if I were to write an essay on the topic, I’d need to read a bunch of books as sources and this is pretty much just exposing the whole process.

In other book news, I also finished the last two books in the Six Stories series! This is really one of my best finds for the year – the plots are interesting, the atmosphere is fantastic, and the social criticism is fairly subtle. It’s smart fiction and I enjoyed it so much! I would hope for more books in the series but it doesn’t seem very likely.

On Substack, I did a three-part series of books set in various countries around the world and I’m pleased to report that I managed to find books that covered 30 countries!

August in Tea

August was notable because I finally published a sustainabiliTEA post after a couple of months! This time, I interviewed a Korean-American brand and got the chance to learn a lot more about regenerative farming.

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet on the tea front – blogging-wise, at least. I’ve got quite a few teas that I could review but I’m currently focused on drinking down my tea sample stash. It just so happens that it’s been an intense month so it’s nice to be able to just open a tea and jot down brief notes rather than focus on writing a longer review.

Other Things

As mentioned earlier, I had a lot of things going on this month! Apart from the two baking classes I mentioned, I also went for a nail painting workshop to learn how to paint press-on nails. I’ve never done my nails but I was curious about the press-on method and I generally like giving all crafts a go at least once. No regrets becaue I learnt a lot in that workshop!

I also went for my first Taeyeon concert! I normally stick to English, Japanese, and Chinese music, since I like to understand what I’m listening to, but this was another pleasant change of pace. Taeyeon has a really, really good voice and though the concert style wasn’t quite what I was used to, I enjoyed it.

And to buff up my “nerd” image, I went for my first ever Magic the Gathering Pre-Release event. I was quite excited for the Wilds of Eldraine set because it’s based off fairytales! And I was not disappointed, so many of the cards were gorgeous. Initially, I was quite worried about going for an in-person even because I’m not very good at the game, but everyone was very friendly and I somehow managed to win two out of three rounds! Though I did get help with drafting my deck so it’s really due to everyone around me that I did better than expected.

September is going to be another busy month – I’ve got two weddings to attend and two videos to make before the week is over. That probably explains why I’m not reading as much!