It’s back – Readers Imbibing Peril reading challenge! I don’t know about you but this is one of the challenges I look forward to the most every year. Now in it’s 14th year so tell me that’s not another thing to be excited about.

So let’s get to the details. The challenge runs from September 1st through October 31st. The purpose of the R.I.P. Challenge is to enjoy books that could be classified as: mystery, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, gothic, horror and supernatural.

The emphasis is never on the word challenge, instead it is about coming together as a community and embracing the autumnal mood, whether the weather is cooperative where you live or not. The goals are simple: have fun and share the fun with others.

There are several levels of participation but I’m going to try to do Peril the First, Peril of the Short Story and Peril on the Screen. I’m not too sure yet about the short stories and the movie(s) but here are some of the potential reads.

The Blackest Bird by Joel Rose. Murders in Nineteenth-Century New York.
The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace. A woman in an asylum in Victorian London. What could possibly go wrong?
Thornyhold by Mary Stewart. A gothic romance where a woman is entrusted with an old house.
The Crying Child by Barbara Michaels. An eerie and child-like wailing is heard in the woods.These all sound like very promising reads but you know how it often goes. Another book can easily capture my attention so let’s see what I end up reading.

I’m really looking forward to this. How about you, are you joining? Let’s have a great time!

Hello Friends! For those of you in the U.S. I hope you are enjoying the three day weekend! I really needed it. I meant to write more last week but I was a bit under the weather after having gotten my second dose of the shingles vaccine so needless to say doing a monthly recap was not high on my priority list.

August was a great reading month. I finished seven books and a couple of those may be on my end of year favorites list. I also read one book for Women In Translation month and that was Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. By now I’m so behind on book reviews that I may have to do several at once before I completely forget if I even liked the books. Well, at least in some cases that could happen.

Of course September marks the kick off to Readers Imbibing Peril reading challenge. You know I’m all over it. I’ll do a post on that soon. Another thing I’m looking forward to is hopefully the end of our heatwave although I just heard that we can expect higher than normal temperatures through the second week in September. Ugh, I’m really tired of 100s.

Finally, I’ve been going back to card making. I used to make cards a long time ago but my card making was quickly taken over by pursuits in mixed media but I have so much paper and I thought why not make some cards. So here is a little card I made for a friend. I used the Jen Hadfield Heart of Home paper pad collection. Mine is a 6 x 6 paper pad which is really perfect for card making. I forgot I had these cute flowers and of course I also have a huge stash of ribbons. So easy and so much fun to make.

So that’s what’s been going on over here at Casa Bookgirl. What was your weekend like and did you get a lot of reading done?