Let's talking about something more fun that covid - reading! May was a stellar reading month for me. I read 9 books and none of them were duds/"just ok." Everything was 4 or 5 stars! I mean I gave a whopping 6 books a 5-star rating! I have sort of loosened my requirements for giving a book 5 stars, though. It's the best way to communicate that I really loved a book and think others should read it. I used to be pretty stingy with 5-star ratings. But I couldn't tell you why! In 2021, I gave 19 books 5 stars and in 2020 I gave 13 books 5 stars. So far in 2022, I've given 11 books 5 stars!
Here are my 5-star reads which are very diverse!
Empire of Pain was an excellent narrative non-fiction book about the (evil) family that significantly contributed to the opioid crisis.
Lessons in Chemistry is one of my favorite books of the year and I'm certain it will make my top 10 of the year. I loved the characters in the novel, but especially the dog who is a prominent character in the book. And I'm not even a dog person! This book deals with heavier topics, but there is also levity and joy. I especially loved that this was a debut by a 65yo woman!
Notes on an Execution has alternating narrators - a serial killer on death row and 3 women who were impacted/tangential to his life. It was incredibly well-done but it's a very heavy book.
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is a novel about grief, written from the perspective of a younger sister mourning the sudden death of her older 16yo sister.
Love and Saffon was a delightful epistolary novel which makes it a perfect summer read in my opinion as it's so tough to put down. My only complaint is that it was too short as just under 200 pages.
The next set of books are 4-star reads and were also great! Trigger warning of domestic abuse for Finding Freedom.
We read a lot of great books together in May, all of which came from the library of course. These are the ones that were read multiple times.
I have Elisabeth to thank for highlighting The Odd One Out. She talks about books on a nearly weekly basis in her Friday post and I always pull up my library account and request everything they liked. This is a fun search and find book.
John's Turn is by one of our favorite authors, Mac Barnett. We will read anything by him. This book is about a boy dancing at his school's weekly talent show. It was a sweet, heart-warming read.
Wild Baby is about a mischievous monkey. We jokingly said the baby was Will. We are working on reading all of this local author's work as all of her books have been hits!
What did you read in May? Do you rate books? If so, are you stingy or generous with your ratings?
7 comments:
I haven't read any of those books - I will definitely look into a couple of them! After I finish my giant stack!
Like you, I feel like I have been much less stingy with my 5-star ratings this year. If I love a book and there's nothing glaring that I would have changed about the characters or the plot, it gets 5 stars!
Lessons in Chemistry and Love & Saffron are on my list to read soon! It's so cool that Bonnie Garmus wrote her debut in her 60s!
What a great month of reads. If I only read 4s or 5s in a month, I would be ecstatic! I've heard such good things about Empire of Pain, but I'm not sure I can handle it - maybe I'll have to put on my big girl pants and just order it from the library.
I read so few books in May. I picked up The Anti-Diet at my sister's in the US, but it has been nice, actually, to push pause on reading the last few weeks. I didn't know I needed a break, but it feels good (I just always have so many books on the go and it can feel like another "to-do" at points).
I DO rate books...and I have to admit I am pretty stingy. Actually - let me re-word that. I give low books the benefit of the doubt (I tend to round up), but I am very, very picky about rating anything a 5. Except for picture books. Because picture books are one of my favourite things in the world and there are so many good ones! I ONLY rate picture books that I give a 4 or 5 star rating to.
I've also complained before about not having 1/2 stars on Goodreads. I really do wish I could give something 3.5 or 4.5. When in doubt, though, I would round a 4.5 star book down to 4.
And now I'm feeling really, really mean...
Oh! And I'm so glad you enjoyed The Odd One Out!! My kids both loved it; we also thought The Book Hog was really cute too (I can't remember if I rated that one at some point; I have a feeling it was more a 4/5 stars to us).
My reading has been very slow lately- life has just been very, very busy. When I do have "free time", I have a zillion things I want to do with it- some things I have to do, some things I just want to do (like, my photo project! Or writing trip recap blog posts, etc.). So I keep finding myself NOT reading, and choosing to do other things, although I do love to read too. But for me, reading always feels like it has to be the thing I do when I "don't have anything else to do", which is like, never. Ha. I've been trying to carve out a little MORNING reading time, first thing, because I keep finding that if I wait until evening, it never happens. The boys go to bed too late, Ivan is around, we watch a show, etc...just doesn't happen.
On the plus side, a local FB friend recently posted that she was getting rid of a bunch of books for free, so I snagged free hard cover copies of Educated, The Vanishing Half, and The Four Winds- all books I had on my "want to read" list.
Well, everyone has been loving Lessons in Chemistry! I just got it from the library and am starting it tonight. I'm definitely looking forward to it.
I'm just finishing The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar- so good!
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