What we read in May

It’s a new month! Yay! I am not sad to see April go because that means we are closer to summer and warmer weather! April was a solid reading month for me since I had flights to LA, Tucson, and Chicago. On work trips, I tend to read on flights (Delta’s free WI-FI has been awful so working isn’t an option) and a lot in the evening if I don’t have dinners at night. So I managed to read 8 books! 

Favorites:

These were my favorites! Hello Beautiful will for sure make my top 10 books of 2023 - and how gorgeous is the cover!! It was sooo good. It’s a character driven novel about 4 sisters that live in Chicago. We watch their lives unfold over several decades. I think it will especially resonate with those with bigger families. This would be an excellent bookclub book. Jacqueline in Paris is a historical fiction novel about Jackie Kennedy’s junior year in post-war Paris. I’m a huge fan of Jackie and this was well-researched and particularly focused on the fear of communism in the wake of WWII. Lastly I Have Some Questions For You has Serial season one vibes as it’s about a podcaster that returns to her high school boarding school to look into a murder that happened during her senior year in 1995. I loved this author’s previous book, The Great Believers; this book was very different but still excellent. I heard an interview of the author and she doesn’t love being compared to Serial but it’s hard to not draw that comparison.

Great:

The last 5 were all great! Bully Market is a memoir about a woman’s experience working on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs in the early aughts. I probably wouldn’t recommend it unless you work in finance or are curious about the horrid treatment of women in finance (which has luckily significantly improved but still has a ways to go, especially on the ‘sell side’ of the industry). Small Things Like These is a slim, quiet Irish novel about a home for unwed mothers that has gotten a lot of buzz lately. I liked it but didn’t love it - I think I would have preferred a longer book with more exposition about what was happening but it was still great. More Than You’ll Ever Know is similar to I Have Some Questions in that it’s about a journalist researching a crime that happened many years ago. It’s about a woman who was living a double life - she has a husband in TX and another in Mexico. When one finds out about the other, he allegedly kills the other husband. Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is about Matthew Perry’s struggle with alcohol and drug addiction. I think he said he spent $7 million on rehab programs! It was a sad memoir that made me wonder how anyone kicks addiction given that an incredibly wealthy, privileged person barely kicked it. I read Girls They Write Songs About after reading about it on Nicole’s blog (hi Nicole!). It’s an excellent look at a complicated lifelong female friendship and I especially loved that it was set in NYC as that is one of my favorite cities. 

Boys’ reads:

Laying on the ground, reading a book. This makes my heart so happy!

We haven’t checked out anything noteworthy lately so I guess we are in a bit of a picture book reading lull. But Will’s interest in books continues to grow and he will happily read book after book after book! Paul is still learning to read. It’s not something we are pushing as I know he’ll learn to read in school but it is very cool to see him learn to read!! 

Did you read anything great in April?