What We Read in May

First things first, I guest posted over on NGS’s blog as part of her 20th Anniversary guest blogger series and shared the 20 ways blogging has made my life better - and my intro includes an explanation for my (very odd) blog title!

May was another solid reading month for me. I finished 9 books! I had a work trip to Napa at the start of the month which meant lots of plane reading time. I’ve kind of given up on working on planes because I can’t get my VPN to work which means I can’t open any files so I just keep up with emails on my phone and let myself read for pleasure.

Best of the month: 

The Seven Year Slip was an easy breezy book with a bit of magical realism. The protagonist inherits her aunt’s NYC apartment and discovers that sometimes when she enters the apartment, the clock turns back 7 years. I don’t always like time travel but it worked for me in this book. The Other Side of Disappearing was a 3.5 star book that I rounded up to 4. The protagonist was forced to grow up early when her mother abandoned her family, forcing the 20-something protagonist to take over the care of her half-sister. Their mom left because she fell for a scam artist/hustler. In this book, the sisters team up with a podcast duo to find out what happened to their mom. Fat Talk was my book club’s May selection. We had a really good discussion about the book. There are some controversial topics in the book but that’s what makes for a great discussion. James is a retelling of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective. I loved this book and gave it 5 stars but I don’t understand why it’s described as ‘uproariously funny’ in the publishers blurb - do not read this for humor. I found the content very heavy. Last but not least, Congratulations, the Best is Over was another 5-star read! It’s a collection of essays that made me laugh out loud which is really saying something because books rarely make me LOL. He covers both light and heavy topics with a healthy dose of humor. This is his 2nd collection of essays and I preferred it to his first (but also liked his debut). 

Just ok to meh:

Competing Devotions is a book I read after it was recommended during an Ezra Klein podcast about balancing work and caring for a family. It was a little too academic and I don’t know what I was supposed to take away. Trust was ultimately too cerebral for me. It’s about a man who worked in the finance industry and was criticized for how well he did during the stock market crash of 1929. I liked but didn’t love The Lonely Hearts Book Club. It was good but I would have to look up the plot line. The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control was just ok. I liked the premise of the book but it felt overly long and then the last 2 chapters were something like 9 principles to remember and 11 suggestions or something to that effect. It reminded me of this bank conference I helped organize 10+ years ago when I worked at a different company. At the closing lunch, the head of my division (which was a person my retired friend and I did not care for to put it lightly) closed out the conference with a text-heavy series of slides with something like ‘the 14 things to takeaway from this conference.’ Who can remember 14 things? Most humans can’t. Unless you are constantly referencing something, at most you can maybe remember 3-5 things. So this book end on a meh note and I couldn’t tell you any of the things I was supposed to take away and apply to my life. I did take away the general theme that it’s ok to be a perfectionist and she points out how you don’t encounter men who refer to themselves a ‘recovering perfectionist’ or something to that effect and yet women do this All. The. Time. (I have been guilty of saying this as well but will not say that going forward.) 

DNF:

I abandoned the buzzy book, Everybody in My Family has Killed Someone at about the 10% mark. I didn’t like the narration style which included breaking the 4th wall. Sometimes I like that style; this time I did not. The book opens with the protagonist’s sibling showing up at his house with a body that needs to be buried (it happens right away so is not a spoiler). I could not even wrap my mind around this as an enneagram 1. Do NOT come to me to help bury a body is what I am saying. I am not that kind of ride or die friend because that kind of task would haunt me and I do not want to go to jail for assisting in a crime. 

The boys’ reading:

Taco has gotten over his obsession with ‘The Circus Ship.’ I love that book but reading it daily can kind of ruin it for a while. Paul has kind of fallen off the wagon of reading together and instead wants to read Dog Man and Wimpy Kid books on his own. It’s great that he can read on his own but I really love cuddling up with him with chapter books! Late in the month I did talk him into reading book 7 of the Dragon Masters series which he really enjoys. We can read them in 2 sittings so we fly through those books. We had read one chapter of Harry Potter but decided to pause that book until he’s a bit older and heartier in terms of intense content. 

Did you read anything great in May?