Wrap-Up: May

• Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant (★★★★☆)
• The Broken Girls by Simone St. James (★★★★☆)
• The Wicked Deep by Shea Earnshaw (★★☆☆☆)
• Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall (★★★★☆)
• More Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops by Jen Campbell (★★★★★)
• Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness In Library & Information Science by  Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (★★★★☆)
• Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney (★★☆☆☆)
• Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian (★★★☆☆)
• Oedipus the King by Sophocles (★★★☆☆)
• Antigone by Sophocles (★★★☆☆)
• Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (★★★★★)
• The Pisces by Melissa Broder (★★☆☆☆)

MONTHLY TOTAL: 12
YEARLY SO FAR: 43

I’m impressed with myself again, although if I’m being honest I don’t think I really read 12 books, as the two plays and the Jen Campbell book don’t really count…do they? They’re so short I don’t know if I should count them towards my book total…still, even without those three books that makes for nine full-length books read, which is still pretty great! I’m not sure where this fire to read is coming from, given that this time last year my average was four books a month!

Mostly decent reads, with the stand-out and favorite of the month definitely being Home Fire, and the least favorite being The Pisces. As you can tell this month features more adult fic than I would normally read and not too much YA (only two!). I’m not sure why, but I’ve just been in a weird mood to read adult fic lately, though I think The Pisces has sufficiently and single-handedly deprived me of that mood. It’s back to YA and fantasy for me for a bit, I think!

To that end I’m currently reading R.F. Kuang’s newly released The Poppy War! I’m only about 100 pages in but I am loving it so far and getting some serious Harry Potter vibes! I’m also still making my way through Jane Eyre…slowly but surely…last month I was 85 pages in, this month I think I’m 120-something pages in? UGH. I don’t hate it or anything but it’s just so dry and boring compared to everything else I want to be reading. Like, there’s always something so much better at my fingertips so that I never want to be reading Jane Eyre.

I have a pile of books from the library that, in  theory, I will be finishing this month. Said pile includes The Queens of Innis Lear (a holdover from last month), One of Us is Lying (yay, hyped thrillers!), Foolish Hearts (a contemporary romance I’m 99% sure I won’t like but I want to read anyway), Lucy & Linh (an obscure cultural contemporary YA novel about Chinese girls at private school), and She Walks in Shadows (a collection of Lovecraftian short stories written by women). The YA in here are short and I’m certain I will get through them pretty quick, but I have to say I’m intimidated by Innis Lear and I don’t have a great track record with weird fiction (the short stories) so we’ll have to see.

In terms of other plans I’m playing it by ear, mood-reading it up in here! I’ve been hearing great things about Dread Nation so I have to see about getting my hands on that, and I’ve just gotten an eBook of Leah on the Offbeat! I recently purchased a stunning and unusual amount of books and I want to get to those too…I might do a book haul post here but I’m also strongly considering starting a Booktube channel on YouTube so I might wait to do a book haul video. We’ll see!

Mini Life Update: I’m done with the spring semester, won’t be starting summer classes until mid-July, and I’m nearly done with my Fulbright essays, and work is chill since it’s summer break, so I’m pretty much sittin’ pretty in June. Just caught up on Jane the Virgin (THAT ENDING), catching up now on Supernatural, watched a weird Gothic show called Requiem, just about finished Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, and thinking of starting either The Crown or Victoria. (I like how my life update is 50% TV shows.)

What’s up with you guys?