May Wrap-Up

 Hello Interwebs!

I had a great reading month again for May. I finished a grand total of eleven books in the month of May for a grand total of 2,870 pages and an average rating of 4.2 stars. My least favorite book this month was A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes with a rating of 3.5/5 stars and my favorite was Bear Town by Fredrik Backman with a 5/5 star rating. So to jump off here's all the books I read in the month of May. 

• Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary. Read from 5.1.2021 to 5.2.2021 with a 4/5 stars. This is the sixth book in the Ramona Quimby series and the one I think I remember the most fondly from my childhood. 
  
  
  
  
• The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor. Read from 4.29.2021 to 5.3.2021 with a 4/5 star rating.  This is a thriller and about a vicar who moves to a small town and ends up in the middle of a mystery that spans back five hundred years when a group of protestant martyrs were burned at the stake as well as the case of two girls who disappeared thirty years before. 
  
  
  
  
• The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrik Backman. Read on 5.3.2021 with a 5/5 star rating. This is a Backman short story that centers around a man who is dying, his estranged relationship with his family, a budding friendship with a young girl who is also in the hospital, and an impossible choice he has to make. 
  
  
  
  
• Ramona Forever by Beverly Cleary. Read on 5.3.2021 with a 4/5 star rating. This is the seventh birth in the Ramona Quimby series. 
  
  
  
  
• Ramona's World by Beverly Cleary. Read on 5.4.2021 with a 4/5 star rating. The final book in the Ramona Quimby series and a reminder of exactly how much I enjoyed these books as a kid. 
  
  
  
  
• Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman. Read from 5.4.2021 to 5.7.2021 with a 5/5 star rating. Another Backman book, this one follows Britt-Marie, a character first introduced in My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, who has left her cheating husband in order to find a way to make her mark on the world. She ends up finding a room to rent and a temproary job as a caretaker at a community center type building as well as a reluctant coach for a youth soccer team. 
  
  
  
  
• A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. Read from 5.7.2021 to 5.13.2021 with a 3.5/5 star rating. This is a retelling of the events of the Odyssey and events following the Trojan war from the perspective of the women involved. It was okay but definitely not a favorite. 
  
  
  
  
• Bear Town by Fredrik Backman. Read from 5.13.2021 to 5.18.2021 with a 5/5 star rating. Yet another Backman book about a town that is obsessed with hockey and it's star junior team. The foundation of the small town is forever shaken when a violent crime occurs and envelops the hockey culture. 
  
  
  
  
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng from 5.19.2021 to 5.23.2021 with a 4/5 star rating. This is about a girl named Lydia who is pulled dead from the local lake. It was a family saga about the Lees, a Chinese-American family and their progress from meeting until the death of middle child Lydia and the aftermath. 
  
  
  
  
• A Pho Love Story by Loan Le from 5.25.2021 to 5.28.2021 with a 3.5/5 star rating. A young adult romance about teenagers who work for their families' competing pho restaurants. I enjoyed it but I think I would have liked it more if it had just been an enemy to friends progression instead of all the way to a fullblown romance. 
  
  
  
  
• A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf from 5.28.2021 to 5.31.2021 with a 4/5 star rating. This is a nonfiction essay about women in fiction from the 1920s. It introduces the idea that for women to write great fiction, as men have always done, they are required to have the time, space, and money in order to write freely and without constraint. 
  
  
  
  

I also showed more restraint than usual and only obtained 11 more books this month. 

• Pride and Premeditation by Tirzah Price (2021). This is a YA mystery novel inspired by Pride and Prejudice that was a gift from my boyfriend for Mother's Day. 
  
  
  
• Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley (2021). This is a YA mystery novel own-voices novel about a girl on a reservation who gets sucked into a mystery due to her knowledge of chemistry and traditional medicine. 
  
  
  
  
• Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian (2021). This is a historical fiction novel about a puritan woman plotting her escape from an unhappy and violent marriage. 
  
  
  
  
• The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave (2021). This is a thriller about a step-mother and step-daughter trying to solve the mystery when their husband/father disappears leaving behind just a note. 
  
  
  
  
• Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (1996). This is a historical fiction novel about a woman named Grace who is working in the governor's mansion while serving her sentence for killing her old employer and his mistress, a crime she insists she's not guilty of. 
  
  
  
  
• The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz (1994). This is a collection of essays from humor writer Fran Lebowitz. 
  
  
  
  
• On This Day in History Shit went Down by James Fell (2021). This is a nonfiction book about the crazy things in history that happened. 
  
  
  
• The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green (2021). A series of essays by John Green about life in the age of humans, providing a star rating of each item. 
  
  
  
• The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren (2021). A romance novel about a single mother who does a high-tech online dating service where she gets matched with the company's founder.
  
  
  
  
• A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression by Jane Ziegelman; Andrew Coe (2016). A nonfiction book about food in the Great Depression.
  
  
  
  
• Virginia Woolf: The Complete Works by Virginia Woolf (compiled 2018). A compilation of all of Virginia Woolf's novels, essays and other collected writings in one volume. 
  
  
  
  

So that's what's up with my May reading and book buying. I enjoyed all the books I read this month and I'm really happy about the books I got this month. Now onto June (which started like six days ago but no matter). 

Happy Reading!

Richelle