May Wrap-Up
I know that we’re so far into June that this is almost ridiculous to post right now, but I’ve been moving this month and that’s delayed every attempt thus far to finish (or even start) this post, but despite the stress of buying a new house and moving I did actually manage to read a ton in May and finally after months of trying I got caught up to where I should be to meet my goal of reading 150 books this year! So here’s how May’s reading went for me:
A Life on Our Planet by Sir David Attenborough - One of my favorite types of films or tv shows to watch are nature documentaries, primarily those narrated by David Attenborough. So I was very interested to read his book when it was released last year. I listened to the audiobook (which he, of course, narrated himself) and I particularly appreciated hearing about his background and all of the experience he has traveling the world and observing the natural wonders it holds. He discussed how the world (and the way humanity observes it) has changed in the nearly 100 years he’s been alive and paths we can take moving forward to ensure the world stays a happy and habitable place to live for future generations. There were sections partway through where it seemed very full of doom and gloom and quite a bit like “we’ve irrevocably destroyed the planet and everything is terrible” but he came out of that with many options humans can take to help protect and restore particularly important ecosystems so the overall effect ended up being more hopeful than it initially appeared. 4/5 stars.
Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater - This is book two in the Dreamer Trilogy which follows the events and some of the characters from Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle series. I thought I would love this series a lot more than I do because I love Ronan and there’s so much to explore with his character and abilities, but I don’t really find it as mystically captivating as the original series. I do still enjoy the books, despite them having a totally different vibe, but I think if I didn’t feel so connected to the characters already I wouldn’t love this series on it’s own. 3.5/5 stars.
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green - A few years ago John Green started a podcast where he reviewed facets of the human centered planet on a 5 star scale. Things reviewed ranged from Canada Geese to the Hall of Presidents at Disney World to Human’s Capacity for Wonder and it’s one of my absolutely favorite podcasts so I was thrilled to find out he was making it a book. I listened to the audiobook which John Green narrates himself and I think it’s one of the few books that I’d really recommend to any reader. It’s incredibly informative, while also being funny and the chapters are short enough that you can read/listen to it in very easily palatable pieces if desired (I read it all in a day through!). Honestly just a really, really great book.
Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells - This is the 6th book in the Murderbot Diaries. Thus far the series has been comprised of 4 novellas with the 5 book being the first full-length novel. Book 6 takes the series back to novellas and I really do feel like that format works best for the stories being told. These books follow a Security bot who refers to themself as Murderbot. They’ve hacked their system to provide them with a freedom of thought and action not generally available to their kind and are now going on a lot of adventures through space. This particular installment is more of a whodunit murder mystery and it was really enjoyable to read, but not quite a standout from any of the other books in the series. 4/5 stars
Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas - I didn’t know before I started this book that it was a Peter Pan retelling. I don’t always love retellings, but this one was fairly interesting. It takes place in the Pacific Northwest in a small town where children have begun to go missing. This puts our protagonist Wendy Darling back into the spotlight because when she was a child she and her brothers went missing and only Wendy made it home. Wendy is further pulled into the mystery when she encounters Peter Pan who she believed to only be a character from the stories her mom made up. Peter tells her that they have to get the missing kids back soon or they’ll suffer the same fate as her brothers did. I liked this book, but I didn’t love it. I thought it dragged a bit and I wasn’t invested much in the story or the characters, but I did really love the ending and the overall outcome of the mystery element of the story. 3/5 stars
How Lucky by Will Leitch - This was my May Book of the Month pick. It follows our main character Daniel who lives in the college town of Athens, GA and works from home as a customer service rep for a local airline. Daniel has spinal muscular atrophy and is wheelchair bound. He often passes his free time observing the neighborhood from his porch. A college exchange student goes missing one day and Daniel soon realizes that he may be the last person to have seen her before she vanished. This drags him into the investigation and its related dangers. I enjoyed this book. I don’t know how well it represents living with SMA, but I like that Will Leitch was encouraged by people he knows to feature a character with that particular illness as it’s not a perspective I’ve often been able to read from. The mystery was captivating enough, but it’s probably not near the top of my list of thrillers I’d recommend. 3/5 stars.
Six of Crows Duology re-read by Leigh Bardugo - It was one of my reading goals at the beginning of this year to re-read more books and finally, 5 months in, I managed to do just that! I read the Grisha trilogy over April/May because I wanted to be able to read Leigh Bardugo’s latest King Of Scars duology with full context of the series and I figured while I was immersed in the world I may as well re-visit Ketterdam and it’s band of misfits. This duology follows a large cast of characters led by Kaz Brekker criminal extraordinaire. Him and his crew are presented with the opportunity to earn unimaginable riches for pulling off what seems to be an impossible heist and we follow their efforts to plan and execute that mission. I love this series; both books are 5 stars for me and I imagine this won’t be the last time I re-read it. Leigh Bardugo has an absolutely masterful ability to not only tell an amazing story featuring so many characters, but to make them all so well-rounded and interesting at the same time. If you like ragtag groups of friends with questionable morals accomplishing astounding feats this book is for you.
Have you read anything good lately? Anything you’re excited to read this summer? Let me know!
