May Wrap-up – Part One

I felt like May was… a gaping hole in my memory. The month flew by and I barely remember a lot of what I did and read. June has been, well we all know how much of a mess June has been, but May was a special kind of strange for me. 

Books I should have Thoughts posts coming on:

• A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh
• A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane
• The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

So. The books I don’t have a lot to say about:

• I picked up The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin on a whim from the bookstore (along with two other books I wound up DNF’ing). I’d heard some buzz on it a few years ago but didn’t get a copy at the time. I paid a big old three dollars for this copy but I’m really glad I did, and would say it’s worth the full ticket price. This is about a young girl dealing with the death of her friend by fixating. It deals heavily with grief and I thought it was done beautifully. I would highly recommend this middle grade novel if you’re interested or you want to get something for the child in your life. Just be aware, it’s so very, very sad at times.
• I read the first issue of the new Doctor Aphra run – I enjoyed it. But it was a single issue so not many thoughts were to be had.
• I picked up another short work in The Jewel and Her Laidary by Fran Wilde. This one… I think maybe I waited too long to read? It just felt very much done. The beats and tempo, the message, it all felt like something I’d read before and read frequently. Perhaps if I’d read this when it came out a few years ago it would have made more of an impact. 
• I thought after that a non-fiction book would be a good pick so I went into The Library Book by Susan Orlean. Again, this was a bummer. This had so much hype and this book was so recommended that I was very excited. However this felt as if this should have been two things – a short essay about the crime in question, and a history book of libraries. By the end I was frustrated with the lack of meat to the crime story that this was pitched on. Which made the history part incredibly hard for me to enjoy. 

The first part of the month may be an indication, now that I’ve written all this, as to why I felt so lukewarm in May. What a downer! I hope everyone else’s May went better. The second part of this should be up in a week or two after this!