Mid-Month Reading Update: Thank God for Audiobooks
Plus, all the good links from around the web that I collected for you this month
Hi, friends.
Happy Sunday! Where I live, it’s currently gray and rainy and chilly, in the 50s. A perfect day for cozying up on the couch and reading books.
…Except that I have a curious 10-month-old with an attention span of about 30 seconds who has recently figured out how to pull up to stand and cruise along the furniture. (Adventure! is! out there!, and by “out there” I mean all over my living room.)
Fortunately, she tends to take really great morning naps on the weekends (I’m talking two glorious hours), which means I did get the chance to catch up on book reviews and sneak in a few pages earlier today. Then we took an afternoon field trip to Barnes & Noble so I could pick up a freshly signed copy of Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell, which is a Hugo Award finalist. Now she’s napping again, and so here I am with you.
May has been good to me so far — at least on the reading front. It helped that I spent an abnormally high amount of time in the car listening to audiobooks, between our trip home from the beach (13 hours over two days) and a work retreat to which I decided to drive (5 hours each way). I’m psyched to have finished five books so far, with two more currently in progress.
But more important than that, as I caught up on reviews this morning, I realized that I gave every single book I’ve read in May between 4.5–5 stars on the StoryGraph. They’re all excellent in very different ways, but wow have I been having a great time.
What I’ve read so far this month
A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher 🎧: My first Hugo Award finalist from this year’s list (besides The Ministry of Time, which I read before the list came out). I had such a great time with this standalone. Storytelling at its best.
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel 📖🎧: I am SO excited to discuss this with the #BookerOfTheMonth crew (tomorrow!). Especially after it became a Pulitzer finalist, too. It truly is a masterful piece of writing.
The Dark Mirror (The Bone Season, #5) by Samantha Shannon† 🎧: I’m caught up and can now definitively say that this is one of the best fantasy series I have read in a very long time. Better yet, it doesn’t fall prey to the current trend of kind of trying to be romantasy just for marketing reasons. It’s simply dystopian fantasy, incredibly written. You need to read it!
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar* 📖🎧: Just as beautiful as I had hoped. Don’t skip the print/audio tandem read on this one, trust me.
The Antidote by Karen Russell*† 🎧: I knew I was going to love this and I was right, but I had no idea how deep it would cut. More people need to be talking about it. Rooting for this one this prize season!
Currently reading
Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put by Annie B. Jones* 📖: I’d been waiting for exactly the right mood to strike me for this one, and it finally did. Loving it.
Silver Elite (TBD Trilogy, #1) by Dani Francis*† 📖🎧: Yes, I’m reading it so you don’t have to (unless it turns out to be really good, in which case maybe I will make you). I’m maybe 15% in and intrigued.
Still on my May TBR
I’ve been feeling a little stifled by my TBR lately (rare for me! I love making plans and following them!), and I recently realized that I am only four books away from a 100% feedback ratio on Netgalley (!). Three of them were on my May TBR anyway. So I think I’m going to bump that last one up and clear myself of obligations to make way for a real, honest-to-goodness — dare I say it — mood reading summer?
Anyway, those NetGalley books are:
Faithbreaker (Fallen Gods, #3) by Hannah Kaner*† (out now)
Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman*† (out now)
When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley* (out now)
The Art of Vanishing by Morgan Pager* (out 7/1)
*print copy gifted to me by the publisher
†audiobook gifted to me by the publisher
Hello, beautiful links
This essay on whether people are bad at their jobs or the jobs are just bad by Anne Helen Petersen is extremely good (as always).
Theatre-loving friends: ICYMI, Tony nominations are in!!!
If you aren’t sure where to start with Emily Henry, the New York Times made you a guide (gift link)
Speaking of Westeros: SAD!!!
- had Annie B. Jones, author of Ordinary Time (which I listed under the currently reading section above), on the Fiction Matters podcast, and it’s a really great conversation
If you’re looking for an actual explanation for what happened with the Pulitzer this year, the New York Times has you covered again (another gift link)
Adam Sol, who wrote my favorite learn-to-read-poetry book, has a new blog post breaking down a very fun and impressive poem
A look back at 100 Mrs. Dalloway book covers in celebration of its 100th birthday
ICYMI
I had Morgan Pager, aka author of The Art of Vanishing and creator behind @nycbookgirl, on the “Me, My Shelf, and I” column.
I also shared a list of books that would make awesome graduation presents.
And on Instagram:
As always, thanks for sharing your corner of the internet with me! It would mean a lot if you were to take a second to like this post. I’d love to hear how your May reading is going in the comments, too.
Finally, if you like this newsletter, please send a few friends my way. I’m less than 20 subscribers away from 1,000!
Until next time!
— Deedi (she/her)