May 2024 Reading Wrap Up
Hey hi hello friends, and welcome back to my blog!
May felt like it lasted twice as long as it should have. I fully accredit this to my new insomnia medication, which is making me wake hours before my usual wake-up time, and because of this the days feel super stretched. I find myself recalling events that feel like they happened last week or so, but when I bring it up to my mother she tells me that the event I'm thinking about happened literally yesterday or the day before. I think it will take me a while to get used to this new schedule, but I'll take it in stride if it means I get a good nights sleep at the end of the day.
Another side effect of being awake more hours in the day is I've been reading a lot more. Actually I've been doing a lot more of everything...it's hard to find enough things to do that will take up the entire day now. In the month of May, I read 17 books: 7 novels, 1 novella, 1 nonfiction, 1 poetry collection, 1 graphic novel, and 6 manga volumes. Most of what I read once again came from the library, with only 5 books from my physical TBR (oops...). I also DNFd 3 books this month, which is odd for me but they were all a little out of my comfort zone and I wasn't feeling like pushing through such devastating (and yes, boring) books while I wasn't in the best head space.
Okay, let's get into the wrap up!
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Novels
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia, YA
Star rating/CAWPILE: 3.5 stars/6.96 CAWPILE
Page count: 541 pages
Day(s) read: 5.01 - 5.04
Final thoughts: This was May's pick for my mother's book club, and since I'd never read it before I figured it was a good time to pick it up. The biggest plus for this book is that you really saw into Coriolanus's head, and so you were able to see just how self-serving and conniving he really was. That was also my main critique of the movie, funnily enough. The movie tried extra hard to make Coriolanus a likable character--he jumped into action all on his own, his worst lines were given to other characters, and their best lines were given to him. But honestly, I stick by my original opinion from when this book came out: this was completely unnecessary. There was no reason to look into Coriolanus's past. I know some people view this as a villain origin story, but Coriolanus was always a villain, and a "betrayal" from a love interest wasn't the catalyst on his road to evil.
Translated from the French by Ros Schwartz
Genre: Dystopia, Literary Fiction, Adult
Star rating/CAWPILE: 5 stars/9.39 CAWPILE
Page count: 175 pages
Day(s) read: 5.07 - 5.08
Final thoughts: This was also a book club read, but one on Fable called the Chapters & Caffeine book club. I had wanted to read this book for a while so once again, I jumped on the opportunity when I saw it present itself. And wow, am I glad that I did! This book might end up being one of my favorites of the entire year! I don't usually enjoy such ambiguous novels, especially ones with open endings such as this, but for some reason this book scratched all the right itches in my brain. First off, the writing was incredible. It's not like it was super flowery or purple prose, but it still managed to come across that way despite being objectively straightforward. I wasn't particularly attached to any of the characters, but I still felt for them. What really sold me was the atmosphere and setting. How could a place so bleak and desolate end up being so full of life? I highly, highly recommend you pick this book up for yourselves.
Genre: Mythology, Historical Fiction, Adult
Star rating/CAWPILE: 3.5 stars/6.50 CAWPILE
Page count: 304 pages
Day(s) read: 5.05 - 5.09
Final thoughts: We all know that Greek mythology retellings are sort of my schtick at this point, so who is surprised I picked another one up this month? No one? That's what I figured. This was decent enough, all around. It didn't do or say anything that I hadn't read a million times before, but I suppose that's on me and not the author, since as I said before, I've read a lot of myth retellings. I can definitely appreciate the care and dedication that went into creating this novel, as evidenced by the author's note at the end. Also, despite all the retellings I've read, this was my first on Medea. We shall have to see how it compares to the other 2024 Medea release once that comes out.
Genre: Fantasy, Coming of Age, YA
Star rating/CAWPILE: 4.5 stars/8.00 CAWPILE
Page count: 392 pages
Day(s) read: 5.15 - 5.17
Final thoughts: It'd been a while since I'd truly read a YA fantasy novel, but I knew that I liked Tessa Gratton's writing, and so I figured I would give their YA a fair shot. Again, I'm very happy that I did! I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this novel. I liked watching our main character grow and change throughout the narrative, in true coming-of-age fashion. Also, you have to appreciate how thoroughly gay this book was. I don't think there was a single character in this entire story that wasn't queer in some way or another. I also really appreciated the commentary on gender-fluidness, especially considering the author is gender-fluid and nonbinary themselves.
Genre: Fantasy, Coming of Age, YA
Star rating/CAWPILE: 4 stars/7.46 CAWPILE
Page count: 432 pages
Day(s) read: 5.18 - 5.22
Final thoughts: The sequel to Night Shine, and I'm a little bummed that I didn't like this book as much as the first one. Of course, a four star rating is still an excellent rating, but it just didn't have the same magical feeling to me that Night Shine did. This book is a second-generation story, so it follows new characters after the ones from the first book grew up. They still played a role in this book, but not the main role. I was a little upset when I first realized that, because I don't usually enjoy generational tales like this one. The world was still the same so it wasn't as bad of a let down as I was worried about, but again, I just didn't vibe with the new main characters the same way I did with the main characters of Night Shine. Still, a very good YA fantasy duology.
Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, YA
Star rating/CAWPILE: 3 stars/5.64 CAWPILE
Page count: 364 pages (11 hrs 29 mins on audio)
Day(s) read: 5.22 - 5.23
Final thoughts: I had put this book off for a couple of months when I realized this wasn't a direct sequel to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, but instead a companion novel. And what did I just say? I don't love sequels that follow different characters. This book was definitely more of a let down than Moon Dark Smile, and that's primarily because I didn't really care about Lovelace's plotline at all. I was much more interested in Pepper's chapters, but that was only half of the book. It does make me wonder how this book will connect to the others later on in the series. At least, I sure hope that they do, otherwise I'll be even more irritated.
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Translated from the Russian by David MacDuff
Genre: Classics, Literary Fiction, Adult
Star rating/CAWPILE: 4 stars/7.68 CAWPILE
Page count: 1013 pages (48 hrs 6 mins on audio)
Day(s) read: 4.02 - 5.28
Final thoughts: Ah, the piece de resistance of May. It took me two months to read this tome, partly because I was listening to the audiobook on Spotify. Did you know that Spotify limits your monthly audiobook credits to a mere 15 hours? Even if I was reading this book at 2x speed (which I was), I still wouldn't have been able to get through the whole book in one month. That bothers me so much, honestly. But I digress. This book certainly wasn't my favorite classic of all time, even of 2024 (hello, The Count of Monte Cristo), but I am still happy that I read it. The character work was truly fascinating, and the commentary on the judicial system, religious reform, and child neglect was masterful. I feel like I need to watch a dozen analysis videos in order to fully grasp what happened, though.
Novellas
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Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Adult
Star rating/CAWPILE: 4.5 stars/8.39 CAWPILE
Page count: 128 pages (2 hrs 34 mins on audio)
Day(s) read: 5.19 (ONE DAY READ)
Final thoughts: This is the fifth book in the singing hills cycle, and it might just be my new favorite! I really loved the eerie, gothic vibes of this one. It reminded me of stories like Dracula or Bluebeard, but it had a subversive twist at the end which I really liked. While I know a bit about foxes in East Asian mythology, I don't know enough to make any of these novellas predictable. I don't say this about a lot of series, but I hope the Singing Hills Cycle never ends! I could read about Chih, Almost Brilliant, and their adventures until the end of time and never get bored.
Nonfiction
Genre: Sociology, Adult
Star rating/CAWPILE: 3.5 stars/6.64 CAWPILE
Page count: 253 pages
Day(s) read: 5.10 - 5.18
Final thoughts: I don't have much to say about this book, to be perfectly honest. I thought it was well researched and well written, but it didn't really leave me with much personal impact. That could be because I can't relate to the author with her exact disability, but as a disabled person myself I think I was hoping for a little more than what I got. More of what, however, I can't pinpoint.
Poetry
Genre: Queer Poetry, Feminism, Adult
Star rating/CAWPILE: N/A
Page count: 176 pages
Day(s) read: 5.31 (ONE DAY READ)
Final thoughts: Big oof. I remember really liking Trista Mateer's first poetry collection in this goddess series, Aphrodite Made Me Do It, but after reading this I'm second guessing past Ally in her choices. This is meant to be modern poetry, but I would be remiss to call most of this collection poetry. I mean, you can't slap single sentences onto a page and call it poetry. It doesn't work like that, unfortunately. Even as someone who has dabbled in the "Instagram Poetry" craze, I can recognize poor writing when I see it. There was absolutely nothing of substance here. Maybe other people will feel different, in fact I hope that they do, because I felt like this was a waste of time and money.
Graphic Novels
Genre: Science Fiction, Horror, YA
Star rating/CAWPILE: 3 stars/5.32 CAWPILE
Page count: 187 pages
Day(s) read: 5.04 - 5.05
Final thoughts: Full transparency, I picked this up because Maggie Stiefvater wrote it. I knew that it was gonna be twisty, magical, and a little creepy. It wasn't the best writing I've seen Maggie put out (I mean, nothing can surpass The Raven Cycle in my eyes, so...) but I still thought it was decent. What I didn't think was decent was how abrupt the ending was. None of my questions were answered! There was no aftermath, no conclusion...I wasn't a fan of that. I felt a little cheated in all honesty.
Manga
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Coming of Age, Seinen
Star rating/CAWPILE: N/A
Page count: 1,172 pages
Day(s) read: 5.12 (ONE DAY READ)
Final thoughts: My friend bought me the first volume of this series for Christmas in 2022, so I've been holding off on reading this series for nearly a year and a half at this point. And for why? I had so much fun with this! It's over the top and ridiculous and there were definitely a few scenes that had me blushing in second-hand embarrassment, but I can look past that. I truly loved the attention to detail, from the costumes to the doll making. I don't really care about the romance, but I'll stick around for the fashion!
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Total page count: 5,137 pages
Favorite book of May: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
DNFs this month: No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
The Tatami Galaxy by Tomohito Morimi
No unfinished books this month
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And that's it for May! I can't believe we're in the final month of quarter two.
What was the best book you read in May? Let me know in the comments below, or DM me on Instagram (link in sidebar under the heading "More Media").
Until next time!
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