Hello everyone,
The end of another month and it all seemed to pass by in a bit of blur, yet strangely to me it also feels like a long time since it began. Either way, we are now in June and summer is almost upon us. Here in the UK, we are finally creeping beyond the point where warm clothing is a necessity.
April was an incredible month for me and so was always going to be a difficult act to follow, but May was also pretty good. It was not always eventful, but it certainly contained some exceptional highlights which I shall talk about later in the post.
As for my reading, it was another quite steady month. I have become very consistent over the past year and-a-half by managing about five books per month during that time, and once again that was my total this time. There were no five-star reads and it is a few months now since I had one of those, but I was fortunate to pick up some excellent titles nonetheless!
Here are the five books I finished in May:
Stay With Me (audiobook) ⭐⭐⭐
The Hawthorne Legacy ⭐⭐⭐.5
Elektra ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Woman In The Photograph ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Girl A ⭐⭐
Having read The Inheritance Games back in 2020, I finally got around to reading the sequel, and once again it was a lot of fast-paced fun with twists and turns aplenty. That provided a nice antidote to the heavier topics covered by some of the other books, such as the exploration of loss and infertility in Stay With Me and the unsettling events described in Girl A. The latter was disjointed for me and did not live up to my expectations.
Having borrowed it from the library over two years ago, I finally read The Woman In The Photograph, a feminist character study that turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The best book of the month though was probably Elektra, which is beautifully written and another Greek mythology retelling that I will cherish.
In May I was lucky enough to meet Jennifer Saint at the Bath Festival and see her speak about Elektra at an event alongside Sarvat Hasin, author of The Giant Dark. She spoke about the book very eloquently and discussed the subject of retellings; the role of women in the mythology whose stories are being reclaimed, and how the themes within them are so relevant to contemporary audiences.
The same evening I was able to see Susan Stokes-Chapman speak about Pandora, her debut novel which I read earlier this year. That was another excellent and insightful talk, and I was also brave enough to ask the first audience question!
Looking ahead to my June TBR, I am still reading The Gilded Ones, which is an ongoing buddy read, and nearly finished the audiobook of Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson. I shall continue with those, but I shall soon be starting Daughter Of The Moon Goddess, which caught my eye as soon as it was released and I am very excited to be picking that one up.
Further ahead, I am also planning to read As Good As Dead, which is quite possibly my most anticipated read of all. The rest of my TBR for the month has not been decided yet, but I am quietly confident that at least one five star read might come my way.
Although it became gradually less busy in terms of meetings, work was pretty full-on during May, as at the start of the month we began using a new system to complete our tasks. This is the last of a number of changes that have taken place in my job recently and it has been hard to keep up! Most of the time I am just having to power through.
The main day out I had was a trip to Salisbury, where I took a tour of a seventeenth century house and simply enjoyed the lovely weather, making a couple of bookish purchases from charity shops along the way. However, hands down the best moment of the month was seeing The Killers live last week.
They are my favourite band and after a two-year delay due to the pandemic I was finally able to see them for the first time. It was an extremely special night and I had the most amazing time. I was exhausted for a few days afterwards but it was totally worth it.
As we are heading into June, I am hoping to have some nice holidays and days out in the coming weeks, and get through lots of great books in the process. I am looking forward to what lies ahead.
To finish, here are a few blog posts I read and loved during the month:
- NS Ford asked the question of why we continue to blog
- Turning that on its head somewhat, Siena shared many great reasons why you should start a book blog
- Eleenae listed five things she learnt from actively choosing to read non-fiction
- Sophie recommended her favourite young adult contemporary novels. I spotted a couple of favourites on this list!
- Erin shared her current TBR
- In Let’s Talk Bookish, Nicole spoke about book blogging friendships, something which I am eternally grateful for
- Yvonne talked about the settings she has read about recently and the places she has ‘travelled’ to via books
- Amy reviewed The Corset by Laura Purcell, a book which I really enjoyed when I read it in 2020
- Kerri took part in the blog tour for The Merciless Ones and shared her thoughts on the book. It made me look forward to reading it even more – once I finish the first book in the series, that is!
That is everything for this wrap-up. I hope you all have a fantastic June!
Happy reading :)
Stephen Reads Books 