April-May Reads
In which two whole months get away from me
I lost two weeks of May to surgery/hospitalization and the fog of painkillers afterward. I never shared about April or May reads, even though I kept meaning to.
At this point, wrapping up all 45+ books I read wholly or partially in those two months feels exhausting. So instead, how about a new segment I shall call Fabulous or DNF (?)
Fabulous or DNF (?)
Here are twenty titles as options.
The Reality of Us by Emma Mugglestone
Ghosts of Sicily by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Winner Takes All by Emily Martin
Wildflower by Becky Jenkinson
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
Boston, 1776 by J.D. Dickey
How to Fake it in Society by KJ Charles
London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
Act Like It by Lucy Parker
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Kulti by Mariana Zapata
An Artful Dodge by Karen Odden
A Spy Among Friends by Ben Mcintyre
Headliners by Lucy Parker
If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane
Cover Story by Mhairi McFarlane
All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
How to Kill a Language by Sophia Galer Smith
Paved Paradise by Hery Grabar
Care to guess which of those were Fabulous and which I Did Not Finish?
The answer is, I DNFed the first 7, and gave 8-20 either 4.5 or 5 stars. Six of the fabulous were rereads, because I needed comfort in my recuperation. Here are highlights of the fabulous that were new-to-me.1
How to Fake it In Society: Truly, I can’t think of an author writing more believable historical romances right now. Nico & Titus’s growing affection is so sweet to behold. A perfect read for Pride Month!
London Falling: The oligarch culture should definitely be studied more!! This reads like a thriller rather than nonfiction.
The Correspondent: I knew I would love this. I bought it six months ago, but was saving it for the right day. Epistolary novels are my favorite.
An Artful Dodge: Genuinely surprised at how good this was. I’ve read a fair number of Victorian crime novels, and this was a cut above the rest.
A Spy Among Friends: Engaging and fascinating! I thought I knew a lot of the Kim Philby story, but this gave me way more info.
How to Kill a Language: Eminently readable, it presents complex linguistic ideas and colonial history in an approachable, well-researched way.
Paved Paradise: How did a book about parking mesmerize me so much?! Super thought-provoking! I’m counting parking spaces everywhere I go now.
Have you read any of my fabulous titles?
The titles are Amazon affiliate links. Obviously, shop local as much as possible. If you have to buy something on Amazon though, please use my link, and I get 3-4% commission, rather than 100% of your money going to fund dumb rockets.