What I Read ♥ May 2024

Last month, I mentioned that I felt a lack in my reading but many of you suggested that I switch up my reading genres and I did and it helped! I decided to read some nonfiction because I find real-life stories inspiring. May was a wonderful reading month! I only read four books but I rated all of them 4 stars and I enjoyed reading every book that I read!

Make sure to follow me on Goodreads to be updated on what I’m reading and on StoryGraph if you’re curious about my book statistics.

My star reading scale
★★★★★/5 – Loved it! Would reread and recommend it to others.
★★★★/5 – Kept me entertained. I would reread.
★★★/5 – Didn’t love or hate but would recommend to others.
★★/5 – Did not enjoy it and probably skimmed through most of it.
★/5 – I hated it and regret wasting my time with this book.
DNF – Did not finish. This will probably be rare because I like to finish every book I start.

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Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen ★★★★/5
In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in an even smaller town, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit. In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it…. The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers. Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.

This was a delight to read! This centers around two estranged sisters who reconnect after one of the sisters arrives at the front door of their childhood home with her daughter. This book gave me Practical Magic meets Gilmore Girls vibes. It was wholesome and I was rooting for the main charaters the entire time. I enjoy the magical bits about the food, there is even a glossary at the end of the books with lists of ingredients and their mystical properties. I love how Sarah Addison Allen crafts her sentences and can’t wait to read more from her, all of her books sound amazing!

You can purchase Garden Spells here

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki Shine ★★★★/5
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

This took me a while to read (I think I started it back in March? Possibly February? I can’t remember! haha). A Tale for the Time Being focuses on two women, Nao and Ruth. Ruth finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on a beach, inside the lunchbox is a diary belonging to a teenage girl named Nao from Japan. As Ruth reads the dairy she finds out that Nao is planning on taking her life so Ruth tries to track Nao down hoping to save her. I enjoyed reading Nao’s parts in the book but Ruth’s chapters fell flat for me. I would’ve preferred the book to be centered around Nao’s life because her chapters were compelling, educational, and humorous. Overall, I enjoyed A Tale for the Time Being but it ran a bit too long for me, I mean it took me months to read! haha

Trigger warning: mentions of suicide and sexual assault.

You can purchase A Tale for the Time Being here

Eat a Peach by David Chang ★★★★/5
In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in a tiny, stark space in Manhattan’s East Village. Its young chef-owner, David Chang, worked the line, serving ramen and pork buns to a mix of fellow restaurant cooks and confused diners whose idea of ramen was instant noodles in Styrofoam cups. It would have been impossible to know it at the time—and certainly Chang would have bet against himself—but he, who had failed at almost every endeavor in his life, was about to become one of the most influential chefs of his generation, driven by the question, “What if the underground could become the mainstream?”

I didn’t know much about David Chang before reading Eat a Peach. I was familiar with Momofuku and have seen him on various food shows. I enjoyed hearing about David’s shortcomings when he was younger and being raised as an Asian-American living in the U.S. and how he got into becoming a chef though he struggled a lot at the beginning of his career. He also talks about his mental health issues and how it affected his work and personal life. I find chef biographies (this is only the second that I’ve read) fascinating because they all mention the toxic kitchen culture (have you seen The Bear?) and most chefs have admitted to feeding into this industry’s toxic work environment so why hasn’t this industry changed? It’s so strange. Anyway, I enjoyed the first two halves of David Chang’s memoir but I found the last third of the book like it was trying too hard. He includes a section at the end of the book for advice for inspiring chefs which I felt was unnecessary for a memoir.

You can purchase Eat a Peach here

Good Morning, Monster by Catherine Gildiner ★★★★/5
In this fascinating narrative, therapist Catherine Gildiner’s presents five of what she calls her most heroic and memorable patients. Among them: a successful, first generation Chinese immigrant musician suffering sexual dysfunction; a young woman whose father abandoned her at age nine with her younger siblings in an isolated cottage in the depth of winter; and a glamorous workaholic whose narcissistic, negligent mother greeted her each morning of her childhood with “Good morning, Monster.”

In Good Morning, Monster, Catherine Gildiner shares five of her most memorable client cases in which she feels that her patient overcame their hardships and came out as a “hero” in the end. Her first story was of her first patient who was a doozy! I felt like DNFing this book based on this story because I found this patient so unlikeable but I’m glad I got through it because the three middle stories were incredible to read, yet shocking. At the end of each story, Gildiner revisits some of her patients which I found interesting because I think I expected a “happily ever after” ending for each of her patients but because these are real people they make real decisions, and some were not what I was expecting.

Trigger warning: child abuse, sexual assault, and mentions of suicide

You can purchase Good Morning, Monster here

Have you read any of these books? What did you read in May?