May was a surprising reading month. I read a total of 6 books! I didn’t expect to be reading this much this month but it just so happened I did! I also reached my halfway mark on my Goodreads reading goal! Unfortunately, this month was full of duds! There were a few books that I enjoyed and glad I read, and I did manage to rate one of them a 5-star! I also managed to squeeze in one of the books from my Taurus TBR before the end of the month.
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.
DISCLAIMER: Links included in this post might be affiliate links. If you make a purchase with the links I provide, I may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you.
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix ★★/5
When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
This is only my second Grady Hendrix read. I read My Best Friend’s Exorcism a couple of years ago and thought it was a fun read. Grady is known for writing novels about horror so his books intrigue me. However, after reading How to Sell a Haunted House, I might have to reconsider. After reading Incidents Around the House a few months ago, I wanted another book with a similar feel so I thought this would be it, plus this involves dolls and you know I love creepy dolls! However, I did not like this book. I found the creepy puppet creature more annoying than scary. It felt too long, and the pacing was just off. Spooky things didn’t start picking up until halfway through the novel, and then, towards the end, too much was happening all at once.
You can purchase How to Sell a Haunted House here
Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen ★★★/5
An engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and what we can all learn about desire and identity by using an ace lens to see the world
First, I want to say that I’m glad a book like this exists because I feel like asexuality is rarely discussed in media. I really, really wanted to love this book because everyone was rating it so high. With that said, I was disappointed with Ace. In Ace, the author mainly explores the Western viewpoint of asexuality, and you can tell, I wonder how different this book would’ve been if they chose to explore asexuality in other cultures and societies. This felt like a book about allosexual (asexual people who feel sexual attraction for other people) more than anything, a new term I found out about after reading this book! I would’ve loved to read more about people who are ace who lead happy and fulfilling lives without any interest in sex.
The author also interviews other aces/aros on their experience, every person’s experience was interesting and insightful to read, it shows that being asexual is more complex than it seems. If anything, this book left me more confused me further about what asexuality truly is, and I will be researching and learning more about the community because I find it fascinating, as I once questioned if I was asexual, I’m not. But I’m curious what people who are in the asexual community think about this book.
I think this should be a must-read for people who are and aren’t asexual so people can learn more about asexuality. This would be the perfect book to pick up during Pride month! There are millions of romance books but only a handful of books about asexuality, I think this is a problem. I hope this changes and that this book inspires more people who identify as ace/asexual to write their own books because I would love to read more about this subject.
You can purchase Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex here
The DallerGut Dream Department Store by Lee Mi-ye ★★★/5
In a mysterious town hidden in our collective subconscious there’s a department store that sells dreams. Day and night, visitors both human and animal shuffle in to purchase their latest adventure. Each floor specializes in a specific type of dream: childhood memories, food dreams, ice skating, dreams of stardom. Flying dreams are almost always sold out. Some seek dreams of loved ones who have died.
This felt like I was reading The Rainfall Market all over again! I don’t know what it is about Korean cozy fiction but it just doesn’t reel me in the way Japanese cozy fiction does. I feel like it could be the writing, as it feels like they write for a younger audience, or at least the translators do. After reading The DallerGut Dream Department Store, I might have to take a break from Korean cozy fiction for a while.
You can purchase The DallerGut Dream Department Store here
The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt ★★/5
Raised in Marrakech by a French mother and English father, a 17-year-old girl has learned above all to avoid mauvais ton (“bad taste” loses something in the translation). One should not ask servants to wait on one during Ramadan: they must have paid leave while one spends the holy month abroad. One must play the piano; if staying at Claridge’s, one must regrettably install a Clavinova in the suite, so that the necessary hours of practice will not be inflicted on fellow guests. One should cultivate weavers of tweed in the Outer Hebrides but have the cloth made up in London; one should buy linen in Ireland but have it made up by a Thai seamstress in Paris (whose genius has been supported by purchase of suitable premises). All this and much more she has learned, governed by a parent of ferociously lofty standards. But at 17, during the annual Ramadan travels, she finds all assumptions overturned. Will she be able to fend for herself? Will the dictates of good taste suffice when she must deal, singlehanded, with the sharks of New York?
I knew absolutely nothing about The English Understand Wool going in. I thought it was literally about yarn or sheep or something, but to my surprise, it had nothing to do with either! This is a short read at only 73 pages but even a quarter way, I thought about DNFing this but I didn’t! I hated this. It came off as pretentious and had an abrupt ending with no resolution. A Goodreads user cleverly came up with the best description for this book as “Strange and off-putting wealthy child attempts to write a book.”
You can purchase The English Understand Wool here
Love & Saffron by Kim Fay ★★★★★/5
When twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter–as well as a gift of saffron–to fifty-nine-year-old Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. Joan lives in Los Angeles and is just starting out as a writer for the newspaper food pages. Imogen lives on Camano Island outside Seattle, writing a monthly column for a Pacific Northwest magazine, and while she can hunt elk and dig for clams, she’s never tasted fresh garlic–exotic fare in the Northwest of the sixties. As the two women commune through their letters, they build a closeness that sustains them through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the unexpected in their own lives.
I don’t remember who or what made me ‘place a hold’ on this novel through Libby but I’m glad I did because I LOVED this! Love & Saffron is told through letters from two women, one in her late 20s and one in her late 50s. They mainly write about food and recipes with hints of their personal lives. Both women are white, and their back-and-forth about “ethnic” food made me LOL! I slightly cringed at their discussion about Mexican food (I’m Mexican-American). The novel took a turn halfway through and the ending almost made me cry. In the end, I had no problems with this read. It’s so wholesome and shows the love between two friends with a love for food.
You can purchase Love & Saffron here
Julie and Julia by Julie Powell ★★★/5
Julie Powell is 30-years-old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that’s going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother’s dog-eared copy of Julia Child’s 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes. In the span of one year.
This is a memoir about Julie Powell’s experience doing the “Julie and Julia” project which she documented via her blog back in the early 2000s. I’ve been wanting to read this book since I watched the film Julie and Julia starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep a few years ago. This was also one of the books I mentioned in my Taurus TBR. Any book that mentions blogging is a book for me!
I thought the writing was humorous, and it gave me nostalgia vibes as it’s set in the early 2000s. I felt like the book ran too long and Julie mentions a lot of random stories that have little to nothing to do with the cookbook project. When she did finally mention the cooking the recipes, that’s when this book shined! I’ve never seen the recipes featured in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking but based on the descriptions, I don’t want to! They seem barbaric, and as a vegetarian, some of the mentioned meat-based recipes made my stomach upset. I also don’t understand why they chose to include excerpts from Julia Child’s life, as I felt it didn’t add to the chapters or this book at all. Overall, I enjoyed the book but felt that certain parts were unnecessary.
You can purchase Julie and Julia here
Have you read any of these books? What did you read in May?
Leave a Reply