TBR List Update: May

  

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In May 2023

Books read: 7

Books I decided NOT to finish: 6

We Are All the Same in the Dark: Too many twists. I couldn't handle the suspense of guessing how the murders had been done, so I skipped ahead and read the end and now it doesn't matter. Next!

Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class: I would have watched this as a documentary -- the topic is interesting -- but my brain felt too lazy for nonfiction. Same with Eating History: 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine.

Lost interest before reading: Recursion, The Angel of the Crows, Midnight Riot

Books left on the TBR List: 91

Best book of the month: Simon Sort of Says

I kept interrupting my wife to read aloud funny passages from this middle-grade novel about a middle-class Nebraska family that moves to the middle of off-the-grid nowhere USA. Eventually I just said, "You're reading this after me." The author has a dry sense of humor that this weirdo connected with -- plus there were religious puns. Shades of Jenny Lawson and squirrels with a higher purpose. Multiple positive adult role models plus a trio of tweens who didn't read like cardboard cutouts. It's one of those juvie books where a character applies behavioral tricks to handle trauma, and I'm a sucker for that low-key mental health support in literature. Content warning: school shooting survivor PTSD. I'm not sure I know whom to recommend this to, but maybe it's you! If you like it, it's definitely you.

Worst book of the month: 

Nothing really stands out! 

For most of the month I had a handful of books "in progress" -- I'd put them down and not be able to find them when next wanted, or be at work with one book having forgotten another at home. So they got finished slowly, but often more than one in quick succession. Almost halfway through the year -- 1/3 of the list is gone! 33 on next year's list, though...