TBR List Update: June

   

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 June 2023

Books read: 8

Books I decided NOT to finish: 2

Shadow of Freedom is one I've probably read before, and it's not part of the Honor Harrington main series (it's the last on the Saganami Island subseries), so if I haven't read it, I don't care. I just have one more -- Uncompromising Honor --before I will complete the series that I started in college.

I'd had X on the list since I was a teen librarian, and I finally got around to reading it for this challenge... and I couldn't get into the writing style. There was a lot of description but not much action in the first half-dozen chapters of Malcolm X's life story, so I gave it up.

Books left on the TBR List: 77

Best book of the month: True Biz

True Biz is one I will be recommending with enthusiasm! From a Deaf author, it tackles a number of hot-button issues in Deaf culture (including cochlear implants, access to language, and the history of activists insisting on Deaf inclusion). I learned some more about ASL grammar and enjoyed the complex relationships between characters. The title refers to "true business" -- slang like "real talk" or "word" or "no cap" -- in this case, the policy that the headmistress has with her students to relax consequences for misbehavior if the student is truthful and forthcoming.

Worst book of the month: A Rising Thunder

What a slog. There are selections in this 14-book space opera series that are mostly about relationships, worldbuilding, and futuristic developments. Then there are the ones about interstellar politics with at least 4 major players (and their corresponding casts of naval officers, spies, assassins, and celebrities), play-by-play of epic battles in spaaaaaaace, and all of the nitty-gritty physics of FTL travel. Ugggggh. Guess which one this was?

I got COVID at the beginning of the month and had to isolate, which provided an excellent opportunity for audiobooks. I polished off a series, The Orphan Train Adventures, that I started in childhood. They weren't on my TBR list (so don't exactly count toward the challenge), but I'd favorited them in Hoopla. Then, when I returned to work, a stack of holds was waiting for me! So that was my month's reading sorted.