Hello Loves!
May is over and doesn't May feel so long?
31 days felt close to 60 odd days.
May was hot and I hunkered down and read my heart out. I read 15 books and while that is not a lot, I did read some hefty little books.
This month I read a lot on my iPad, I am really enjoying spending time reading on it.
I bought a few books. Haul is up already.
Read quite a few new releases, not something I usually do a lot, so that was a good change of pace.
And I read mostly books I really, really enjoyed.
This was a good reading month and without gabbing on..let's just jump into it.
BOOKS OF MAY 2023:
1. The Greatest Marathi Stories Ever Told Edited by Ashutosh Potkar: I started my month with this collection of short stories originally written in Marathi by a wide variety of writers. I did this mainly to celebrate Maharashtra Day and generally do a deep dive into this book full of writers I hadn't read before. I read this through the month, a story here and a story there and really took my time with these stories and didn't rush it. I started on the 1st and finished it on the 28th.
I loved this collection, it featured stories from rural areas, urban chronicles, some set in my own city of Mumbai, a spooky story and stories talking about the whole human experience. I loved most of these stories and it was a great way to spend my month.
3.5/5
2. Dust Child by Nguyen Phan Que Mai: I read and absolutely loved The Mountains Sing by the author and when I saw that her new book was out, I knew I had to get my hands on it and read it ASAP. And I did just that.
This book is mainly centered around the ghastly Vietnam War and the myriad ways in which it effects people years and decades later. Mainly told from three perspectives- one of two sisters from a village to move to the city and end up working in a bar catering to American GIs and how eventually they becomes versions of themselves they no longer recognize. We see the sisters in the late 60s and see their lives at the bar during the war years.
In the present day we meet Phong who is a mixed race child of war- he's half Vietnamese and half Black and his life has not been easy. He is the eponymous Dust Child. This book showed me the cruel reality of so many kids who were a result of the war, being mixed is not something that was widely accepted in the traditional Vietnamese society and these kids were shunned and abused and treated as horrible reminders of the war, for no fault of their own. Phong is desperate to find his parents and somehow find a way to the US and escape his life in a society that has never wanted him.
We also meet Dan, an American veteran of the war who is back in Vietnam, trying to heal his trauma and wounds. He is also trying to find his former girlfriend and make amends. He was my least favourite character in the whole book and honestly I couldn't give a crap about him and his trauma because what he did to his girlfriend is beyond reprehensible.
Overall this is a book I liked. A lot. I am just not sure if I LOVED it.
3.5/5
3. Take me with you when you go by David Levithan and Jennifer Niven: This is a 2021 release and I don't know how I've never heard about it because I've read and enjoyed books by both these authors.
Well, this book is told entirely in email exchanges between a brother and sister.
The sister has run away from home, and no one knows where she is and if she's safe. We know that home was a hellhole and both siblings have suffered all kinds of neglect and physical abuse and so her running away is no real surprise. The book also has some additional voices and well more emails later on in the narrative.
I liked this. It was very OK. Sad in parts and upsetting. It was a decent read, nothing that blew my mind.
2.5/5
4. Stranger Danger by Maren Stoffels: Next I read a thriller, this was a quick read I just breezed through. Three teens rent a cabin in the middle of nowhere to go cram for their finals. Only there is someone else there hellbent on settling old score.
Like I said I had a lot of fun reading this book and I just breezed through it and it was short and pacy and a good time, the ending while realistic wasn't my favourite but it did pack two very solid twists.
4/5
5. The Aayakudi Murders by Indra Soundar Rajan: A pull fiction murder mystery. A mix of murders, occult, magic, ghosts and a small village reeling under all kinds of madness. This was fun and an easy read. Slightly bizarre but that comes with the genre and the little twists were fun too.
3.5/5
6. Haunted Places of India by Riksundar Banerjee: This might be the most disappointing thing I've read all month and more so because I went in hoping it would be fantastic. I read the author's previous book, The Book of Indian Ghosts and absolutely loved it. I cannot recommend that enough, so I went in with very high hopes and they were not met..at all.
It wasn't bad outright. But overall..something here was so off. I didn't enjoy the writing and this was a task to read.
Not fun. Avoid.
2/5
7. Soft Animal by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan: This is my fourth book about the pandemic and I love reading about that crazy time in our lives we all somehow overcame and survived. This book is set in Delhi and we see a couple tackle the lock down together. It's basically a book chronicling the end of a rather unremarkable marriage. It's about a woman feeling alone in her marriage and through the course of the first lock down realizing she doesn't like her husband and wants out of her marriage.
I liked this book. I liked that this took me back to those insane and terrifying days and showed up how life quickly changed in every single way possible.
I will do a full review for this one, so keep your eye out for it.
3.5/5
8. The Niger Wife by Vanessa Walters: An expat wife or a Niger Wife goes missing in Lagos and no one knows if she's dead or alive. This book takes us to the affluent circles of Nigeria and it's Niger Wives, foreigners married to Nigerian men and we see the life of our main character in the weeks and days leading up to her disappearance and a look at her life so far away from home (London in her case) and how lonely one can be. We also see chapters in the present from the perspective of her aunt who's come all the way from London to represent the family and get some much needed answers. She's also grappling with issues and traumas and memories of her own.
This was an interesting read. I liked it while I was reading it but it's not a book that will stick with me. Which is fine, not all books are meant to make an indelible impact on you. This was a good enough summer read.
3/4
9. Lucky Girl by Irene Muchemi Ndiritu: My next read took me to Kenya. Set in the 1980s and 1990s, this book is about an affluent girl from Kenya who grows up in a house full of women, and while she loves the women in her family, she wants to get out and away from her overbearing mother. So she moves to New York for college and tries to find her own way in the world.
I loved this book so much. I loved the people, the family dynamics, the mother daughter drama and of course NYC in the 90s sounds perfect. It also had some very interesting and nuanced conversation about race and what it means to be Black in America vs. being Black in Africa.
Loved this.
So much.
Pick it up.
4/5
10. Terminal 3 by Debasmita Dasgupta: Loved it.
Reviewed it.
4/5
11. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros: You guys...everyone loves this book and I've never heard a bad thing about it but I didn't like it.
It just didn't work for me.
I can appreciate it but I didn't enjoy it and it just felt really disjointed to me.
Not for me.
2/5
12. The Guest by Emma Cline: I read The Girls by the same author back when it came out and I absolutely loved it. I actually hope to re-read at some point this year, so I was really looking forward to reading this one. Now I have some mixed feelings about this one. I LOVE the writing. Cline is clearly a very talented writer and I adored how she brought this world to life. I felt like I was in the Hamptons on a hot summer day. I felt like I was right there with Alex, our very unlikable and very messed up protaganist. I want to file this under 'Cool Girl Summer Reads". It's all about the vibes and the tone and treatment and not so much about plot or even character study.
I was quite into it till the 61% mark but post that my interest just dipped.
3/5
13. Yellowface by R.F. Kuang: This one is sharp and acerbic look at the world of publishing and writers and twitter trolls and all sorts of writerly-ness.
Athena and Juniper are college friends (not close), who both had book deals straight out of Yale. While Athena went on to have a career you can only dream of, Juniper's debut tanked and since then her career has been pretty non-spectacular. One night Athena chokes and passed away right in front of Juniper and Juniper goes on to steal her latest manuscript and then pass it off as her own. Her career skyrockets and everything she dreams of comes true. Only....does it? Does someone know what she's done?
This book does such a good job of talking about books and the culture in which they exist. Who gets to tell what stories? Do some stories belong to certain individuals?
There is so much to think about and mull over here.
I liked this. I found myself stopping to think and dig deep. Love when books make you do that.
3.5/5
14. Bless The Daughter Raised by a Voice in her Head by Warsan Shire: I have read and loved Shire's poetry before and I really, really enjoyed this collection of poems, a lot of which are about her mother and her relationship with parents. Hard-hitting and moving and powerful, her poetry is something I'll always want to read more of.
3.5/5
15. Tinkle Origins Vol. IV: Ended my month with a dose of happiness and nostalgia.
Tinkle is synonymous with summer and reading on hot summer afternoons. It's such a joy reuniting with characters I grew up with and loved so much.
5/5
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15 books and a mix of thrillers, new releases, literary fiction and historical fiction and even some poetry, graphic novel and a comic book.
A solidly good reading month!
:)
Hope May was lovely for you too and full of good reading.
