April and May 2017 Book Report (And a Look to June)

Unsurprisingly, being unemployed since the end of March has been really great for my reading life. I’ve read more in each of the last couple of months than I did through all of January, February and March, which feels amazing! I mean, the whole not working thing isn’t really sustainable in the long term, but for now I am just grateful to be getting my reading groove back.

April 2017

First up, the books I finished in April:

1. Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller (young adult fiction)
2. Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker (nonfiction)
3. Hit Makers by Derek Thompson (nonfiction/audio book)
4. Dark Money by Jane Meyer (nonfiction)
5. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Gran (nonfiction)
6. Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (nonfiction)
7. Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson (fiction)
8. Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant (nonfiction)
9. The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson (fiction)

Wow, looking at that list is surprising — I didn’t realize how much nonfiction I read in April, and how many were good. I really liked Cork Dork and Killers of the Flower Moon, and got a lot to think about from Option B, Sandberg and Grant’s new book about grief, joy and resilience. Perfect Little World was also a great read, a fun look at family and community and rebuilding after calamity.

May 2017

And second, the books I finished in May:

1. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (science fiction/fantasy)
2. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (fiction)
3. The Art of Grace by Sarah L. Kaufman (nonfiction)
4. Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane (fiction)
5. In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib (fiction)
6. The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan (mystery)
7. My Lady Jane by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows (young adult fiction)
8. Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson (nonfiction)
9. The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George (fiction)

Having a long weekend at our family cabin for Memorial Day helped me finish a lot of books, many that were outside my normal reading comfort zone. Both Since We Fell and The Unquiet Dead were fun mystery/thrillers, and My Lady Jane was a goofy young adult fantasy with magic and shape changing and royalty. The Little Paris Bookshop was also a good read, in an unexpected way.

A Look to June

On Monday, I spent most of the day cleaning and reorganizing all of my books — gotta make space for the new BookExpo titles and all the books I’ve been buying (whoops). But getting things in order made me so excited for all the books I’ve got to choose from… and also a little overwhelmed, so many choices.

Today I am heading out of town for a long weekend in Duluth (my last bit of travel for awhile), and so I’m trying to decide what books to bring. So far, I know I’ll be packing The Radium Girls by Kate Moore, a narrative nonfiction account of the horrors of radium, and Startup by Doree Shafrir, a novel about startup culture in Manhattan. They both sound like fun.

So, yay, summer reading on the North Shore and on the patio. I can’t wait. What books are you excited for this summer?