This is a slightly delayed wrap up, but the start of June has already been busy! As for May, I can’t really remember what I did that month, aside from read a lot and not much else. I will say, it was nice to have a quieter month in terms of actually doing things; the last few months have been so hectic, it was nice to just slow down for a bit.
Books read:
- Heartstopper Vol 1 – Alice Oseman
- Heartstopper Vol 2 – Alice Oseman
- Heartstopper Vol 3 – Alice Oseman
- Heartstopper Vol 4 – Alice Oseman
- Among Thieves – M.J. Kuhn
- Knight: The Medieval Warrior’s Unofficial Guide – Michael Prestwich
- Misrule – Heather Walters
- The Stardust Thief – Chelsea Abdullah
- Kaikeyi – Vaishnavi Patel
- The Forest of Enchantments – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I know I said April was a really good reading month for me, but May seems to have beaten that. I got through 10 books, jumped on the Heartstopper bandwagon and generally, really enjoyed everything I read. Alternating between physical and Kindle books seems to really work for me, so I think it’s definitely something I’m going to keep up. I also think throwing some shorter works into the mix is working really well too, so I’m going to try and keep that up too (if anyone has any short fiction recommendations – whether it’s novellas or graphic novels – please let me know in the comments!)
In terms of what I didn’t enjoy as much as I’d hoped, Among Thieves was one I really wanted to enjoy, but I just felt that there was something missing. On paper, this has a lot of the things I enjoy in a fantasy novel, but I felt that a lot of the character bonding and development was lost towards the end. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I’d hoped for a slightly different ending. That said, I will probably pick up the sequel – I did like a lot of the concepts in the book and I’m intrigued to see where the story goes next.
Goodreads / Storygraph reading challenges:
10 more books means I’m up to 37 books for the year and and 74% through my reading challenge. I know I say it every month, but it still freaks me out at how quickly I’m getting through my reading at the moment. It’s giving me 2020, reading as a coping mechanism vibes and I still can’t quite work out if it’s a good thing or not.
I also – finally!- have some Hodderscape challenge news to report! I did have to make a change to one of the prompts, as C.L Clark’s The Faithless is unlikely to come out this year, but it does mean that I managed to finish 2 books for this challenge (The Stardust Thief and Kaikeyi). I will do an update post towards the end of June with my progress so far.
Other things:
While I managed to only clear 1 book from my Kindle backlog, pretty much everything I read this month was by a new author, so I’m going to take that as a win. For June though, I am going to try and not put too much pressure on clearing my backlog and reading new authors. Every time I “fail” to meet that goal, I start stressing out unnecessarily, so I think I just need to take step back and stop looking at it like a chore.
Speaking of chores, the good ol’ Illumicrate backlog. I know I said June would be the month to clear it, but this is another one that I need to stop seeing as a chore and start looking at like it’s something to actually look forward to. So, June might not be the month to read all of them, but I am going to try and read at least one!
I know I also said that I was going to try do some other stuff aside from reading in May and I’m glad to say that I actually got back into a bit of gaming! I managed to complete Transistor, which was a much shorter game than I anticipated. I’m still in two minds about this one, but I will say it has an amazing soundtrack (it’s by Darren Korb if you’re interested) and visually, it’s a really lovely game. I also started playing Hades again (from the same developers as Transistor) and it has been *so* good to button mash for an hour or so in the evening after work. I hadn’t quite realised how much I had missed it until I picked up my Switch again!
I also binge watched Heartstopper (hence reading all 4 volumes!) and I really enjoyed it. There are a couple of things I really wish they had warned viewers about first (and in the comics too), but on the whole, it was the TV show I needed.
I’m aware this a longer wrap up than normal, so I’ll finish here. I hope your May was good too and that your June is just as wonderful!
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