may/june booklist

A book list for May & June.

Halfway through the year I've read 40 books, which feels like a feat! My goal doesn't lie in numbers, but to steadily work through things & always have something on the go, though it does feel great to have read a decent amount. 

MAY

5 total / 1 nonfiction / 4 fiction

4 audio / 1 read

The Shell Collector / Anthony Doerr

Fiction, Short Stories

I checked this out because I really enjoyed All the Light we Cannot See - I still enjoyed his writing, though I found these stories to be a little unsettling. I skipped a couple.

Little Fires Everywhere / Celeste Ng

Fiction, audio

A contemporary pick for Joel & I to read together. Didn't love it, though it was fun to do together & talk about. (Together, but separate)

A Complicated Kindness / Miriam Toews

Fiction, audio

A re-read. Well narrated by the author.

Our Souls at Night / Kent Haruf

Fiction, audio

This was a random & lovely little book, though a bit heartbreaking.

Dusk, Night, Dawn / Anne Lamott

Non-fiction, memoir-ish, audio by the author

Both Joel & I laughed out loud listening to this. Loved her wry wit & deadpan humour on everything from mistakingly taking her dog's medication to insight of the Divine.

"Stories can be our most reliable medicine."

"Dear God, please let me not just have swallowed the dog's medicine."

JUNE 

total 6 / 5 fiction / 1 non fiction

4 audio / 2 read

The Midnight Library /

Fiction, audio (Carey Mulligan)

Didn't blow my mind. Felt like I could see the end coming a long ways off & it took a while getting there.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn / Betty Smith

Fiction, read

I didn't enjoy this as much as I was hoping to - I read it years ago. I found it to be kind of a Little House meets Brooklyn in the early 1900's. There were similar beautifully descriptive passages & it just reminded me of that series but in a different time & place.

"the neighbourhood stood old, quiet & serene  in the saturday sunshine. There was a brooding quality about the neighbourhood, a deep, timeless, shabby peace."

"You betcha they'd live, thought Francie grimly. It takes a lot of doing to die."

We are All Completely Beside Ourselves / Karen Joy Fowler

Fiction, audio

Was okay. 

"You learn as much from failure as from success, dad always says, though no one admires you for it."

"Maybe anasignosia (sp?), the inability to see your own disability, is the human condition."

"I wonder sometimes if I'm the only one spending my life making the same mistake over & over again, or if that's simply human. Do we all tend toward a single, besetting sin?"

Leap Over a Wall / Eugene Peterson

Non-fiction, read

I really enjoyed this book though it took me quite a while to work through - full of bits & bobs of wisdom as well as covering the life of David.

"Stories don't stay put; they grow & deepen. The meaning doesn't exactly change, but it matures. We keep on telling the same old stories over & over again. They keep releasing new insight in new situations."

"In the solitude awareness develops of your part in this intricate & precarious web of life."

Hamnet / Maggie O'Farrell

Fiction, audio

Really enjoyed the earthy quality of the first half, set in England in the 1500's. The latter half was more internal & I was less into.

"All Agnes wants is the green of a forest; she craves the dappled, animate pattern of light on ground, the merciful shade of a leaf canopy, the not quite quiet. The repeating seclusion of trunks disappearing into the distance."

The Last Thing He Told Me / Laura Dave

Fiction, audio

Lovely narrator, though as a whole very underwhelming.