Share Your Shelf #26; Books I Read in May

It's the first Thursday of the month and time for Share Your Shelf with Dara and I.  I hope you all look forward to this monthly link up as much as I do. I just love getting new ideas for books to read or listen to.  

I had another pretty good month of reading; though there were a few that I wasn't so wild about! Ordinarily I just DNF a book I'm not loving but either the book fit a prompt so well I didn't want to give up on it or I literally could not give up on it mid-air while traveling (or else I'd have had nothing else to listen to).  Speaking of travel, all our travel time gave me lots of opportunity to read/listen to lots of books. I knocked another few prompts off my 52 Book Challenge and found some wonderful new authors along the way. 

1. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson-- This was a fun and quick listen on all things cosmos-science related. 

2. Otherwise Engaged by Susan Mallery--  Ava, Victoria, Cindy, and Shannon are two mother daughter duos with complicated mother/daughter relationships. All of their lives are thrown into a bit of a tailspin when the 4 of them run into one another one day at a wedding venue. Ava has always mourned the daughter she was going to adopt from young Cindy who was a teenage mother that suffered a change of heart at the last minute. Cindy has always regretted how her decision to keep her daughter hurt Ava and felt guilty that she could not provide the same sort of life for Shannon as a struggling single mother that Ava and her husband could have. Victoria always felt like she was not quite the daughter her mother wanted and hearing the story of Cindy/Shannon cements her belief that her mom always wanted the cute little blue eyed blonde Shannon would have been. Shannon struggles to make any sort of decision in her life that might upset her mother knowing all that her mom gave up to focus on raising her alone. There are a lot of very complicated feelings and emotions and I'll be honest that I couldn't always understand them or the choices many of the characters made but I still enjoyed the story. 

3.  Live and Let Chai (Seaside Cafe Mysteries book 1) by Bree Baker-- Everly has moved back home to Charm and opened her own sweet tea shop. But when a customer that she often squabbles with ends up dead with poison residue having been found in the cup of tea he was drinking her business starts to tank. Everly decides it's up to her to investigate so she can save her reputation and her business. It was a really cute cozy mystery and the book included some sweet tea & other recipes in the back that sounded so yummy. I'll definitely be checking out others in this series. 

 4. Helen Keller in Love by Rosie Sultan- I was thrilled when I saw this fiction book on my library's Libby app since I had been completely lost on what to read for prompt #45 biographical fiction but in all honesty this was not a favorite. I would have DNF the book if it hadn't fit one of the 52 book challenge prompts so nicely. This is a historical fiction novel account told from Helen Keller's point of view about a love affair she had in adulthood that neither her mother nor her caretaker approved of. I'm not entirely sure what I didn't like about the story as I think the author did a great job making me feel both sad for Helen that she was so sheltered but also upset with Helen that she couldn't see the true character of the man she fell in love with. But I just didn't get pulled in in any way by the story. I think a big part of the problem was that I really, really disliked the love interest.  

5. Heroes by Alan Gratz-- I always love Gratz's books and this one was another fabulous listen. Frank and Stanley are best friends growing up on Pearl Harbor with their dads working in the military. The two boys were touring a ship in the harbor when the bombs began dropping and, though scared, the boys who are obsessed with super heroes and comic books realize they need to step up and become heroes themselves. It is a wonderful middle grade historical fiction. 

6. Murder Bites by Mimi Montgomery-- I was thrilled to get an email inviting me to read and review this ARC of this debut author's first book Murder Bites. It sounded like such a fun and adorable murder mystery. Everyone in this town is a bit over the top but that's what makes them so fun! Poor Margot has never really fit in with the people in her neighborhood and becomes something of the neighborhood social pariah (after a few crazy over the top moves on her part) but when a local dog walker is killed all eyes and suspicion turn to Margot. When the septuagenarian who is in charge of the HOA offers to team up with Margot to prove her innocence Margot figures she's got nothing left to lose and the two dive into town affairs trying to figure out who had both motive and means. It really was a riot.  

7. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans-- This one took me just a little while to get into but oh my gosh I enjoyed it so much! Written as a series of letters, it was an engaging read. Sybil, who is in her 70's, writes letters-- a lot of letters. To her brother, to the dean of the local college, to famous authors, to her best friends and more.. and through these letters we learn so much about her life both present and past. 

 8. How Y'all Doing? By Leslie Jordan--This was such a cute and fun listen. Leslie reminisces about his successes and failures. Filled with funny stories and his no nonsense, unapologetic style. 

9. The Girls in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian-- I nearly didn't finish listening to this one as the narrator voice was not my favorite... but it really grew on me and I was so glad I did not give up on this story. Set in the 1920's in the back swamps of Mississippi two teenage girls Ada and Matilda team up in the most unlikely of circumstances. Ada, a very poor white woman growing up in the house of a very mean father is newly returned home after running away with a boy. Her father is not happy to see her and delights in making her life miserable. Meanwhile Matilda is the daughter of a sharecropper dreaming of freedom in the north and festering under the unfair laws and treatment of black people in the south. When their worlds collide one night the two become tenuous friends.  

10. The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka-- I thought this was a rather odd listen. Three chapters are written in the first-person plural tense (we/us) describing the pool and the people who frequent it. Then when the pool is shut down it switches to the second person (you) for the final two chapters and yet the "you" in each of those two chapters is different. One a mother and another a daughter. It wasn't a bad story but at times I did get confused (probably because I wasn't listening as closely as I should have as I listened to this in the airport and on the plane). In the final two chapters we focus on one swimmer, Alice, and her descent into dementia as well as the impact this has on her daughter. 

11. Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman-- I listened to this on the plane, not really knowing anything about it other than it had been made into a movie. It was just kind of strange. 17 year old Elio moves out of his bedroom in the Italian Rivera each year so his parents can host a grad student for the summer. But this summer when Oliver comes to visit everything is different. Elio is drawn to Oliver. Told from Elio's point of view it chronicles his obsession and affair with Oliver as well as a local girl.. or two. I thought it was pretty boring, and really weird at times, and just uncomfortable to listen to. If I could have switched over to another book mid-flight I SO would have! At least I could knock a book off my 52 challenge as Google informs me it's "usually considered a modern, genre-defining, iconic work of LGBTQ+ literary romance." 

12. That Old Black Magic by Mary Jane Clark (book #4 in the Piper Donovan Series)-- This book picks up just one month after book 3. Piper is in New Orleans to work with and learn from a famous pastry artist. Of course people start getting murdered and despite her every promise to stay out of it Piper is drawn into the mystery. It was a cute ending the series and I'm glad I read it. 

 13. How the Penguins Saved Veronica by Hazel Prior-- This was a rather sweet and endearing story. Veronica is in her mid-80's and estranged from her family. While looking for a worthy cause to leave her fortune to she decides she's going to take off for a penguin research station. Despite the scientists pleas for her to remain at home, Veronica arrives and proceeds to upset all their plans to see her off on the next ship. In no time at all she's adopted a baby penguin chick. We get to learn about how Veronica came to be this way as her long lost grandson, Patrick, is sent her old journals and begins to read about her early life. When Veronica gets sick, and the scientists fear she might die, they reach out to Patrick, who also turns up at the research center, and though both Veronica and Patrick are hesitant to trust anyone they build inroads to their relationship. I enjoyed it a lot. 

14. Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson-- A really gripping read! Claudia arrives home from her summer away and can't wait to see her best friend Monday... only Claudia can't seem to get a hold of her. When the first day of 8th grade rolls around there is no Monday. The whole first month passes by and still no Monday. Claudia seeks out Monday's mother, runs into Monday's sister and even asks neighbors and teachers where Monday is but oddly no one seems to know. The only one that seems really upset is Claudia and worse yet the deeper Claudia digs into Monday's disappearance no one can really remember the last time they saw her. At a certain point in the story I just knew this was not going to have a happy ending and boy was it ever sad but still as much as I kept wanting to walk away from it I just could not put it down. So heartbreaking but oh so good. 

15. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson-- Another really gripping read. Melinda is struggling so much her Freshman year of high school. Due to something that happened over the summer her friend group has splintered apart and Melinda has been ostracized by nearly the entire school. No one, not even her so called best friend, seems to care WHY she called the cops to bust up the end of the summer party so Melinda starts to retreat into herself and the only class she really seems to get enjoyment from is her art class where no one expects her to talk or engage with anyone. As Melinda begins to process and deal with what happened to her she realizes it's time to speak up and defend herself. This book made me tear up a time or two but I really enjoyed it a lot.  

16. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir-- I'm not generally a science fiction fan but my husband and I saw this movie in theaters and loved it so I thought I'd give the book a try. I am so glad I did; I loved it just as much as the movie. The movie pretty closely follows the book but at nearly 500 pages of course there were lots of details and side stories that were omitted. Mr. Grace (often just called Grace) wakes up in outer space with no recollection of how he got there. Through a series of flashbacks/ memories we discover that Earth is in trouble and Grace is on a suicide mission to save the world. While in outer space he encounters a friendly alien life form trying to solve the same problem for his/hers/their home planet. Grace and "Rocky," as the alien comes to be known as, team up to save both their worlds from certain ruin and along the way become the most unlikely of friends. It is really wonderfully written. 

 

Just 4 left to go on my 52 book challenge!

 

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