May was a very odd month for me. I had a lot of messy house maintenance stuff and weekends with friends and family, which took up a lot of time. I also ended up watching far too much of the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial (don’t ask!). Beside that, I was also writing quite a bit. Between all of that it took away precious reading time. So, this month was a month of few books and mainly a bunch of short ones. I wouldn’t quite call it a reading slump, as I just had a lot of stuff on. I am confident June will be a more settled month.
PHYSICAL TBR:
Start 2022: 300
1 May: 313
Acquired: 6
Read: 5
Balance: 314
DIGITAL TBR:
Start 2022: 177
1 April: 172
Acquired: 0
Read: 3
Balance: 169
I read the two shortest books I acquired this month, but that did not help me much. Any normal month I would have easily read more than I acquired this month, but not this month! At least my digital TBR went down!
MAY READING REVIEW
I read 8 books in May, which is not to be sniffed at, though admittedly one was a relatively short poetry collection and there was a children’s book as well. That was kind of cheating, but it doesn’t matter really. Overall the books I did read were good, but there were a couple that stood head and shoulders above the others.
- When We Found Home (Susan Mallery) 4* ebook
- The House with the Golden Door (Elodie Harper) 6* NetGalley e-Arc
- Gold Dust (Ibrahim al-Koni) 5* paperback
- Exit West (Mohsin Hamid) 5* ebook
- The Horse That Swam Away (Walter Farley) 5* hardback
- The Life of Olaudah Equiano (Olaudah Equiano) 5* audio & paperback
- The Island of Missing Trees (Elif Shafak) 7* hardback
- Open Secret (Rumi, Moyne, Barks) 5* paperback
BOOK OF THE MONTH
Although I loved The House with the Golden Door, my favourite read of the month was The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak. She’s an author whose books I tend to love and I plan to read other books by her sooner rather than later. There is just something about the way she crafts her characters and their stories. It just works.
Lola Et La Vie 
That’s still a good few books! My balance went the right way for once in May but I have acquired two already this month (OK and finished two so …).