Another month, Another roundup

What I read in May 2025

The more things change, the more they stay the same so behold: the list of books I read last month. I once again read 8 books, so I’m still keeping pace with the needed output to hit 100 books for the year. I kind of want to get back up to 9 or 10 books a month, the output I was achieving at the beginning of the year, but this is absolute nonsense. I do not need to be giving myself more to do. 8 books a month is ~2 books a week. That is enough. I will, however, be doing a lot of driving this month, so maybe I can sneak in an extra audiobook into June’s total.

But first - May. April flowers bring May flowers or some such nonsense. Spring is my second least favorite season (summer is in last place) because of the number of plants that are trying to kill me. Spring, however, is not always hot, which gives it an advantage on Summer. Summer tries to kill me and my joints by being so dang hot and I do not know how you people deal with this because it is miserable for me. Keep your 90 degree days, I’m moving to the Arctic. Check back next month for how long I hold out on putting my window AC units in, despite these heat related complaints. I am nothing if not an enigma.

Notable reads this month included: not one but two French books, not one but two poetry books, and another genre other than fantasy taking the top spot.

Unless otherwise noted, all books were physical. And all graphics are courtesy of The Storygraph.

1. I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, by Glynnis MacNicol
   MacNicol’s memoir of spending a month in Paris just as the Covid lockdowns and quarantines were lifting. Spending a month in Paris with no agenda other than cavorting about? Gosh that’s my kind of gal. In the words of the youth™️, relatable content. Overall, it was a nice read and I thought MacNicol did a good job of tying everything together. There wasn’t much ‘point’ other than enjoying herself (as she alluded to in the title), and while that doesn’t make for the most interesting of plots, it is an interesting concept to consider in my own daily life.

2. One Dark Window, by Rachel Gillig
   The book club’s latest entry. Honestly? This book slapped. I had very low expectations going in (I assumed it was generic YA) and I had a blast. There were trees! There was sassy monsters! There were people being really bad at heists! Book club was last week, and not everyone had the same experience, so it was an interesting discussion for sure. I still stand by my verdict: this slapped. This is the first in a duology, and the second book will be our book club’s read next month, and I am just so proud of myself for not forging ahead immediately. Read digitally on my iPad. (I had the Apple Books file)

3. Makeshift Altar: Poems, by Amy Alvarez
   If I haven’t stated it before, I shall state it now: poets scare me. In the best way. Same with rappers. Their facility and precision with language is intimidating to me. So it’s only right and good that I read poetry. It’s not only good for the soul, but also good to keep me on track with my book count. That is not the only reason I read this book, though. The cover is absolutely beautiful, and I loved the idea of makeshift altars - what kinds of altars were made in less than ideal places, and the relationship to home and memory that the speaker of these poems has.

4. Les années, par Annie Ernaux
   This book took me the longest to read thus far this year, regardless of language. It wasn’t just the vocabulary, though there was that. The other issue at hand were the cultural references: Ernaux mentioned so many that every few pages I was having to go look up what this or that was. And I’m someone who has studied French, France, and their politics FOR YEARS. That’s how I ended up down a rabbit hole looking at Christian Ranucci and the Monsieur de Paris.¹
   Les années is considered Ernaux’s magnum opus, and was surely part of the consideration for her to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022. It is a memoir of her life, from her infancy in the waning days of World War II, to her adolescence in the 1950s and her early adulthood in the 1960s and 70s, and on and on until we reach the 2000s. What makes this memoir unique is twofold: one, Ernaux does not use je (the French ‘I’) She instead uses ‘on,’ which roughly translates to ‘one.’² This is noteworthy because that is the entire point of a memoir. You’re writing your experiences. What does Ernaux do instead? She writes as if on behalf of her entire generation, making generalizations about political views, reactions to cultural changes, and interior lives. Not only does she not write as herself, but also she writes as everyone else. As weird as it sounds, it works. I’d recommend it, but just be aware it’ll probably open up a thousand different rabbit holes and will take a while to read. This is available as The Years in English.

   

   I was not kidding when I said Les Annees took me FOREVER.

5. Nom, par Constance Debré
   Another French entry, mainly to get me back on track with my French reading goal for the year. This book is another example of how translation can occasionally lose some of its original context. This book is available in English, but if I was French, I’d know immediately that the name Debré is from a well established, well connected, political French family. Which, honestly, is the point that Debre tries to make in the end: she is trying to distance herself from the family legacy that she is connected to.³ I did not know any of this, and so went in without that vital context. Also, this is apparently the third in a trilogy of memoirs Debré wrote, and gasp the horror, I haven’t read the first two. Now I need to, obviously. Available as Name in English.

6. Pop Song: Adventures in Art and Intimacy, by Larissa Pham
   As much as I enjoyed this book, the title is very misleading. There are very few pop songs in Pop Song, something that disappointed me greatly. The subtitle is much more accurate: adventures in art and intimacy. Pham uses her essays to explore her relationship to art, as well as addressing a mysterious ‘you,’ who it becomes clear is a former lover. I really enjoyed this book.⁴ The author and I are close in age, so we shared similar college and relationship experiences. Pham is the child of Vietnamese immigrants, so there are obvious racial and ethnic differences, but so much of what she described I related to from the emotional and relational standpoint. It made me realize that while youth is wasted on the young, you could not pay me to go back to my early 20s. I also learned about a number of new artists throughout the reading, which is always a nice discovery.

7. Poems of the Sea, various

   I got this book in Salem, back in 2023, during my freelancer era. I’m still freelancing, but it’s not my main source of income. Point being - I was very much still in my ‘everything can be made a business expense if you try hard enough’ period. I still stand by that. Anyhow, this book is a collection of poems dedicated/about/referencing the sea. We have everything from Homer’s The Odyssey to Sylvia Plath. I read this for two reasons: 1) Les Années took me so long to read that I needed something else that I could finish in a relatively short amount of time to meet my monthly quota and 2) I am currently in a Master and Commander phase.⁵ I love that movie. I did not watch it when it originally came out in 2003 (I was, and forever will be, a Lord of the Rings girlie), and I only watched it in 2009 as part of an English class I was taking. (Literature of the Sea, for those who went to LC.) It stayed with me because it is such an accurate historical fiction depiction, and overall just a good movie! It’s a real shame it was released when it was, because LOTR and Pirates of the Caribbean overshadowed it. It’s free on YouTube, so I figured I’d accompany my searfaring watching with seafaring poems. I mainly enjoyed this for the vibes.

8. East, Edith Pattou

   

   The cover of my youth on the left, the updated one on the right.

   I normally do not re-read books. In fact, the only book that I re-read on any regular basis is Pride and Prejudice. Mainly because I have to answer something whenever someone asks what is my favorite book, and I have indeed learned a lot from Ms. Austen. Anyways, I read East when I was in middle school, and really enjoyed it! I still remember the broad strokes of the plot 20 years later. Why I am reading it again now? you ask. Well, I just discovered that there’s a sequel to this book West. The nomenclature, it’s striking. I thought I remembered enough to just jump into West, but alas, I did not. Even though I remembered the broad strokes of the plot, I didn’t remember the character names, so after 20 pages of West, I realized I needed to re-read East. Which truly, how much of an imposition, re-reading a book I enjoyed. The book was as I mostly remembered it, but having the plot fresh in my mind will help when I broach West in June. East was published in 2003, and West was only published in 2018, so honestly props to Edith Pattou for remembering her own book that much, because I’m not sure I can conjure anything from 15 years ago story wise. Apropos of nothing, I prefer the original 2003 cover, not the newer 2018 one. Just saying. I guess I should go buy these books now, huh? Read digitally on Everand.

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No New Books™️ Challenge

I had a realization this week. A super important one. What’s that, you ask. Well! My special edition buying will conclude this month (RIP my wallet) and then I will have no new sequels or books to acquire until August at the earliest. You know what that means? That means I can make a run for my title: title of longest streak this year and also longest streak ever. (My longest streak last year was 50 days.) The rest of June plus July plus most of August? I can do it. Something to look forward to while I STILL keep resetting the counter every week.

• Longest streak: 38 days (January 1st - February 6th)

• Last streak: 14 days (May 7th -20th)

• Current streak: 0, the number brought to use by our friends in Arabia⁶

Mug Moment of the Week

Another new mug this week. Mugs have always been a part of my personality, but I appear to be leaning in hard on the hand crafted mug portion of this side quest. Behold, the Feral mug I got from local potter Party Mouth.

The blues on the mug match the blues on my coaster, which match the blues on my calendar. It’s all very ~aesthetically pleasing~ to my feral raccoon brain. It is a little small, but has a very nice stone feeling on my hands, and the rim is glazed to aid in easier tea sipping. Overall a fine steeping experience.

Until next time friends, may your reads be juicy and your tea piping hot.

1. Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT go down this rabbit hole unless you want to read about capital punishment in France. I do not recommend it and am now probably on some list.

2. You know you have reached French fluency when you realize that absolutely no one uses the nous conjugation form, and uses on instead.

3. Which includes, among other things: the architect of the current constitution of France, prime ministers, renowned war reporters, and a whole bunch of drug addicts.

4. Not just because the author and I share basically the same name.

5. Heaven forbid a girl have hobbies.

6. Super mega bonus points if you get that reference.