May 2022 Wrap Up

Well May was a whole clusterfuck. Similar to March and April. I have given up hoping that the next month will be better. June has a lot going on, so maybe I'll be so busy it will all fly by.

Nevermind all that. Let's talk about what I read in May. Don't get comfortable. It's not that much.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman - I really enjoyed this murder mystery set on a pensioner's village in England. It's interesting that a man wrote mostly from the perspective of a woman. He did kind of make her a husband hunter, but otherwise she was interesting. The ending was a surprise and I was convinced it was someone else. Osman did great with the red herrings.

The Late Show by Michael Connelly - This was a mashed potatoes book for me. I wanted to read it for a long time because I was interested in a female detective written by a man known for his male detective series. I liked that he head on tackled the problems many women face in male-dominated work places, and the "back the blue" "cops are never wrong" "never turn against a cop" mindset that police departments traditionally have. Renee is relegated to the night shift because she filed a sexual harassments complaint against her boss and her partner, who saw the offense, didn't say anything to support her. The complaint was thrown out and she was transferred to the worst shift. Another interesting facet of this story is that there are two separate cases she's working on and they actually have nothing to do with each other. I kept expecting the streams to cross, but they never did. That gave me two things to focus on which kept both stories from getting too intense. I enjoyed this. I'm considering reading the next one.

Perfect World, Vol. 1 by Rie Aruga - I can't remember where I saw this, but I requested it from the library to check out the disability representation. A young woman runs into her high school crush after college. He works for the architectural firm her design company is partnering with. Then she realizes he is in a wheelchair. He was hit by a car in college and is paralyzed from the waist down. She doesn't think she could stand being stared at if she dated a man in a wheelchair, but she is still attracted to him. Turns out, he doesn't want to saddle a romantic partner with all the things that come along with being paralyzed which is where this book really shines. There are so many things you don't think about that come along with paralysis: he is more susceptible to illness and small illnesses can be fatal, he frequently poops himself and has to be cleaned up, etm. (etm is my new favorite abbreviation. It's like etc but it means et merde: "and shit".) Anyway, he is not willing to make himself vulnerable in that way and also not willing to ask a partner to tolerate these things.

Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge - This was the book club book for May. I liked it? I'm not sure what the point was, though. Libertie is the daughter of a Haitian man and a freeborn black woman in New York. Her mother is the local healing woman and frequently helps enslaved people get to freedom in New York and Canada. Her father died before she was born. Libertie goes to medical school in Ohio, but doesn't do well and resent her mother forcing her to follow in her footsteps. When she comes home, she finds a Haitian medical man helping in her mother's clinic. She marries him and moves to Haiti. His family can't stand her, and suddenly her husband's expectations of her have changed. I am still not sure what this all meant, but the writing was good.

The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller - Mike found this for me. It was on the library's "Coming Soon" list so he requested it. Charm is a madam in a high class bordello in the emperor's city. She reserves herself solely for the Emperor who comes every Tuesday. One day she is summoned to the palace by the Empress. The Emperor is dying and he wants her to find out which of his sons killed him to take the throne. Also he wants her to kill all the sons. As it turns out, Charm and all the women in the house of ill repute are boneghosts. The Lady suffered some horrendous trauma in her home country, so she split off parts of her personality to protect herself. Pain feels all the pain for all the women. Shame, Justice, Pride, and Desire fulfill various roles. I really enjoyed this. The mystery was fantastic, and the action scenes were heart-pounding.

So there you have it. 5 books. At least I mostly liked them all. I tend to get bogged down reading books I'm not excited about. Then it takes me five-ever to finish a book.

What did you finish in May?