My May Reads – 2026. What a mess.

May was a tough month. It was, personally, one of the worst months of my life. And it was a rugged reading month over all. I struggled in a number of ways.

A week in, the reading plan changed drastically. And I still had problems with the new list. Quite a few books were a slog, even though I enjoyed them for the most part. My thrillers, which are my escapist popcorn reads, were a disappointment. One was a book I didn’t finish because of a spoiler, though the beginning wasn’t bad. One was just not my cup of tea, but I finished it. The third won’t release until June after all. I had to push several other books on the TBR into the future because I’d made changes to the list early on, and then because of all the personal chaos, I ended up moving some others. In general, I had less time to read than I’d anticipated because my father was in the hospital and ended up passing away. Reading was lower priority and that’s okay. It was just a really hard month.

Books on the original TBR that moved include:

• An Ending on Elliot Bay, by DD Black: The new release date is June 4
• Letters from Japan, by Marie Kondo: A casualty of my TBR reshuffle
• How to Solve Your Own Murder, by Kristin Perrin: A casualty of the TBR reshuffle
• Social Media for Writers, by Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine: A casualty of the TBR reshuffle
• Taking Out the Carbage, by DJ Foodie: Too long for the time available
• The Writer’s Garden, by Jackie Bennett and Richard Hanson: I ran out of time
• How I’ll Kill You, by Ren DeStefano: I ran out of time
• The Claiming, by JA Nielsen: I ran out of time

Despite that impressive list of stuff I didn’t read, I actually completed a quite a few books. A few were on the original TBR and the rest were from the reshuffle.

Here’s the graphic. Then the list, in no particular order.

• Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yaros.

This was a Tier One priority book. I am only half way through this book, but that was intentional. It is over 500 pages, and I’d started it in May with the intention to finish in June, since it was a June book club pick in my fantasy book club. I didn’t really expect to enjoy this, because Romantasy is not my genre, but it’s surprising me. It feels like more of a traditional fantasy in the first half. I expect the romance will heat up in the second half, so we’ll see if that changes my opinion. But I really like it so far. I am glad I was encouraged to pick it up.

• The League of Dangerous Young Ladies, by JA Morgenstein

This has been a high priority because I have an advanced reader copy. The book releases on June 2 and I need to write a review on release day. I am not quite done, but I should finish it by then. I hope to write a review here on the blog as well. It’s about the adventures of Rose Moriarty, the teen daughter of Sherlock Holmes’s enemy. It’s high in imagination and adventure, and it includes nods to Frankenstein, Dracula, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and others.

• The Odyssey, by Homer (translated by Emily Wilson)

This was another Tier One pick. I ended up choosing the Emily Wilson translation because the iambic pentameter format felt easier to read than the novel-like translation I’d picked up originally. It was a slow read for me, pacing wise, but I did enjoy the story. Most of us know pieces of it, and I’d read parts in college, but it was nice to read it from start to finish. I think it’s a great preparation for the film versions. I did like that there’s extensive additional sections that discuss Greek life and culture at that time, which help shed additional light on the story. I didn’t read all of that material, but it was fascinating, and it’s nice to have it available for the clarifications that you need.

• The Book of Ichigo Ichie: The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way and The Four-Way Path by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles

This was a Tier One book that I did finish. The concept behind this book is that each moment in our life happens only once, and if we let it slip away, we lose it forever. It’s advocating more mindfulness and putting thought into special moments. That resonated with me this month as I spent my final days and minutes with my father. If you enjoy self help books with exploration of concepts like this, you’ll like the book.

• Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books, by Hwang Bo-Reum

I read this book for the Goodreads Spring Reading Challenge. It was a prompt to read a book about books. This book included numerous short essays about the joy of reading – the when, the where, the what. It was an homage to reading in every way. It’s fast paced and had many thoughtful takes. The author includes a lot of great quotes from other writers too.

• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

This is one of my favorite stories in movie format and I had never read the book, so it was on my Tier Two list, and the only one in that tier that I finished. It was time to read it. It’s a slow read in the beginning while you get used to the longer sentences and more meandering style of classical literature, not to mention the greater description compared to more modern novels. Jane Austen is such a sharp observer of human nature, though, and her dialogue is exquisite. I loved this read.

• I Knead My Mommy by Francesco Marciuliano

This was the only Tier Three read that I finished. In keeping with my goal to read more poetry this year to improve my prose, I read this cute little poetry book. I’ve had it on my shelf for years because I collect cat books, so it was fun to revisit. A lot of my short fiction writing leans into whimsy, and this one matches that tone. Plus, it has kittens. I thoroughly enjoyed it all over again.

• Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier

I’d put this novel on my TBR after the reshuffle, because it met some reading prompts, because it’s been ages since I read it, and above all, because it showed up in my library queue early. I knew the twist but had forgotten some of the details. I enjoyed going back to it and refamiliarizing myself. I think I got a lot more out of it theme-wise, than I did in my early twenties. There’s a lot under the surface of this one that I missed the first time when I took it all at face value. If you haven’t read it, it’s a brooding gothic novel where a young and naive new wife feels herself to be in competition with her husband’s dead (and perfect) first wife for his love.

• Best Wishes from the Full Moon Coffee Shop, by Mai Mochizuki

I read this one to fulfill a coffee shop setting book prompt, and it was added in my reshuffle. It worked well because I had it on my shelf already to read someday soon. Much like the clinic in the book, We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, which I read a couple of months ago, the coffee shop is a magical place that helps visitors. In this book, they discover their true wish in life. Also like that other series, I bought the second book in the series first. In this case though, I didn’t discover it was the second until I’d read it. That’s okay. I think I wasn’t that confused by how things worked. This book is very much in the Japanese magical realism style. It was a sweet and rapid read.

• The Perfect Roommate, by Minka Kent

I chose this thriller during my reshuffle because it fit a reading prompt for a book with a roommate. In this book, a college student moves in with a girl who soon becomes her close friend. When she gets strange vibes from her and a murder happens, things get dark. This one didn’t hit for me. I can’t put my finger on what wasn’t working. It may be just that the murder happens pretty late in the story and the earlier intrigue wasn’t capturing me. There was a twist that I didn’t figure out, so it’s a good thriller in that sense, but not my cup of tea.

• The Subtle Art of Folding Space, by John Chu

I picked this for the Goodreads Spring Challenge as part of my reshuffle. It’s a pretty short science fiction novel. The premise is that there are a group of people tasked with maintaining and fixing the physics of our universe (called the skunkworks). When the daughter of a scion of this group finds a mechanism that is keeping her mother in limbo between life and death for someone’s own gain, she has to fix the problem and find the perpetrator or perpetrators with her own universe maintenance skills she’s learned. In some ways, the abilities read like magic in the unusual descriptions about the backside (or inside) of the workings of the universe. It was intriguing and entertaining, and it’s a very quick read. It’s not my usual kind of choice, but I did like it.

• Snacking Dinners, by Georgia Freedman

This was my cookbook pick for the month. I am so glad I chose it. It was a lot shorter and easier to review looking for good recipes than my original pick. I need a less fraught month to go through that one. Meal worthy toasts and unstuffed crab and avocado look like easy and delicious dinners with healthy ingredients, but there are so many others.

In addition to the above, I read half of The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz. It’s about a novelist who steals the plot of a fellow writer’s novel after he dies. He’s wildly successful until someone who knows what he’s done threatens him. It was going well until I stumbled over a spoiler to the ending and couldn’t finish it. I now know that I can’t do a spoiler in a thriller, though they can work for me in other genres.

All told, I read twelve books in one of the tougher months of my life, and I only had one DNF. It was messy with juggling all the titles that weren’t right for the month, but it was otherwise a success, considering. What were your favorite reads this month? Do you have any recommendations?

Thanks for reading!