May has been both a relief, and a stressful month. First, I’m entirely finished with my school work. I ended in my dissertation about a week early from the due date, which was a total relief. I feel like I’ve got things under control for the first time in a long time.
Restrictions are lifting slowly over here, so I took a trip to Kilkenny a few weeks back. It was maybe a bit early (and definitely a rainy day…) so the mix of doing outdoor stuff and being in the rain wasn’t a good mix per se, but I still enjoyed it. Even if it took my body a couple of days to recover from all the walking.
My body’s still acting up with pain flareups, so I’ve been reading a lot of audiobooks as I lay in bed waiting for it to pass. There’s got to be a good side to everything! I read 13 books all together this month, so here’s just some of the highlights!
- The Tea Dragon Society and The Tea Dragon Festival, two amazingly gorgeous comics by Kay O’Neill. I only got the second one on Saturday and I gotta say it was just as good, if not better, as the first one!
- Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer – a soft-spoken, informative and heartbreaking audiobook about Native American ways of living. A must-Read in my opinion.
- A Memory Called Empire, by Arcady Martine: Fast paced and brilliant scifi novel around colonialism and the meeting of cultures. I’ve just about started reading the second one in the series!
- Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers. This book wrecked me! I might eventually write a review, though it’s the 3rd book in the Wayfarers series – it mostly works as a standalone. It’s another amazing bit of writing by Becky Chambers, who’s now definitely an auto-buy for me
- Hani and Ishu’s guide to fake dating, by Adiba Jaigirdar, an absolutely adorable Irish-Bengali YA romance that had me feeling all the feels!
- A Dead Djinn in Cairo, and the Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djeli Clark – I’m really excited for A Master of Djinn to come to my country in audio format, but in the meantime I’ve found some Clark short stories I’m gonna read too.
I’m behind on my ARC reviews, but I’ve started Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it, it’s shaping up to be a great novel already!
For June, I’d planned to do a queer author spotlight, but I’m realising now that I won’t have the spoons to do it as well as I’d want to. So instead, I’m going to focus on reading queer books this month (more than usual, that is to say) and use those reviews to highlight some queer authors and stories.
What’s the last queer book you read? And your favourite queer book of all times?
🌈 Happy Pride month everyone! 🌈
