The 52 Book Club: 2025 Challenge discussion

WEEKLY CHECK-IN
May 6, 2024 -- Week 19

Which book did you start the month of May with?
How would you rate it?

I started this month with Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova. I rated it 3 Stars.

It was a pretty short read and I enjoyed the strangeness and grossness of the overall mood of the book but I finished it with more questions than answers.

I stopped by the library during lunch and picked up a couple of books I’d been waiting for. I also spent a few minutes in the Children’s section reading Lailah’s Lunchbox (no need for me to check out a 32-page children’s book!)

The Secret Life of Bees- three stars.

The One and Only Bob- four stars.

The Count of Monte Cristo- four stars.

I have started Love and Ruin by Paula McLain. It’s about Martha Geldhorn who was one of Ernest Hemingway’s wives. I had seen a movie about her and Ernest. I’m enjoying the book which starts with the Spanish Civil war.

I started with Murder as a Fine Art. I'm still reading it and I'm loving it so far. It's a historical thriller novel.

I started and finished The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh for a bookclub. I did not have high hopes for it.....but wow, I read it in a day and half, it kept me wanting to know what happened next. 4 stars

I started with The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen, which is the first book in her new Martini Club series. It was really good, I gave it 4 stars. Lots of action, a few twists, and I love the group of retired CIA agents that are the protagonists.

I’m reading Mississippi Blues by Kathleen Ann Goonan, book 2 in her Nanotech Quartet. I haven’t had much time to read, so I’m only about 40% done. It’s a little more focused than the first book in the series.

I’m also listening to Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune. It’s excellent so far!

May is off to a slow start for me, but that’s OK.

I started May with The Story of Antigone by Ali Smith and Heathen, Vol. 1 by Natasha Alterici. I rated both 4 stars.
The Story of Antigone was a retelling of the play for a younger audience. It had beautiful water color illustrations and was told from the POV of a crow.
Heathen is a graphic novel retelling of Norse Mythology. I really like the art style and the story line is interesting especially because I'm much more familiar with Greco-Roman mythology than Norse. I know the basics but I have no idea if Heathen is retelling a specific myth or just pulling on basic elements to build a story.

Natalya wrote: "I started with Murder as a Fine Art. I'm still reading it and I'm loving it so far. It's a historical thriller novel."

I'm in the middle of that one, too, and I agree. It's very good.
The first book I finished this month was Fugitive Colors by Lisa Barr. It's about how the Nazis treated modern artists in the years before WWII. I'd give it 4 stars.

So This is Love by Elizabeth Lim - I finished the book on the first day of May. 4/5

Scorched by Mari Mancusi - Started April 29th but will finish it Friday (May 10). Unless something drastic happens I'm gonna give it 3/5.

S.O.S. by Tom Phillips - Finished this book on Cinco de Mayo of all days. Really enjoyed this book. Weirdly, I gave it the same rating as So This is Love (I really enjoyed them both), but S.O.S. is by far my preferred if forced to pick between the two. I just found it so funny and enduring. 4/5

Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim
Redemption by Deborah J Ledford
No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall

All pretty good.

The Night Circus is the first book I started in May. I am not done yet so not sure what I will rate it, but I love it so far.

Thread and Gone

It was a spur-of-the-moment pick from my library's shelves. There were a few things that were bothering me about it as I read it (maybe some of those are because it's #3 in a series of which I haven't read #1 or #2), but overall it was a pretty standard cozy mystery.

I started May with Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack. 4 stars!

I'm reading Redwood Court by DeLana R.A. Dameron, 2.5 Stars

I started May reading The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson by Ellen Baker (4 stars), Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang (3 stars) and am now reading Funny Story by Emily Henry (4 stars so far ;-) )

I started May with finishing 2 library books,

Eirik Raude by Øystein Morten for the prompt 'Non-fiction recommended by a friend' which I rated 4 stars

and

Vestlandsvegar - Historiar om farlege og spektakulære vegstrekk by Halvor Folgerø, which I also rated 4 stars.

I started May with Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance by Ramie Targoff - an interesting read about women who were writing during the same time as Shakespeare (about whom we don't know because women could only publish privately and that was also rarely done). For me was looking at a completely new perspective!

The Girl Who Played With Fire - Stieg Larsson. 4 stars

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
5 stars

May has been a slow start as I was finishing up books from last month. Those were California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline by Rosanna Xia, a big 5 stars for this, and Horse by Geraldine Brooks which I am not connecting with so setting aside for now.

So the first read of May is James by Percival Everett. So, So good and also humbling. I just started this yesterday, but it feels like a 4-star rating so far.


Side note: James is a difficult search through Goodreads. It does not show up until 3 - 4 pages in.

Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia by Hadley Freeman was my first book of May. Not sure if it fits into any of the prompts, but it was an excellent book 5/5.

I See You by Clare Mackintosh was so difficult to put down. 5/5

Next is A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson