Read Women discussion

June is almost a wrap. Gulp.

Let's take a moment to discuss highlights or anything else memorable about what you have read this year. Take stock and share goodness along with any most anticipated excitement for your second-half TBR.

This year has zoomed by. I'm in a bit of a reading slump right now. The heatwave in the UK isn't helping but the first 5 reading months were great ones!

Firstly, I'm really loving my new role here as a moderator and am thankful to you all for welcoming and encouraging me :)

I really enjoyed our Han Kang author focus. We've had some great discussions too. Mr Loverman and Womb City spring to mind! I'm also really glad that you guys encouraged me to retry Their Eyes Were Watching God and have discovered a new passion for reading bingo!

My favourite reads of the year so far:
Things They Lost
Mina's Matchbox
Ten Steps to Nanette
Their Eyes Were Watching God
A Guardian and a Thief
The Vegetarian

I'm looking forward to trying to smash our second bingo challenge! Getting over this slump and reading some of my massive pile of nature reads, including our buddy read of The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works. And exploring more for our Q3 sci-fi/fantasy challenge :D

The Han Kang author focus was a big win for me, too, Hannah. Overall, I've had a better nonfiction reading year than fiction, but I can't complain. I'm excited for how many of my most enjoyed reading discoveries were found with our group.

Best Fiction

Hunger: A Novella and Stories by Lan Samantha Chang

August Blue by Deborah Levy

Human Acts by Han Kang

Mallory's Oracle by Carol O'Connell (mid-1990s NYC police procedural/mystery series)

Best Non-fiction

Dead and Alive: Essays by Zadie Smith

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown

Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital by Elise Hu

Humanly Possible by Sarah Bakewell

Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice by Rachel Kolb

Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town by Hannah Kirshner

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Light and Thread by Han Kang

Most Anticipated Reads

Unsettled by Rosaleen McDonagh

Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage by Heather Ann Thompson

Our July group read: Fighting Chance: The Struggle over Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction America by Faye E. Dudden

Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor

Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter by Ada Ferrer, author of Cuba: An American History

Our Hilary Mantel and Arundhati Roy Author Focuses

Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor

and two by 2 of my fave male authors:

Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead

Etna by Paul Yoon