May was an amazing month of reading this year (check out my youtube channel to see a wrap-up of all that jazz). June proved to be less promising but still decent – much better than any single month last year that’s for sure.
Overview
My thoughts
I started ‘Agnes Grey’ at the very end of May but finished it in June. I read it as part of my quest to read more classics and I was so glad that I chose this to bring me back because I absolutely loved it so much. I’ll need to do a reread of ‘Jane Eyre’ to see if this needs to overtake it as my new favourite classic.
Next up with ‘The Best We Could Do’, a graphic novel. This was absolutely beautiful both to read and to look at. I finished it so quickly due partly of course to it’s format but mostly to the way I was entranced by the story of this family. It brought up so many themes and especially ones that I think about often like the sacrifices that parents make for their children.
‘My Brilliant Friend’ has been on my list for a while due to my fascination with Italy and my aim is one day to read this series in it’s original Italian. I also read this as part of my aim at reading more widely across the world and including more works in translation. This story was also beautiful and I connected to the character Elena in many ways enhancing my investment.
‘The Ask and The Answer’ is the second is a series that I am absolutely loving and have plans of finishing in the first few days of July. This book took such a turn from the first book bringing us into a much larger story world and really showing Ness’ ability to not only give us the one developed character but to really connect us to multiple characters which I admire.
This month I picked up to short-listed books from the Women’s Prize, neither being the winner as the bookstore was of course out, and I decided to start with ‘When I Hit You’. This book was so devastating and yet beautiful in it’s language and construction. While at times it seemed a little repetitive this really brought us into the mind and experience of out protagonist which was scary but very effective.
I’ve been meaning to get to ‘This House of Grief’ for a very long time because I stole it of my mum’s bookshelf but I finally got to it this month after binge-watching ‘The Staircase’ on Netflix which also follows a court trial. The thing about this case unlike many others that I am interested in is that I remember hearing about the trial in the papers because it happened in my city. This made it really sink it but also made it enjoyable to read if I can say that about such a horrible story, because I new all the places that were being talked about and I could imagine all their lives really playing out.
‘The Killing Lessons’ is maybe the first murder mystery that I have ever read, if I am correct. I love watching TV shows and documentaries about true crime or murder mysteries but as a genre of books it has always seemed so…I don’t know. Either way I loved this. It was super creepy in the first half and in the second half things kept changing and while I think that some of the people that ended up alive could have probably died for it to be more realistic I really did enjoy it. I thought that the motive for the killer was very smart and the way that she wrote the voice of each individual character was really well done and they were all quite seperate and fleshed out in their own right.
Total finished: 7
DNFed: 2
Favourite: The Ask and The Answer
Least favourite: This House of Grief by Helen Garner
Audrey xx
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