End of May reading update

Here we are deep into June already and I haven't finished with May. Blame it on my second round of strep throat, which was diagnosed today. "Sucks to be you," the doctor said to me, pleasantly. I felt very well understood.

Anyway, in May I read 8 books -- almost 9, but couldn't quite finish the last one on May 31st, so it'll be in the June list. Here's the list:

36. Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by Maureen Corrigan. An enjoyable discussion of the books she loves and how they've influenced her life. She and I like many of the same writers, such as Barbara Pym and Dorothy L. Sayers. I also loved her analysis of the "Beany Malone" books.
37. Potty Training for Dummies by Diane Stafford and Jennifer Shoquist. Read for obvious reasons, but what a terrible book! So badly written and even more badly edited. An embarrassment to the "Dummies" series and of no help at all to anyone.
38. A Darker Place by Laurie R. King. Not a mystery, one of her stand-alone books. About a former cult member who infiltrates cults for the FBI and attempts to diffuse them. Like all Laurie R. King books, it meanders and doesn't tie up loose ends very well, but I still enjoyed it.
39. The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich. This is the book she wrote before Shadow Tag, and it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. More her usual style. It was very good, but didn't grab me like Shadow Tag.
40. Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde. Thank goodness I'm finally done with this series! This one upset me in many ways. I'm glad I don't have to read any more about Thursday Next (until Fforde writes the next book in the series).
41. The Seal Wife by Kathryn Harrison. Such an odd little book and for a while I was not happy with it. It's about a National Weather Service employee who goes to Alaska in 1915 and falls in love with a native woman. One of the reviews I read of it said they wished there had been less about his weather service work and more about the romance -- I of course was hoping for more meteorology. The TMI details of his longing for the woman after she goes away just really left me cold. But it has a neat ending and all in all I decided I liked this book.
42. Look Again by Lisa Scottoline. Scottoline is a popular writer of legal thrillers, so I thought I'd try this one, which some reviews said was her best. And now I know I don't ever have to read anything else by her. Just awful.
43. The Meaning of the Boulder-Dushanbe Teahouse by George Peknik. No, I am not padding the list, it's not just a coffee table book, there's a lot of text. And what bad text. I must remember that coffee table books are not meant to be read.

As you can see, I only have to read 7 books in June to reach 50 by the halfway mark, but I'll try to do better than that, since you never know when you'll hit a slow month. For instance, I feel like I'm hitting one now. Or maybe it's just the strep. Or the heat. Welcome to summer in Ridgecrest.