May went by so quickly, and it turned out to be such a full month. There were a lot of things going on in my life, so I wasn’t able to devote as much time to reading as I’d have liked. Audiobooks were hugely helpful when I didn’t have the time or the focus to read printed or digital books. I’ve been DNFing more than usual, maybe because I have a lot of books I’m really looking forward to reading and it makes me reevaluate the books that I am devoting my time to, and whether I’m actually enjoying them or just reading them as if it’s a task to check off my list. My big accomplishment this month was being formally approved for disability benefits, so that’s a huge win at the end of a long journey. 🙌🏻 Happy Pride Month!

I’ve fallen even farther behind in my never-ending quest to get on top of my ARCs. Diversity is always a goal of mine, and while this wasn’t my best month, I did prioritize books authored by Asian, Pacific Islander, and Jewish people in honor of the Heritage Months being celebrated in the United States in May. I finished one of my reading challenges (🎉) but didn’t make any progress on the other one, so that’s just kind of how things are going over here. Here are some of my May highlights:

• My blog has gotten another 10 followers, bringing me up to 769. That short-term goal of 800 is in sight!
• I’m so far behind on physical ARCs that it isn’t even funny, and I’m struggling to focus. I read the most recent one in a shorter period of time and focused a bit better, so fingers crossed that it gets better. As for NetGalley, I reviewed exactly as many ARCs as I got approved for in May, so I ended the month basically in the same place that I started.
• Of the 35 books I read in May, only 2 were nonfiction, a decrease from last month. One was a memoir, and the other was a family biography exploring what happened to members of their family during the Holocaust by visiting Poland and searching for records and any trace of a surviving family member. It was incredibly moving and a powerful book that challenges the “hero/victim” narrative that Poland desperately clings to.
• I read another one of the books that I own this month, so making good progress there!
• As far as diverse voices, I read 4 books by Black authors, 4 by Jewish authors, 6 books by LGBTQIA+ authors, and 7 by Asian/Pacific Islander authors. Pacific Islander authors are especially underrepresented in publishing.
• I’m still working on challenging myself to reading genres outside of what I usually read, so in May I read 1 book classified as history/war, 1 as horror, and 1 as sci-fi. I’m finding out that I actually enjoy some of these genres more than I thought.
• I didn’t read any more of my 12 in 12 challenge books, so I still have 5 more to read. I completed the 18 Jewish authors challenge, and I made some more progress on the PopSugar reading challenge, leaving me at 44 out of 50 prompts completed (88%). Now it’s getting tougher to complete the prompts.

Here’s my breakdown of monthly/cumulative totals for May:

May Totals:

• Books read: 35
• Books DNF’d: 3
• Pages read: 4,575
• Hours listened: 9 days, 16 hours, 4 minutes
• Average pages: 381.3
• Average hours listened: 10 hours, 5 minutes

Cumulative Averages:

• Days per book: 3.33
• Pages read per day: 168.25
• Books read per month: 34.80
• DNF’d books per month: 2.2

Genres Read in May:

• Biography/Memoir: 1
• Fantasy: 9
• General Fiction: 5
• Historical Fiction: 4
• History/War: 1
• Horror: 1
• Mystery/Suspense: 7
• Romance/Erotica: 6
• Sci-Fi: 1

Backlist vs. New Releases:

• Backlist books: 9
• 2023 releases: 26

Fiction Vs. Nonfiction:

• Fiction: 33
• Nonfiction: 2

Format Read:

• Print: 3
• Digital: 9
• Audio: 23

Age Range:

• Adult: 29
• YA: 5
• Middle Grade: 1

My favorite book of the month was Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

Here’s what I read in May:

• Someone Else’s Bucket List by Amy T. Matthews (NG ARC)
• Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (ALC)
• Jews in the Garden: A Holocaust Survivor, the Fate of His Family, and the Secret History of Poland in World War II by Judy Rakowsky (NG ARC)
• Painted Devils by Margaret Owen (Little Thieves #2) (NG ARC)
• The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi (The Jaipur Trilogy #3)
• Unorthodox Love by Heidi Shertok (NG ARC)
• Vicious by V.E. Schwab (Villains #1)
• I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah’s Witness by Daniel Allen Cox (ALC)
• We Dream of Gods by Devin Madson (The Reborn Empire #4) (Publisher ARC)
• Hurt You by Marie Myung-Ok Lee (ALC)
• Jade Shards by Fonda Lee (The Green Bone Saga #0.75) (NG ARC)

• Murder at the Pumpkin Pageant by Darci Hannah (Beacon Bakeshop #4) (NG ARC)

• Everything’s Still There by Kalyn Fogarty (ALC)
• Hula by Jasmin Iolani Hakes (ALC)
• Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune (ALC)
• We Cry for Blood by Devin Madson (The Reborn Empire #3) (Publisher ARC)
• Zero Days by Ruth Ware (NG ARC)
• The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz
• House of Roots and Ruin by Erin A. Craig (Sisters of the Salt #1) (NG ARC)
• Into the Fire by Rick Mofina (Ray Wyatt Thriller #1) (ALC)
• Friends Like These by Meg Rosoff (ALC)
• Famous For a Living by Melissa Ferguson (ALC)

• Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst (ALC)
• Sugar, Spice, and Can’t Play Nice by Annika Sharma (Chai Masala Club #2) (ALC)

• What the Neighbors Saw by Melissa Adelman (NG ARC)
• Never Trust a Gemini by Freja Nicole Woolf (Untitled Series #1) (ALC)
• The Rachel Experiment by Lisa Lin (From Sunset Park, With Love #2) (ALC)

• Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen (Skin of the Sea #1)

• Sing, Nightingale by Marie Hélène Poitras (ALC)

• Debt of Sacrifice by Piper Stone (Eagle Force #3) 
• The Ferryman by Justin Cronin (ALC)
• The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill by Rowenna Miller (Publisher ARC)

• House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig (Sisters of the Salt #1) — reread
• Little Thieves by Margaret Owen (Little Thieves #1) — reread
• The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi (The Jaipur Trilogy #1) — reread
• The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi (The Jaipur Trilogy #2) — reread
• Murder at the Christmas Cookie Bakeoff by Darci Hannah (Beacon Bakeshop #2) — reread
• Murder at the Blueberry Festival by Darci Hannah (Beacon Bakeshop #3) — reread

How was your May? Did you have a good reading month? What are you looking forward to in June?