Reading Wrap-Up: May 2012

We’re halfway through the year already–can you believe it? I am loving the warmer weather, and I’m looking forward to the kids being done with school so I can sleep in every day. Oh bed, how I love thee.

I got a ton of reading done in May, although not so much of it counted towards the challenges I’m participating in. I have been doing a lot of re-reading–I finished re-reading all of Toni Morrison’s fiction, and now I’m re-reading all of Margaret Atwood’s fiction as part of a project started by Dog Ear Discs.

June is going to be a busy reading month–I’m reading a bunch of books for book clubs, and I’m going to be joining O of Délaissé for her Bloomsday read-along of Ulysses on June 16th (official sign-up post coming soon). I’m also going to join sj of Snobbery for her annual re-read of the Lord of the Rings series (starting with The Hobbit) on June 23rd. Fun, fun!

Here’s a look at the reading I accomplished in May:

Number of books finished: 15
YTD: 57

• What It Is Like to Go to War, by Karl Marlantes (started in April for #hpbookclub)
• Volcano, by Shusaku Endo
• Paradise, by Toni Morrison
• Love, by Toni Morrison
• A Mercy, by Toni Morrison
• The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison, edited by Justine Tally (started in February)
• Lizz Free or Die, by Lizz Winstead
• When I Whistle, by Shusaku Endo
• Naples Declared, by Benjamin Taylor
• Overseas, by Beatriz Williams
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll (for #TuesBookTalk)
• The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain (for #1book140)
• A Sense of Direction, by Gideon Lewis-Kraus
• The Edible Woman, by Margaret Atwood
• The Yard, by Alex Grecian

Number of books in progress: 8

• The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (#hpbookclub)
• The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (#1book140)
• With My Body, by Nikki Gemmell (BOOK CLUB)
• The Memory of Love, by Aminatta Forna (Chunky Book Club)
• Middlemarch, by George Eliot (#TuesBookTalk)
• Johnson’s Life of London, by Boris Johnson
• Brand New Human Being, by Emily Jeanne Miller (TLC Book Tours)
• Surfacing, by Margaret Atwood

Number of pages read: 3,900
YTD: 19,085

Books reviewed:

• In One Person, by John Irving
• Lizz Free or Die, by Lizz Winstead
• Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Naples Declared, by Benjamin Taylor
• Volcano and When I Whistle, by Shusaku Endo
• Overseas, by Beatriz Williams

Reviews in progress: Yes.

**I’m using the Daytum website to keep track of my reading stats this year, so you can follow my progress at any time by visiting my Daytum profile.

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 4/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 0/40  (YTD: 11/40)
• Chunkster Reading Challenge: 1/14  (YTD: 8/14)
• End of the World Reading Challenge: 2,698 pages  (YTD: 14,566)
• The Classics Club: 5/100 (Total)
• A Non-Fiction Adventure: 6/130 (Total)

**You can follow my progress and learn more about each challenge under the Challenges tab in my menu bar.

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Ashley (my 11-year-old daughter) is participating in two of the challenges with me: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge. She doesn’t have a place to review the books she’s read, so she’s just doing the reading and keeping track of her progress in a notebook.

Here’s a look at what Ashley accomplished in May:

Number of books read: 7
YTD: 42

• Chomp, by Carl Hiaasen
• March Toward the Thunder, by Joseph Bruchac
• The Vampire Prince,  by Darren Shan
• Just as Long as We’re Together, Judy Blume
• The Little Red Guard, by Wenguang Huang
• Thirteen Ways to Sink a Sub, by Jamie Gilson
• Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, by E.L. Konigsburg

She also read three chapters of My Bondage and My Freedom, written by Frederick Douglass, and she’s currently reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by Harriet Jacobs.

Number of pages read: 1,652
YTD: 10,832

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 4/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 0/50  (YTD: 16/50)

My favorite books in May (not including re-reads) were Lizz Free or Die, A Sense of Direction, and The Yard.

What was/were the best book/s you read in May?