Read:
Go Gentle – Maria Semple (Penguin Random House Audio, 2026) (narrated by Saskia Maarleveld)
Son of Nobody – Yann Martel (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2026)
The Wax Child – Olga Ravn (Book*hug Press, 2025) (translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken)
Mother Mary Comes to Me – Arundhati Roy (Scribner Canada, 2025)
Yesteryear – Caro Claire Burke (Knopf Canada, 2026)
Seasons of Glass & Iron – Amal El-Mohtar (Macmillan Audio, 2026) (narrated by Rachel Elizabeth Smith)
Nobody Asked for This – Georgia Toews (Anchor Canada, 2026)
Pizza Girl – Jean Kyoung Frazier (Doubleday, 2020)
Who Else in the Dark Headed There – Garth Martens (Biblioasis, 2026)
Waist Deep – Linea Maja Ernest (Jonathan Cape, 2026) (translated from the Danish by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg)
The Hill – Harriet Clark (Macmillan Audio, 2026) (narrated by Maggie Thompson)
Peace Like a River – Leif Enger (Harper Audio, 2005) (narrated by Chad Lowe)
Before I Forget – Tory Henwood Hoen (St. Martin’s Press, 2025)
Currently Reading:
The Golem and the Jinni – Helene Wecker
Tenderness – Rowan Beaird
Thoughts:
I read a lot in May without feeling like I was working hard at trying to read a lot. I caught up with some reviews that I wanted to write for some April reads. I don’t plan on reviewing everything I read in May – some of these books I just honestly don’t have that much to say about – but I do have a few reviews scheduled into next month. So stay tuned!
Highlights of my May reading are definitely Son of Nobody and The Hill. I don’t know if either will make my Best of List at the end of this year but they’re both books that I’ve been thinking about since I finished them. I enjoyed Go Gentle but probably won’t review it because I don’t feel like I have much to say about it. Same with Pizza Girl, which had been sitting on my TBR for a few years now, though I enjoyed that one less. I did not really enjoy Yesteryear but I’m glad I read it and I did feel like I had things to say about it!
2026 Reading Goals:
54/100 books (13 in May)
Theological: 0/12
Translated Works: 6/12 (The Wax Child and Waist Deep, both translated from Danish, in May)
Pre-2025 TBR: 10/25 (Pizza Girl (since 2020) and Peace Like a River (since 2024) in May)
Goliaths: 5/6 (none in May)
Owned: 8/25 (Who Else in the Dark Headed There in May)
Current TBR: 174 (previously 153 but I have a good reason for the jump!)
What’s Next:
I recently pulled out, organized, and counted all of the books that I have piled up in my house that I plan to read but have not yet. Some of them, I realized, were not on my official TBR list so I added them (causing a somewhat depressing leap upward in my numbers). Before I started that, I wasn’t sure if or how I would participate in this year’s 20 Books of Summer challenge but I feel that it is always a good chance to focus a bit on my own shelves. I opted for 10 books on my list this time and I chose based on 1) books I already own and 2) books I felt excited to read when I picked them up from the pile. I didn’t worry about filling any other quota. Just books that I picked up and thought, “Oh yeah, I want to read this.” So here’s my list and you may notice that it’s actually 11 books. I started reading The Golem and the Jinni when I went away for a weekend at the end of May and then thought maybe that was cheating to have it on my Summer List so I replaced it but then knew I wouldn’t finish it before June because it’s quite large and so put it back but couldn’t decide which book to cut so here we are.
10 11 books of Summer
The Golem and the Jinni – Helene Wecker
A Fortune of Sand – Ruta Sepetys
Prophet Song – Paul Lynch
The Boy from the Sea – Garrett Carr
The Odyssey – Homer (translated by Emily Wilson)
Abiding Dependence – Ron Block
Babel – R.F. Kuang
Prophet Song – Paul Lynch
The Rise & Fall of Great Powers – Tom Rachman
A Horse at Night – Amina Cain
A Circle of Quiet – Madeleine L’engle
Karissa Reads Books 