I read a bunch in May because Mr. Mouse and I had a week's vacation where we did stuff (hiking, trail running, road bike riding) in the mornings, then hunkered down to read through the early afternoons until it was time for beers. Solid strategy.
- Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill. A debut fantasy novel with heavy folkloric overtones. An acolyte, desperate to obtain the patronage of a god, gets sent back in time by the trickster Fox to try to save her own ancestors and, by doing so, save herself.
- I See You've Called in Dead by John Kenney. Bud is an obituary writer and, one day, feeling sorry for himself, gets hammered and writes his own obituary. But then he inadvertently submits it for publication. The newspaper wants to fire him but the HR department has now classified him as dead, and you can't fire a dead person - until the glitch in the system is worked out. Bud uses this time to figure out WTF he wants and he does this by going to the wakes and funerals of strangers. I liked this one.
- Clown Town by Mick Herron. The most recent installment in the Slough House / Slow Horses British spy series. Decent, although it's been so long since I read the last one that I didn't really remember what was going on in the longer story arc.
- Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. Mr. Mouse and I recently watched the Mindhunter series on Netflix and while we liked the first season, were less enamored of the second. I was interested enough to pick up the (non-fiction) book the television series was based on. As it turns out, I ended up liking the book better than the show.
- Hungerstone by Kat Dunn. Ooh I liked this one! It's a vampire novel, a feminist retelling of Carmilla (previously read here), which is itself the novel that inspired Dracula.
- On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz. Wherein the author takes eleven walks, most in New York City, with eleven different experts, to see what she is missing with her inattention. The experts include: her toddler, her dog, an artist, a geologist, a blind woman and a font designer. I enjoyed some chapters more than others but mostly came away with wanting to read Horowitz's book, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know
- I, Medusa by Ayana Gray. I liked this one too - another one in my unofficial series of modern retellings of Greek mythology. This is a version of Medusa's origin story, and how a smart, young woman gets forced into being one of the most iconic monsters in mythology.
- The Maid by Nita Prose. A murder mystery set in a hotel, with a slightly neuro-divergent chambermaid heroine.
- Death of the Author by Nnedi Okonafor. A science fiction novel within a novel, with an irascible, Black handicapped protagonist, Zelu. When she gets fired from her university job, in the wake of getting her novel rejected, she starts writing something completely different: a science fiction novel about robots in the aftermath of a global apocalypse that killed off all the humans.
- Beasts of Carnaval by Rosalia Rodrigo. A fantastical, fictionalized exploration of the effects of colonization on native peoples. Sofia, a mestiza freedwoman, travels to Isla Bestia - where rich colonizers flock for the food, wine and various entertainments - in search of her twin brother, who disappeared there five years earlier.
- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. Ooh. Love this one. Dragon fantasy that is kind of like Dragonriders of Pern crossed with Hunger Games but also pretty spicy. Readers are apparently kind of pouty that the author hasn't finished #4 in the series yet.
- My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. This one is a re-read and, honestly, I have no idea how many times I've read it. My copy was stolen from my fourth grade homeroom and completely fanned the flames of my youthful obsession with Greece. Ostensibly written to be about naturalist Durrell's encounters with the fauna of Corfu when his family lived there from 1935-1939, it is as much about the crazy characters who are his family and friends as it is about critters. I love this book. One of my all-time favorites.
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