may 2024 wrap-up
Hello, friends. It’s been a hot minute. My last post was more than a year ago now, and since then, a lot has happened in my life personally and in terms of reading, which kind of rendered the unplanned hiatus. But I am back now with a lot of recent observations and realizations about how I consume books (then and now) and the pressures that I put on myself reading a book within my average timeframe that obviously differed during the time of the pandemic and now that I’m about to become a senior in college (woohoo!). So I’m kind of taking it slow and easy these days. My current goal is to keep reading, no matter how far ahead or behind I am in my Goodreads challenge. And hopefully, along the way, I could continue and post more often in my reading blog.
That being said, another epiphany I had in terms of managing Quiet Novel is how structured and almost robotic I was with writing my past posts. In my head, there was a strict guideline about how I should structure my posts and how I voice out my thoughts to be able to be called a real reading blog. But that, I realized, has actually limited what I wanted to share and contributed to my slump in both reading and writing. So starting today, there will be changes in this blog. Such as that: I will be less formal and just talk about books like I am explaining them to a friend. I hope the lowercase switch also doesn’t bother you because that’s also how things are gonna be now. I’m still in the process of updating my old posts, but in the meantime, here’s everything I’ve read in May: )
What I’d Rather Not Think About – Jente Posthuma trans. Sarah Timmer Harvey
Rating: 4/5 ★
This is a beautifully written book tackling complicated families, depression, and grief. Posthuma did well encapsulating everything compactly and authentically in just a few pages. This honestly kick-started a (rather well) reading month for me, after half a year of a slump. It’s shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024, which got me interested in the award itself and made me add Kairos, the winner, to my TBR!
Paradise Rot – Jenny Hval trans. Marjam Idriss
Rating: 2/5 ★
My face exactly after reading this… was a very confused one. Scratch that, I was very confused the entire time I was reading it. My friend 🕯️ recommended this to me about 2-3 years ago, and I’ve only gotten the right headspace to dive into it last month. Boy, was I disappointed. The. Amount. Of pee. In this book. Outrageous. I’ve read reviews talking about how this book was a rollercoaster to the senses – you can feel, smell, taste, and hear everything – and I definitely agree with that. all in all, I’d find very profound points about sexuality and gender here if only I wasn’t too distracted wincing at every mention of urine.
I Who Have Never Known Men – Jacqueline Harpman trans. Ros Schwartz
Rating: 3.5/5 ★
I picked up this book after watching a video of my current favorite YouTuber, hunter is kinda cool. She talked about this book in a most eloquent and profound way that made me just scour for the book the moment her video ended. This is a dystopian literary fiction that centers around the female experience, loneliness, and humanity in the midst of the absurd. The author does something very genius yet cruel to the reader towards the end (which I will not spoil, don’t worry) that just gives you that very meta moment when you realize that she did exactly to you what she did to the reader. I hope that interests you enough to try this one, too.
Mr. Salary – Sally Rooney
Rating: 4/5 ★
After that semi-traumatizing ending of I Who Have Never Known Men, I needed a feel-good romance (on second thought, was this a feel-good?) to nurse my wounds. All I can say is Sally Rooney, why is this not longer!!!
Cellular and Molecular Immunology – Abdul K. Abbas, Andrew H. Lichtman, Shiv Pillai
Rating: N/A
Read almost the entirety of this for class. My suffering deserves merit. To be fair, the first half of the book was digestible. The other half had me praying for St. Abbas The Patron Saint of Lymphocytes.
Babel – R.F. Kuang
Rating: 4/5 ★
My friend Addie thinks I am too much of a coward to read tearjerky books. Quite frankly, I agree. which is why it’s sometimes useful not to dive into a book with zero knowledge about it. The experience of reading this is almost exactly like what I had reading the Legend series by Marie Lu (that is, reading an extremely well-written young adult adventure book, which will render the need for therapy afterwards).
Funny Story – Emily Henry
Rating: 4.5/5 ★
Miles, Miles, Miles, Miles. I didn’t expect to like you a lot. A very obvious pattern in my reading habits is having a bandage book after a rough one. I like Emily Henry in general, and how she brings so much depth and personality to her characters, but this one was just chef’s kiss. I enjoyed it so much, setting it next to book lovers in my top Emily Henry books. I loved the characters more than the plot, but honestly, the latter works so well too. If only I didn’t feel like cheating on Charlie Lastra doing so, I would’ve given this a 5-star.
Hope the month has been kind to you as it has been to me! ciao.
This piece was originally posted on WordPress on June 9, 2024 and migrated to BearBlog on March 19, 2026.