Bookish June
My bookish June was a mix of one adult fiction novel, one nonfiction audiobook, and two middle grade novels. I would have liked to have read more adult fiction novels, but ended up bailing on 3 of them, which I won’t name here.
The fiction book I read for personal reading is I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue. It reminded me of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, which I liked a lot. It’s a book about a socially awkward woman who is emotionally scarred by a past event and working at the office of a Walmart type superstore chain. There’s humor and friendship in the book. I gave it 5 ⭐️.
I’ve mostly sworn off audiobooks because I just have a difficult time with most of them and do better with print books, but I kept a few on hold with the library. Those few have been on hold for a long time. One of them came up, so I listened/read. I listened to Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food and Why Can’t We Stop by Chris van Tulleken. It was mostly preaching to the choir for me, but I still very much enjoyed it. Well, it wasn’t a happy or light-hearted listen, but still I thought it was mostly well done. There are snippets of a podcast conversation between the author and his twin brother that I found to be an interesting addition.
I read two very different middle grade novels to my son at bedtime. The first was Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. I had been wanting to reread this book and we didn’t have my son’s next pick from the library in time, so I took this book off of my bookcase. I was surprised at how much my son enjoyed this book. He’s more of an action and science fiction type reader. I wasn’t surprised that I enjoyed it. My son gave it 4 ⭐️ but I’d give it 5. Then we read a library copy of Minecraft: The Tournament by DaVaun Sanders. Official Minecraft middle grade novels are must reads for us, though both my son and I prefer the ones that take place entirely in Minecraft worlds. This one, unfortunately, did not. It ended up just being an okay read for me. I think my son liked it a little more than I did, but he still gave it just 3 ⭐️.