Wow, is this year going faster than other years, or what? I feel like May has just begun (I've just come back from China), and suddenly it's almost July already! We're bracing ourselves for some of the hottest days to come this year (30+ temperatures, the whole country is in an uproar) and in the meantime I even managed to read some books!
19 De vegetarier (The Vegetarian) - Han Kang
20 The assassination of Margaret Thatcher - Hilary Mantel
21 Us - David Nicholls
22 Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
23 Gooseberries - Anton Chekov
I alllmost managed to finish The Talented Mr Ripley as well, but then sleep overtook me, so that will have to go in next month's list.
But considering that the last full week of June was last week (week 26), and I'm now at 23 books, I seem to have actually caught up by one book! I am now only 3 books behind!
So I read some wildly differing books this month. The Vegetarian is by a South Korean writer who I'd never heard of, and it is a very beautiful but also slightly disturbing book about a woman who decides to stop eating meat, and the events that unravel because of that choice. It makes you wonder whether anyone is actually in their right mind at any time. I feel that Us is this years The Rosie Project: the book about a scientifically minded man (first-person narrator) who falls in love with this artsy girl but can't quite get the affection across because of his slightly autistic nature. Only in Us, the couple are actually married (much to the surprise of the protagonist) and their marriage is falling apart. Also, Us has a wonderful sense of humour, which makes me want to read more books by Nicholls. Then there was Gooseberries, short stories by Chekov, to complement the short stories by Hilary Mantel. And finally Black Swan Green, of which I've written a lot already.
Hopefully the approaching summer weather will mean lots of lazy afternoons filled with reading and eating home-grown strawberries...
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