It is the last hours of May on the West Coast, and I wanted to share a bouquet of books—that is, everything I’ve been reading recently:

A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux. A friend had been telling me to read this French author (and Nobel Prize winner) for years, and this memoir about her mother intrigued me. It is short, so I read it over an evening and a morning. What frustrated me about Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart was absent here—Ernaux’s mother was a complicated person, yet she neither justifies nor condemns her. Instead, she paints a very blunt portrait, nostalgically sad without being sugarcoated. I thought it was an exceptionally good memoir for this reason and plan to read her other book about her father someday.

Dracula by Bram Stoker. Recently my boyfriend took me to a wonderful secondhand bookstore and said he’d buy me a book. 💕 I was excited to stumble across an old Wordsworth Classics copy of Dracula. These editions are very sentimental to me and rare, so finding a new one is like winning the book lottery. I am about halfway through rereading it. It’s more melodramatic than I remember it in 2012, but then again, I was more melodramatic back then, too… Still, it’s brought me joy in the same way as rereading The Woman in White. These old Gothic classics are my comfort food.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. I’m three stories into this collection, having just reread “The Empty House,” “The Norwood Builder,” and “The Dancing Men.” I feel the writing is stronger in this one than in previous Holmes books. Maybe the break was good for Doyle? I’m most eager to read the stories I can’t remember, like “The Priory School” and “The Golden Pince-Nez.”

Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong. This is the latest pick for Reading the World. I feel conflicted about it, because the setting (early communist Vietnam) forces me to think about my own family history, which is a bit of a Pandora’s box that I know little about and have been afraid to ask. Yet I chose this book, because I am hoping to gain some perspective from it. We shall see.

Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley. I started this as part of a readalong. The first chapter was not promising, but I intend to read it this month and get to a point where I can discuss it with my reading buddies (who are way ahead of me).

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng. This is a novel by a Malaysian author I’d never heard of before; I picked it up randomly on vacation. The promise of a biracial protagonist in interwar Malaysia sounded interesting, and so far it’s been pretty good. I want to get back to it, but I also know that I need more time because it is a chunkster. :]

This summer is shaping up to be a busy one. I will be traveling quite a bit and may be absent for extended lengths of time. I’m very excited, but prayers would be appreciated, as there are some unknowns.

And before I sign off—a song from Clancy, the new twenty one pilots album I’m a bit obsessed with.