May 2026 Wrap Up - Book of the Month - June TBR

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]It's time for the May wrap-up. I'm going to talk about all the books I read in May, pick out a book of the month, and then talk about what I'm going to try to read in June. Now, for most all of these books that I read in May, I did longer videos that I'll post down in the description, links to those. There is one exception that we'll get to here in a minute, but the first book I finished was Camp Concentration by Thomas M.

[00:00:22]Disch.

[00:00:23]And I mostly liked this book. I I I did I did enjoy it, but I think there was a lot that kind of went over my head with this one. It would probably be one that would be good to reread in the future, although I'm not sure I'm going to come back and reread this one. We'll just have to wait and see.

[00:00:42]But, this book is about a poet who is a conscientious objector in a war. He's sentenced to prison and later transferred to another prison that's doing experiments on the prisoners by trying to increase their intelligence, but it comes at this major cost that it reduces the prisoners' lifespan drastically.

[00:01:07]And so, the whole story is kind of told through journal entries by the main character. And he knows the authorities in this prison are going to be reading these journals. So, it kind of sets up this unreliable narrator where you you're not sure everything he's saying is truthful knowing that these these authorities are going to be reading it.

[00:01:29]It's It was a good book. There was, like I said, a lot There was a lot of references to literary works that I'm not that familiar with. I did stop and look up a few things to try to make sense of some of it, but it was still enjoyable at that level, but to fully get everything out of it, it would probably take multiple rereads in the future. I'm not I'm not sure I'm going to, but uh the next book was a classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C.

[00:01:57]Clarke. This was a buddy read with Scott Danielson and we had a great time talking about this one. We talked about the book, we talked about the movie, Arthur C. Clarke in general and kind of got side on some side tangents of some other works of science fiction. It was a great time chatting with Scott.

[00:02:18]Um but most people are probably pretty familiar with that one. You know, I I did forget how much more the book explains things uh as opposed to the movie because I am more familiar with the movie and this was just the second time reading this one and if if you are familiar with the movie and you want to know more about some of the mysteries that the movie really doesn't explain, the book definitely explains a lot more. So, check that out if you haven't. And then next up was another buddy read. This was Songs from the Stars by Norman Spinrad and me and Deb from the Omnivorous Reader we we read this one and then did video on this and had a good time talking about this one. Probably not my favorite so far from Norman Spinrad, but it's a very interesting concept. We've got a post-apocalyptic situation where the kind of main civilization that is rebuilding is in California and it's kind of like uh this kind of hippie uh scene that is rebuilding civilization. They've kind of shunned the technology, they call it like dark energy, everything that led to this war and devastated the Earth. And so, they really believe in like karma and renewable energy and it's it's done pretty interesting. Norman Spinrad is always interesting. I I will say that.

[00:03:50]But there are still some people who are kind of practicing these dark arts and these two kind of civilizations meet and it was a very entertaining story. The the two main characters here, it was like what are their names here? Clear Blue Lou and Sunshine Sue.

[00:04:10]And it was it was a fun one, but like I said, maybe not my favorite from Spin Rad.

[00:04:17]But, always a good time talking to Deb about these books.

[00:04:21]Then next up was The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. I had read this back in my younger days and I did not like this book when I was younger. I I gave it two stars and my only note said slow and boring.

[00:04:35]And on this reread, I liked it a lot more. I kind of took my time with it. I had I'm a more patient reader and a more mature reader.

[00:04:46]And I did like it quite a bit. I I think there's still other Ursula K. Le Guin books I liked more.

[00:04:52]But, this one is about these two planets who um humans had kind of settled this Earth-like planet first and then there was this revolution and some of the people taking part in this revolution went and colonized this sister planet.

[00:05:09]And there'd been communication had been like kind of completely cut off between these worlds and they'd gone different ways.

[00:05:18]And we have a main character who was born and grew up on this desolate planet and he's a brilliant physicist and he's he's going to maybe try to bridge the gap between these two planets and and share some of the insight in the in the physics that he's he's got this very interesting theory about kind of faster-than-light communication. A lot of people know Ursula K. Le Guin kind of coined the term the ansible. So, this is the story of how this ansible kind of the inception of this. And it's a very slow book. I will say that.

[00:05:56]There's not a lot of action in this one.

[00:05:58]It's a lot of talk, a lot of contemplation about society and religion and um governments and things like that.

[00:06:09]But, I I did enjoy it a lot more on this reread. The next book I read was Beyond Another Sun by Tom Godwin. This was the wife's wild card pick.

[00:06:20]And Tom Godwin mostly is known for a short story he wrote called The Cold Equations.

[00:06:26]I didn't really like that one too much.

[00:06:28]I like the ethic ethical dilemma that he sets up in that story, but the engineering is so bad that I just couldn't get over that and couldn't go full into the story. It it's just seems like a a flawed short story to me. Now, this is his only novel he ever wrote. And I like this quite a bit. He he He set up some ethical dilemmas again. It seemed like he was really good at that.

[00:06:55]But, there was a little bit more meat on the bone and I like the setup. So, we had back on Earth 150 years ago, people had discovered this dark star that was going to be entering the solar system and it was going to collide with our sun and just wipe out everything in the solar system. So, mankind decided they were going to send these scout ships out multiple scout ships in all different directions looking for a new home for humanity.

[00:07:26]They kind of spread their their net out wide and look look all over the place and they they had these colony ships trailing behind them um one after the other as they could build them and and follow behind these scouts and if these scout ships found a new home, they would let everyone know and kind of migrate toward this this area. And they have a faster-than-light communication, so everyone's kind of checking in with Earth.

[00:07:53]And and then what happens is if if they don't find a home, just say they find a a planet that might just be good a good way station, then they can kind of resupply these colony ships and keep all these people alive as they're going. So, this is this story takes place about 150 years into this mission, that mankind still has not found a a really good home for humanity. There's only 25 years left before this dark star is going to enter the solar system.

[00:08:28]And so, things are starting to get desperate, and our main character in this one is one of these scout ship pilots, and so he's he's kind of hopped through many different worlds, and he finds a world that has human beings on it, but they're only at like a Stone Age uh in their evolution.

[00:08:48]And so, there's a lot of things that that come up in this one, like is this going to be a place for humanity? Is it going to just be a way station? What What are we going to do with these people on the planet? And it it's it's a pretty interesting book, you know. Uh I don't think a lot of people have have read this book. It's a a Curtis book, which I think this is the first Curtis book I'd ever read, but it was it was pretty solid. Like if you see this one out there, uh it could be worth a checking out. And there was a lot of interesting things explored. It wasn't really necessarily a hard science fiction book. He brushes over a lot of things that um a fan of hard science fiction would question, so don't overthink that part of it. And the ending was pretty good. Um he he kind of resolves a bunch of things in an interesting way, but like I said, it's not really uh derived out of hard science.

[00:09:47]Okay, then the next book I read was We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

[00:09:52]And this one, you know, was written in like 1920 by Yevgeny in Russia. He was not able to publish this book for obvious reasons if you've read this one.

[00:10:05]He kind of rails against society, religion, all sorts of things.

[00:10:12]This is a book that >> [snorts] >> he you know, he I think he was persecuted there because of his views. I think he served time in prison. He finally got out of Russia, but he never really got a lot of fame in his in his day. He died fairly poor in I think it was France.

[00:10:31]And it was later that this book kind of got out of Russia, got translated in different countries in the West.

[00:10:39]And man, what a what a great book this was. This influenced books in like dystopian uh subgenre of science fiction.

[00:10:49]Notable works like you know, for sure 1984 by Orwell, possibly Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, although he says he didn't read this one, but maybe it was just in the collective uh unconscious of of people.

[00:11:06]But this is a very dystopian book. Uh it's set up like a utopia where >> [clears throat] >> in in the future after this 200-year war, the the ruling class here has decided that you got two options. You got happiness, and to have that, you can't have freedom. If you allow the population to have freedom, they're not going to be happy. So they go all in onto happiness, and and there's this drastic conformity in the population. Every All identity is lost. You're in this kind of collective of conformity called we and everybody kind of does the same thing and we have a a main character who starts to associate with someone who's kind of looking at things in a different light and it and it it's the the story is really this this main character's internal struggle of seeing things in this other light and man is it done so well. The the writing from Yevgeny is just amazing. The themes he was going over at the times and how influential this book was written in 1920.

[00:12:20]I I couldn't recommend this book enough.

[00:12:23]It was so good. It blew my expectations away at every turn of the page.

[00:12:28]The end everything about this one I loved. It's one of my favorite books of the of the year so far.

[00:12:35]So yeah, go check that one out for sure.

[00:12:38]Then the last book I read this month was They Walked Like Men by Clifford Simak.

[00:12:43]Kind of been taking part in this monthly Simak read with the Pig and Whistle group is what we call ourselves. I wasn't able to take part in the live on Scott Danielson's channel.

[00:12:55]But you know, I was kind of busy but I got to say I did not like this book really. It was probably my least favorite from Clifford Simak. I was a little disappointed overall by this one.

[00:13:09]And it's about this like newspaper man who starts to discover the some weird things happening in this town. He starts noticing these bowling balls that are trying to you know, take them out and then they start noticing that there's this this person who's buying up everything in this town, the grocery store, the bars, the houses, evicting everyone.

[00:13:37]And then he has to go around kind of solve this this mystery. And it just gets weird. He ends up meeting a talking dog.

[00:13:46]And all this somehow becomes related to this this hostile takeover of the planet Earth.

[00:13:52]And it it should It was just a very weird book. I didn't like it very much at all.

[00:13:58]I I I'd give this one like two stars.

[00:14:01]There is a lot of weird plot holes.

[00:14:03]Um it kind of felt like a Twilight Zone episode episode with some weirdness, but I just didn't like much about this one at all. And it's very odd because this book came out like right before I think this was the one right before Way Station, which is one of his best, and it's one of my favorites.

[00:14:23]But it almost felt like Simak was rummaging through some old manuscripts, found this idea, you know, took it off the shelf, wrote this novel, and and turned it in, and I don't know. I don't know. I could understand why some people would like this, maybe.

[00:14:41]It felt like a real bizarre movie that that he almost novelized or something. But yeah, not not a big fan of this one, but still, you know, I'm still going to read through everything Simak wrote, and it doesn't bother me that much that I didn't like that, but uh yeah, definitely not for me. So, my book of the month, if no surprise, it was We.

[00:15:03]This book just so good, and to know what Yevgeny had to go through to publish something like that, and how ahead of his time he was is just amazing. So, that was my book of the month.

[00:15:17]Okay, so now let's talk about what I'm going to read in June. I'm currently reading Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick. This is going to be a buddy read with a bunch of people. We got Bart from Bart's Book Space, Robin from Book Spin, and Brandon from Sci-Fi Brandon. We're all reading this and we're going to discuss it on and it's going to be hosted on my channel. So, uh look for that one coming out at some some point here in the near future once we all finish it and record it.

[00:15:51]And then my next the the then the big challenge for June for me is to read Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. I'm going to kind of treat this as a single book.

[00:16:03]I don't know if I'll be able to finish all four of these in in June, but I I did read these a long time ago.

[00:16:11]It will probably feel like reading it for the first time because it was so long ago when I read those.

[00:16:17]And I don't really think I'm going to just be able to read them all in a row without anything in between. I'm probably going to need to break them up and take some little breaks in between.

[00:16:27]So, I have some other ideas here of some little maybe kind of easier reads to read in between. So, I've got After Things Fell Apart by Ron Goulart that I might try to read. This is a nice short novel.

[00:16:41]I had this one on a my last month's book haul, Re-Chief of the CDT. I got a lot of comments about this. Sounds kind of comical at times maybe maybe a a good one to read in between to kind of mix it up.

[00:16:57]And then I also got the next wife's wild card we've got an Ace Double that she picked out here.

[00:17:03]And so, this is two kind of short short novels or novellas. So, I might start kind of reading those in between some of the Book of the New Sun.

[00:17:13]I don't like I said, I don't know if I could get through the whole thing in 1 month, but we'll just have to see. I want to kind of try to read it all within a short amount of time and and treat it like one big long book and see how that is. I remember when I read it a long time ago, I think it took me, you know, half a year or something to to slowly read through those books and I remember little bits of it, but it's going to be very interesting to kind of reread that and revisit it.

[00:17:43]And I know Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge was kind of on my TBR, but I'm going to kind of push that back. I don't think I'll get to it in June. That's probably more like a July read or something like that. So, like I say in all these one these monthly wrap-ups, let me know what you read in May and what some of your favorite reads were and maybe what you're thinking about reading in June.

[00:18:07]But, that'll do it for this video.

[00:18:08]Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video.