May 2026 Reading Wrap Up

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00][music] >> Hey guys, it's Didi. I'm back again and I'm here to do my May wrap-up. So, May was a very interesting month of reading.

[00:00:14]I'm really excited to talk to you about the books that I read last month. So, let's begin at the beginning and I started the month with Blanche White.

[00:00:25]So, Blanche Passes Go. This is the fourth book in the quartet of the Blanche White series.

[00:00:34]>> [clears throat] >> This is a cozy mystery featuring the protagonist Blanche White, who is a 40-something year old black woman who is a domestic worker. She cleans homes for a living and this is how she winds up sleuthing.

[00:00:54]In this particular novel, she is contemplating returning to her hometown and she's wondering if this is the right move for her for various different reasons.

[00:01:08]She would eventually be going there not to be doing domestic work, but to be working with her good friend in her friend's catering business.

[00:01:20]So, this novel is very interesting because it is not really following uh previous type formats of the previous books because she's not a domestic worker. So, she we see her in this particular novel as a black woman with a lot of independence, but looking for her next move. Where Where Where do I go next? What do I do next?

[00:01:52]And I find that this one is I think Barbara Neely threw everything at this one she had as if though she knew she would not be writing another Blanche White novel because she goes heavy in on female independence.

[00:02:11]So there's a lot of male female relationship themes going on here as well as family theme. There's also this idea of the I feel like there's a big a big look at female strength. That is female strength not just physical but particularly mental. She of course talks about class and race as usual in the novel but it's done in a manner that it feels very uh natural and like it's a very a novel that flows really well because I I think I read this in two sittings. You just get really She really knows how to pull you in on this one.

[00:02:58]I I highly recommend it if you haven't picked up the Blanche White series, don't wait. This is book number four.

[00:03:04]Sadly no more Blanche White but I will surely reread it because this series is just so so so good. Highly recommended.

[00:03:11]I gave this one five stars. Okay, the next novel I read was this one right here La Cousine Bette by Balzac and this is one of the books from La Comédie humaine or the human comedy by Balzac. I will put below the number that this is because we're not reading the in in order. We just we pick the ones we want to read.

[00:03:34]So I'm buddy reading this with my friend Anna and this one was a hit.

[00:03:40]I was yeah, I was so blown away by how good this one was. So we have here a mother and her two sons. The oldest Philippe, the youngest is Joseph.

[00:03:51]Philippe is the golden boy. He's good-looking. He is well put together.

[00:03:57]He's highly intelligent, cunning, and he's about to join Napoleon's army.

[00:04:03]So, his mother, he cannot do anything wrong, you know. This guy shits gold bars. Let's just put it that way.

[00:04:11]So, the second son is called Joseph, and Joseph is the exact opposite. He is not as good-looking. He is never looks like he's put together. He looks like he, you know, just rolled up out of bed kind of look. He's He's intelligent, but in a different way.

[00:04:29]And he is an artist.

[00:04:33]And he's a very good one because he can do, uh, like he can do copies and stuff like that.

[00:04:40]Sadly, his mother doesn't feel that this is a a good job because back in the 19th century, being an artist was kind of synonymous with not being very well hooked up societal society-wise.

[00:04:58]So, artists were usually broke, down and out, you know, that kind of thing.

[00:05:02]That is not the case of Joseph.

[00:05:05]Because Joseph has talent.

[00:05:08]Okay? So, we see how the mother will throw everything into her older son.

[00:05:19]Cuz to to her, he is the one. And how she ignores her younger son, Joseph, who is always there to help her when stuff is not going right.

[00:05:34]Well, that's sort of like how the beginning of the story starts. I'm not saying nothing else after that because stuff be turning left and right in this in this book. It's very, uh, unpredictable, and I love it. I was here for it, and it kept us Yeah, it kept us occupied.

[00:05:57]Now, if you want to read this one in English, the title in English is called The Black Sheep. Not a good title, okay?

[00:06:06]Not a good title. I mean, knowing the meaning of of that expression, the black sheep, and then putting it on this, it just doesn't it it doesn't really fit, in my opinion.

[00:06:20]But, be that as it may, this is an excellent read. It's a little long, it's a little over 400 pages, but it's well worth it, um, even though there are some slow parts, because that's Balzac. He gets off track, and he wants to talk about some other stuff, details that have nothing really to do with the story.

[00:06:40]Like, you could not read that part and still understand what's going on. But, he is he writes his stories like that.

[00:06:48]There's always some little bit of blah blah blah, of 10 15 pages here and there, and when it hits you, it hits you like a wall. Cuz you're like reading, and it's all really good, and then suddenly it's like Oh, no, we're at these 20 pages of blah blah blah blah blah blah. So, I feel like that's just how he writes. I don't particularly love it, you know?

[00:07:13]You know me, I love my Zola.

[00:07:15]But, I highly recommend this one. I thought it was very good. I gave it four stars. The next book I read was this one right here, The Women by Kristin Hannah.

[00:07:25]Now, this one, you know I thoroughly enjoyed this one as well. I did a review on this one, which I will link below, so you can learn more about what I thought about this one. I'm not going to repeat it all over again. But, I really enjoyed it, and it was my first Kristin Hannah, and I'm I'm of wanting to read this one right here that's on my cover, The Four Winds, cuz somebody told me this was about the depression in the Midwest, and that sounds like something I'd be interested in. So, yeah, so I'll link the review below.

[00:07:57]All right, then the next book I read was this one right here, which is called Tomo and Hawk, and that's by Bryce Bryce Courtenay, and this was book two in The Potato Factory.

[00:08:10]Yeah, book two in The Potato Factory series or trilogy.

[00:08:15]I read The Potato Factory last year, which was a big huge chunker of a book, 800 pages I think it was. Fantastic.

[00:08:24]This one not so much. I I was I had high hopes for this one, I really did, but I really wouldn't recommend it. So, this one discusses the relationship between two uh twin brothers, uh Tomo and Hawk. So, Tomo is white and Hawk is black. Uh so, they come into being by this very rare phenomenon of like two eggs being fertilized by two different men because their mother was a prostitute.

[00:09:00]Now, their mother at the moment is that prostitute's best friend because their mother dies and the best friend decides to adopt these boys. So, in this second novel, we basically see how these two boys kind of grow up into being men, and we see the kind of men that they're going to be.

[00:09:26]Kind of, yeah.

[00:09:28]The problem with this novel was for me I got sick of hearing the N-word. There was too much N-word in here, and there were too many draggy, slow parts.

[00:09:40]The best parts about this novel are, I would say, the first third of the novel, because it takes place within the Maori the Maori community. So, you learn a lot about the Maori people and their traditions and stuff like that, and I found that fascinating.

[00:10:01]But, the rest was kind of like, Yeah, I was like, it's not worth the amount of pages I had to read to finish it. So, I, you know, I read through it. Like, there were some parts that were very, very interesting, and some parts were just kind of like, no, not for me.

[00:10:22]So, for a book that's over 600 pages to be meh, tells me to tell you, I read it, so now you don't have to.

[00:10:32]>> [laughter] >> So, I think I gave this one a 2.75 or something like that. All right, then, the next book I picked up was this beauty right here, which is called Solitaria, >> [snorts] >> and this is by Eliana Alves Cruz, and she is a Afro-Brazilian writer.

[00:10:54]And this one was fantastic. This was a really, really good book. So, this is the story of Eunice and Mabel.

[00:11:06]So, Eunice is the mother, and Mabel is the daughter, and they are in service to a rich family that houses them on their property, and they have to live in this tiny little room. I mean, tiny room.

[00:11:23]And when Mabel is a child, Mabel has to stay in the room during the day while her mother is cleaning and cooking and doing all the things for this family. And then of course, as Maybelle gets older, then Maybelle as well has to work for this family. Because they are so damn rich and [ __ ] cheap, they get two for one by hiring a maid that has a daughter. So, they are housed on the on the premises. And this story really uh explores modern slavery.

[00:12:04]Now, it's a very slim novel, but it's like your fly on the wall with this one. She does a wonderful job, the author Cruz, of letting us know the context of this kind of relationship, how deeply manipulating and could manipulating, controlling, and and horrible these kinds of modern-day slavery relationships can be. And she does a wonderful job of showing us how that comes about, how that is maintained, and what it takes to get away from it.

[00:12:47]And I found this very interesting as well is the way she writes the book. Her writing technique is very particular.

[00:12:56]I'm not going to say exactly what is that is because I feel like that's a big part of why you should read the book, and it's the it's a wonderful discovery when you're reading the book. I highly recommend you read this one. I have seen nobody really talking about Solitaria, but it is an excellent read. Read this for the Read So Lit Book Club. The ladies absolutely enjoyed the book. I think we gave it as an overall rating of 4.5. Definitely something to read. Also, if you're looking for translated fiction, this would be great to read for translated fiction month or what we call women in translation month. This would be a wonderful read to do because it it will it will have you thinking about a lot of things. So, this is the writer here.

[00:13:46]Elia Eliana um Alvarez Cruz. There she is right there.

[00:13:53]Now, I feel like this is not her first book. This is her third book. And sadly, none of her other books are translated into English. So, you got to get this one.

[00:14:03]Highly recommended. I gave it four stars. All right.

[00:14:07]Then, last but not least, I read this one, which was it's just Lonesome Dove, which I did read along for this one. And my goodness, what a fantastic read. Now, there's one thing. You know when they hype up books on BookTube >> [clears throat] >> and on Bookstagram, everybody's a little dubious. I'm a little I'm the first one to be dubious.

[00:14:35]This one right here stands up to the hype.

[00:14:38]I mean, for real, okay? This is a western. It's a classic written by Larry McMurtry, who I realized and did not know wrote Terms of Endearment. I did not know. But, I highly recommend you pick up this book.

[00:14:57]Tatiana Michael and I discussed it on Saturday night, and we absolutely just loved the hell out of it. There are some very interesting characters in this book. You can see I got my tabs going.

[00:15:13]There's some great one-liners. It has all of the attributes of a typical western, but it's just really, really good. Now, this is the first book in a quartet. I will be hopefully continuing on with this series. Not sure when I'm going to pick up book two, but I will definitely pick up book two this year because I I want to get back to this whole thing. I want to see what's going to happen what's going on with this.

[00:15:42]But, um if you want to know more about what I thought about Lonesome Dove and what Tasha and Michael thought about it, you can click the link below and you can watch the live uh discussion we did. Do not watch the live discussion if you do not want to be spoiled because there's spoilers all throughout. Read the book, then go click the link. So, that's it.

[00:16:04]>> [snorts] >> This was a really good month. Now, I read literally everything that I said I would read on my TBR except for one book.

[00:16:14]And that was I didn't get a chance to read Patton's Panthers.

[00:16:19]Uh I just I think I don't know if it was the style of writing or I was just tired. It It has to be one of the two.

[00:16:31]But, I feel like what I did read, I read a lot last month. Even though I only read six books, I read a lot of pages.

[00:16:39]So, I'm not mad at it.

[00:16:42]I did what I had to do and I I you know, I I feel I can say I did that.

[00:16:47]I read what I said I was going to read and that is rare for me because I could say I'm going to read this and then I'll change my mind because I'm a mood reader and read something else. So, that's it, y'all. That was my May.

[00:17:00]Comment below. Let me know which books that you liked or that you read and you know, liked or want to read. Let me know and I will be back very soon with another video. Bye.

[00:17:16]>> [music]