{"id":4626,"date":"2025-05-31T20:06:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T00:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=4626"},"modified":"2025-06-16T20:27:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T00:27:29","slug":"may-2025-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2025\/05\/may-2025-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"May 2025 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Daddy Long-Legs: A Comedy in Four Acts<\/em> &#8211; Jean Webster, 1912. Multiple re-read, this time looking for more of the Cinderella\/orphan feel from <em>A Little Princess<\/em>. It&#8217;s also a great school story. I love the cartoons Judy draws of herself. I&#8217;m shocked this hasn&#8217;t turned up in previously-read; I&#8217;ve been keeping up with my monthly lists since 2016, but I&#8217;m more meticulous now so I suppose it might have slipped in years ago. But maybe I read it so many times when I was younger that it stuck with me?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Racketty-Packetty House <\/em>&#8211; Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1906. More comfort re-reading, and another I&#8217;m surprised not to have listed since 2016. The family of jolly dolls who laugh through hard times always cheer me up.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Magic Mountain<\/em> &#8211; Thomas Mann, 1924. ABC selection, first read with Great Books in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2022\/11\/the-magic-mountain-thomas-mann-tr-by-h-t-lowe-porter\/\">2022<\/a>. This time I had the Woods translation, which I liked better (but Settembrini and Naptha are still tarsome). Different quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Beyond the Door of No Return<\/em> &#8211; David Diop, 2021. Second Monday; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World<\/em> &#8211; John Vaillant, 2023. Nature\/Enviro, quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Bridge of San Luis Rey<\/em> &#8211; Thornton Wilder, 1927. Great Books, quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Night Circus<\/em> &#8211; Erin Morgenstern, 2011. The May challenge for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">Massachusetts Center for the Book<\/a> was &#8220;A book with a first sentence of eight words or less.&#8221; Jonathan found me a Margery Allingham, <em>The Beckoning Lady<\/em>, but I couldn&#8217;t stand it and checked the <a href=\"https:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/6373c623e1adcf72e307e7f0\/t\/67e2c9be45ac0374cb419117\/1742916030700\/2025+Book+Recs+%281080+x+1350+px%29+%281%29.pdf\">MassBook recommended list<\/a> for an alternative. I&#8217;d heard a lot of good things about Night Circus and it was already on my read-someday list so I picked it. Hmm&#8230;. a lot of beautiful images but overall it didn&#8217;t grab me. Kind of a cross between Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and Fingersmith. But it was originally a NaNoWriMo project so I root for it for that reason alone. A reviewer on GoodReads says it&#8217;s worth reading twice because you don&#8217;t pick up on the plot connections the first time around&#8230; but I&#8217;m 60 and there are too many other books to read. For the challenge I wrote &#8220;The circus of the title is the best thing about this novel &#8211; a dreamlike place of visual wonders.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>T. Tembarom<\/em> &#8211; Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1913. Re-read for the umpteenth time; it&#8217;s probably my favorite Burnett, plus it&#8217;s related a bit to the Cinderella theme.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Death in Venice<\/em> &#8211; Thomas Mann, 1911. Amherst book group; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Novellas and short stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;The Dwarf Pine&#8221; &#8211; Varlam Shalamov (from <em>Kolyma Stories<\/em>, 1954-1973), for Story Club<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Novellas and short stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4626"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4708,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4626\/revisions\/4708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}