May 2025 Wrap-up and June TBR

For my first one hundred years in the underworld, I ate my dinner in bed.

May was a good reading month in terms of page-count, but with only three books finished. In fact, it was a very bookish month indeed as I was producing almost daily content for my Oblomov read-along and actually managed to keep up and finish part 2 on 31 May. It was touch and go for a bit, but I got there!

It was also a month of a ridiculously long spell of warm, sunny weather and I got to sit outside on our freshly painted porch with my books and stationery and read while the birds sang all around me and came down for nibbles from our birdfeeder.

The reading porch 🥰

Books mentioned:

• The Iliad — Homer, Emily Wilson

• Gilgamesh — Emily H. Wilson

• Overreach — Owen Matthews

😍Loved

📖 Gilgamesh, Emily H. Wilson, 2024

Fiction, Physical Book, Audiobook (Narr. Zehra Jane Naqvi)

This is the second book in the Sumerians trilogy. It’s loosely based on the Epic of Gilgamesh and follows various characters as they come into their own in godlike ways. I met the author at Worldcon last year and mistook her for Emily Wilson the translator of The Odyssey and the Iliad. I read the first book in the trilogy, Inanna, last year and really enjoyed it. Gilgamesh was even better. It’s a fast-paced story with strong characters, particularly women, and a heavy dose of fantasy elements. I’m very much looking forward to the final book, Ninshubar, when it’s released later this year.

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📖 Overreach, Owen Matthews, 2022

Audio (Narr. Saul Reichlin),

I heard Owen Matthews discussing Russia and Ukraine on a news podcast and that led to my buying his book. Matthews gives us a summary of the history of the region and the complicated relationship between Russia and Ukraine before going on to talk about the current war up to 2022. Matthews knows of what he speaks and it was a very well written, researched and edited book. I will no doubt listen to this again and buy a copy for the shelf to make some notes from.

😐Meh

📖 The Iliad, Homer, Translated by Emily Wilson, 2024

Physical Book, Audiobook (Narr. Audra McDonald)

I read this with fellow Substack writer

Matthew Long

as part of his group-read. Last year I read The Odyssey, also the Emily Wilson translation, as well as Stephen Fry’s Odyssey and Troy. I enjoyed all three books and expected to like The Iliad just us much. I didn’t. I enjoyed the language of the translation and maybe that’s what the book is about more than the plot, but the plot just bored me. Fight, fight, fight. And then not even the Trojan horse at the end.

Towards the end I almost quit and decided that, no, I’d push through. At that point I started listening the audiobook on Spotify, a version that claimed to be the Emily Wilson translation but it wasn’t. That was way worse and difficult to follow, so I used a credit on Audible and got the actual Wilson edition and listened to the last few books. Matthew Long’s posts helped enormously to get me as far as I did with the physical copy and I soon switched from reading the chapter before Matthew’s post to doing it the other way round. That helped a bit, but not enough and I didn’t end up finishing Matthew’s posts either. In fact I think he’s not quite finished yet. Maybe I’m just not ready for the book and it’s one that I’ll come back to.

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Fiction

• Gilgamesh

• The Iliad

Non-fiction

• Overreach

June Reading

• Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov

  • I’m leading a group read of this novel through May and June. Join here for free.

• Stalin’s Children, Owen Matthews

• Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga

  • Recommended by

    Katie Lumsden
    on my BookTube anniversary video

• Poyums, Len Pennie

• ADHD 2.0, Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey

  • This is a Kindle read that I try to open when I’m in the throne room instead of doom-scrolling, but so far I’m not doing so well with that.

• Anna Karenina, Tolstoy

  • Reading with Henry Eliot

• The Karamazov Brothers, Dostoyevsky

  • Reading with Dana • Dostoevsky Bookclub

• Stephen R. Donaldson and the Modern Epic Vision, Christine Barkley

  • I don’t seem to be getting to this and will probably pause it until I’m ready to write more Donaldson pieces for my Substack.

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All book links in this post are affiliate links that will offer you a choice of four sellers: Amazon (localized), Bookshop.org, Waterstones, Blackwell’s. I’m required by Amazon to include this disclosure:

I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.