The month that was… May 2023

May was another crazy busy month! From the ice hockey world championships (GB came top of their group and will be promoted to the topflight for next year’s competition!) at the start of the month, a weekend away in Northumberland (an attempt to avoid coronation shenanigans!), and then Hay Festival (the reason for the delay in posting my monthly wrap up!), it’s all felt a bit hectic, but in the best possible way. I’d like to say that June will be a nice, quiet month, but we’ll see how it goes!

Hay Festival was as wonderful as always, even with a busier Festival this year now that events are back to full capacity (ticket sales were limited last year as the first year back after COVID). Highlights for me included Margaret Atwood (always a joy), Richard Osman (in conversation with brother, Mat), and Eleanor Catton (I adored The Luminaries, and can’t wait to read Birnam Wood), although I loved every minute of it. And the weather was glorious, something I particularly appreciated while camping!

I managed to fit in some reading amongst all that, reading eight books including a couple of longer titles. I did hit something of a slump mid-month and DNF’d more than I’d like, but I seem to have come out of it fairly quickly. Blog activity has once again been limited, although I did reach my eighth blogiversary at the end of the month! 🥳 I really do need to up my blogging game this month or I’ll have no hope of completing 20 Books of Summer. Wish me luck! 🍀

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I also committed to 20 Books of Summer, and you can see my sign up post here although it’s guaranteed that the books I read for this challenge will change considerably!

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Books Acquired

I purchased seven books this month…

…and then went to Hay-on-Wye for the Festival. If you think that this looks like an extremely modest haul from Hay Festival, then you are 100% correct. Because my visit spanned May and June, some (most) of my purchases won’t be counted until the end of this month! You can scream “creative accounting” all you like, but it’s my blog and my rules!

If you do want to see everything I bought in Hay, well, your wish is my command. Many of these are from the Festival itself, either from talks that I attended while others simply caught my eye in the Festival Bookshop. Others are from the many wonderful bookshops to be found in Hay-on-Wye:

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TBR Watch

May isn’t too bad… June will be quite a different matter!

• Books out = 7 read + 3 DNF* = 10 (yes, I said that I read 8 books, but The Unit was a reread and doesn’t count against the TBR)
• Books in = 0 ARCs + 7 purchases + 6 from Hay = 13
• Gives an increase of 3 in my TBR!

*I may come back to the DNFs at a later date, but for now they have been removed from my TBR.