May was an interesting month! My reading started off okay and then I fell into a bit of a slump during the second half. I also took a trip to the UK, so that impacted how much I felt like reading, too. However, I picked up THE KNIGHT AND THE MOTH this week, which is helping me get out of my slump. All that aside, I managed to do some bookish stuff this month. So here’s my May 2025 book blog wrap-up in case you missed anything!
Book Reviews
I posted three book reviews in May. From earliest to latest they are:
- Maddening Mast Cell Mathematics by Sarah Klein
- The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
- A Fate Inked In Blood by Danielle Jensen
Blog Statistics
Every month I share some statistics from Google Analytics because I think it helps put expectations into perspective for other micro-bloggers like me who are out there. These statistics are from Google Analytics 4.
My top five posts for total page views are (as of the evening of May 30):
- Book Review: Gild by Raven Kennedy: 469 views
- Arthurian Retellings Reading List: 434 views
- STEMinist Romance Books: 284 views
- Book Review: Gleam by Raven Kennedy: 242 views
- Book Review: Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Maehrer: 209 views
May’s viewership was all over the place. I attribute this partly to the Google update and partly because I didn’t post as much this month. The Jetpack stats tracked an alleged spike in my STEMinist romance books post, but I think it was mostly bots because GA didn’t track the same “foot” traffic. I think the news that Raven Kennedy’s Gild has been picked up as a TV show brought a decent amount of traffic my way for that series. As you can see, two of the books from her The Plated Prisoner series made it into my top five most-viewed posts.
Lastly, I gained some more followers and now sit at 253! Welcome to the blog, folks!
#BeattheBacklog
Between travel and my reading slump, May ended up better than expected for this challenge. I finished two books that were on my TBR prior to 2025. Those were THE LAST TALE OF THE FLOWER BRIDE by Roshani Chokshi and DAUGHTER OF THE BLACK LAKE by Cathy Marie Buchanan.
Other Bookish Items
I finished five books in May:
- UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED by Sarah Gailey
- THE LAST TALE OF THE FLOWER BRIDE by Roshani Chokshi (audiobook)
- THE STARVING SAINTS by Caitlin Starling (ARC)
- EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS by John Green (audiobook)
- THE LOST SISTERS by Holly Black (audiobook)
Honestly, audiobooks came in clutch for me in May. I had a hard time focusing on reading and felt kind of slumpy. Hopefully June is a better reading month for me. There’s a chance I might finish my ARC of CLOUD WARRIORS by today, but I won’t hold my breath.
I posted about my UK book haul from my recent trip across the pond. It’s always fun to visit new bookshops. But I particularly enjoy checking out bookshops in other countries because they have books on display that I might not know about while browsing in the US simply because of different local interests.
Other Media Wrap-Up
CONCLAVE: I watched this on the flight over to London. Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I thought it was simply fine. I found it entertaining, but not very exciting. I loved the ending, though.
A REAL PAIN: I watched this on the flight back to Virginia. It’s not usually the type of film I seek out, but it won some awards, so I figured why not. Again, it was fine. But I get what it was trying to communicate–that everyone deals with and feels (or doesn’t) pain differently. It’s also about reconnecting with family.
What I like about both of these movies, though, is that they’re new. They’re not the third remake of whatever book or franchise. They’re brand-spanking new content, thank goodness.
Non-Bookish Items
My husband and I went on a nine-day trip to the UK. We focused on southwestern England and southern Wales. The weather was amazing, surprisingly, and I got sunburned two days in a row. (It was almost my first sunburn of the year, but that prize goes to Florida back in March.) This is a trip I’ve wanted to do for a while and my husband did a great job giving us a taste of different things. We spent time in Cornwall where we visited Tintagel and then Port Isaac; while in the latter, I had some delicious cream tea (excellent clotted cream). We of course went to Stonehenge. Some other places we visited included the West Kennet Long Barrow, Bourton-on-the-Water (Cotswolds), Avebury, Bath, and Oxford–all in England. I made use of our time in Oxford by finally visiting Blackwell’s and their sci-fi/fantasy/manga store as well as a few Waterstones.
In Wales we visited Swansea, Tenby, St. David’s Cathedral, and Raglan and Pembroke Castles; hiked to the highest point in the Brecon Beacons; saw Dobby’s grave at Freshwater Beach; and checked out the Bronze Age Foel Drygarn Hill Fort. We also stopped in Hay-on-Wye, which is a town in Wales known for its dozens of bookshops. Luckily, we got there the day before their two-week long book festival, so it wasn’t super busy. Another interesting place we stopped in was Venta Silurum, which is a Roman town in Wales; it has some pretty extensive and relatively well-preserved Roman walls still standing around the town.
That’s most of the stuff we stopped at, though not necessarily in that order! We kind of did a loop, more or less, starting in England, then Wales, then England again.
Other than that, I continued to garden and transplanted what I could before our UK trip. The weather this past week has been wet, though, so I obviously haven’t felt motivated to try and do a bunch of gardening.
Your trip sounds like a dream, and Hay-On-Wye is somewhere I’ve always wanted to go. And I had no idea Dobby’s grave was a thing!
Yes, I only found out recently about “Dobby’s grave” thanks to social media. It’s of course just the relative filming location, but it was cool to see everyone’s tributes there. Huge pile of rocks, some painted with messages, and crosses made of sticks full of socks. No $$ goes to the author for any of this currently (thankfully), it’s just a fan-made site.
To be fair, I don’t think Conclave was meant to be exciting 😄. I’m assuming the real thing is mostly likely incredibly tedious. I enjoyed it but, as always, thought the book was better.
That’s true! Maybe “exciting” isn’t the right word, but I guess I expected it to be more interesting since it got an award. I enjoyed it well enough but don’t see myself rewatching it.
Sounds like a great trip!! Now if would only stop raining in Virginia, and actually feel like it’s going to be June tomorrow 😭
It was a wonderful trip! Sun is back out now where I live! ☺️
It sounds like you had a fantastic time whilst in the UK and managed to visit so much. Cornwall has so many picturesque locations. I’ve only been to Oxford once and if I go again I’ll definitely have to try and find that fantasy based Blackwells store. My parents were camping in St Davids last month too, odd timing 😂
I’m glad The Knight & The Moth helped with your reading slump. I somehow haven’t read anything yet this month. I’m majorly hoping to finally start today once I’ve finished on a few catch up based things. Although atm it also comes down to whether or not the headache I’ve got decides to budge.
I didn’t know Gild had been picked up for an adaptation. How did you find The Last Tale Of The Flower Bride?
I need to try and watch Conclave sometime but haven’t yet mostly due to what you’ve described – I’m worried it could be too slow. Yet the cast is fantastic which definitely intrigues me.
I hope you have a great month 🥰