Literature: May Books

Instead of writing individual reviews for all the books I have read, I am just going to condense them into what I have read each month.

In January I set myself the target of reading 60 books however in March I increased this target to 100 because I was already nearing the target. Now we are in May and I think I may have to increase the target again soon as I am only 23 books away from 100.  My friends said that since I read 139 last year then I should try and read more than that – so I may increase my target to 145.

But for now, I will concentrate on the books I read in May – lockdown is giving me the time to read more. So in May I have read 17 books which now brings my total number of books read so far in 2020 to 77.

So what have I read in May? Here goes:

Christian

Isaiah 43 Explained by Mitch Glaser

The Stories we tell by Mike Cosper

A Woman’s Battle for Grace by Cheryl Broderson

Deep Magic, Dragons and Talking Mice by Alister McGrath

Discipleship in the Present Tense by James Smith

Fiction

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Crime

The Bat by Jo Nesbo

Night School by Lee Child

I’m Watching You by Teresa Driscoll

The Shrine by LJ Ross

Here to Stay by Mark Edwards

Short Stories

The Great Summer Sewing Bee by Alex Brown

The Donor by Clare McIntosh

20 Minutes Earlier by Daniel Hurst

Clean Break by Tammy Cohen

Non-Fiction

Turning Left Around the World by David C Moore

Becoming by Michelle Obama

The worst book this month, in my opinion, was The Bat by Jo Nesbo, people rave about this author and how could he is but this book was disappointing and did not make me want to read the others in the Harry Hole series.

There have been many TV/Movie adaptations of books and some have been disappointing and some have actually been better than the book. Well one Friday night I started watching Sally Rooney’s Normal People on BBC and after episode 7 decided I wanted to read the book, so that night and the next morning I read the book and then finished the series on TV. So which one was better? Well in my opinion the TV adaptation stays quite true to the book with a few variations in there for dramatic purposes – so I can’t actually say one was better than the other – they were both good but I did like the ending of the TV series better than the book  - it was more emotional and drawn out. Overall, 10 out of 10 to the director, writers, and the cast of the TV series – a  job well done.