“In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.” ~ John Steinbeck, The Winter of our Discontent.

Happy summer solstice! I’m not sure that a lot of flowers are exploding in our garden as the temperatures here have been unbearable since last week. We’ve been hitting 100s (broke a record yesterday at 106) and with the heat index it feels even hotter but it is nice to see our Lantana making some progress and it certainly makes me smile any time I pass it by when I’m going in and out of the house.

So other than complaining about the heat, I do have some book talk to share. Last night I met up with my mystery book group and we discussed May God Forgive by Alan Parks. This is a detective novel set in Glasgow in the early 70s. The course of events takes place over a few days and at times can seem a bit confusing with so many things going on but boy, was it a good book. This will probably end up as one of my favorites of the year but a word of warning it is quite bleak.

Next month we’re going to read Welcome to Cooper by Tariq Ashkanani. Another detective crime story but this one set in Nebraska.

This week I finished reading Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal and this was an audiobook for me and I thought it was a lot of fun. There were some spicy stories though which I know the title says erotic stories but I didn’t really think there would be some examples. Haha. If you want something a bit more lighthearted this would be a good choice.

Also, happy to say that I finally started one of my choices for the 10 Books of Summer, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. I’ve heard that this is a slow book but although I’m only a few pages in, there’s already been a tragic train derailment.

So how about you, what are you reading to kick off the summer?

I think I went a bit overboard with my book shopping last month. What can I say, I needed a bit of book therapy and birthday gifts to myself. I got a lot of nonfiction which is a bit unusual for me but I also got fiction, books in Spanish, books in translation and of course some mysteries.

For my nonfiction picks I chose: Moonlight Gratitude, The Wicked Boy, Lab Girl, Lady Killers, Wintering, The Well-Gardened Mind, Bittersweet, The Disappearing Spoon, Killers of the Flower Moon, Letters to the Universe and Beloved Beasts.

For fiction reads I got Colony and The Swiss Summer. I also got some of the short-listed International Booker nominees, Boulder and Still Born.

For books in Spanish I turned to Hablemos Escritoras and got La Casa de los Secretos, Casas Vacias and Los Libros de Otros.

Finally, the mystery picks include Reprieve, Welcome to Cooper and May God Forgive.

One outlier in all of these is Apothecary which is a book of stickers. These are artful stickers featuring botanicals, crystals and other metaphysical elements. I love using stickers in my journaling and planner so I thought this one would be a fun addition.

That’s a lot of books right? I am almost done with May God Forgive by Alan Parks which is for my Mystery Book group discussion this month and I’ll tell you more about it soon.

Now believe it or not, these aren’t the only books that I added to my shelves last month. I also got quite a few advance review copies but I’ll tell you about those in a separate post. Let me know if you’ve read any of these books and which one would you start with!