May in Review

Books Acquired:
Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram by Iain Banks
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley
As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
In One Person by John Irving
Acquired Tastes by Peter Mayle
Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie
Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances by Alexander McCall Smith
The Go-Away Bird and Other Stories by Muriel Spark
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Books Read:
Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier
Akira, Volume 2 by Katsuhiro Otomo

A huge list of books this month, from the book sale haul at the beginning of May (part one and part two), but not a lot of physical books read. Funny how that happens sometimes. I read The Sense of an Ending for almost the entire month, a few pages each night, which is a ridiculously long time to read such a short book. What saved me this month was audiobooks, all three of which I really enjoyed. I just need to get a bit of focus back.

Lee-Ann’s birthday is in May, so we spent a fun weekend celebrating that. Part of the birthday weekend, which is starting to become tradition, is visiting the annual highland games. It’s a good excuse to spend the weekend out in the sun watching people throw heavy objects about. I didn’t take any photos this year, but here’s a couple from last year:

I’m incredibly happy the weather has warmed up, if just for the comfortable dog walks. Looking forward to the summer!

Movies watched:
Black Panther (2018) – Finally got around to seeing this, and I think it lived up to the hype – really fun movie, fantastic characters, and a great soundtrack. Wakanda was just brilliantly imagined.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) – I managed to avoid spoilers, despite waiting weeks to see this. I thought it was good. They did an amazing job of juggling so many characters without it feeling too ridiculous. I thought Thanos was a great baddie, and the humour was on point, but I wish they had committed to the ending a bit more. I won’t go into spoilers, but I feel like it’s obvious what will happen in the next movie.

TV watched:
The Big Family Cooking Showdown: Season 1 (2017) – We’re running out of cooking shows to watch. I enjoyed this one, despite it being a competition show, which I typically hate and avoid. I like the families they brought on, who all seemed to be friendly and having fun, and the cooking was interesting. The hosts were awkwardly intense and felt out of place in the context of the show, but overall I thought it was good.

Games played:
God of War (2018) (PS4) – I’m still playing this, nearly done now, and loving every moment of it. Brilliant game. I was thinking I might write a post about it actually, introduce some gaming content to the weblog here, but I’m not sure yet.

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What have you been reading/watching/playing this month?