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Books I read in May 2026
Total: 12 books
-- A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman;
-- The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis;
-- The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich;
-- Rotten Tommy by David Sodergren;
-- The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie;
-- Tracks by Louise Erdrich;
-- Conclave by Robert Harris (reread);
-- Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews;
-- Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich;
-- The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture by Grace Perry;
-- Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything by Alyson Stoner;
-- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.
Short Stories: 2
-- The Gay Old Dog by Edna Ferber;
-- Brothers by Sherwood Anderson.
A Study in Emerald: Not a big fan of Neil Gaiman. This was surprisingly good. Really deals with the genre of detection fiction very well, delves into themes of doubling/doppelgangers. Melds Lovecraft with Holmes in a way that explores what it means to BE Holmes. This was our final book for my Detective & Mystery Lit class.
The Hounding: Lots of potential here, but overall pretty disappointing. This book follows a pack of orphaned girls raised by their grandfather in England some time after the civil war. A young man, alcoholic, economic straits, becomes obsessed with the girls and how odd they are; he wants them to bow to them as a man and recognize that he's been blessed by God and they have not. A rumor spreads that the girls can turn into dogs, and that those dogs are killing the livestock. Good bones, genuinely, but it's written very clumsily and painfully. Lots of thoughtless repetition. Just about every page has at least one paragraph where every sentence says the same thing as the one before it, and fails to build.
Like: Pete was a religious man. He loved God. He felt like he had been touched by God at a young age. Not many people were as religious as Pete. They didn't know God like he did. He prayed often and was sure God spoke to him.
Or: Agnes was an odd girl. She didn't conform. She often did strange things that other people would never do. The villagers commented that she was an odd duck, and they didn't approve of her choices. Pete thought she was odd, too. She had often done strange things in his presence that he didn't approve of.
The characters were also disappointingly shallow; the villain has no dimension to him, and unfortunately, that's even more true for the heroes. The girls are Odd. The nice boy is Nice. The grandpa is Nice. Pete is Sexist. Robin is Probably Gay. Etc.
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: Possibly my new favorite Louise Erdrich book. It follows the life of Father Damian from his (roughly) teenage years in a convent to his death at the age of approximately 150. Erdrich's signature magical realism is especially strong in this one. Damian, aka Agnes, is a runaway nun who falls in love, gets shot in the head, loses her common-law husband, loses EVERYTHING in a flood, and takes the clothes and identity of a dead priest she finds hanging from a tree. From there, Agnes/Damian goes to Little No Horse, an Ojibwe reservation, and tangles with Pauline. Both Pauline and Damian are recurring characters from the Love Medicine series. Pauline is a very pale-skinned Ojibwe who shuns her native identity and embraces her white side to become a nun. She desperately wants to be worshiped and adored, to be a saint. In the modern timeline (modern = 1996), a younger priest approaches the elderly Father Damian, hoping to discover whether the long-dead Pauline counts as a saint. Damian is convinced that Pauline is more of a demon than a saint, but he can't reveal Pauline's whole story without revealing his own -- including his AGAB.
If this sounds good to you, I'd encourage you to read it, but with a warning. It's one of the later books in the series, and there are several moments where it helps to have context from previous books. You can kind of get the gist without reading them, but you'll be left a little confused about what exactly just happened.
Rotten Tommy: a fun, surprisingly capable indie horror book that I saw recced on Reddit for people who liked Mister Magic. Both Mister Magic and Rotten Tommy involve haunted VHS tapes and a forgotten children's TV show from the 80s. Rotten Tommy is a quick read and very entertaining, but there are lots of reviews complaining about unanswered questions. I generally like unanswered questions, so I ignored those reviews. But they were right XD The book really gets you hyped to find out exactly who Tommy is, and then sweeps the questions away in a joke at the end. Which I lowkey respect.
The Toughest Indian in the World: 5-star read for sure. It's a collection of short stories involving city/urban Indians, one of Alexie's less cynical works, but still deeply sad at times. One story in particular is so lyrical and stunning that it changed me. "The Sin Eaters." Brilliant, dystopian, beautiful. "Dear John Wayne" has a similar, slightly unreal vibe. It takes place in the future, in the form of an interview transcript between an impossibly-old Spokane woman and a young white scholar. The Spokane woman claims she had a whirlwind romance with John Wayne while working as an extra on one of his films. Gut-wrenching but also very funny, like most of Alexie's work.
Tracks: Chronologically I think this is the first in Erdrich's Love Medicine series. It follows Pauline on her route to sainthood, with Fleur Pillager as her foil. Lulu Nanapush, Fleur's daughter, ranges from infancy to, er, I think about 6 years old in this book, I can't remember if it follows her further. Old Man Nanapush narrates the Fleur chapters, telling the story to a now-grown Lulu, while Pauline narrates her own chapters. Most of the book takes place on the reservation from about 1912-1920.
Conclave: I rewatched the movie as well, a few times, so I wanted to reread the book, and then I launched into fanfic again and found several good ones.
Don't Let the Forest In: Ace recommended this to me. I think it's... ugh, it's tough. I think it would be, and clearly is, very enjoyable for those in the target audience, 13-17. But I don't think older audiences will be able to stomach the bad writing. And the whole book gave me a gross feeling. It felt very fetishistic, and the fetish here was school shooters--a very romantic portrayal of a kid who kills his parents in the morning before school and then hooks up with his friend to kill their bullies and most despised teachers, before killing themselves at the end in a 'beautiful' romantic scene. I like dark stories but considering this is a YA book it felt borderline irresponsible. I know I would have loved it as a kid, but I also know it would have pushed me in a very dark direction. Like, to be clear, it's not ABOUT a school shooting. It's about fantastical creatures that come to life when the two main characters draw/write about them. But the school shooting parallel was incredibly uncomfortable for me, especially with the dark ending.
Moral quibbles aside, it just wasn't well-written. I was thoroughly disenchanted with the book for technical reasons long before I made the school shooting connection.
Love Medicine: I think this is the first published book in the series. It follows the descendants of the characters from Tracks, 1940-1980-ish, with some of the child characters from Tracks now elderly. Lulu and Nector are the stars here, and it really aches. Nector has developed Alzheimer's; Lulu has gone bald from a house fire Nector started when they were middle-aged. Both have married other people and popped out or adopted boat-loads of kids, who have their own tragic/moving storylines going on. Absolute favorite story here was The Red Convertible, which follows two of Lulu's sons as one of them processes war trauma and the other tries and fails to save him. Favorite storyline in general, though, was Lipsha Morrissey discovering who his real parents are, decades after he was taken in by Nector and Marie. Lipsha reconnects with his dad, who is the modern reincarnation of Old Man Nanapush (one of the best characters of all time, I'm not kidding). Legal shenanigans ensue. Overall, very funny, very tender. The book kicks off with an introduction to June, who steals you heart immediately, and then you're devastated to learn that she's dead, and remains dead and off-page for the rest of the book, haunting the narrative.
The 2000s Made Me Gay: just okay. You don't have to relate to the author's favorite shows/movies/music to relate to the essays, but the essays themselves aren't very good. I would recommend maybe 3 from the whole collection, but even those aren't must-reads. The book really suffers from the passage of time more than anything. It was published in 2021, and most of the essays were previously written from 2015-2019, I think. So there's an aura of optimism and pre-Trump happiness that now reads as out-of-touch and even slightly dumb. Not the author's fault. Some of these essays felt like I could have written them myself, around the same time.
Semi-Well-Adjusted: Alyson Stoner was a Disney child star best known as "the little white girl from the Missy Elliott video." Hip-hop dancer, also played the tomboy from Zack and Cody and Cheaper by the Dozen. They were in Camp Rock and Step it Up. I didn't have cable growing up so I wasn't familiar with most of their work, and the same is true for Jennette McCurdy of "I'm Glad My Mother Died" fame. The two memoirs are very similar, actually: competently written, funny and horrifying, with lots of focus on the abuses children face in Hollywood, mixed with the less unique (or more unique?) abuses these two particular children faced in their own home. For Stoner, the story can be broken down into these trigger warnings: semi-covert sexual abuse on a child, outright rape on an adult, alcoholic mom, physical abuse, financial abuse, anorexia, homophobia and transphobia (though mostly homophobia, Stoner doesn't really talk about any transphobia they experienced).
I gave this the same rating I gave McCurdy's memoir--4/5 stars. And I was shocked to see that Goodreads doesn't agree. Usually I'm the ultra-critical Debbie Downer, and I sneer at Goodreads' high ratings. But it was the opposite here. Lots of 1- and 2-star reviews. I read a few and noticed a pattern. Not only do they (unfairly, imo) criticize the exact same two elements (both of which feel somewhat random and odd, and I would argue are a near-purposeful misreading or twisting of the book), but they all use, at some point, the exact same made-up quote to make the exact same bizarre point. So I suspect there's some kind of bot/harassment campaign going on. Don't know why. IMO, any criticism you apply to Stoner can be equally applied to McCurdy. Yet McCurdy's book was frequently held up as the gold standard by the people criticizing Stoner's. The biggest criticism *I* had was not mentioned at all in those negative reviews (and my criticism was, I feel, pretty significant -- the entire last chapter is just an ad for Stoner's new business).
Demon Copperhead: Rich got me this book. I'd been avoiding it because it's so popular, and with popular literary fiction, I'm usually disappointed. I was dead-wrong here. Knew it was a 5-star book from the first page, absolutely deserved the Pulitzer it won. The story itself is nothing special, which is another reason I avoided it -- a basic plot description will not draw most people in, imo. It sounds like your standard Poor Appalachian Kid trauma-porn. The writing is what makes it sizzle. Hilarious, extremely moving without ever being over-wrought. Subtle. Authentic. I'm in love with it, honestly. And although I hate Poor Appalachian Kid trauma-porn, it's very relatable to me lmfao. I'm only halfway through it, maybe a little more, so expect to see it on next month's list as well, maybe with more detail. As for the David Copperfield connection--I haven't read David Copperfield since I was 12, so I can't comment intelligently on the way Kingsolver weaves the two together. All I can say is that various characters and plotlines have pinged my Dickens radar while still fitting seamlessly into the Appalachian world and 90s/early 2000s timeline of Kingsolver.
Short stories:
Both of these are early 20th Century Chicago stories with similar vibes -- loneliness, unfulfilled romance, death. Both exquisite. Ferber's story is packed full of wry humor, whereas Anderson's story takes a more lyrical, poetic approach. It's got his signature plain, monosyllabic style but makes brilliant use of repetition and looping, so that it feels like a song. Despite this, I'd probably recommend Ferber's story over Anderson's. For sure, she's less well-known, and I think her story is overall just easier to melt into. It follows an old man-about-town named Jo who seems to have it all--booming WWI-era business in saddles and halters, tons of money and fine things. But it weaves back through his early years, when the business was failing and he was taking care of his younger sisters, and details his failed romance with a young woman. The ending is a fantastic little punch. He reunites by chance with the woman he loved. They both happen to be at a parade for soldiers going off to WWI, the same war Jo is profiting from. She's furious, and crying for her son--her son, not Jo's--but Jo sees him in the crowd, recognizes him, and forgets the boy isn't his.
-- A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman;
-- The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis;
-- The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich;
-- Rotten Tommy by David Sodergren;
-- The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie;
-- Tracks by Louise Erdrich;
-- Conclave by Robert Harris (reread);
-- Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews;
-- Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich;
-- The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture by Grace Perry;
-- Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything by Alyson Stoner;
-- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.
Short Stories: 2
-- The Gay Old Dog by Edna Ferber;
-- Brothers by Sherwood Anderson.
A Study in Emerald: Not a big fan of Neil Gaiman. This was surprisingly good. Really deals with the genre of detection fiction very well, delves into themes of doubling/doppelgangers. Melds Lovecraft with Holmes in a way that explores what it means to BE Holmes. This was our final book for my Detective & Mystery Lit class.
The Hounding: Lots of potential here, but overall pretty disappointing. This book follows a pack of orphaned girls raised by their grandfather in England some time after the civil war. A young man, alcoholic, economic straits, becomes obsessed with the girls and how odd they are; he wants them to bow to them as a man and recognize that he's been blessed by God and they have not. A rumor spreads that the girls can turn into dogs, and that those dogs are killing the livestock. Good bones, genuinely, but it's written very clumsily and painfully. Lots of thoughtless repetition. Just about every page has at least one paragraph where every sentence says the same thing as the one before it, and fails to build.
Like: Pete was a religious man. He loved God. He felt like he had been touched by God at a young age. Not many people were as religious as Pete. They didn't know God like he did. He prayed often and was sure God spoke to him.
Or: Agnes was an odd girl. She didn't conform. She often did strange things that other people would never do. The villagers commented that she was an odd duck, and they didn't approve of her choices. Pete thought she was odd, too. She had often done strange things in his presence that he didn't approve of.
The characters were also disappointingly shallow; the villain has no dimension to him, and unfortunately, that's even more true for the heroes. The girls are Odd. The nice boy is Nice. The grandpa is Nice. Pete is Sexist. Robin is Probably Gay. Etc.
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: Possibly my new favorite Louise Erdrich book. It follows the life of Father Damian from his (roughly) teenage years in a convent to his death at the age of approximately 150. Erdrich's signature magical realism is especially strong in this one. Damian, aka Agnes, is a runaway nun who falls in love, gets shot in the head, loses her common-law husband, loses EVERYTHING in a flood, and takes the clothes and identity of a dead priest she finds hanging from a tree. From there, Agnes/Damian goes to Little No Horse, an Ojibwe reservation, and tangles with Pauline. Both Pauline and Damian are recurring characters from the Love Medicine series. Pauline is a very pale-skinned Ojibwe who shuns her native identity and embraces her white side to become a nun. She desperately wants to be worshiped and adored, to be a saint. In the modern timeline (modern = 1996), a younger priest approaches the elderly Father Damian, hoping to discover whether the long-dead Pauline counts as a saint. Damian is convinced that Pauline is more of a demon than a saint, but he can't reveal Pauline's whole story without revealing his own -- including his AGAB.
If this sounds good to you, I'd encourage you to read it, but with a warning. It's one of the later books in the series, and there are several moments where it helps to have context from previous books. You can kind of get the gist without reading them, but you'll be left a little confused about what exactly just happened.
Rotten Tommy: a fun, surprisingly capable indie horror book that I saw recced on Reddit for people who liked Mister Magic. Both Mister Magic and Rotten Tommy involve haunted VHS tapes and a forgotten children's TV show from the 80s. Rotten Tommy is a quick read and very entertaining, but there are lots of reviews complaining about unanswered questions. I generally like unanswered questions, so I ignored those reviews. But they were right XD The book really gets you hyped to find out exactly who Tommy is, and then sweeps the questions away in a joke at the end. Which I lowkey respect.
The Toughest Indian in the World: 5-star read for sure. It's a collection of short stories involving city/urban Indians, one of Alexie's less cynical works, but still deeply sad at times. One story in particular is so lyrical and stunning that it changed me. "The Sin Eaters." Brilliant, dystopian, beautiful. "Dear John Wayne" has a similar, slightly unreal vibe. It takes place in the future, in the form of an interview transcript between an impossibly-old Spokane woman and a young white scholar. The Spokane woman claims she had a whirlwind romance with John Wayne while working as an extra on one of his films. Gut-wrenching but also very funny, like most of Alexie's work.
Tracks: Chronologically I think this is the first in Erdrich's Love Medicine series. It follows Pauline on her route to sainthood, with Fleur Pillager as her foil. Lulu Nanapush, Fleur's daughter, ranges from infancy to, er, I think about 6 years old in this book, I can't remember if it follows her further. Old Man Nanapush narrates the Fleur chapters, telling the story to a now-grown Lulu, while Pauline narrates her own chapters. Most of the book takes place on the reservation from about 1912-1920.
Conclave: I rewatched the movie as well, a few times, so I wanted to reread the book, and then I launched into fanfic again and found several good ones.
Don't Let the Forest In: Ace recommended this to me. I think it's... ugh, it's tough. I think it would be, and clearly is, very enjoyable for those in the target audience, 13-17. But I don't think older audiences will be able to stomach the bad writing. And the whole book gave me a gross feeling. It felt very fetishistic, and the fetish here was school shooters--a very romantic portrayal of a kid who kills his parents in the morning before school and then hooks up with his friend to kill their bullies and most despised teachers, before killing themselves at the end in a 'beautiful' romantic scene. I like dark stories but considering this is a YA book it felt borderline irresponsible. I know I would have loved it as a kid, but I also know it would have pushed me in a very dark direction. Like, to be clear, it's not ABOUT a school shooting. It's about fantastical creatures that come to life when the two main characters draw/write about them. But the school shooting parallel was incredibly uncomfortable for me, especially with the dark ending.
Moral quibbles aside, it just wasn't well-written. I was thoroughly disenchanted with the book for technical reasons long before I made the school shooting connection.
Love Medicine: I think this is the first published book in the series. It follows the descendants of the characters from Tracks, 1940-1980-ish, with some of the child characters from Tracks now elderly. Lulu and Nector are the stars here, and it really aches. Nector has developed Alzheimer's; Lulu has gone bald from a house fire Nector started when they were middle-aged. Both have married other people and popped out or adopted boat-loads of kids, who have their own tragic/moving storylines going on. Absolute favorite story here was The Red Convertible, which follows two of Lulu's sons as one of them processes war trauma and the other tries and fails to save him. Favorite storyline in general, though, was Lipsha Morrissey discovering who his real parents are, decades after he was taken in by Nector and Marie. Lipsha reconnects with his dad, who is the modern reincarnation of Old Man Nanapush (one of the best characters of all time, I'm not kidding). Legal shenanigans ensue. Overall, very funny, very tender. The book kicks off with an introduction to June, who steals you heart immediately, and then you're devastated to learn that she's dead, and remains dead and off-page for the rest of the book, haunting the narrative.
The 2000s Made Me Gay: just okay. You don't have to relate to the author's favorite shows/movies/music to relate to the essays, but the essays themselves aren't very good. I would recommend maybe 3 from the whole collection, but even those aren't must-reads. The book really suffers from the passage of time more than anything. It was published in 2021, and most of the essays were previously written from 2015-2019, I think. So there's an aura of optimism and pre-Trump happiness that now reads as out-of-touch and even slightly dumb. Not the author's fault. Some of these essays felt like I could have written them myself, around the same time.
Semi-Well-Adjusted: Alyson Stoner was a Disney child star best known as "the little white girl from the Missy Elliott video." Hip-hop dancer, also played the tomboy from Zack and Cody and Cheaper by the Dozen. They were in Camp Rock and Step it Up. I didn't have cable growing up so I wasn't familiar with most of their work, and the same is true for Jennette McCurdy of "I'm Glad My Mother Died" fame. The two memoirs are very similar, actually: competently written, funny and horrifying, with lots of focus on the abuses children face in Hollywood, mixed with the less unique (or more unique?) abuses these two particular children faced in their own home. For Stoner, the story can be broken down into these trigger warnings: semi-covert sexual abuse on a child, outright rape on an adult, alcoholic mom, physical abuse, financial abuse, anorexia, homophobia and transphobia (though mostly homophobia, Stoner doesn't really talk about any transphobia they experienced).
I gave this the same rating I gave McCurdy's memoir--4/5 stars. And I was shocked to see that Goodreads doesn't agree. Usually I'm the ultra-critical Debbie Downer, and I sneer at Goodreads' high ratings. But it was the opposite here. Lots of 1- and 2-star reviews. I read a few and noticed a pattern. Not only do they (unfairly, imo) criticize the exact same two elements (both of which feel somewhat random and odd, and I would argue are a near-purposeful misreading or twisting of the book), but they all use, at some point, the exact same made-up quote to make the exact same bizarre point. So I suspect there's some kind of bot/harassment campaign going on. Don't know why. IMO, any criticism you apply to Stoner can be equally applied to McCurdy. Yet McCurdy's book was frequently held up as the gold standard by the people criticizing Stoner's. The biggest criticism *I* had was not mentioned at all in those negative reviews (and my criticism was, I feel, pretty significant -- the entire last chapter is just an ad for Stoner's new business).
Demon Copperhead: Rich got me this book. I'd been avoiding it because it's so popular, and with popular literary fiction, I'm usually disappointed. I was dead-wrong here. Knew it was a 5-star book from the first page, absolutely deserved the Pulitzer it won. The story itself is nothing special, which is another reason I avoided it -- a basic plot description will not draw most people in, imo. It sounds like your standard Poor Appalachian Kid trauma-porn. The writing is what makes it sizzle. Hilarious, extremely moving without ever being over-wrought. Subtle. Authentic. I'm in love with it, honestly. And although I hate Poor Appalachian Kid trauma-porn, it's very relatable to me lmfao. I'm only halfway through it, maybe a little more, so expect to see it on next month's list as well, maybe with more detail. As for the David Copperfield connection--I haven't read David Copperfield since I was 12, so I can't comment intelligently on the way Kingsolver weaves the two together. All I can say is that various characters and plotlines have pinged my Dickens radar while still fitting seamlessly into the Appalachian world and 90s/early 2000s timeline of Kingsolver.
Short stories:
Both of these are early 20th Century Chicago stories with similar vibes -- loneliness, unfulfilled romance, death. Both exquisite. Ferber's story is packed full of wry humor, whereas Anderson's story takes a more lyrical, poetic approach. It's got his signature plain, monosyllabic style but makes brilliant use of repetition and looping, so that it feels like a song. Despite this, I'd probably recommend Ferber's story over Anderson's. For sure, she's less well-known, and I think her story is overall just easier to melt into. It follows an old man-about-town named Jo who seems to have it all--booming WWI-era business in saddles and halters, tons of money and fine things. But it weaves back through his early years, when the business was failing and he was taking care of his younger sisters, and details his failed romance with a young woman. The ending is a fantastic little punch. He reunites by chance with the woman he loved. They both happen to be at a parade for soldiers going off to WWI, the same war Jo is profiting from. She's furious, and crying for her son--her son, not Jo's--but Jo sees him in the crowd, recognizes him, and forgets the boy isn't his.
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