May 2025 Bookmail

How is it already May? I have lost all sense of time completely. Doesn’t help that with my new work schedule, my weekend is Monday and Tuesday. What even are days of the week anymore?

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Books I Read This Month

Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York - Elon Green

This has been on my tbr since it came out and I finally picked it up at the library. I cracked it open during my wait at the DMV and by mid-day the next day, I had devoured it. While this is true crime, Green centers his book around both the victims of a serial killer preying on the gay piano bar scene of 80s and 90s New York and an understanding of the time period and culture itself. Engagingly written, it made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced, enraged at how the police and the public treated the community (this was, of course, during the AIDS epidemic), and feeling like I experienced something rather than just read it. Full of empathy, heart, and kindness, I honestly recommend this to everyone. I think they made a documentary out of this and I need to check that out, too!

Enchanted to Meet You - Meg Cabot

Meg Cabot novels are go to comfort food. Her Heather Wells series is one of my absolute favorites of all time. This is book one in a new series and its already gone places. Small town witch runs a boutique and uses her magic to make clothes perfectly fit her clientele. Hot dude shows up, tells her she’s the chosen one to save her town from certain doom. Doom begins to appear. Time to figure out how to help the ‘bringer of light’ (a sassy teenage lesbian) and deal with her high school bully in one go. This is very much a feel good, relaxing kind of read. Usually you can tell about two thirds of the way in how the series is going to go and honestly, I didn’t see the set up for book two until the very last chapter of this (Small town witch’s brother is back in town and so is her best friend’s little sister? Iiiiiiinteresting) which was fun. The climax was a tiny bit of a let down after all the build up but I’m curious what’s going to happen in book two!

Some of It Was Real - Nan Fischer

I grabbed this rather impulsively off the shelf of the library, the bright blue cover calling to me and I ended up adoring it. Not falling into one easy category, this tells the tale of Sylvie Young, an up-and-coming psychic doing live shows on the verge of a tv show and Thomas Holmes, a journalist working on a piece to expose popular psychics as frauds. Sylvie agrees to spend a week with Thomas, letting him follow along with her in the lead up to her next show, to prove to him that what she does is real. Along the way, they investigate the mystery behind what happened to her biological parents and Thomas deals with the grief he’s let fester the majority of his life. I never knew exactly where this book was going with Sylvie’s background and having an interesting mystery like that as the backbone of this story, along with letting the two main characters grow as people as they pushed and pulled each other along, kept this incredibly fresh. Thomas does start the book with a beloved twenty year old cat named Christopher Robin and you could tell how that story was going to end so warnings for that but other than that inevitability, this was a smart, heartfelt, rom-com/mystery/drama that I really enjoyed. Plus, it was set in Portland so a very big bonus. Will definitely be checking out more Nan Fischer books!

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I am two weeks into my new job and I am exhausted. I’ve been on my feet more in the past two weeks than I had been in years and I’m feeling it. I’m lucky that everyone I work with is incredibly nice and slowly teaching me more and more computer things so I can spend less time on my feet and more time uploading photos and the like.

Nevermind that Independent Bookstore Day was my fourth day on the job. Talk about a trial by fire! I was stamping sheets and selling books like my life depended on it. Saturdays and Sundays are busy anyway, as it tends to be in shops like this, but man oh man.

Here, have a cool thing from my shop:

Yes, this is a page from a third folio of Taming of the Shrew. It’s $500 and I covet it.

Sadly, working Saturday and Sunday does mean that I haven’t been out doing much. I’ve gone to a few movies (I’ve seen Sinners twice now and I am constantly wondering if I should go again), had dinner with a few friends. I’m instituting Molly Movie Night the first Saturday of the month, so friends can come over and hang out and watch a movie. Although it’s going to be the first Saturday, I’m starting it the second Saturday this month just for ease’s sake so looking forward to having some friends over in a few days.

Beyond that? Oh, I need to figure out more things to do. I’m working on getting some things in the works but they’re still percolating. In the meantime, a reminder that you can support me writing these silly newsletters for $5/month or $35/year. This also lets you pick a book for me to read and devote a whole newsletter to! Give me things! Good things! Bad things! Anything! I’m looking forward to it!

See you all in two weeks for some horror flicks but until then, happy May!