Books read: 8
I really enjoyed a lot of the books I read this month, which was great as it’s been a while since I had a 5 star read. My favourites were The White Road and And the Rest is History. The book I was most excited about reading this month was A Court of Wings and Ruin, and although I did enjoy it, it didn’t quite come up to the high standards of ACOMAF in my opinion.

• A Court of Wings and Ruin, Sarah J Maas
• The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare
• The Green Road, Anne Enright
• Into the Water, Paula Hawkins
• And the Rest is History, Jodi Taylor
• The White Road, Sarah Lotz
• The Hundredth Queen, Emily King
• The Ice, Laline Paull

Books acquired: 20
Whoops. This list is quite long. Only two are review copies and only two are library books, which means that my book shopping got a little out of control this month. Four were bought using up credits that had built up on my Audible account, but even taking these out I still bought too many books!

• A Court of Wings and Ruin, Sarah J Maas
• Wrath, John Gwynne
• The Shadow Sister, Lucinda Riley
• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
• The City’s Son, Tom Pollock
• And the Rest is History, Jodi Taylor
• The Hundredth Queen, Emily King
• An Accident of Stars, Foz Meadows
• Into the Water, Paula Hawkins
• He Said/She Said, Erin Kelly
• The White Road, Sarah Lotz
• The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
• How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
• The House at the Edge of the World, Julia Rochester
• Darien, C. F. Iggulden
• The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood
• Twilight of the Eastern Gods, Ismail Kadare
• The Versions of Us, Laura Bennett
• The Owl Always Hunts at Night, Samuel Bjork
• 4 3 2 1, Paul Auster

Blog posts published: 8
The most popular posts on The Stacked Shelf this month were the discussion posts I published on rereading and why reviewing books can be difficult. the one I enjoyed writing the most though was about the problems that come with updating Shakespeare.

• April wrap up
• Golden Son – Pierce Brown
• Flame in the Mist – Renee Ahdieh
• To reread or not to reread?
• Top 5: favourite book quotes
• The problems with updating Shakespeare: Vinegar Girl
• Discussion post: Why reviewing books can be tough
• My recommendations: If you liked… (Part 1)

TBR for May:
I’m already half way through The Wise Man’s Fear, which is a brick of a book at 993 pages, so I’m off to a good start. I have a couple of days off in June and not much planned for weekends, so hopefully it should be a good reading month. I’m not great at sticking to TBR lists, but will see how it goes.

• The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
• House of Names, Colm Tobin
• Darien, C. F. Iggulden
• The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood
• He Said/She Said, Erin Kelly
• The Shadow Sister, Lucinda Riley

Challenge progress:
Goodreads Challenge: My Goodreads reading goal is to read 50 books this year. I’ve now completed 35 books – meaning that I’m currently ahead of schedule by 15 books. (35/50)

Beat the Backlist Challenge: The Beat the Backlist challenge is all about knocking off titles that have been on your TBR for a while. Books need to have been published prior to 2017, and I’m only including books that I actually bought before 2017 and that have been sitting around waiting for me to read them – so no new purchases or library reads.

This month, none of my reads qualified, so my total remains at just two books towards a goal of twelve. (2/12)

How was your May? What was your favourite read? What do you have planned for June?