May 2026 Monthly Wrap Up -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

February 2026 Monthly Wrap Up

When it comes to vacation books, I’m Team Fluffy all the way. When I go out of town, like I did in May, I pack hen lit, comfort reads, and mysteries. Many of the books I read in May are not in this picture because I left them behind when I finished.* Do you do that?

Here's a list of the books I read in May. See any favorites?

• The Last Detective by Peter Lovesey, set in Bath, England, where I started my vacation. This is the first of his Peter Diamond mysteries and I thought it was terrific. I have most of the series in Soho Crime editions and look forward to reading all of it. 

• The Art of Making Memories by Meik Wiking, author of The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living, which has so much more going for it. He followed Hygge with The Little Book of Lykke: Secrets of the World’s Happiest People. This is the weakest of the three. It was interesting enough, but felt like he overworked scant material. 

• Regeneration by Pat Barker, the first book in her Regeneration Trilogy about psychological injuries caused by, and closeted gay life during, WWI.

• The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker, the second book in the trilogy.

• The Ghost Road by Pat Barker, the last book and the 1995 winner of the Booker Prize. 

• The Trees by Conrad Richter, the first novel of his Awakening Land trilogy about American pioneers in the late 1700s.

LEFT BEHIND

• The Royal Secret by Lucinda Riley. I greatly enjoyed this thriller involving a “fictional” royal family, even through its highly improbably spots. 

• Fellowship of Fear by Aaron Elkins, his first Gideon Oliver mystery. I read a later book from this series last summer and loved it, so wanted to start at the beginning. This one didn't do much for me. The plot just never made sense. But I will continue because I try to not judge a series from its first book and I know from the other one I read that these get better. 

• The Season of Second Chances by Diane Meier. This one was just my cup of tea. It's a campus novel featuring a woman of a certain age who moves from New York City to to be a professor at Amhurst, where she renovates a big old house and tries her luck at romance.  

• They Did It with Love by Kate Morgenroth is a domestic thriller set in ritzy Greenwich, Connecticut. It was very clever, but (without giving anything away), I didn't like the ending. 

• Bookish People by Susa Coll, a cute story set in a Washington, D.C. bookshop. This one came full circle for me because I bought it while on vacation in Alaska a couple of years ago and read it on vacation this year. 

AUDIOBOOKS

• What I Ate in One Year (and Related Thoughts) by Stanley Tucci. Entertaining, but not as good as Taste: My Life Through Food. It's easy to understand why. Taste was the story of his whole life, so he had a lot of material to draw on. It was also charmingly self-deprecating and he played down his life as a famous movie star. This one is limited to one year, so he had to make a little go a long way. As a result, it's mostly about his life as a movie star and there's a lot of name dropping.  

• The Engine House by Rhys Dylan, the first in a mystery series set in Wales, where I went on vacation after Bath. One of my book club friends recommended the series to me when I told her I like to read books set in the places where I travel. I plan to continue with the series because this first one was quite good and most (all?) are available as audiobooks from my library. 

* I love a "take one/leave one" shelf in a hotel. I love searching for some gem that will then be a souvenir of my trip. And I'm more than happy to leave behind any books I finish. But I never leave a book in an airplane seatback if I finish it on the plane. I think those just get thrown away, either immediately, when the plane is being cleaned, or later, after a long internment in a lost and found closet. What do you think happens to them?