Welcome to the Monthly Wrap Up hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction to share our monthly wrap-up posts that summarizes our month in books, our favorite books of the month, what we did on our blogs, and anything noteworthy we want to share.

May and June 2025 Wrap Up

Hello my friends, I have been so very absent on the blog to the point that this month’s wrap up is actually a combination of May and June. I have posted some book reviews but only because I have a compulsive need to keep track of the books I read and record my thoughts about them. Even so, I’m far behind on keeping up to date on writing the reviews, and I haven’t replied to any comments in the last couple of months. I am so sorry!

A lot of things have happened that have kept me busy, but only two worth mentioning right now;

First, we lost one of our beloved cats, Loki, very unexpectedly earlier this month. One day, he was fine and perfectly happy as usual, the next day he started having seizures and vomiting. We took him to the vet in the afternoon, but he wasn’t getting better, and we ended up having to go back later that night to put him to sleep.

It was a horrible day.

He was the most vocal and active of our cats, and it’s very noticeable that he’s gone now. We miss him every day, and it still hurts to think of him. The worst thing was how sudden it was. He was only nine years old and had no signs of any health problems. I don’t know why this happened. We’ve been cuddling our other two cats, Button and Pepper, a lot more than usual lately, and they’ve been more receptive to it as well. They notice he’s gone too and have been more affectionate with us.

The second thing is a happier thing, although it has me nervous. I’m going back to school for an Accounting certificate this fall. I had been busy with paperwork and applications, and recently just got my acceptance letter! I am very excited and nervous at the same time. It’s been a long while since I’ve been in school but I also love learning new things and once upon a time, my biggest aspiration was to be a “professional student”.

I still have a lot of things to organize and prepare for going back to school but there’s a couple of months to go. Being so absent from the blog these last couple of months, I do worry that I might not be able to keep up with the blog once school starts, but I like fixed schedules and routines and I’m expecting things to settle down once I adjust to the student lifestyle once again.

Now on to the book updates;

My May 2025 TBR Intentions

I did manage to finish all the books on my TBR intentions in May. Yay! The ones on the list were the priorities and I wanted to leave space for mood reads, and I got some in.

1. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (The Wayfarers #4) by Becky Chambers
2. Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
3. Every Tool’s a Hammer by Adam Savage
4. The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
5. Rose Madder by Stephen King

Books Read in May 2025

1. The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
2. Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
3. The Accounting Game by Darrell Mullis and Judith Orloff
4. Every Tool’s A Hammer by Adam Savage
5. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
6. Rose Madder by Stephen King
7. Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
8. The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
9. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
10. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

My June 2025 TBR Intentions

My June TBR intentions were chosen because my online bookclub was having a friendly competitive read-off event, where the team that got the most points for books read would win. There were exponentially higher points for books over 1000 pages and 1500 pages, so I made my list with that in mind, although some books were chosen because they were BOTMs, and/or had end-of-June deadlines. I also did end up reading a lot more than expected because I was trying to distract myself from Loki’s passing.

1. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
2. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
5. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
6. 1984 by George Orwell

Books Read in June 2025

1. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
2. 1984 by George Orwell
3. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
4. Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley
5. The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
6. The Wild Robot Escapes by Peter Brown
7. Oz: The Complete Collection by L. Frank Baum
8. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
9. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
10. The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
11. The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
12. The Complete Double Dead by Chuck Wendig

Notable Books

For May, the notable books were Perdido Street Station, Rose Madder, and The Ghost Bride. For June, the notable books were Les Misérables, Gone with the Wind, Scarlett, and Oz: The Complete Collection. I won’t go too much into detail about the books here because these are two months’ worth of books and I’m somewhat rushing this post as well.

In brief, Perdido Street Station is a little wordy but the world-building is incredible, and the story is haunting and heartbreaking and lives in my head rent-free. Rose Madder is a Stephen King book and everyone knows I’m a fan. It’s not gory horror, but it’s psychological horror and that really gets me. The Ghost Bride is a reread and written by a Malaysian author about the early 1900s’ in Malaya. It’s so reminiscent about my life, family, and culture in Malaysia, and I love that it incorporates our folklore into such a vivid fantasy story.

I listened to Les Misérables on audio and absolutely loved the experience of it. It is a little long-winded but I enjoyed it still! The whole story infuriates me but it’s told so well that I can’t help but love it, and I feel like this is one of those books where I’ll come back to and get more out of every time I reread.

Gone with the Wind, and Scarlett, are two of my favorite books that I’ve read over and over again. My experience and thoughts about them have changed over the years, but this last read was very nostalgic and I appreciate them for the works that they are.

Oz: The Complete Collection is the collection of books 1 through 14 of the Oz books. I have never read them, not even the first book, and I had no idea there was so much to the stories! Reading them as an adult, I’ve fallen in love with the stories and the characters, and it makes me wish I had read them as a child. They are just so magical and imaginative, they were so fun to read!

July 2025 TBR Intentions

My online bookclub is continuing the competitive read-off event in July, so I’m planning to continue with the big books, plus also July’s BOTMs and other buddy reads with July deadlines.

1. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
6. If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino

How was the last couple of months for you? What were your most memorable bookish moments? I hope you have a wonderful July with lots of great books!