May 2019 Updates

What a month May has been! It’s been one massive roller-coaster from beginning to end.

May actually started off a little slow and leisurely. I had just completed one big project release, and finished a lot of work towards the next one, and so I was feeling good and lazy.

And that’s when the unexpected happens, doesn’t it? The next two weeks suddenly ramped up into super-speed mode where life, work, blogging, and family demands kept me on my toes.

The last week of May was the week of my travel to China. I entered it feeling ragged and flu-ey. Thankfully, the viral held off during my travel, but it’s come with a bang now, and I’ve been feeling poorly since I’ve been back.

I was half-tempted to cancel my monthly updates post, but it’s something I want to maintain at least this year, and so here’s a quick one about all that I got up to in May.

May was less about reading books and more about blogging about them. I finished up some long-pending reviews – 1Q84, The Three Body Problem, and Beast – all books that I had finished in April.

I had planned to take China Rich Girlfriend (the second book of the Crazy Rich Asians series) to read while in China. But the book didn’t really hold my interest, and I dropped it in favor of my daughter’s book – An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, which I quite liked.

Snubnose loved the unabashed materialism of China Rich Girlfriend far more than I did and read the book from start to finish during a train ride from Xi’an to Shanghai.

Another book that I finished and loved this month is Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough. Here’s how I came to read this book. I had sent Snubnose over to the library with a request for The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (which the librarian told was reserved for me). However, there was some confusion and the book wasn’t available. So Snubnose looked around and got me Antony and Cleopatra saying she thought I would like it.

Turned out, I loved it. I am not very familiar with ancient Roman/Egyptian history and loved how this book brought me to speed with the times without being boring or difficult in any manner.

I tried to follow up this book with Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran, which I thought made a natural sequel. Sadly, the difference in styles was all too jarring, and I found myself DNF’ing Cleopatra’s Daughter. This is a book I might have liked in other circumstances, but after the stellar Antony and Cleopatra, it was a massive disappointment.

I didn’t really watch anything interesting in May (apart from Game of Thrones), it was too hectic a month. That said, I watched Ordeal by Innocence (based off the Agatha Christie book) during my flight back home from China and it didn’t put me to sleep, so I guess it’s good?

I didn’t care that they made such drastic changes to the plot (I am a Christie purist), but overall it was a good three hours of entertainment.

And oh yes, I saw this silly movie on Netflix – The Perfect Date starring Noah Centineo and Laura Marano. It was ok, it felt too young for me, what am I doing watching such movies anyway? It was blah and formulaic, but also mildly fun maybe because the lead pair had pretty good chemistry.

So, travel to China was the highlight of this month and quite possibly the year. I was a little worried while trip planning about the food (vegetarian) and toilets (picky about cleanliness). Everything turned out ok though. The food was a delight for the most part, and the toilets, sigh! I guess we survived.

I’m still gathering together all the photos and videos we shot. It’s going to take some time to process all that we saw and did. For now, I can say it was an amazing and eye-opening trip that made me totally rethink how I view the country and the people.

So that was May – amazing, frustrating, and crazy-busy in turns. Overall, a very exciting month, and one of the best months of the year so far!

How did May treat you?