Reading life review: May

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Number of books read in May: 10
Number of books read in 2012: 53Complete list here.
■ The Night Bookmobile (Audrey Niffenegger) Graphic novel. Related entry here.

■ First Love (Ivan Turgenev) Fiction. Related entry here.

■ Are You My Mother? (Alison Bechdel) Graphic memoir. Related entry here.

■ When You Were Mine (Rebecca Serle) YA fiction. You know? I really wanted to loathe this retelling of Romeo and Juliet, particularly the "central casting" aspect of Serle's characterizations. But... it was actually rather sweet and old-fashioned.

■ The Wave (Todd Strasser) YA fiction. You may remember the ABC Afterschool Special better; both were based on the same classroom experiment. 

■ Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading (Lizzie Skurnik) Non-fiction. A reread for me. Why? Related entry here.

■ Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting (Pamela Druckerman) Non-fiction. This book takes itself quite seriously when, in fact, it's nothing more than commonsense parenting packaged as an exotic discovery. I realize that the circles in which Druckerman runs may eschew "The Look" (i.e., "Big Eyes") or early and ceaseless coaching in excellent manners as too authoritative and/or too robotic, but some parents (Alas! Too few, too few!) have quietly gone about the business of raising their children sans any reminders about who makes the decisions and why.

■ Bossypants (Tina Fey) Non-fiction. Listened to this one on the Kindle. Smart, funny, entertaining.

■ The Fault in Our Stars (John Green) YA fiction. Others have already amply praised this beautiful novel: NPR, Washington Post, TIME, and NYT.

 ■ The Devil All the Time (Donald Ray Pollock) Fiction. Relentlessly grim but perfectly paced and neatly woven, this was the "it" book a couple of seasons ago. What seemed to capture many imaginations, though, was Pollock's personal history: He published his first book, Knockemstiff, in 2008 after working as a laborer in a paper mill for more than thirty years. While that is interesting, I think his work would have been compelling even without the backstory. The jacket copy notes similarities to Natural Born Killers and the stories of Flannery O'Connor, but I was reminded of that underappreciated 2001 film Frailty. Pollock's novel explores some of the same psychological landscape -- the twisted pursuits, the underlying faith, the inevitability of it all.