May 2025 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Welcome to the May 2025 Reading Round-Up. Each month I write about the books I’ve read and rank them from worst to best.
Summer is my favorite reading season. The days are long, the weather is good, and reading lists abound. In an ideal world, I can sneak in a few minutes of outdoor reading every day, whether that be in a beach chair or as an audiobook as I go for a run (although studying for the bar exam currently means more audiobooks than beach chairs).
There are so many books coming out this summer that I’m excited about. When you get a chance, check out my Summer 2025 Publishing Preview, which includes the 20 releases that I’m most looking forward to.
Consider sharing The Book House Blog with anyone you know who you think might enjoy monthly reading round-ups, quarterly theater reviews, seasonal publishing previews, and themed reading guides.
Entitlement - Rumaan Alam
Fiction, 276 pages, published in 2024
It’s summer, Obama is in his second term, and an unidentified man keeps poking women with needles on the subway. Against this backdrop, Brooke, a mid-thirties New Yorker, is living her normal life: seeing friends, trying to impress her mother, and navigating a new job working at a small philanthropic foundation trying to give away an octogenarian billionaire’s fortune to worthy causes. But Brooke is not satisfied with her life. Despite having seemingly everything she could need, Brooke strives for more. She starts by desiring a sense of purpose, but as she gets closer to Asher Jaffee, her billionaire boss, she also begins to crave the money and power that seems to come so easily to him. These wants start to change Brooke, causing her to distance herself from her friends and family, make unadvisable decisions, and become obsessive about buying an apartment that she doesn’t have the money for. In Brooke’s mind, if the people around her can have these things, why can’t she?
Rumaan Alam is best known for his third novel, Leave the World Behind, which was turned into a movie on Netflix. I admittedly have not read the book or seen the film, but have heard positive things. Entitlement, which arrives on the heels of its predecessor’s success, felet rushed and not fully fleshed out. I understand that Brooke’s psychological transformation is central to the book’s conceit, but that doesn’t mean that she needed to be as flat and patently unreasonable as she ended up being. I also thought that Alam did more “telling” than “showing” in his writing. For example, Brooke’s ascension to Asher Jaffe’s protégé happens suddenly without any actual events occurring to make this feel plausible. Instead, she starts referring to herself as such and we’re just supposed to believe it. Luckily, the book doesn’t take long to get through, so my disappointment with the writing didn’t need to last too long.
Rating: 6.5/10
Blaze Me a Sun - Christoffer Carlsson
Fiction/Mystery, 448 pages, published in 2021 in Swedish, translated to English in 2023
On February 28, 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated on the street in a brazen and unexpected act of violence. His killer was never found. On the same day, the police in Halland, located just south of Gothenburg, receive a call from a man who claims to have attacked a woman and left for dead. Detective Sven Jörgensson is the first on the scene and is unable to save her life. As he tries to solve the case, two more women are attacked by the same man. Sven becomes obsessed with catching the killer at the same time that the country enters a state of collective shock about crime and lawlessness in the country.
Decades later, with neither killer caught, a novelist returns home to Halland to live in his recently vacated childhood home. One night at a local bar, the writer comes across Sven’s son who is similarly obsessed with solving the mystery of the women’s murders as a way to honor his now deceased father’s legacy. The writer becomes interested in the story and starts his own quest to figure out what happened.
Blaze Me a Sun is the American debut of Christoffer Carlsson, who is the youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year award in a country that values its Nordic mysteries. I thought the book was engrossing and I certainly didn’t guess the identity of the killer in advance. However, by the time of the big reveal, I found that I didn’t particularly care who the killer ended up being. The story had gone on for a bit too long and, regardless of who did it, the book had run its course.
Rating: 7/10
Bear - Julia Phillips
Fiction, 282 pages, published in 2024
Sam works a dead-end job serving snacks and beverages on a local ferry near her home off the coast of Washington state. After her shifts, Sam returns home where she lives with her older sister and her dying 51-year-old mother, who suffers from pulmonary complications caused by the constant inhalation of fumes while working at a nail salon. The family lives paycheck to paycheck, and, although Sam loves her mother, she looks forward to when they will be able to sell the home and leave the island, which necessarily has to be after she dies. One day, while working on the ferry, Sam spots a rare grizzly bear swimming in the water. The next morning, Sam is startled awake by her sister, Elena, who has spotted the bear right outside their door. While the bear sparks intense fear in Sam, for Elena, the bear turns into a symbol of hope and possibility that their stagnant life might improve. Sensing that the bear portends unwanted change, Sam becomes obsessed with getting it to go away, which drives a wedge between herself and her sister.
I ended up giving this a more generous rating than I anticipated solely because the ending was so utterly shocking that I couldn’t help but respect Julia Phillips’ panache. The lead-up to the conclusion, however, could sometimes be a slog, especially when Sam’s disillusionment with the world and everyone around her became overpowering to the point of tediousness.
Rating: 8/10
Lorne - Susan Morrison
Non-Fiction/Biography, 601 pages, published in 2025
I am a religious watcher of Saturday Night Live. I started watching the show, or at least the highlights, in 2008 when Tina Fey debuted her incredible Sarah Palin impression. Since then and especially in recent years I try never to miss an episode, although usually that means catching up first thing on Sunday morning. SNL’s 50th anniversary season has been an exciting few months of television and a perfect time for the release of the first definitive biography of the man who started it all.
Lorne Michaels started SNL when he was just 30 years old after a series of failed TV and movie projects. He intended for it to be a counter-cultural comedy show, but over the years it has firmly embedded itself into the American cultural canon. As SNL’s success grew, so too did that of Michaels, and today Michaels is a producer on all of NBC’s late night television programs in addition to a slate of TV shows and movies. This biography follows Lorne from childhood to the present, documenting the ups and downs of his career. Throughout the book, Susan Morrison intersperses behind-the-scenes descriptions of the week-long creation process for the November 3, 2018 episode hosted by Jonah Hill, including the initial pitch meeting, the selection of the sketches, the management of personalities, and the production of the final show.
My ideal book would probably have just been an in-depth peek behind the curtain into the hectic writing and production process that takes place each week. Indeed, when I started the book, I expected it to be more of a biography of SNL than of Lorne Michaels, but given the book’s title, I have only myself to blame for any residual disappointment. As far as biography’s go, this one is thoroughly researched and reported. It relies on a trove of interviews with Lorne, his friends, and SNL greats to build a comprehensive narrative of the man’s life and the indelible impact he has had on not only the American comedy scene, but also American culture writ large.
Rating: 8/10
By the Fire We Carry - Rebecca Nagle
Non-Fiction/History/Indigenous Rights, 352 pages, published in 2024
In By the Fire We Carry, Rebecca Nagle alternates between past and present to explain the historic fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. In 2020, the Supreme Court held in McGirt v. Oklahoma that the land set aside for the Muscogee people in the 1830s remains tribal land today; a decision with far reaching implications for tribal sovereignty and the relationship between tribal nations and the United States government. McGirt made its way to the Supreme Court after a Muscogee citizen sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land filed a habeas petition arguing that because the murder occurred on the tribe’s land, Oklahoma didn’t have the jurisdiction to execute him. In response, Oklahoma argued that the reservation - comprised of land granted to the tribe following the Trail of Tears - no longer existed. Nagle unpacks the story that led to this Supreme Court decision by weaving together the facts of the case with this country’s long history of displacement of indigenous people, particularly of tribes currently situated in eastern Oklahoma.
I thought the narrative structure of this book was well-done and a thoughtful choice. By intermingling the timelines, Nagle makes the compelling argument that the history of displacement and disenfranchisement of indigenous peoples is intimately linked with tribal status today.
Rating: 8/10
Heroic Measures - Jill Ciment
Fiction, 193 pages, published in 2009
It might be 2009, but New York City is still experiencing post-9/11 trauma and paranoia. When a gasoline truck gets stuck in the Queen-Midtown tunnel and the driver flees the scene, the city suspects the worst. Was this an intentional act or an accident? Is the driver a terrorist? And where is he? Amidst this uncertainty Alex and Ruth, a couple in their mid-70s, are trying to sell the East Village apartment where they have lived for the past four decades. They’ve been told that their fifth floor walk-up apartment, which they purchased for $5,000 with the assistance of the GI bill after World War II, is now worth over $900,000. The two want to use the money from the sale to buy an apartment in a building with an elevator, but are reluctant to leave the home they have known for the entirety of their adult lives.
On the eve of their open house, and on the day that the truck gets stuck in the tunnel, Alex and Ruth discover that the back legs of their beloved old dachshund dog - a surrogate child for the children they chose not to have - are suddenly paralyzed. The two must get their dog to the animal hospital while braving chaos taking shape in the city and internal uncertainty over their future home.
On the surface, Heroic Measures is a short, often humorous book, about the confusion of one 48-hour stretch in an elderly couple’s lives. Even Dorothy the dog, whom I loved, gets some chapters written from her perspective. In Jill Ciment’s hands, however, this book becomes a much larger meditation on paranoia (Alex and Ruth were monitored by the FBI during the Cold War Red Scare and now the truck driver, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, is facing similar scapegoating in the post-9/11 era), fear (even the dogs in the animal hospital can sense the unease in the city), as well as the uncertainty that comes with a changing city and aging lives.
Rating: 8/10
Stone Yard Devotional - Charlotte Wood
Fiction, 293 pages, published in 2023
The unnamed narrator and main character of Stone Yard Devotional is a middle-aged woman experiencing a moral crisis about the efficacy of her work as an environmentalist. She leaves her home in Sydney to return to the rural plains of Australia where she grew up in the hopes of having a few days of solace in a small convent of nuns. The narrator attended Catholic school as a child but was never religious, and when she arrives at the religious community she considers herself an atheist. The peace she experiences in the isolated convent proves appealing and, despite not knowing how to pray or what to pray for, she decides to stay. Years later, amidst the pandemic, the woman’s solitude is interrupted by a series of disturbances: the arrival of a nun the narrator knew and mistreated in childhood and the onslaught of a massive, uncontrollable plague of mice. In a life guided by the principle of do no harm, the narrator grapples with the role of the individual in creating and healing the pain one causes.
This is a beautifully written book, but as the description might suggest, it is a slow and quiet one. I am typically drawn to character-driven over plot-driven stories, and while this book certainly can’t be considered plot-driven, I did sometimes wish that there was a bit more to the events that were pushing the story, and by extension the narrator’s revelations, forward. This book is meant to be appreciated and contemplated rather than consumed.
Rating: 8/10
My Friends - Hisham Matar
Fiction, 395 pages, published in 2024
As a young boy growing up in Libya in the 1970s, Khaled has only consciously known life under the dictatorship of Muammar Qaddafi. His daily life is fairly normal. He goes to school, spends time with his family, and plays with his friends. But lurking beneath the surface is an undercurrent of caution: any dissent will not only not be tolerated, but could be met with imprisonment or death. When Khaled wins a state scholarship to study literature at the University of Edinburgh, his parents, while proud, are rightfully concerned that once he tastes freedom he will never return.
They are not wrong to be worried. A few months after he moves, Khaled is reluctantly convinced by a new friend to attend a demonstration at the Libyan embassy in London. When it ends in violence, Khaled knows that not only can he never return home, but he also can’t tell his parents why he must live in exile out of fear that they will be punished for his actions. Isolated from his family in a new country, Khaled creates a surrogate family of other Libyan expats and exiles, each of whom yearns for the ability to return to their motherland without fear of persecution. My Friends spans the majority of Khaled’s adult life lived in London. When the Arab Spring erupts in 2011 and some of his friends feel called to return and fight in the revolution, Khaled finds himself stuck in a new conundrum: now that he can return, where does he truly call home?
Hisham Matar is a beautiful writer whose books, past and present, are all loosely based on some elements of his own life lived as a Libyan in exile. His memoir, The Return, won the Pulitzer Prize for its description of his quest to find his father after he was disappeared under the Qaddafi regime. These dual feelings of longing and loss are integral to My Friends, resulting in a fascinating and well crafted work of fiction.
Rating: 8.5/10
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