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Use this topic to discuss whether you enjoyed your May picks from Ireland, and whether you’d recommend it to your fellow readers! Did you find it easy/difficult to complete this task?

Please tag all spoilers in this post!

I chose Room by Emma Donoghue, partly to see what the fuss was all about. However, I was not prepared for this to be a swift DNF after about 20 pages for me. =(

Overall, the writing style felt tedious and cumbersome, but I think my main issue with this book was the �� admittedly unique �� point of view. Telling what could have been a harrowing tale of incarceration and rape of a woman from her 5-year-old son's perspective just didn't work for me. His voice was inconsistent, sometimes either too babyish or too mature, and his irritating tendency of naming/gendering mundane everyday objects drove me up the wall.

So after reading The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and being underwhelmed, i also gave Unraveling Oliver a chance, and i REALLY liked it! it seems to be classified as a thriller which i feel like is a bit inaccurate (its more of a slow burn, and you know Oliver is a bad person, it's a question of how he got to this point), but i would recommend it.

I made it through Room, but it was difficult because of the subject nature and because I was, like Nina, also uncomfortable of the narrator being a 5-year-old.

I couldn't finish The Glorious Heresies. Will try another author and also just continue with Tana French.

I read Brooklyn and I really enjoyed it. I did find the main character quite passive but I think it kind of worked for this novel.

I read The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien and gave it 3 stars.

A good book, not great but a cool glimpse into the lives of these women.

I finally read Normal People after prolonging it for so long. While I enjoyed how it was written, I really did not enjoy the story. Maybe I'm not a very sympathetic person, but I could not understand the struggle they seem to be creating with each other and towards each other when all these could have been amended by properly talking. It was really toxic. Unless that was the actual intention then I guess the author succeeded in her point.

I read Normal People, I found it to be just OK. Like there was the spark of something there that never ignited.

I didn’t read a book this month. I ordered The Lesser Bohemians but I could not parse the prose of this book and by the time I realized this would be unreadable for me it was too late to get another book for the month.

Sireesha wrote: "I couldn't finish The Glorious Heresies. Will try another author and also just continue with Tana French."

The Glorious Heresies got such rave reviews when it came out, but I also tried to read it and couldn't finish it. That's why I didn't include it in the post

Hey everyone, just a heads up, the Iran post should be coming tomorrow or the day after at the latest. I'm not sure if I'll have time to do the historical bits because I have a shitload of academic projects to finish and time has been really short. But I'll do my best.

I read Normal People for last year’s ONTD challenge which I liked a lot so I was excited to read Conversations with Friends for this May's challenge. It felt like the blueprint of Normal People, just like my March pick The Solitaire Mystery felt like reading a blueprint for Sophie's World. Basically every topic of Normal People was already covered in Conversations with Friends. Nevertheless, I liked it a lot �� mostly because I enjoy Rooney’s style of writing, which is so reduced but at the same time also very captivating.

As a teenager, I used to be obsessed with Irish culture so I still have some unread books from this period. Teacher Man was one of them. My mother gave this one to me years ago. I had already read Angela's Ashes before which was okay (but not great) so you could say I wasn’t that excited to read another Frank McCourt memoir. It’s also the main reason this book has been sitting on my shelf for more than a decade now, unread. I have to admit I liked it, especially the first half. The other half I felt like I was listening to an drunk old white man blabbering about his youth. But then again, that’s the point of a memoir, right?

Milkman was a very humbling experience for me. I bought the book years ago thinking I'd be able to dive in at my usual pace and my inability to sink into the story actually made me hit pause on it and put it away. I'm glad this challenge brought me back to giving it a try because it is such a unique and niche piece that I'm glad I got the chance to really dig into. I had to take my time because the prose gave me little space to break given the long chapters and stream-of-consciousness style but once I was able to devote hours to sitting with it, I was well immersed. Certain chapters ended in ways that simultaneously made me laugh and left me breathless. Curious to know if those who read it fall into the camp of "loved it" or "hated it" since it seems to be so polarizing.

I read Watermelon and it was just what I needed it. It was a fun read for me, but I can see why not everyone would like it. The writing is funny, but it has a lot of cringey 90's humor that does not fly nowadays. And as a deeply depressed bitch myself, I felt seen the first 100 pages with Claire being a bottomless pit of depression. Overall, looking forward to reading more books by Marian Keyes.