Welcome to May.

It was interesting reading the reader mailbag feedback on whether you take notes while reading a book. I was worried I was the only one – so glad to see I am not!

It made me think about taking notes after I finish a book, too. It would come in handy for those book series that release a book a year, or when I am reading a series and take a break.

My What’s Next page at Book Notification is about three pages long at this stage. And truthfully, there are so many series I want to get back into, but I cannot remember anything from the prior 3 or 4 books I read in the series, so it’s hard to go in cold.

Ah, the problems we readers have.

I’m having fun deciding which audiobook to listen to next. I’ve generally narrowed my preference down to thrillers when it comes to listening to a book. They just work so much more for me and keep me hooked.

So I load up the Libby app, then just browse the ‘skip-the-line’ books in that category, or just browse in general across the 7 different libraries I can access. I have it filtered by ‘standalone’ and ‘thriller’. Then I read the descriptions of many, and as soon as one jumps out at me, I pick that and go with it.

That is how I discovered The Business Trip by Jessie Garcia. I had never heard of this author before, but wow – the combination of a great story and excellent narration had me hooked. There was so much I liked about this one, from its structure to its character development.

Also, you know what I really liked? The characters weren’t stupid. That really stood out to me. So many books these days, I find the plots involve characters not doing the obvious. It was the opposite here; characters were doing things I wouldn’t have even thought of.

Anyway – great book and read more about it in the recommendations section. I will warn you that it has a bit of a polarizing ending.

I also listened to The Fury by Alex Michaelides. He’s the author of The Silent Patient. This was an average book about a murder on a Greek island, made all the better by Alex Jennings’s narration. One of those books I’d definitely say to skip reading, only listen to it.

I had a big running weekend in April, with a 10k one night followed by a half-marathon the next morning, and I was dealing with a few injuries. So I re-listened to Running the Dream by Matt Fitzgerald. It’s about an everyday runner who starts training with a professional running team.

What always stood out to me when I first listened to it was the way it addressed injuries, and how so many runners go into runs with them and learn to work around them. It was a game-changer for me back then, as previously I would react to any injury by taking a break.

This was just as enjoyable as the first time. Matt really knows how to tell a story. If you’re looking for a good non-fiction book or are into running, check it out.

And the running weekend went well. If you follow us or Book Notification on social media, you might have seen my weekly “Currently Reading” segment. I do a quick video chat about what I am currently reading, and always do it from a different location.

Well, for this one, I decided to do it during the half-marathon. I’ve never tried to embed a video in here before, but here it is below- hopefully it works. If not, here’s a link to watch it on YouTube.

I’m currently listening to Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera. I stumbled upon this one in a psychological thriller Facebook group. It’s about a woman who may have murdered her best friend – she has amnesia from the incident – and a true crime podcast which is covering the story years later.

Quite a good book. Definitely one of those that works a lot better because it’s an audiobook, with the podcast aspect.

For the I Care About Books Book Club, I read Beartooth by Callan Wink. I had mixed opinions of this one. The descriptive writing was BEAUTIFUL, but there was a real lack of a plot.

In theory, it’s about two struggling brothers who live near Yellowstone, and take an illegal job to survive – but it was just really lacking a purpose. And I felt it ended very poorly. The prose really saved this one from falling below the 5/10 mark for me.

I also read The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar. It’s about a man who can see five seconds into the future. I really wanted to like this book, which won the Locus Award for best sci-fi, but it was a struggle.

It’s only his second book, and it showed – it was just very rough around the edges. It almost felt like a book that could have been broken down into a three or four-part series, but instead was all crammed into one.

It would spend pages and pages trying to explain and rationalize the phenomenon this character experiences, but would then practically skip past all the action scenes. Great concept, not so great execution.

I also read The Dinner Party by Freida McFadden, which is like a Choose Your Own Adventure style book. Quite fun. Always enjoy something different like that.

I’m currently reading Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. It just debuted and is a BBC Radio 2 and Good Morning America Book Club pick.

The plot is about a tradwife influencer with eight million followers who wakes up in a brutal, unfiltered version of her “perfect” life with no staff and no escape, and she will do anything to get back.

I’ve only started it, so no thoughts yet.

As always, if you want:

  • 20x the authors as OrderOfBooks
  • Get notified of new books by your favourite authors
  • A Personalized Book Release Calendar
  • Track Your Reads and TBR
  • Printable book lists
  • And much much more….
  • …then check out our sister site Book Notification

We’ve started adding a few fun elements to the site; Easter eggs on certain authors’ pages. If you’re aware of the Berenstain Bears ‘Mandela Effect’, you’ll get a kick out of our Stan and Jan Berenstain page, for example.

One thing I am really proud of, and I don’t believe many people are aware of, is the work we put into stopping our lists from being polluted with literary vaporware.

By this, I mean books that an author lists as upcoming, complete with a release date, description, and book cover, and then, a week before their release, they suddenly disappear from all retailers.

Here’s the work we do:

  • Remove the book from the author’s list.
  • Do a manual check to see if the author has posted any reason for it.
  • Run an automatic check twice daily to see if the book has returned under the same or a new ISBN.
  • Perform a manual check twice per week to confirm the book is available, and see if the author has posted anything about why it was cancelled/postponed.
  • If the author has posted anything such as the book was postponed due to health issues, we will create a FAQ notifying people as to its status.

Here’s what Goodreads does:

  • Nothing.

The book remains listed, with the same release date, with no explanation. We will get e-mails asking why we don’t have an author’s book listed or why they can’t find it online, even though it ‘clearly’ came out, based on this inaccurate Goodreads page.

What makes it worse is that so many other sites rely on Goodreads for their data. So this sort of misinformation just spreads across the web, causing confusion.

What makes me laugh about this is that we have a database staff of just 7 people, all fully paid. While Goodreads is run by a trillion-dollar company with over 320,000 volunteers doing its database work. They can’t handle something like this, but we can.

Anyway, I just wanted to get on my soapbox for a minute. I recently received a lot of “why can’t I find this book?” e-mails, and I always like to raise awareness of the incredible work my team does every day. Be sure to check out Book Notification.

Each month, we give away 5 $25 Amazon gift certificates to random subscribers.

To win, all you have to do is be a subscriber. Nothing more! When we click “Publish,” we take a list of all our subscribers, put them into a random draw, and those are the winners.

Our winners this month are:

Barbara S. G. from San Francisco, CA
Gisele S. from Fayetteville, NC
Gwen 35 from Atco, NJ
Karen D. from Plano, TX
Vicki C. from Peoria, AZ

All of you have been e-mailed. If you don’t see anything, check your junk folder or contact me.

So it goes.

Graeme
OrderOfBooks.com

Book Recommendations

In this section, I give 3-5 random book recommendations from readers of the newsletter. They can be old books, they can be new. Feel free to e-mail suggestions to me. Just hit reply. If you wish to add a description for the book around the same size as the ones below that’d be great too! 

The Business Trip by Jessie Garcia: Two women. One who works for a news station. Another who is looking to escape an abusive spouse.

They both get on the same flight to Denver. Then their friends start receiving text messages after the flight.

Both women are texting about a man they met. The same man, Trent.

And then the women vanish.

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm: A highly rated #1 best seller at Amazon, Keith wrote in to recommend this standalone novel. Here’s what he wrote:

“Read by Rebecca Calder. A mind-bending SF / Horror novel unlike any I’ve seen before. Certain entities exist primarily in a parallel dimension, so most humans are not aware of their existence. However, some are malevolent and can cross over to our domain, where they feed on our memories. So, even if you sense their intrusion, by the time the encounter is over, you will not remember that it happened. How do you fight an invasion of a predator you don’t know exists?”

“Brilliant novel. Also, the audiobook producer used a clever trick: insertion of a special sound bite to indicate where passages in the printed version were marked “Redacted”. Challenging, but worth the effort.”

A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck: Faye wrote in to recommend this novella, which was also extremely popular on #BookTok. Here’s what she wrote:

You mentioned in your last newsletter that you wanted to explore some shorter novellas that can be finished quickly. It brought to mind a novella I listened to a few years ago that has haunted me ever since. Are you familiar with ‘A Short Stay in Hell’ by Stephen Peck? It runs about two hours on Audible. This is from Wikipedia.

A Short Stay in Hell is a 2009 psychological horror novella by the American writer Steven L. Peck. The events of the story take place in Hell, which has taken the form of a library orders of magnitude larger than the known universe. The story follows the journey of a condemned soul, Soren Johanssen, as he searches for a book that perfectly describes his earthly life. The novel explores the afterlife, the absurdity of eternity, and the human mind’s inability to process large numbers.

I haven’t listened to it yet, but do plan to. Thanks Faye!

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt: A Goodreads Choice Award nominee, this was the debut novel by Shelby. It was also nominated for Audiobook of the Year and was a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick.

Debra hadn’t even finished the book yet before she wrote in to recommend it. “I would like to highly recommend “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” which was recently suggested to me by a colleague. I’m only ~1/3 through this book, but so far it’s quite fascinating.” Also, a shoutout to Christine, who wrote in stating that it was the best book she had read this year so far.

A grieving aquarium cleaner forms an unlikely bond with a clever octopus who may hold the truth about her son’s long-ago disappearance and the key to a new start.

Sounds like a really interesting one. And a good time to read, as the adaptation releases this month.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab: Kris wrote in to say that they had listened to two phenomenal audiobooks this year. When they said one of them was Project Hail Mary, I knew I’d be adding this one to the recommendation list as they have great taste!

It’s the most read book by Schwab on Book Notification, and was on pretty much every ‘Best Of’ list you can think of.

Addie LaRue makes a deal to live forever but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets, until nearly three centuries later, one man finally remembers her name.

As someone who uses the library a lot for audiobooks, I treat Audible credits like rare diamonds, and am very picky on what I spend them on. After reading about this book, I forked over one of those rare Audible credits immediately.

May Book of the Month

The Last Mandarin by Louise Penny & Mellissa Fung: Don’t worry Gamache fans – he’s returning on October 20th. In the meantime, Louise Penny releases her second standalone novel.

This one is also co-authored, with the award-winning journalist Mellissa Fung.

When a worldwide cyberattack is traced to China, human rights activist Vivien Li and her estranged daughter Alice are pulled into a race to stop a global disaster. As they decode old secrets and hidden messages, they must also face the fractured bond between them before power turns family into a weapon.

10 More Notable Books Releasing in May

Brought to you by BookNotification.com where you can get updated on all the upcoming books by your favourite authors with your own personalized calendar!

Pictures of the Month


Thanks to Carla for the first three and Donna for the last one.

Send in your own to site@orderofbooks.com or by replying!

Images, jokes, etc. We’ll take it all!

Your Thoughts!

Last month, I asked if you take notes while reading. The answers are later in the newsletter.

This month I am asking:

Should characters age?

Or to expand a little – for series that span over a dozen books, how do you feel about protagonists aging in real-time versus staying eternally in their prime?

I feel like that can depend a bit on the genre; however, I actually think I am against the character aging for the most part.

Jack Reacher is always in his prime, for example. However, if he aged in real time from his first appearance… well, the new Reacher books just wouldn’t be as fun, would they? That’s one character where aging would likely affect the quality of the books in a big way.

I’ve read every single book in the Harry Bosch Universe by Michael Connelly, and the last few books in particular have really focused on Harry’s age and health. And honestly? I consider it a bit of a detriment to the series. I still love them – but it’s definitely getting to the point where I’m ready for Connelly to put Harry to sleep.

I also like a bit of a mix. In the Mitch Rapp series, Mitch has definitely aged, and his physical and mental skills are not quite as good – but he’s still the same ass-kicking lone badass, just maybe not quite as good.

What about you – do you think characters should age in real-time, or stay in their prime? Be sure to let us know which characters/series in particular as well.

E-mail us your feedback to site@OrderOfBooks.com or just reply to this e-mail, and we’ll pick the best comments and feature it in next month’s newsletter. Five people will also randomly win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.

Reader Mailbag!

Click here to read.

Book Notification
Order of Books » Newsletter » OrderOfBooks May 2026 Newsletter

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