Hi Bookworms. You might have noticed that yesterday was the 82nd anniversary of D-Day when Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy to begin the liberation of France from Nazi occupation. Also known as Operation Overlord, D-Day was the largest seaborne invasion in military history with nearly 7,000 ships and 160,000 Allied troops landing on the beaches. Sometimes we forget these things or take them for granted since it was 82 years ago, but it’s good to pay one’s respects and take heed.
I remember the history tour we went on back in 2018 with my parents visiting battle sites in Northern France, where we walked the Normandy beaches. It was quite a trip, which I talked about here. So many years ago the Allies saved freedom and liberty. I really hope we will step up to preserve it … along with our Allies and NATO.
I don’t have much new this week. I have started my summer bike rides and my Summer Book List, lol. Kin by Tayari Jones is the first book I received and so far it’s full of good storytelling. I also picked up John of John by Douglas Stuart from the library so I need to step it up and get reading. Things have been busy with projects, upcoming house renovations, sporting activities, and yard work, so you do what you can. This photo of my bike was taken next to a rural mailbox – the kind we use out here. We were out biking on a windy day.
In book news, I see that writer Julia Elliott has won the 2026 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction this past week for her short story collection Hellions. I don’t know of this author (who takes home $150,000 USD for the prize) but apparently she’s an English professor at the University of South Carolina and her book beat out a couple favored on the prize’s shortlist including: A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar and The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes.
The prize’s jury said of Elliott’s collection: “There’s folklore in these stories, and Southern gothic horror, and surrealism, and fantasy, and, at their center, a thread of uneasy, bodily realism. … But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control; Elliott is a gifted and thrilling writer.” So you might want to try it out; it’s said to consist of 11 “feral, Southern Gothic stories” in its 272 pages.
Also don’t forget the Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced this coming Thursday. The shortlist can be seen here. It’s a big one!
And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately.
Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su / Harper / 256 pages / 2025
3.7 stars. I thought this would be a somewhat light funny novel that I needed after some weighty reads, but I guess I was surprised that it was a bit deeper and more troubled than I expected. Still it is funny in places — about a mixed Taiwanese girl Vi, a recent college dropout, who out with her co-worker one night finds a jelly-ish blob near the garage bins of a bar’s back alley.
Drunk and curious, Vi takes it home and notices later it’s alive and begins to grow. She can mold it … and it eventually morphs into“Blob Bob” as she calls it and grows into a handsome human-like guy, who seems like her ideal boyfriend. But he’s not really human he’s just learned quickly from TV how to be and act. Soon Bob wants to be out and about and not stuck inside Vi’s apartment yet that could prove complicated for her.
Interspersed with this, you learn about Vi’s life before — how she’s had a hard time: her boyfriend broke up with her, she dropped out of school, her family is not attuned to her … and she works at an unexciting job at the front desk of a hotel … where her co-worker Rachel is her bubbly opposite. Friendless and awkward, Vi’s going through a breakdown of sorts in her life. At times she’s not too likable a person to root for, but her friendship and experiences with Blob Bob make things gradually come around. You have to wait to see what happens.
It’s a girl’s coming-of-age story about her 20s. The young author Maggie Su (now age 33) who wrote it, after she finished her PhD in fiction from the University of Cincinnati, said in an interview: “I imagine this book as a love letter to my younger self, the mess I made of my 20s, and the perfect blob who I imagined might come along and solve my problems.”
I look forward to seeing what she writes next. Ti at Book Chatter read and reviewed this novel before me and her good review is here. It reminded me very slightly of the 2024 novel Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino, about an alien who grows up in Philadelphia, lol.
That’s all for now what about you — do you know these books and what are you reading these early June days? Have a great week.
