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Speak to Me of Home by Jeanine Cummins

May 2025

After reading AMERICAN DIRT, I was looking forward to what Jeanine Cummins would write next. I was so happy to see that she really delivered again with the generational story in SPEAK TO ME OF HOME. I know many people who have migrated to this country, and sometimes I wonder if they are torn between two places. While life here has so many freedoms and opportunities, I have often considered what it is like to think in two languages and think of home as more than one place. It was very much on my mind as I read this book.

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When was the book that you’re currently reading published?

May 23, 2025, 643 voters

May 23, 2025 - June 6, 2025

Here are reading recommendations with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars for the contest period of May 23 - June 6.

May 23, 2025

As I write this, the temperature is stuck in the 50s, which is not giving me Memorial Day weekend vibes at all. I am so ready for the long weekend, though the weather here has been so much cooler than I would like. I rescued the peonies that you see above before the rain arrived and scattered petals all over the ground. They are really stunning but such delicate flowers! I feel like this happens every year. As soon as the peonies start to pop, the rain comes pouring in, and the petals fall to clumps on the ground.

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Brenda Coffee, author of Maya Blue: A Memoir of Survival

At 21, Brenda Coffee surrendered herself to her marriage and became a woman who would do almost anything her charismatic and powerful older husband, Philip Ray, wanted. Regardless of whether it was dangerous, adventurous, sexual or illegal, she wanted to be the one woman he couldn’t live without.

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The 2025 International Booker Prize

The winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize is Banu Mushtaq's HEART LAMP. Translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, it is the first collection of short stories to win the prize.

Written between 1990 and 2023, the book's 12 stories chronicle the lives of women and girls in patriarchal communities in southern India. Mushtaq, a lawyer and major voice within progressive Kannada literature, is a prominent champion of women’s rights and a protester against caste and religious oppression in India, and was inspired to write the stories by the experiences of women who came to her seeking help. She becomes the second Indian author to win the International Booker Prize after Geetanjali Shree in 2022.

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May 20, 2025

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of May 19th and May 26th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our Women's Fiction Author Spotlight & Contest for Lori Foster’s upcoming book, THE GUEST COTTAGE, which kicks off her Firefly Summer series. In anticipation of its May 27th publication, we’re awarding a copy to 25 readers and asking them to share their feedback on it by Monday, July 7th. The deadline for your entries is Friday, May 30th at noon ET.

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May 20, 2025

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Wednesday, May 21st at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of JUST BEACHY by Wendy Wax, which releases on June 3rd. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

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May 17, 2025

ReadingGroupGuides.com is celebrating a big anniversary --- 25 years --- and we are looking for ways to honor this major milestone! Over the years, we have gotten some of our best ideas from readers. So we would love to hear yours! Send me your suggestions at Carol@bookreporter.com with the subject line “25!”

We will be hosting our 14th Annual Book Group Speed Dating event on Friday, June 13th at 1pm ET. If you are a librarian, bookseller, or book club leader of four or more groups, and you would be interested in attending this event, please email me and tell me a bit about yourself using the subject line “Speed Dating.” Invites will be going out next week. This is a “trade only” event, but we will be sharing the publisher videos, PowerPoint slides and other materials with you later next month.

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Dave Barry, author of Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up

How does the son of a Presbyterian minister wind up winning a Pulitzer Prize for writing a wildly inaccurate newspaper column read by millions of people? Dave Barry takes us on a hilarious ride, starting with a childhood largely spent throwing rocks for entertainment --- there was no internet --- and preparing for nuclear war by hiding under a classroom desk. After literally getting elected class clown in high school, he went to college, where, as an English major, he read snippets of great literature when he was not busy playing in a rock band (it was the ’60s). CLASS CLOWN isn’t just a memoir; it’s a vibrant celebration of a life rich with humor, absurdity, joy and sadness.

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