Books Read in May

I'm a little late on this.  Sorry!  Not many this month.

Around the World in 80 Days, Verne - I'd never read this before.  Very enjoyable both in concept and especially as an historical piece.  If anyone is interested, you can now travel commercially around the world in something like 36-40 hours.
View from the Cherry Tree, Willo Davis Roberts - I think my teacher read this to us back in 5th grade and it stuck with me ever since.  This was the first murder mystery that I've ever read.  I enjoyed it this time too.
Seveneves, Neal Stephenson - This just came out a couple of weeks ago.  The idea behind the story is that the moon has broken up and will send enough stones down to earth to render it uninhabitable.  An emergency attempt is made to use the ISS and some quickly designed pods to put people into orbit.  This works but there are large problems.  At some point humanity dwindles to only seven child bearing women.  And then the story takes off.
Did I like it?  Eh.  I love Neal Stephenson but this one was far too heavy on info-dump and light on people.  It would have been much, much better broken into two books.  As it is, I can't really recommend it.

And then parts of other books.  I'm working my way through the very good 'Black Swan' by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (theory explained here).  I'm slowly rereading 'Les Miserables' by Victor Hugo, taking my time and savoring.
As far as short stories go, I only got to three of them this month but that still keeps me ahead of schedule.

The Dead by Joyce - good, but not as good as my expectations had led me to hope for
Greatness Strikes Where it Pleases by Gustafson - only ok
The Man to Send Rain Clouds by Silko - very good