Here’s the monthly round up of everything I read in April. I had two trips during the month, one work and one pleasure, which meant I relied pretty heavily on e-books since they’re so convenient for travel. At one point on vacation, I used an app on my phone to check out a book in Libby, then turned my phone into a hotspot and connected my Kobo to it to download the book onto my e-reader for instant gratification. What a world we live in! The other thing about Libby is that it enables going down a rabbit hole on a particular author, as I did at the end of the month.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking - Susan Cain - three stars - I read this around the time it came out but something made me want to revisit it, and I didn’t find it as compelling this time.
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction - Dinty W. Moore (ed.) - four stars
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy - Heather Ann Thompson - four stars - This was a really well done history of something I knew very little about.
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi - three stars
Such a Fun Age - Kiley Reid - four stars - such a fun book!
Plucked: A History of Hair Removal - Rebecca M. Herzig - three stars - Elise Hu kept mentioning this when she was on the Stacks and I discovered that it was on Libby. Some of it was pretty interesting.
Beautiful and the Damned - Siddhartha Deb - three stars
Parasol Against the Axe - Helen Oyeyemi - three stars - It probably wasn’t fair to Oyeyemi to be the first serious literary fiction after James. Usually, I really like her but I didn’t really get into this one.
Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage (audiobook) - Jeff Guinn - three stars
Rabbit Cake - Annie Hartnett - four stars - Delight!
Hotel Iris - Yoko Ogawa - two stars - a lot of this was just gross.
Creep: Accusations and Confessions - Myriam Gurba - four stars
Crying in H Mart - Michelle Zauner - three stars
The Fury - Alex Michaelides - three stars - I bought this with some gift cards so that I could read it and pass it along to my Gen Z trainer, who lent me his first book. She was pretty excited about it.
The Hunter - Tana French - three stars - She’s really good at what she does.
The Postcard - Anne Berest - four stars - This is for one of my micro book clubs and I found it fascinating!
The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center - Rhaina Cohen - three stars
Devout: A Memoir of Doubt - Anna Gazmarian - three stars
The Deep Sky - Yume Kitasei - four stars
Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot - Mikki Kendall - three stars
Roots: The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley - three or four stars (three for writing, four for content) - when I was in 7th grade, we had a family tree assignment in history class, and one of my Black classmates instead did a book report on Roots, talking about how many Black families like his couldn’t trace their roots back as far as white families. Our little 7th grade minds were absolutely blown. I needed to read an award-winning book from the year I was born for my reading challenge, so I finally got around to this one. It’s an imperfect book, but I’m glad to have read it.
Family Lore - Elizabeth Acevedo - three stars
Lakewood - Megan Giddings - three stars
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion - five stars - just a fantastic work on grief. My first Didion, believe it or not.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion - four stars
The White Album - Joan Didion - three stars
You had quite the reading month Ellen! I see a few in there that I have read and many that I haven't. I enjoyed "The Silent Patient" by Alex Michaelides but haven't read this one you mention. Might have to check it out.