Saturday, May 9, 2020

April Wrap-Up

Hello Interwebs,
It's now May, more than a week into May actually. Since my CNA exam is on Sunday, everything else has kind of fallen by the wayside in favor of studying. Pass or fail I'm ready for the test to be over so I can pretend to have a life that isn't studying. Anyway, on to the update.

So in April I finished a grand total of 5 books for a grand total of 1,974 pages. I read one hard copy book, 3 audio books, and a eBook. I listen to a lot of audio books since I don't really listen to the radio while on my way to and from work and I can listen to books while playing video games with the boy and studying. Most of my library books, since the library is obviously closed at the moment, I get eBooks and audio books through the Libby  app which is part of the Overdrive system. You use your library card and can rent any of the available audio and Ebooks for a set period of time, I think 2 weeks for audio books and 3 weeks for eBooks. I like it a lot so check that out.

So the first book I finished in April was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.



This was a reread due to the recent movie and I loved it just as much as I remembered. This was the audio book version of the book that I rented from the library. I had started it at the end of March and finished about a week into April. It's a long book but well worth the listen. For those of you who live under a rock and haven't heard of this story and don't know what it's about, it's the story of four sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy and their lives and adventures growing up in post-Civil War US. Full disclosure, as much as I love Jo, who is definitely supposed to be the ultimate heroine of the story, my favorite is actually Amy and I think that Florence Pugh's portrayal of Amy alongside Timothee Chalamet as Laurie was absolutely amazing. Also the movie has Meryl Streep in it and who doesn't adore Meryl Streep? I gave this book a solid 4/5 stars on GoodReads and I will never not love this story.

Second book finished this month was Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland, the sequel to Dread Nation that I reread in February/March.
The Dread Nation books are following an African-American girl named Jane McKeene in post-Civil War America, but an alternate history in which the Civil War ended after the dead started rising and walking the earth after the battle of Gettysburg. In this reality African-American and Native children are sent to training schools to learn to fight the undead and the main character Jane and her friend Katherine attend Miss. Prescott's School which teaches young African-American girls how to be attendants to white women, protecting them against threats from both the living and the dead. In the first book, things happen and both girls get sent from their home in Baltimore to Kansas where they find a particularly nasty community where white-passing Katherine poses as a white lady while Jane works security and they work to take down the corrupt government run by the local sheriff and his preacher father. This book takes up after the fall of Summerland, the town from the first book, and follows the two of them first to a neighboring community with its own secrets and then West to California as they look for Jane's mother and hunt down the man responsible for a lot of their troubles. These were both good books and I actually hope it remains a duology due to the fact that it had, what I think was, a perfect ending. I read this book in hard copy and I own it as a hardcover, although I did rent the eBook from Libby in order to more easily read on it while at work (I do work nights and it gets quiet sometimes). I gave this a well deserved 5/5 stars.

The third book I finished in April was another audio book, also rented from Libby, and that is The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman.
This is a comedic memoir written by real-life #CoupleGoals Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman about their relationship from its start, meeting during a community theater production, through their marriage and to present day where Nick Offerman of course stars on Parks & Recreation as Ron Swanson and Megan Mullally makes guest appearances as his toxically funny ex-wife Tammy 2. I love Parks & Rec and Ron Swanson and after listening to this I especially love them as a couple. Also I highly recommend listening to this rather than reading it due to the hilarity that ensures listening to the two of them read the book at each other. I gave this book a 4.5/5 stars.

The third book I finished this month was The Hunger by Alma Katsu.
I read this as an eBook I rented from the library. It's a historical fiction thriller/horror story that revolves around the Donner Party expedition during the Oregon trail days. Obviously the Donner Party was a real expedition that got caught in the Sierra Nevada mountain range during the winter while trying to cross. The expedition spent the winter in the mountains, during which a large portion of the group died and was cannibalized by the others trying to survive. The story is gruesome on its own but Alma Katsu takes that story framework and gives it a supernatural spin. During the whole expedition that is fraught with bad luck from beginning to end, something is out in the wilderness stalking them and hunting them. It takes a very werewolf like creature with the "disease" passing from person to person via contact and mixes it with the Native American concepts of skin walkers and the real life disease, Porphyria. I enjoyed it well enough, it was a good twist on a real life story and I do love books that leave you questioning whether the "murderer" was supernatural or just humans. I gave it a 3.5/5 on GoodReads.

Finally, the last book I finished in April was Yes Please by Amy Poehler.
This is a memoir of Amy Poehler's life, which I listened to after finishing The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, because I love Parks & Rec and I especially love Leslie Knope. It follows Amy Poehler's life from grade school plays to improv companies to SNL and finally to the lovable Parks & Rec deputy director I adore so much. Her humor was infused throughout and she had her friends make appearances in the audio book to read pieces they wrote or interact with her including Seth Meyers, Patrick Stewart, Carol Burnett, and others. It was a lot of fun and as a new mom of a son myself, the parts about her sons really resonated with me. Also, any comedian's memoir needs to be listened to rather than read. This book also got a 4.5/5 on GoodReads.

So those are the 5 books I read in April, they were all good with no real missteps this month. On to my Goals summary. So I'm still plugging away at my 40 book goal for the year. I'm halfway through that total and it's only a third of the way through the year. I listened to more audio books, am still blogging, read 2 nonfiction books, and a Kindle book. The place where I fell down was in my book buying. I did a previous blog post with a lot of my April acquisitions so I'm just going to list the books I bought in April along with the format.

So yeah, lots of books were purchased, most on sale from Amazon but still not the most successful and, spoiler alert...May's not looking much better so far. 

So as far as my reading challenges go, they're progressing. The definite one I do each month is Monthly Motifs Reading Challenge from GirlXOXO. Each month has a theme or "motif" that you have to read a book from. So April's was called Classics or Currents which was a book published prior to the year you were born (Classics) or between April 2019 and April 2020 (Current). I read Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland which was published in February of 2020, so a Current. Although Little Women would've also worked as it was published in the 1800s and is definitely a Classic. 

Anyway that's the wrap up of everything I read and bought in the month of April. I recommend all of the books I read this month in either Audio or hard copy. 

Happy Reading!

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