What are we reading in April?

Happy April, everyone! What are you reading this month? I'm starting off with The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, which will work for this month's RandomCAT and GeoCAT.

I'm about halfway through Golden in Death. I also will be juggling The Glass Hotel and Lavender Blue Murder.

Just finished The Bus on Thursday - still considering what I think of it! Also reading If On A Winter's Night A Traveller and Five on a Treasure Island for the boys' read aloud.

Started Here Be Dragons, by Sharon Kay Penman.

>4 rabbitprincess: Oh good, I look forward to hearing what you think.

I'm continuing Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath by Kate Moses which I started last month. Not the best book for these times so it's going a little slow.

I'm reading Time Storm for the SFFKit (Time Travel) and the RandomCAT. And alternating with The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, which I started last month and I didn't want to get too far away from it before finishing it.

I've started The Conqueror's Wife, a novel about Alexander the Great's wife and other women at his side. I've a ton of historical fiction on my mount TBR and haven't read any of it for a long time, so it's high time to at least try to make a dent.

I've started the month with the 9th book in a favorite series, The Missing and The Dead by Stuart MacBride as well as My Name is Resolute by Nancy E. Turner.

>8 DeusXMachina: I love books about Alexander the Great. Have you read the Valerio Massimo Manfredi series?

>10 JayneCM: no, never even heard of it until now, that looks really interesting. Thanks for the tip!

I'm rereading Station Eleven which is about the collapse of civilization after a plague. Good reminder that there are worse things than staying home and social distancing.

I'm reading Boy Swallows Universe, an Australian book for the GeoCAT.

Going to start tearing into some crime. First up is Cop Killer, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (translated by Thomas Teal).

I've decided to quit on Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath by Kate Moses. Instead, I've started Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber and I think I'll also start Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley.

I read Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell.

Knocked out two books today: Our Man in Havana, by Graham Greene; and a Doctor Who comic, The Twelfth Doctor Vol. 5: The Twist.

Tomorrow I will likely start Isvik, by Hammond Innes.

I am rereading Lord Peter Views the Body, a collection of short mystery stories, in between reading Good Behaviour by Molly Keane & listening to the audiobook of A Study in Charlotte.

Started Seven Fallen Feathers, by Tanya Talaga.

I am currently reading The Dry by Jane Harper and The Three by Sarah Lotz, both are doing good job of holding my attention.

Just finished The caller by Karin Fossum that I really enjoyed. My first by Fossum but I'll be looking out for more.

I've started Killman by Graeme Kent for this month's GeoCAT.

I've just started Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes and am really liking it so far!

I finished An Amish Picnic: Four Stories and The Gracie Guide to Naples, both of these for NetGalley. Touchstones are not coming up.

Getting ready to start ATA Girl, a Big Finish audio drama about the Air Transport Auxiliary in WW2.

Currently reading and/or on the pile near my chair:

* The Glass Magician by Caroline Stevermer
* Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann
* The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
* The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph by Frances Sheridan

* A Very Stable Genius by Philip Rucker & Carol Leonnig
* The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum
* The Darkest Year: The American Home Front, 1941-1942 by William K. Klingaman
* Fugitive Slave in the Gold Rush: The Life and Adventures of James Williams

Currently reading Girl in Disguise by Greer Macallister and Pink Flannel by Ruth Parks.

Completed Mata Hari: A Life from Beginning to End in the Hourly History series of biographies of women in history. This book did double duty for the MysteryKit challenge of Espionage and the NonFiction Cat for Law and Order. I like the Hourly History books for a quick read and overview of different people and events in history. Mata Hari was certainly a fascinating and outrageous woman, even though she did not seem to be a very successful spy. Yes, I read it in about an hour!

Just finished Seven Fallen Feathers, by Tanya Talaga. A must-read.

Completed Pink Flannel by Ruth Park.

I finished Time Storm and The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler and started Dead and Gone and planning to pick up The Siege as well.

I've just begun Jodi Taylor's Just One Damned Thing after Another.

Blasted through ATA Girl yesterday while audio-puzzling (Ravensburger has an app for iOS and Android, which is a lot of fun on the iPad), so next up in audio will be The Diary of River Song Series 4.

Raced through Dead and Gone, continuing with The Siege and have also picked up In Cold Blood.

I am reading The Little Palace which I got from Early Reviewers and also The Farm Stand for NetGalley.

I am reading Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir and Alligator Candy, a true crime story by David Kushner. I am enjoying the historical fiction but the true crime story is a little grim for me right now but I will soldier on.

Finished and definitely recommend 18 Tiny Deaths, by Bruce Goldfarb.

And now that I have inspiration to chip away at the library pile again (after totally ignoring the print books I have had out for a month), I'm not sure where to go next. Might go to An English Murder, by Cyril Hare.

On the fiction side, finished The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. Laughed 3 or 4 times (I kept track). But Fredrik Backman is still my favorite Swedish author. At the bookstore I always say, when I recommend him, that I would learn Swedish if they stopped translating him to English.

Started The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph by Frances Sheridan. I'm reading the Broadview Press version of it, and even the introduction is great (I stop reading introductions as soon as they start critiquing/quoting from the works though, and go back and finish after I read the work). I LOVE Broadview Press titles.

I'm still working on Killers of the Flower Moon, and two library holds came in for me today; Redhead by the Side of the Road, and The Yellow House.

I'm starting Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend by Jenny Colgan, my March Early Reviewers book.

Ended up starting Piece of Cake, by Derek Robinson, after watching the documentary "Spitfire: The Plane That Saved the World" on Netflix.

I'm reading The Long Prospect by the Australian writer, Elizabeth Harrower.

Working my way through earning as many OWLs as I can for the Magical Readathon, as well as making sure the books I choose fit in categories here as well!
Currently reading Fleishman Is In Trouble which I am not really enjoying (too much gross random sex with strangers) but I need to see what happens!
Then I have The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart for GeoCAT - Australia.

Currently revisiting a book I remember liking in childhood, Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones. I appreciate it even more now!

I am reading Melmoth the Wanderer, which I am not really liking very much, and rereading Thunder on the Right for the RandomCAT. In audiobook, I am listening to Swing. I still plan to reread Murder Down Under for the GeoCAT...

I am reading Wolf Border by Sarah Hall, a novel about reestablishing wolves in northern England. I am also going to start Decision At Delphi by Helen MacInnes either this evening or tomorrow.

I'm reading A Modest Independence by Mimi Matthews.

I finished The Siege for KITastrophe, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for the 1001 monthly challenge, am most of the way through In Cold Blood for the Non-fictionCAT and have started Lantana Lane for the GeoCAT.

Finished Here Be Dragons and trying to decide where to go next: historical fiction with La Reine étranglée, by Maurice Druon, or historical non-fiction with The Grand Scuttle, by Dan Van der Vat.

I thought I'd post here that in honor of World Book Day (Apr 23), Amazon has a nine free kindle books by "world" authors. Good time to expand my authors.

I've started The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells and am enjoying it so far!

I finished The Farm Stand (An Amish Marketplace Novel) by Amy Clipston. I am currently reading The Happy Camper by Melody Carlson for NetGalley and The Story of Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting.

Attention, Murderbot fans and those who'd like to start the series! Tor is giving away all four novellas in the series in preparation for the new book! Check out the deal here: https://www.tor.com/2020/04/20/download-all-4-murderbot-books-for-free-before-ne....

Still haven't decided where I'm going next in historical, but I am reporting that I ended up reading An English Murder, by Cyril Hare, in one sitting yesterday :)

>49 dudes22: Thanks. I downloaded some of them.

>53 rabbitprincess: Ohh, that's a good one!

I finished the fabulous The Yellow House, and am still working on Killers of the Flower Moon. I also decided to delve into the second in the Sandhamn Murders series, Closed Circles.

>52 christina_reads: Thanks for the info. I love Murderbot.

>55 christina_reads: So good! I was going to suggest it to you if you hadn't read it already, haha :)

Ended up deciding to start La Reine étranglée. It's in my second language, which is more of a challenge, but it's pretty short.

I had an interesting reading experience lately, going far out of my "comfort zone", because a friend of mine has asked me to review/beta/edit a series of novellas for her. Romance novellas. Erotic romance novellas. Four of them. And she asked me of all people.

I don't read romance. Never. Don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for a good, steamy romantic subplot as long as the characters have something else in their heads than just the desire to get laid. I also get the appeal of the genre, it's comfortable, escapism in its purest form, HEA, you know in advance what you get, some delightful and forbidden debauchery. To each their own. It's just not for me, and I certainly don't know the genre conventions and reader expectations in modern Romance well enough to have a substantial, informed opinion as an editor.

But I have far more spare time at the moment than I'm comfortable with, and she asked so nicely, and so I plundered Smashwords (that's where Erotica authors publish the stories that get banned on Amazon) and loaded my reader with an unsorted collection of free stuff. And then I started reading.

Werewolf triangles including A/B/O dynamics. Some BDSM with a very strong female character™ discovering the fun of getting tied up and spanked (it's nearly always the women, btw). The inevitable "woman gets lost in the middle of nowhere, burly but gentle lumberjack drops by, snowstorm + fireplace + bear fur" scenario in a lot of variations. Historical hedonism and Harem. Cowboys and astronauts. I drew a line at those manga- and anime spinoffs with weird Japanese names where the women look (and behave) like 12-year-olds and their most salient characteristic is their hair colour, romantic horror and non-human supernaturals.

It was a hell of a romp, I got some of my prejudices confirmed, some not, formed some new ones instead. I still don't think I'm prepared to edit something specifically for that market, I'm still completely confused by the overwhelming variety of sub-genres and kinks/niches (seriously, that's worse than fanfiction ship wars), but it was certainly a lot of fun (though I must confess, the most fun was had when my spouse read me one of the love triangle stories aloud. With voices. I nearly fell off my exercise bike).

So yeah, can recommend. Perhaps not this specific kind of detour from your reading habits, but just to get away from the well-trodden paths every once in a while.

And now I really need to get me some solid old-fashioned SF with a male-only and completely straight cast on space missions in full-body pressure suits. Seriously.

>59 DeusXMachina: You just cracked me up laughing! I could imagine the read-aloud session too. I do not read the kinds of stuff you are writing about here, so I am no judge at all about them. But thanks for the humor and enlightenment. (People really read that stuff, right?)

>59 DeusXMachina: I enjoyed your post as well, thanks for sharing your experience!

I'm enjoying Lantana Lane and have also started The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.

>59 DeusXMachina: I read the last part of your post as "CATS on space missions" and thought "that sounds AWESOME".

Thanks for sharing your experience getting out of the reading comfort zone!

>63 rabbitprincess:

>60 LadyoftheLodge: Glad I could amuse you for a bit :) And yes, people read this stuff voluntarily. Actually, Romance as a whole is by far the best-selling genre of all.

>63 rabbitprincess: >64 BookLizard: Book Bullet! I would totally read about cats in space ^^

>64 BookLizard: That looks cool! I need to find out about Catstronauts!

>64 BookLizard: Yessss! Added that to my to-read list!

I am currently reading Death Message by Mark Billingham, a police procedural from his Tom Thorne series. I am also about to start The Last Good Paradise by Tatjana Soli.

I've finished The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. I'm also reading The Library at the Edge of the World by Felicity Hayes-McCoy and The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser.

I was happy to get my hands on Julia Spencer Fleming's latest installment in the Clare and Russ series. It's been a while, but I love this series! I also have Conjure Women, and Closed Circles on deck.

Currently reading Blindness by Jose Saramago for the March KITastrophe Epidemics. It is quite chilling reading in the current situation and we have been extremely lucky in Australia. I cannot imagine what it is like in other countries. We had people here protesting that they were not allowed to play golf - I wanted to smack their heads together and tell them to look at the situation in other countries. Get your priorities straight, people!

I'm reading and thoroughly enjoying Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair interspersed with The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie.

Just spent a delightful couple of hours sitting outside enjoying the beautiful spring weather and reading Murder on The Last Frontier, a fun historical mystery set in Alaska during the 1910's.

Was feeling a bit sluggish, so read a very silly children's book that I had read before, at least 20 years ago: Vampires of Ottawa, by Eric Wilson. Now that I live in Ottawa, I found it much easier to picture where everything was (and to wonder where the Terry Fox statue was in 1984, when the book was first published).

I am reading At Lady Molly's, the fourth book in Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, The Glass Slipper, an early had-I-but-known by Mignon G. Eberhart and The Age of Wonder, which I have started early for the Science Non-fiction CAT because it is over 500 pages.

I just finished Thursday's Bride for NetGalley, which I found a bit dark compared to most of the Amish novels I read. I also read Art Workshop for Children which was a totally cool art book based on age appropriate art projects for kids. Beautiful photos and lots of great ideas for parents, family, teachers, librarians, anyone who wants to set up an art center for children. This book made me wish I had access to some kids who would want to do art with me.

I'm currently reading Not to Be Taken by Anthony Berkeley. I really loved his The Poisoned Chocolates Case and bought a few of his other books on the strength of it. Hopefully this one will live up to expectations!

My pile keeps changing. Right now, because all 116 items I had out from my local library were due May 1st, and 37 of them were non-renewable, that's where I was spending my reading time.

With 21 of 37 still to get through, today I found out every item now has a June 1st due date (and some of the titles that were non-renewable due to holds -- and which I read first for that reason -- are no longer non-renewable: arrrghhh).

I put my Frances Sheridan aside since it's a book I own, and these 4 are currently in progress:

* The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne
* The Parisian by Isabella Hammad
* A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America by Philip Rucker & Carol Leonnig
* The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens

Mostly I'm concentrating on the Payne -- it has the fewest pages!

The last book listed was the first Dickens title I ever bought. Do not, however, be fooled into thinking I'm reading my own copy. Oh, no, no, no! No idea where my copy is. This library copy is in the Oxford Illustrated Dickens series: hardcover, nice smaller size.

>75 pamelad: The Age of Wonder sounds great; look forward to hearing what you think.

>78 ReneeMarie: Boy, I am glad to hear that I am not the only person who has over 100 items from the library at the moment! I think I may have overdone it when I heard they were closing!

>78 ReneeMarie: Good luck corralling that pile! For some reason I find all my physical library holdings totally uninteresting now that I have them for an extended period. Our library extended the due dates to July 15 (and one item of mine is due July 22 for some reason). Hoping to tackle them with a will in May.

>79 JayneCM: What do you mean "at the moment?!" I always have a humongous number of library items checked out! Even without caller ID, the reference and circulation librarians recognize my voice over the phone. I read a lot for work and book groups, and even if I could afford to buy all the titles, I don't want or need to own everything. (And, BTW, if I never went to the library again, I have enough unread books at home to see me through the rest of my natural life....)

I did mention to the library that I wished the maximum number of checkouts was 50 and the maximum number of items on your hold list was 125, instead of vice versa: I use the "suspend hold" option so that everything doesn't arrive at once. When the library closes and changes all your due dates to the same day, however, life gets more difficult.

>80 rabbitprincess: Thanks! Finished the Payne yesterday and added Your Score: An Insider's Secrets to Understanding, Controlling, and Protecting Your Credit Score by Anthony Davenport in its place. I feel like Sisyphus.

My focus has shifted to the Hammad. For now.

I have the same problem with books I borrow from work or people I know, which is one reason why I no longer borrow books from people. (The other reason is that I no longer want to loan books: you never know who doesn't have the same respect for a physical object they don't own as you do. Or has a dog who doesn't have the same respect. True story.)

>81 ReneeMarie: True! I was just saying 'at the moment' to make it sound like I am not such a borrowing addict! My librarians also recognise my voice on the phone. I have my own dedicated holds pick up shelf at the library; otherwise there is no room for all my holds! And same with the numbers of books at home! I don't really need to go to the library at all but there is always something else I want to read other than what is on my shelves.