So April was a month. Mostly okay with a dash of spending a whole lot of money on a new car. But now I feel like I can more safely go places since the new car doesn’t make a lot of strange noises, or have annoying tires that like to get really low unexpectedly. I’m definitely going to go to my favorite state park soon and to the zoo, and there are a few other places that are relatively nearby I want to visit, so hopefully I’ll be doing a smidgen of traveling soon. I really want to. I want to get out of town, even if it’s just for a day or so.

Mina had a better month than I did, I think. The weather started warming up, so I started opening the windows so she could hang out in them and get some fresh air and fresh sniffs. And while we did have some cold days, that just meant she had an excuse to curl up next to the radiator and be perfectly warm and happy.

Seriously, I want my cat’s life. She doesn’t have to go to work or deal with car stuff. She just naps all day and has treats and plays. It’s a good life.

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What I Finished Reading In April:

I read twelve things in April. They were average to good, with nothing that I hated and wanted to throw at the wall.

• Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee, ebook provided by NetGalley
• Six of Crows (Six of Crows #1) by Leigh Bardugo
• A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention: A Memoir of Coming Home to My Neurodivergent Mind by Rebecca Schiller
• Bring up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell trilogy #2) by Hilary Mantel, audiobook narrated by Simon Vance
• The Sinister Booksellers of Bath (The Left-Handed Booksellers of London #2) by Garth Nix, audiobook narrated by Marisa Calin
• The Whispering Skull (Lockwood and Co. #2) by Jonathan Stroud, audiobook narrated by Katie Lyons
• The Poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, audiobook narrated by various artists
• Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, audiobook narrated by Dan Stevens
• The Quicksilver Court (Rooks and Ruin #2) by Melissa Caruso
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown, translated from the Middle English by Simon Armitage, audiobook narrated by Bill Wallis
• The Owl and the Nightingale by Unknown, translated from the Middle English by Simon Armitage, audiobook narrated by Simon Armitage
• The Love Poems of John Donne by John Donne, audiobook narrated by Edward Herrmann

Statistically Speaking:

• 41.7% of what I read was by women, 41.7% was by men, and the remaining 16.7% was by unknown authors
• 66.7% of what I read was by English authors, 16.7% was by Americans, and 8.3% each was by Australian and Austrian authors
• 25% of what I read was translated from Middle English
• 41.7% were fantasy novels, 16.7% each were nonfiction, YA fantasy, and poetry, and 8.3% were historical fiction
• Half of what I read came from the library, 41.7% was from my own shelves, and 8.3% was from NetGalley
• 66.7% were audiobooks, 25% were physical books, and 8.3% were ebooks
• Publication dates ranged from 1200 to 2023

I reread a lot of books in April, so of those, Bring up the Bodies and Six of Crows were my favorite rereads, while my favorite new read was The Quicksilver Court.

Again, there was nothing that I even disliked among these. Huzzah for a good month of books!

Storygraph TBR, April 1: 134
Physical TBR, April 1: 65

StoryGraph TBR, May 1: 140
Physical TBR, May 1: 62

Less progress on my “reduce the physical TBR project”, but slow progress is better than no progress, so I’ll count it as a win. As for my StoryGraph TBR, well, that’s constantly in flux, and I added some books that come out later this year, so I’ll be giving them a shot whenever they come out.

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What’s on Tap for May:

Yes.

Books.

I really have no idea which ones. As I’m trying to make a dent in my unread physical TBR, I’m keeping an eye on my personal collection and reading books from my own shelves, but that’s a slow process, as much of what I have that I haven’t yet read are nonfiction titles- specifically history- and those can be rather dense and slow to get through. But I will make it through them! Eventually.

What I’m tentatively planning to read are the rest of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books I haven’t gotten to yet (Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, and The Other Wind), and a couple of Tolkien books I also haven’t gotten to, namely The Nature of Middle-earth and The Fall of Numenor.

Some other titles I have my eye on are Other Middle Ages: Witnesses at the Margins of Medieval Society edited by Michael Goodich, The Science of Middle-earth: A New Understanding of Tolkien and His World edited by Arnaud Rafaelian, Loic Mangin, and Jean-Sebastien Steyer.

Martha Wells’s upcoming Witch King comes out later this month. I’ve been looking forward to it since I first heard about it, and I’ve pre-ordered it from the local indie bookshop, so I’ll be picking it up and starting it as soon as I can.

As for other things that I’ll be reading, it really depends on which of my holds come in for me at the library. They tend to wait until there’s a group of them and then they ambush me when I’m already in the middle of three other books I’m having a great time with. How do they always know?

However that turns out, I’m sure it will be an even better reading month than April was.