April Wrap-Up: I break out of my reading slump + some great reads + 500 followers??

What. A. Month.

Like, we’re, what, a handful of days into May? And my life is already in shambles. I am in full freakout crisis mode. My personal life is in a state of destruction of my own making. Everything is ruined permanently and I cannot fix it.

April, on the other hand? All I had to worry about was my looming demise at the hands of finals, plus how I was going to make it through the ceiling as my quality of life continued to rise, without regard to manmade structures, toward the atmosphere. (Again: before I ruined everything, as I tend to do.)

I am going to stop pitying myself (just kidding but I’ll stop live-typing as I continue to do so) and talk about April boi!! When things were perfect and everyone important (read: me) was happy as a clam.

Not bad!! Not awesome. But not bad!

APRIL GOALS

READ AT LEAST TWO CLASSICS ✓✓

STAY 20+ BOOKS AHEAD OF GOODREADS CHALLENGE ✓

READ ARCS ✗

REDUCE NUMBER OF UNPOSTED REVIEWS ✗

BLOG POST AT LEAST 5 TIMES ✓

FOCUS ON SCHOOL ✓ish

TRY AT BOOKSTAGRAM ✗

GET OUT OF THIS SLUMP ✓✓

GOALS FOR MAY

READ ARCS

REDUCE NUMBER OF UNPOSTED REVIEWS

POST ON BOOKSTAGRAM AT LEAST 5 TIMES

POST ON BLOG AT LEAST 6 TIMES

READ AT LEAST ONE CLASSIC

READ AT LEAST 15 BOOKS

STOP HAVING A PERSONAL CRISIS

Whether the above is accomplished by solving my problems OR avoiding them. I’m not picky!

It’s summer! I’ve got my hat on backwards and it’s time to f*ckin’ party.

Sleep?! I don’t know about sleep! It’s summertime! (Go to bed!) Oh she caught me.

SUMMERTIME!!!! I don’t practice Santeria……I ain’t got no crystal ball……..

Above are perfect transcripts of three summer-themed vines (1 2 3), which is to say: I’M DONE WITH SCHOOL! It’s summertime, baby. Hopefully that means lots of reading + blogging + bookstagramming and whatnot.

But it’s me. So you never know.

1. Out of the Blue by Sophie Cameron

Read: March ? – April 3 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 2.5 stars

I can’t stress enough that this was a BOOK about ANGELS falling OUT of the SKY and I still was like. “Predictable. Boring. Give me more.”

There was a girl-on-girl romance plotline, which was dope. Biracial main character. Themes of mourning and chronic illness and other cool stuff. It wasn’t a bad book but it didn’t click for me. Honestly tragic. Everyone please shed a tear for me (a second tear, because you should have already shed one without direction when I introduced this post with my tale of woe).

Thanks to Fierce Reads for the ARC!! This one’s out May 15.

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2. The Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont

Read: April 5 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4 stars

Part of my ongoing quest to only read nonfiction anthologies of the stories of under-discussed badass women from history alongside beautiful art.

Otherwise known as “I loved the book Brazen so much and I just want to feel that feeling again. Like a drug addiction. But with woke graphic novels about women.”

Anyway. This was very cute and good and I love the title.

But it wasn’t as good as Brazen.

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3. Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Read: April 7-12 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 3 stars

The 3 stars of it all is subject to change. But like, I 3.5-starred Illuminae. I three-starred Gemina. So it shouldn’t be thatthatthat surprising.

The rating may even go down. In a lot of ways, this was all the sh*t that bugs me about the Illuminae series rolled up into one uniquely-formatted, million-page-long gift box.

But also it’s the endddddd. Aren’t endings sad?? Don’t they make ya wistful??? They even make me sad, and I’m an emotionless robot. (And NOT in the AIDAN way where he starts out a creepy villain and turns into a giant mushball. Not that at all. I have not been programmed to love. That’s why I’m flourishing right now.)

Wow, I’m annoying even myself.

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4. Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson

Read: April 13-14 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4.5 stars

This book has E V E R Y T H I N G. (Read this in a Stefon from SNL voice please.)

Bucket lists. Road trips. Friendship. That thing of where a character starts out with no friends and then by the end of the book has a squad of quirky weirdos to hang around. Banter. Snacks. Summertime. Playlists. Romance – BUT NOT TOO MUCH ROMANCE.

It’s all so good. The perfect contemporary. Morgan Matson, thank you for your blessings upon us.

Wait. Should I five-star this? Why didn’t I five-star this?

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5. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Read: April 14-15 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4 stars

Weird lineup of reads this month. Magical realismy angel book -> feminist nonfiction -> feminist nonfiction -> sci fi space adventure -> summery contemporary -> …whatever the hell this is.

This book was so cool. Physics! Multiverses! Who knew!

I love really complicated but exciting adventurous books that can teach me stuff. This was, like, the epitome of that genre. Move over, The Martian. No one cares about you anymore.

Yay for reading books that aren’t YA! Boundaries: consider yourselves pushed.

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6. The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson

Read: April 15-16 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 3 stars

Then I tried to recreate some Morgan Matson success and failed UTTERLY.

This book was so meh I can barely even put it into words without boring myself to death. I’ll put myself to sleep. Typing the next few sentences in fits and bursts, between involuntary micro-naps caused by overwhelming dullness.

This book was so boring. The main character was so boring and was rivaled for boringness only by her boring love interest who was so boring I wish death upon him.

At least the friends and father were cool. Otherwise god knows how I would have made it through this.

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7. The Distance Between Us by Kasie West

Read: April 16-17 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 1 star

It’s warm outside, so now I can barely read anything besides contemporaries. Like I lose the ability to read, essentially. YA fantasy? I don’t know her. General fiction? I’m sorry, I’m illiterate. Any contemporary ever? Give me two hours and a glass of water and I’ll get it done.

Anyway. This book suuuuuucked. It was so bad! Like, comically bad. And then in the acknowledgments Kasie West calls writing contemporary her “thing,” which is so funny it almost made up for the horrendous excuse for a book she just delivered me.

Almost.

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8. Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Read: April 18-19 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4 stars

THIS BOOK IS SO FUN.

Like, honestly, move over Illuminae series. There’s a new uniquely-formatted book in town, and it’s not a three-book series that follows the exact same formula of unlikely heterosexual couple overcoming the odds to gaze into each other eyes while ships blow up in space with high casualty rates for characters who don’t matter.

Why am I harboring so much rage for the Illuminae books?

Anyway. The characters in this are infuriating, but this was still such a fun/funny/entertaining/amusing/synonyms read. Woo! Addictive. Unique. Love it. Yay.

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9. Inferno by Dante Alighieri

Read: March 20-April 20 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4 stars

I read this book for school (hence those fresh fresh month-long currently reading dates) and STILL I liked it.

It took us like 6 or 7 hour and forty-five minute class meetings to fully analyze and finish this, and STILL I liked it.

I had to write an eight to ten page paper on this with a confusing prompt as one of four grades (FOUR! GRADES!) in the class I’m least confident in, and STILL I…okay actually I liked it a little less after that.

Great book, though. Read me rant about literally one (1) single line of this thing here.

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10. Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi

Read: April 19-20 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4 stars

THIS BOOK GAVE ME A CRUSH ON MARY H.K. CHOI.

There is something so inextricably ~cool~ about this book (almost as cool as bracketing words with ~ these things ~~~) that I instantly googled the author upon finishing.

GUESS WHAT I FOUND OUT.

She has a dope website. She writes articles. She’s cool on Twitter. She’s beautiful. SHE HAS APPEARED ON THE LATE NIGHT TELEVISION PROGRAM DESUS & MERO.

She is cooler than I ever have been or could ever hope to be.

Also, this book is good. And look at the cover!

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11. Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella

Read: April 20-21 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 2 stars

I wanted to keep those good contemporary vibes going, and also the brunette-female-in-dark-glasses-against-a-simpleish-blue-background + mysterious search/missing person-related title gave me heavy Where’d You Go, Bernadette vibes.

As it turns out, these two books have very little in common. Mainly, one is good, and the other is not. (This is the not-good one.)

This whole book felt all jagged and abrupt and exaggerated and cartoonish, which made even the good parts (Audrey’s narrative voice! Bits of the anxiety rep!) feel bad. Bleh.

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12. The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner & Lewis Carroll

Read: ?-April 22 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 5 stars

I LOVED THIS BOOK SO FREAKING MUCH THAT IT MADE ME CRY IN PUBLIC.

NO BOOK HAS EVER MADE ME CRY IN PUBLIC.

I BARELY EVEN CRY. LET ALONE AT BOOKS. LET ALONE IN PUBLIC. LET ALONE AT BOOKS AND IN PUBLIC.

Fully wild.

Anyway. This is a version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (my very favorite book OBVIOUSLY are you new here) with crazy annotations of all these things about Britain at the time of the writing and Lewis Carroll’s life and the book’s legacy and UGH. It’s all so fascinating.

Perfect perfect perfect book. I loved it so much my heart had to physically grow to make room.

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This makes for an overall rating of………..as always, please give me a drumroll in addition to your full, long term attention……………………

3.4167!

Not as high as last month, but I read more books + more new books (lot of rereads in March), so that’s to be expected.

Better than 2.7!

I posted seven whole times in April! Who even am I. A brand new person, apparently.

Or just procrastinating for finals. I DON’T KNOW.

My top three posts of the month were:

Whoa! Two of the three were review posts. When does that happen.

And, for the third month in a row, my actual top post is an oldie:

When are people going to stop caring about this book???

So there’s April. There were some really fabulous personal life moments last month – even when finals came around and attempted to cause my death, I had a great month.

The first days of May have NOT BEEN GREAT.

Fingers crossed I manage to pull off some truly unlikely comebacks and the month turns around for me am I right??? Maybe stop destroying my own chances at happiness??? #justgirlythings

Also, I forgot to mention in the midst of my self-pity: I HIT 500 FOLLOWERS IN APRIL!! And had my best month for views ever!!!! Thank you guys sooooo much. Lots of love, you’re the greatest, etc etc, other cheesy-but-true things.

How was your April? Did you read anything really good? Really bad? What was your favorite read of the month?

Have you read any of the books I read in April? How’s the start of your May?