April was a slower reading month for some reason. I seemed to have a lot going on so didn’t get as much time to read as I would have liked. Such is life. I did read 11 in the end, thanks to two fairly short books at the end of the month! Anyway, here are the April, stats:
Books Read
Broken Country – Clare Leslie Hall – 2 Stars
Possessions: A Memoir Of Transformation In An Era Of Precarity – Davina Quinlivan – 3 Stars
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes – Robert Louis Stevenson – 3 Stars
Hemisphere – Pete Green – 3.5 Stars
Here Comes the Fun: A Year of Making Merry – Ben Aiken – 3.5 Stars
Terrible Maps – Michael Howe – 3.5 Stars
Tiny Experiments: How To Live Freely In A Goal-Obsessed World – Anne-Laure Le Cunff – 4 Stars
Roads To Santiago: Detours and Riddles in the Land and History of Spain – Cees Noteboom – 4.5 Stars
What We Have Lost: The Dismantling of Great Britain – James Hamilton-Paterson – 4.5 Stars
Farewell to Russia: A Journey through the Former USSR – Joe Luc Barnes – 4.5 Stars
Book(s) Of The Month
Night Train To Odesa: Covering The Human Cost of Russia’s War – Jen Stout – 5 Stars
Top Genres
Travel – 14
Fiction – 7
Miscellaneous – 5
Poetry – 4
Natural History – 3
Top Publishers
Longbarrow Press – 3
Bantam Press – 2
Icon Books – 2
Vintage – 2
Jonathan Cape – 2
Review Copies Received
None! Handy that I still have loads of others to read…
Library Books Checked Out
Radical Cartography: What Maps Tell Us About Who We Are – William Rankin
Tales Of The Suburbs: LGBTQ+ Lives Behind Net Curtains – John Grindrod
Amuse Bouche: How To Eat Your Way Around France – Carolyn Boyd
Books Bought (Or Sent by Friends)
As I have said elsewhere, I am trying to buy fewer books. So I will give totals of l the number of books that enter my house and those that leave permanently. These are the figures for this month:
Books in: 17 I kept these below:
Mad Shepherds – L.P. Jacks
Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark – Jane Fletcher Geniesse
Faster, They’re Gaining – Peter Biddlecombe
Books out: 12 (The books leaving the house were sold, returned to the library or passed on to friends or charity. I am aiming for this number to be higher than the one above!!!). IT WASN”T ;-(
So, are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.
I feel your pain with balancing the books. I decided to make better use of my library which has just reopened but all that happened is I’m getting a bigger to-read pile. I think for the first time ever I haven’t read a single one of your April books.
I have 17 reservations on one library card, and I have two library cards! Not read any of them? Faints!!
We both failed on books out vs books in in April, however I got rid of NONE!
Oh dear!
The only vague overlap I have with your list is with reading a book about eating your way around France, Felicity Cloake’s One More Croissant for the Road .
I have a signed copy of that, that I found in a charity shop. Along with a signed Peter Mayle!
That sounds like an excellent charity shop. I don’t suppose it makes them particularly valuable, but it certainly feels more special.
It varies. Sometimes really good stuff, but most often not!
Probably just as well, or your house would be completely full and your bank balance considerably lower.
The house is pretty full of books as it is!
I’ve only read one of your April books – the R.L Stevenson.
I do fancy reading Amuse Bouche. It was going on camping holidays to France when my children were young that really opened my eyes to the fabulous food there and I used to try and replicate the dishes back home (with varying success!).
Only one? Blimey. French (and Italian) food is excellent. The whole country is rightly obsessed by food. I did like Amuse Bouche, but it does read like a glorified list!