“April, the angel of the months, the young love of the year.”
Vita Sackville-West
April was a okay month for reading, but terrible for writing as I’m catching up at the end of July start of August – thank goodness I kept notes!
Did you know that the etymology behind the word “April” comes from the verb “aperire,” which means “to open”? It’s commonly believed that the word refers to the season of trees and flowers begin to “open” or bloom, but only in the Northern hemisphere. In the Southern hemisphere, April is the seasonal equivalent of our October. April also, interestingly, used to only have 29 days, it was none other than Julius Caesar that added the extra day.
Anyway, lets talk books.
So honestly, April was a struggle, I felt like I couldn’t make a decision on what I wanted to read, I kept picking up a book, reading two pages and putting it down – it took me two weeks just to commit to something to read! Eventually, I did manage to get going, although there weren’t too many completed. Out of the six books I read, four were re-reads, which wasn’t really the point of trying to challenging myself, but hey-ho – better than nothing.
Afterworlds was a re-read for me, although I think it may have been close to 10 years since I read it the first time around, I remember seeking it out having been introduced to Scott Westerfeld through the Uglies series. The dual storyline is captivating and seeing how Lizzie and Darcy both overcome their own challenges is fascinating – the idea of a novel within a novel can’t have been the simplest concept to develop but it absolutely works. I am genuinely impressed by how Scott writes female leads, even more so in this novel than the Uglies series as there are female characters of all different ages and backgrounds and they all seem so believable.
Another re-read was It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, I read It Starts With Us the month previous and felt it didn’t quite match up so wanted to see if what I thought still held true on revisiting it. And it does, although – I’m not sure it is one that I’ll come back to again any time soon. I found the story somewhat less engaging when I knew exactly how it was going to pan out.
One perk of being so behind on my write ups are that I have already been to see the movie. Having previously always liked Blake Lively I was looking forward to seeing her in the role, I think she made a good job of it, albeit there were a lot of things that came out differently on screen than how I would have imagined it. Lily’s style wasn’t quite as I was expecting, and the cast were older – for example, but I loved the casting of Jenny Slate as Allysa and Brandon Sklenar was the Atlas I didn’t know I was thinking of. I can’t discuss the movie, without touching on the controversy around Blake and Justin Baldoni, I don’t know what happened to cause a rift in the cast the way it appears during the press – but Justin seems to be the only one talking about what this story is really about, it’s not a ‘wear your florals’, girls night out – it’s a serious message about domestic violence. Team Justin all the way.
I don’t want to turn this into a movie review post, but I can’t pass on the omission of Lily’s conversation with her Mum in the adaptation, this is such an important turning point in the book, and yet it’s clunky and doesn’t really reflect in the film. Crazy Rich Asians did a great job of showing the difficult conversations between mother and daughter and I was sad to see that It Ends With Us didn’t do the same.
Getting back to books – despite a somewhat lukewarm start to the month, I did enjoy the variety of the books completed in April even it was unsettling not to find focus in books the way I normally do.
Books Read:
| Title | Author |
| In Order to Live | Yeonmi Park |
| Every Breath | Nicholas Sparks |
| It Ends With Us | Colleen Hoover |
| The Sun Is Also A Star | Nicola Yoon |
| Afterworlds | Scott Westerfeld |
| We Should All Be Feminists | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
Total keeping: 2 out of 6
Afterworlds was a great read, it’s definitely staying – I enjoyed it just as much this time around, as I did the first, possibly even more. And We Should All Be Feminists will always have a space on my shelf. I was lucky enough to see Chimamanda speak a few years ago, so not only is this book in particular close to my heart, it is also a reminder of a great night out in London with one of my absolute best friends. One of the most memorable paragraphs for me, is as below:
“Some people ask: “Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.”
It’s not the quite the same message but it reminds me of this quote from Maisie Williams:
“I feel like we should stop calling feminists ‘feminists’ and just start calling people who aren’t feminist ‘sexist’ – You are either a normal person or a sexist.”
Total heading for new homes: 4 out of 6
More than half went at the end of April, but, in full honesty – I do already have it Ends With Us and Every Breath on my Kindle, so they’re only gone in physical copy!
The Sun is Also a Star is a great Young Adult read, it was really interesting seeing the perspectives of characters who would never normally be more than a line on a page – and a good reminder that you never know what is going on is someone’s life, so be kind. Every Breath is very Nicholas Sparks, you know it will have great story telling, great scenery, characters to fall in love with – and tears. This one is no different, although the narrative is created in an unusual ‘found story’ way which adds an interesting slant to the storyline, I loved the characters and they came to life on the page.
In order to live by Yeonmi Park is a heart wrenching story about rising through adversity, it’s not always the easiest read as she details her sale into a slave marriage in China – but it is an important story to hear. Yeonmi shares her story of life in North Korea as a young child, and how she escaped the regime to a place of relative safety, in South Korea. Whilst living in the South, she felt unable to share her story in the hope of blending in but eventually went public with her experience in the hope of finding her sister. She has since gone on to become a human rights activist, you can find videos of her speaking online and they can’t fail to touch you – I strongly urge you to add this one to your list.
I really struggled this month and found myself reaching back to re-reads and easy reads on Kindle, yet I know that when I push myself to engage with my bookshelf it’s normally worth it – you can’t find new favourites if you never read the pages!
Do you have any tried and tested methods to get you focused on reading when inspiration escapes you?
Nx
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