Books I Read in April: Part 1

I read a LOT of books in the month of April, at least as far as my usual numbers go. I will most definitely not have time to write a full-length review for all of them, but I’ve included links to the ones that do have a full-length review floating around on the blog.

My April reads started out really strong. The first two books I read, The Incarnations by Susan Barker, and The Circle by Dave Eggers, are the two that stand out the most, but there are a few other wonderful books on this list.

1) The Incarnations by Susan Barker

Rating: 9/10

This book was unreal. Like, I straight up loved it like I haven’t loved a book in a very long time. You can check out my full review here.

2) The Circle by Dave Eggers

Rating: 8.5/10

Such a unique take on utopian/dystopian fiction. I really enjoyed The Circle, which inspired a full-length review (which you can find here).

3) Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Rating: 6/10

I don’t think that I’ll be writing a full review for Six of Crows, because I don’t think that I want to put much more time into it than I already have. I really wanted to like this book. I don’t read a ton of YA, but I put on hold at the library after a good friend of mine recommended it to me. Besides which, it is beautifully designed, and has such a lovely cover, so I held out hope for it. And I can kind of understand why it’s been so hyped up. But for me and as far as my tastes go, I just couldn’t connect with this book. It started out quite slowly for me, but whenever I found a moment where I would start to feel intrigued, it almost immediately dipped off again. This inconsistency in pacing was enough to ruin the experience for me. The main thing that keeps this rating from being lower is my minor affection for some of the characters in the story. There are a few of them that had some very intriguing backstories, which helped me force myself to finish the book.

4) We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Rating: 8.5/10

This book is adapted from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk of the same title. I picked it up after watching another one of her talks, called The Danger of A Single Story which I also highly recommend checking out. She is so well-spoken and thoughtful. I’m pretty stoked to check out some of her fictional work.

5) Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

Rating: 8/10

This description is right out of the back of the book: “Milk and Honey is a collection of poetry about love, loss, trauma, abuse, healing, and feminity.”

Kaur’s writing is lush, painful, provocative. And reading this collection felt a bit like going on a healing journey. I didn’t always agree with Rupi Kaur’s opinions about everything, but I love how vulnerable and open she was in her writing, and how loving and empowering aspects of it were.

6) A Wild Swan by Michael Cunningham

Rating: 7/10

A Wild Swan is a collection of the darker moments in our childhood fairy tales — those darker moments that were swept under the rug or “deliberately concealed”. It was a touch dark for me, which is odd because I typically like some darkness in my books. But A Wild Swan was dark in a relentless, unhelpful kind of way. The rating is where it is because of Yuko Shimizu’s gorgeous illustrations, and the book’s beautiful design.