April 2010 Reads

Plans for an Awesome April was bust. I mean, I made a freaking list and everything. But, well, an awesome job called. And yes, my boss might be reading this. Hawh. What basically happened was, a] I didn’t have as much time to read books, b] and when I did have time, I usually gravitated to books that were, well, thin, or just called to me for some reasong, c] one of which is the fact that working near too many bookstores equates to too many new additions to your Book Dump, and, well, conscience dictated that I read those new ones first. Heh. Sa prisinto na ako magpapaliwanag. Here are my April 2010 Reads:

1. My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides.
2. Olivia, by Ian Falconer.
3. The Blindfold, by Siri Hustvedt.
4. Notes on Love and Courage, by Hugh Prather.
5. You Know You’re a Writer When, by Adair Lara.
6. Claude and Camille, by Stephanie Cowell.
7. It’s Kind of a Funny Story, by Ned Vizzini.
8. What the Librarian Did, by Karina Bliss.
9. Sweet Restraint, by Beth Kery.
10. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne.
11. The Unnamed, by Joshua Ferris.
12. Love Story, by Erich Segal.
13. This is Just Exactly Like You, by Drew Perry.
14. Hot for the Holidays, by Lora Leigh, et. al.
15. Subtle Destiny, by Beth Kery.

And, yes, I know that #14 doesn’t exactly fit with the timing. Anyhoo. The love story anthology edited by Eugenides [#01] is definitely all sorts of awesome. So is new-to-me author Siri Hustvedt [#03], who is no longer “Paul Auster’s wife,” whose book What I Loved is cozy on my bookshelves. I was completely charmed by Vizzini’s novel about a 15-year-old depressive [#07], got my heart broken by John Boyne’s Nazi Germany fable [#10], and was sucker-punched by Joshua Ferris’ story about the man who could not stop walking [#11]. And Erich Segal [#12], he was a surprise.

Therefore, well, it didn’t exactly go as planned. And I hardly went through the things on that Awesome April list. But, well, I devoured some really good books, discovered new authors. I read what I can. And it was good. [I suppose it’s just the O.C. in me that’s in agony over the plans and the list and all that.] Oh, and so far, my 2010 Reads number 77. Yeahba.

Off to work/pretend to look like I’m working.