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:
- My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides.
- Olivia, by Ian Falconer.
- The Blindfold, by Siri Hustvedt.
- Notes on Love and Courage, by Hugh Prather.
- You Know You’re a Writer When, by Adair Lara.
- Claude and Camille, by Stephanie Cowell.
- It’s Kind of a Funny Story, by Ned Vizzini.
- What the Librarian Did, by Karina Bliss.
- Sweet Restraint, by Beth Kery.
- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne.
- The Unnamed, by Joshua Ferris.
- Love Story, by Erich Segal.
- This is Just Exactly Like You, by Drew Perry.
- Hot for the Holidays, by Lora Leigh, et. al.
- 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.
Well, 15 isn’t too shabby and you read some good books so doesn’t sound too bad to me. Hope you have a wonderful reading month ahead!
Thanks, Iliana. I’m just griping because I made a list, haha. I’m hopeful about May though. :)
I’m with Iliana. 15 isn’t bad at all–especially considering your new job and all that. Plus you read some really good books.
I wonder though what’s on that list.
Thanks, Ewan. The list is pretty ambitious–I definitely didn’t see this job coming when I wrote that. It has Auster and Woolf and Chang-Rae Lee and T.C. Boyle and Mikhail Bulkagov and Chekhov and Von Goethe and Barthes. Heh.