April Reads

April was such a long year, guys. 

I mean month.

Allegedly. 

I had initially wanted to read eight book in April, but considering how spread thin I have been, I'll take it.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was read with Sawyer at night and it took us a really long time, but we finally finished. The illustrated versions are beautiful, and they the the same exact text as the normal ones. It was so much fun to revisit them with him, and we're already a chunk into the next one.

I reread the The Awakening by Kate Chopin for the 32329th time, for work, but I still love it. I just had a Zoom meeting with some of my students to discuss it (and have another one in an hour), and they all really like it too. There's so much to discuss in terms of class, gender, the arts, and society to talk about. It's barely over 100 pages, so if you haven't read it, you really should. 

I finally finished Elton John's memoir, Me, and it was outstanding. I am a huge fan of his, so I loved all the tidbits he offered about his career. I wasn't as interested in the beginning, the childhood and early, early singing stuff, but as a whole it was really great. 

Towards the beginning of the month I read Lauren Wilkinson's American Spy, which I knew little about, other than that Obama loved it. It ended up being a solid B- the writing, the characters, and the story were all really solid. I admittedly got a little bored during some of the super political moments, but that's just personal preference (and probably why Obama liked it so much!). If you are into spy novels, but want a little more depth I highly suggest this one.

I read Don DeLillo's White Noise, which Julie and I did a Blogger Banter post for (check it out here).

Finally, I finished Colson Whitehead's newest novel, The Nickel Boys, a few days ago for our book club meeting last night. I thought it was well done on every level- I enjoy his writing style, I thought his characters all possessed true depth, and he did justice to the subject matter. Highly recommend this one.

Maybe eight next month?