#april reading wrap up

[brandileigh2003]

~~April reading wrap-up~~

••Total words: 1,792,107••

-Daily averages: 59k/day= 3.3 hrs, 240 pages

-Total fics over 15k: 15

Have you read any of these? Or any fics you recommend from this month?

•finished marginalia by spindrifters

•Code Black by @ixekizumab wip marauders in med school

•The View Between Villages by monsieurmoon (wip) Remus centric, Hogwarts

•Drifting by @eniaos (44k) muggle slow burn childhood friends to lovers

•160 Acres in Ojai by MsAlexWP @languagelessonswolfstar muggle road trip

•beautiful boy by peachyybabe just completed (113k) MCD based on the book

•Tertiary colors by krabapple @severedreamerfox (27k reread) mpreg, 1st war divergent

•Chiaroscuro by krabapple (17k reread) post war div

•Closer to Fine by krabapple (77k reread) 1st war div, mpreg

•chéri, darling, and other terms of endearment by Siriusly_Reggie_13 (49k wip) hockey au, get together

•Beekeeping in the Daylight by @halictus-writer (50k reread) muggle get together ft friendship

•Of Prefects, Pretence, and Precedent by Whoops_e (121k) Hogwarts divergent slow burn

•Back to September by WriterwithaWindow (25k) au get back together

•I Don't Care if My Heart Breaks by orphan_account (19k reread) bookshop au

•when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone's bed (you put me on and said I was your favorite) by barkatthemoon @barkingatthemooninsteadofwriting and sequel (113,433k) muggle au, slow burn,

One shot sampling:

•it turns out freedom aint nothing but missing you by fl0wersan : raising harry and get back together, ootp timeline

•2:00 A.M. by SaltedPapercuts Hogwarts get together with trans remus

•A Little Misunderstanding by birdyhands Hogwarts fic, lily thinks Remus is trans and is such a good friend

•Looking For An Outlet by ravenclawesome42 muggle au

•Padfoot, Moony by MarigoldWritesThings @marigold-hills animagus week piece, snapshots in grimmauld

[theinquisitxor]

April 2025 Reading Wrap Up

I read 5 books in the month of April, and wrapped up two series! Five books is a little below average for me, but I got myself in such a reading slump at the end of the month trying to read The Luminaries. It's been very slow going with this book, and while I don't want to dnf it, it's just taking me forever. Making this post today (May 4), I'm still only 1/2 way though. The first 3/4 of April was good reading, so let me dive in:

1.The Crow (The Books of Pellinor 3) by Alison Croggon, 4/5 stars. I remembered scenes from this book vividly because of the emotional damage it did to me when I was young. I know many people don't like this book as much, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I like the change of perspective, place, and character this book brings.

2.The Singing (The Books of Pellinor 4) by Alison Croggon, 4/5 stars. The conclusion to this series, and tbh I did not remember almost anything from when I read this years ago. It was almost like reading it new. I feel like this book is a satisfactory conclusion, the ending probably could've been written better, but it's good enough imo.

3.The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan, 4/5 stars. This is a published version of Tan's nature/birding journal, and a lovely account of the birds who visit her backyard over the course of several years. I love birds and this was a simple book, but joyful, emotional, and thoughtful. I really enjoyed reading this, and highly recommend!

4.Cybele's Secret (Wildwood Dancing 2) by Juliet Mariller, 4/5 stars. This is a companion novel to Wildwood Dancing and follows one of the sisters, Paula, as she travels with her merchant father to Instabul in search of a lost relic. I actually enjoyed this more than the first book, and it was very different from book 1. This is more of a plot driven adventure story with secret societies, scholars, ancient artifacts, trials and tests.

4.A Northern Gardener's Guide to Native Plants and Pollinators by Lorraine Johnson. As I was getting ready for spring planting, I wanted to learn more about native plants and pollinators, and how to garden with those in mind. I've always been anti-lawn and pro native gardens, and learned more from this book!

I was hoping to have The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton finished in April, but that did not happen. I'm hoping to buckle down and get this book finished soon. I am enjoying it, but it's just taking me forever to get though. Since this has put me in a reading slump, I haven't though of my May tbr very much. I didn't get to my Random TBR book for April (because reading slump), so that is a priority in May.

May tbr?:

finish The Luminaries

read April's Random TBR pick: Child of a Hidden Sea

May Random TBR pick, tbd

something shorter and easier!-- maybe The Demon King or Some Desperate Glory ?

[dragonbadgerbooks]

April was a good month for reading! Maybe I'll expand on my thoughts, but also probably not :P

[godzilla-reads]

April Showers ☔️ Bring May Flowers 🌸

In April I read a total of 12 books, bringing my yearly count to 54 books! My Top 3 for this past month were “Rifqa”; “Old Herbaceous”; and “A Midsummer Night’s Faery Tale”.

Anyway, here’s the list:

🐱 A Cat at the Wall by Deborah Ellis

🧚‍♀️ Brian Froud’s World of Faerie

🍄 A Midsummer Night’s Faery Tale by Wendy Froud and Terri Windling

🐜 Ant Story by Jay Hosler

❤️ Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd

🪽 Catwings by Ursula K. Le Guin and S.D. Schindler

🐍 The Wyrm King by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

🌞 East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North by Kay Nielsen and Noel Daniel

🍀 Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell

🔥 Introducing the Medieval Dragon by Thomas Honegger

🐺 The Werewolf at Dusk and Other Stories by David Small

🌸 Backyard Fairies by Phoebe Wahl

What did you read?

[lenorayoder]

April 2025 Reading Wrap Up

Highs and lows this month...

Once again my terrible memory strikes and I do not remember what this slump was about. I do, however, remember that Rebecca was amazing.

On to the annual goals!

15/75 books total (I have finally decided to exclude The Lexington Letters from this count)

Didn't read any books I already own, so the total still sits at 2/12

1/5, for a total of 4/5 award-winning books (Rebecca, National Book Award. That "Nation" being the U.S., I'm guessing there are other national book awards)

2/6 for a total of 4/6 books for my Spring 2025 Challenge

2/10, for a total of 5/10 books for the StoryGraph Genre Challenge

3/30, for a total of 14/30 books for my local library’s reading challenge? Like I said in last month's wrap up, these numbers are dicey

No books for StoryGraph’s World and Onboarding challenges, for a total of 1/3 or 1/6 books for the Onboarding challenge.

Less than a week until it's time for May's wrap up, we'll see if I get that out in time. Meanwhile, I'm going to try to get my reviews for April's books posted. A couple of these books were hard for me to pin down, so I've been having some trouble articulating myself in my reviews.

[fable-the-queer-bookworm]

April reading wrap up!

[onebigfangirlworld]

April 2025 Reading Wrap up

4/12ths done and I have learned that I don't like when people use modern references in books

so for context, I was reading Leather and Lark, the ending saved it all, and Lark starts refereing to herself as a multiple deleter because she doesn't want to be called a serial killer. No explanation is given for this and I got the ick because why are we using Tik Tok phrases or things I would hear on Tik Tok in books, it just wasn't fun.

I was so hyped to read Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero, the synopsis made it sound so good and it was like what if the scooby doo characters grew up and realized that they put the wrong guy away. Sound's amazing, right? WRONG. The author's strange obsession of making every interaction between the 2 female leads sexual and talking about them kissing or how their boobs touched when they cuddled on the bed they had to share was so weird and the worst thing. I still liked the book but god was I weirded out sometimes

I was hoping that there would be more 5 star reads this month but most of the books I read were either really good but there was always something that just made me hesitate to give it a 5 star rating or they were just good books but nothing really special

also relistening to the ACOTAR audio book ('graphicaudio a movie in your ears' that's the first thing you hear and I say it sometimes just to myself cause it's so funny) and i'm just reminded how fucking stupid feyre is! Girl only notices when things are happening right in front of her and even then refuses to obtain more information about anything. or has a superiority complex because she's not like other girls and likes to hunt and wear pants. She's parentifying herself. (I know her mom made her make that promise and that's part of it but she didn't need to do all that)

STATS TIME

5 star reads: All Shall Mourn by Ellie Marney (physical book)

lowest rated read (2 stars): Born in Blood by Sadie Kinkaid (ebook)

DNF: Double Pucked by Lauren Blakely (ebook)

Currently Reading: House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J. Maas (physical book)

[magpiex-reads]

April reading wrap up!✨️

I feel like I got fairly side tracked this month 😅 (I am such a mood reader sticking to my tbr rarely happens 😭), but here is what I was able to get around to reading:

You're not supposed to die tonight - 4⭐️, could have been a bit longer, but what it was able to pull off was effective!

Song of silver, Flame like night - 4⭐️, struggled a bit to get into it at first, the romance did grow on me and I'm excited to get around to the sequel!

Spin the dawn - 4.5⭐️, super fun concept!! I'm pleasantly surprised by the pacing and the romance (as I did struggle with Six Crimson Cranes), and am excited to get to the sequel.

Foul heart huntsman - 4⭐️, I read this mostly in one sitting while ill and definitely enjoyed the journey! Super interesting duology would recommend!

I also finished the below e-ARCs:

The Mask of Merryvale Manor by Pete Sherlock (4⭐️)

Moonstone by Laura Purcell (5⭐️)

[the---hermit]

April 2025 reading wrap up

The two main themes of this last month of reading were audiobooks (again), and the hunger games. Believe it or not I had never read the original trilogy. I was a teen in the hight of success of the books, I remember everyone around me reading them, but I was not a big reader back in the day. I actually didn't love reading at all. I was only reading graphic novel, and that's it. I think it's more or less in that period of time I started to very very slowly get into reading in my free time, but they journey was long and slow. In the past couple of years I had the idea of actually reading the hunger games trilogy, since I have fallen in love with the dystopic genre, and many have started to consider these books modern classics. The main thing that held me back is the fact that they are ya, and from experience I always struggle with books classified as ya. Then some beloved friends finally conviced me to give them a try and during the past month I listened to the audiobooks, fell in love with them, bought physical copies and then also read the two prequels, and loved them even more. So much so that I am already looking forward to rereading all five books to heavily annotate them like all of my beloved dystopic novels. I am still thinking about them, and I think I will be for a while.

Books I finished:

Emily Wilde's Map Of Otherlands by Heather Fawcett (I had a great time with the second book in the series, I feel like this was a great sequel to the first book, but I am sadly not having a good time with the thrid and final book of the series)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Re:Carmilla (I have read the original novella a few times and always loved it, but this audio adaptation was so good. I listened to it as it was coming out, but I plan on relistening to it in the future with no pauses between the various chapters. The performances of the VAs was incredible, they gave so much life to a story I already loved, and I know it's kind of unrelated but this hyped me so much for my yearly reread of Dracula following the Re:Dracula adaptation)

The Handmaid's Tale - graphic novel adaptation

The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Sunrise On The Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Books I am currently reading:

Emily Wilde's Compendium Of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett (ngl this book is holding me back a little bit I am super stuck with it, I kinda want to dnf it, but at the same time I'd like to finish the trilogy, so I have no idea what to do. I read a little of 100 pages and nothing has happened, and I just do not reach for it?)

The Secret Life of Trees - graphic novel adaptation (I am now realizing that one of the themes of my year of reading so far has been graphic novel adaptation of books, and I am having a great time with them)

Magellano: Il Primo Viaggio Intorno Al Mondo by David Salomoni (this is the book I am studying for one of my exams and so far it's really interesting and well written, I have high hopes for this one)

[brandileigh2003]

April reading wrap up. do you keep count? have you read any of these?

[slaughter-books]

Day 30: JOMPBPC: Read In April

My reading wrap-up for April, 2025! 💚

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

Read in April 2025

well, despite being incredibly sick the first half of the month, I managed to read a decent amount of books and I really enjoyed the majority of them. Careless People and the two Handmaid's Tale books were definitely the standouts this month

Nonfiction:

The Lives of Lee Miller by Antony Penrose - 4/5

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams - 5/5

Familiar authors:

The Thirteenth Child by Erin A Craig - 3/5

Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson - 4/5

A Killing Cold by Kate Alice Marshall - 4/5

This Stays Between Us by Margot McGovern - 4/5

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay - 3/5

Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen - 4/5

Other reads:

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood - 5/5

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood - 5/5

Bitter is the Heart by Mina Hardy - 4/5

The Specimen by Jaima Fixsen - 4/5

The Children on the Hill by Jennifer McMahon - 4/5

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid - 3/5

Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang - 4/5

[jasper-book-stash]

April 2025 Reading Wrap-Up

Tried something new this time, I made this post early in April and updated it with the books I read as I finished them so I still had my thoughts fresh in my mind. I think I like this approach, I'll be continuing it until I forget.

I read a total of fifteen books this month. I was in a big "study Shintoism" mood because I'm doing a lot of writing for my blorbos over on @azzie-beastbinder, but overall a lot of the books I read were in the nonfiction or occult part of my shelf. I really need to get back to reading all of this fiction I have on my bookshelf, I'm running out of TBR room.

Anyway, the moral of this month is "it's bad enough if your book is boring, it's a bigger sin if your editing is shit".

1/10 - Why Did They Publish This?

None applicable.

2/10 - Trash

None applicable.

3/10 - Meh

Elemental Spirits: Building A Magical Practice In An Animistic World | Jaq D Hawkins

I wanted to like this book, I really did. It was so promising. But the problems just kept stacking up over and over. Between the unsafe offering recommendations (putting HUMAN FOOD like CAKES into WATERWAYS), jacking off about Stonehenge, using faeries and spirits interchangeably which just got weird after a while... And the worst sin of all was that it got repetitive. There were things that made me think in this book, but I eventually tapped out because I just couldn't take it anymore.

Easy Reading Series: The Yengishiki Or Shinto Rituals | unknown author

So, this is basically a paper version of a free PDF I could have gotten. The formatting sucks actual ass, there are nearly no paragraph breaks (which is worth its own bitch in and of itself), and the translation is janky as hell. There aren't even 25 pages of information in here, most of it is just...bad. Not worth the money.

Scorpion Chronicles: A Comprehensive Exploration Of Arachnid Predators And The Realm Of Stingers. | M.sc. Ava Arachno

So this is one of those poorly-formatted books that feels like a bunch of blog posts were made into a book. Despite having around 190 pages, there is very little information in here that just gets repeated over and over in large font. It's like if a children's encyclopedia didn't have any pictures. And that's to say nothing of the shitty editing work.

4 to 6/10 - Mid-Tier

Shinto: The Way Of The Gods: Introduction To The Traditional Religion Of Japan | Vincent Miller

First and foremost, I cannot stress enough that they needed a proper fucking editor. Half of my time going through this book was spent fixing editing issues or making notes about where paragraph breaks should have been. The information isn't horrible, it just had quite a bit of weird phrasing and helped define a lot of stuff, it's just...looking at the writing and the editing, I cannot, in good faith, give it anything higher than a 5 out of 10. (Also, the publisher seems to pump out a lot of dieting books that they advertised in the back...not great.)

The Municipalists | Seth Fried

This was not a bad book. It just was not interesting to me. There's a lot of worldbuilding in here, which is great for something sci-fi, but it often cut down on the characters actually having a conversation; they would just summarize the conversations about half of the time, even with the ones that are, you know, crucial for character development and interaction. It also took me 70 pages to finally get into it, only to tap out at page 106 and just read the last two chapters. I'm sure it's plenty interesting, but it wasn't that interesting to me. Also a 5 out of 10.

Pegasus 1977 | National Poetry Press

This is one of those "I picked up some random poetry books from a secondhand store" type of books. For the most part, the poems were...passable? Not bad considering the year...I think? I can't actually find information on this book online anywhere. Also the mythological pegasus never gets mentioned even once. If anyone knows what the fuck is up with this, uh, let me know. Giving it a 4 out of 10 because it dragged on so long.

7 to 8/10 - Good With Caveats

Mimusubi Essays On Shinto 5: Shinto Practice For Non-Japanese | David Chart

So this is actually a published duo of Patreon essays, but none of the other duos of essays have paper versions that I could get easily. There's a lot of good info in here that built on what I got from Vincent Miller's book. The font is so fucking small though, which I imagine is how the author got all that detail into so few pages (the book is marked as having 49 pages on my spreadsheet). 7 out of 10, hard for me to read but I liked what I got out of it.

DISCLAIMER! One of the shrines referenced in this booklet as an American shrine is apparently bad enough that it has an entire blog dedicated to exposing information about it. That can be found here: Exposing Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America.

Amaterasu: Return Of The Sun: A Japanese Myth | Paul D Storrie, Ron Randall [Juvenile]

This is an incredibly short and simple graphic novel/comic book retelling a version of the Amaterasu myth, with enough given context of previous myths to figure out what's important here. Very generic looking artwork, but lovely character designs. The author and artist chose a version of the myth appropriate to its target age demographic. This is an 8 out of 10.

The Gay Agenda: A Modern Queer History & Handbook | Ashley Molesso, Chess Needham

This is overall a fine enough book that I enjoyed and learned from, but there are some problems I had with it.

While there's a strong aesthetic present thanks to the artwork of Ash + Chess (I actually have a tarot deck by them and didn't realize this was by the same people until I recognized the art style because I just…don't read the author names of books at first), it also has the problem of being really hard to read thanks to small font and background and font colors that don't work together well on several pages. It's very United States-centric, which I did not realize going in. Some of the terminology used in here feels like they're trying too hard to be "hip" and there are a few places where things that were objectively bad were referred to as "really lame". Finally, I found the last chunk (the "handbook" section meant to include guides and information) to be…far less useful than a dedicated book to queer identities, and it suddenly has a section pointedly addressing non-queer people even though the assumption across the rest of the text is that the person reading this book is already queer. There's also some parts back in the handbook section that treat asexual and aromantic as the exact same thing, and a focus on drag queens exclusively in the parts about drag throughout the book.

Despite these problems, this is still a pretty good book for a look at queer history in the United States, though I haven't dug into their sources myself just yet. I'd give it an 8 out of 10. I'm glad this book exists, I just think it could have been better if they had another pair of eyes on it.

9/10 - Very Very Good

Starter Villain | John Scalzi

It's so fucking stupid, I love it. You are sitting down across the bar from this guy while he fixes you a drink and tells you about the weirdest shit ever in his life. The dolphins get unionized. The protagonist blows up a satellite with a laser funded by the US Department of Agriculture. The cats type on keyboards. The events of this book are only going on in the course of about a week. Please read this book.

The Book Of Japanese Folklore: An Encyclopedia Of The Spirits, Monsters, And Yokai Of Japanese Myth: The Stories Of The Mischievous Kappa, Trickster Kitsune, Horrendous Oni, And More | Thersa Matsuura, Michelle Wang

This is a book I picked up on a whim from a "local" (read: 1 hour away) bookstore because I've been doing research to better write my blorbos. For the most part, I enjoyed this book, though I do have some mild complaints that not every entry has artwork (particularly those entries that could use the help of a few pages to get them on par with other entries). Other than that, I quite enjoyed it and got through it in the span of two days, which is pretty quick for a nonfiction read for me. It also introduced me to the bean man, which I cherish greatly.

A Popular Dictionary Of Shinto | Brian Bocking

Less of a book that one reads cover-to-cover and more of, well, a dictionary, it is nonetheless quite thorough and useful. I will be picking up my own copy, and I'm thankful that my library system had it so I could check it out before buying it.

10/10 - Unironically Recommend To Everyone

The Serviceberry: Abundance And Reciprocity In The Natural World | Robin Wall Kimmerer

So, if you know anything about me, it's that I loved Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It was one of my favorite books of 2023 and the Young Adult adaptation was one of my favorite books of 2024. So when I saw this in the little bookstore an hour away from my rural home (I shit you not, that's the most local bookstore I have), I scooped it up to give it a read too. And honestly? It was really fucking good. It's given me plenty to think about. If you're at all interested in Indigenous science, gift economies, or getting a new perspective, I recommend picking it up.

Ada Lace, Take Me To Your Leader | Emily Calandrelli, Tamson Weston, Renee Kurilla [Juvenile]

This is actually part of a slightly longer series of kid's books, but my family's had it for a little while (...but had never read it) because we're amateur radio ("ham radio") operators, just like Ada Lace in-story and Emily Calandrelli out-of-story. This is a delightful little book if you or someone else has never heard of ham radio before, or if you know a kid a young age bracket with a love for science. It doesn't get bogged down in the scientific details but it also doesn't hesitate to pause and explain things in-story.

A Quick & Easy Guide To Queer & Trans Identities | Mady G, Jules Zuckerberg [Young Adult]

This is basically a nonfiction graphic novel, and it is incredibly approachable and easy to read, even if the font is a little small. It's an easy introduction to the concept of queerness. I would definitely recommend it as a book to pick up if you're questioning or you know someone who's questioning. It's marked as being YA on Amazon but I could easily see this added to the Juvenile section of a library without issue.

[booksandrandomfandoms]

JOMP day 30

Read in April

[aromanticasterisms]

the epic highs and lows of rereading your own writing to seek out parts you disliked and analyze Why you disliked them to do better in the future