April Recap 2016

Hi Friends! I can’t believe I have only posted four times this month, with three of those posts being books from last month. It has been a REALLY busy month. In case you didn’t remember I wrapped up my old job and started a new job in the middle of the month. The hardest adjustment by far has been going back to working 9-5 and not working 7-3 with the afternoons dedicated to blogging.

I’ve also just been exhausted, having spent the last three weeks at my old job working 55+ hour weeks and then starting my new job and working 50ish hour weeks was a big change. I’m starting to catch up on sleep, but even now when I was preparing to blog I labeled all of my photos as if  it were my March wrap up and not April! All of this being said new job is great and I’m excited to see where I go from here. On to the books!

Seriously though, when I went to finally catch up on blogs my second week after starting at my new job I had over 300 to read! I’m slowly making my way through, but I’m not commenting as much as I usually do 🙁

Books & Bookish Things
So much of my time went into wrapping up my old job and starting my new job that my reading suffered. It also didn’t help that I got sucked back into highly modified Minecraft, but predominantly it was adjusting to my new work schedule and much shorter commute.

We did get a last-minute escape to the Cape with a friend and we actually had time to stop by one of the two bookstores in Wellfleet. Herridge Books (Yelp link) was such a cute store and had a lot more in it than I thought it would! I picked up two books listed below. All of this being said, I did finish TWO books this month, barely. The first I posted about way back on the 12th and the other I’ll post about in the near future.

436. Dragons in the Waters (O’Keefe Family #2) – Madeleine L’Engle
437. House Like A Lotus (O’Keefe Family #3) – Madeleine L’Engle

The funny thing is, I was already so far ahead on my Goodreads goal that I’m STILL ahead even though I only read two books last month. It shouldn’t matter, but that definitely mad me less stressed.

This happened though:

@geoff_whaley I loved this! Many thanks.

— Curtis Sittenfeld (@csittenfeld) April 5, 2016

I’m glad to say I LOVED Eligible and can’t wait to pick up my copy to read again later and just to add to my permanent collection. I also saw this and saved it to share:

Recent Acquisitions
I didn’t really behave this month. I ended up purchasing four books and getting a review copy from a publisher. I’m glad the two Coelho books are in Spanish. he’s such a simple writer that I’m hoping the Spanish translations will be as beautiful and simple as the English translations. I’m also hoping it’l force me to start reading more in Spanish (but I won’t hold my breath).

• Tell No One – Harlan Coben
• Brida – Paulo Coelho
• El Zahir – Paulo Coelho
• Jane Steele – Lyndsay Faye
• Lost Classics – Michael Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, Esta Spalding, & Linda Spalding (Eds.)

I got the Tell No One and Lost Classics from our last-minute trip to the Cape at Herridge Books. I was excited to grab another Coben as I enjoyed the first two I read and two people mentioned this one was great. The other I stumbled across in the Literary Criticism/Letters section and it’s a fascinating idea: “Writers on books loved and lost, overlooked, under-read, unavailable, stolen, extinct, or otherwise out of commission.” And when I looked at the list and it included quite a few I read, I figured why not grab a copy.

Culture Corner
Another reason I didn’t read too much this month is because we kept busy. We saw the “Realish Housewives of Boston,” a stage parody of the Real Housewives franchise reunion shows, early in the month (it feels like years ago). I got to see the venue where my new job will be hosting our gala later this year. (And by new job, I mean me [Photo, below right].)

I already mentioned we went to the Cape and as much as I wanted to sit and read, that wasn’t really an option as we were there for so short of a time, but we’re definitely already talking about going back. I also got a brand new big-@ss iPhone and I LOVE it.

I’m surprised at how fast I adapted from a 5c to a 6S+. It’s like it was made for me 😀 We also saw The Jungle Book in the theaters and it was a lot darker than I remember!

Tim and I spent time getting ready for our China trip, and by that I just mean that we went to experience Megacities: Asia at the MFA and attended the Japanese festival. Neither of these has really prepared me for the hugeness that will be Beijing and Shanghai, but they’ve at least made me understand better how large they truly are.

The exhibit was really cool and featured two pieces by Ai Weiwei, the bikes and the snake. The snake was really sad, but incredibly moving, you can read an NPR piece about it here. There’s another public art piece by Weiwei in Boston that I want to see at some point.

What’s Next?
I’m hoping to finally wrap up my L’Engle binge and then move on to something random. I do really need to edit my last podcast because I’m not three months behind. I don’t want to just quit because it’s something I enjoy doing, but with so much on my plate it and Bibliophilanthropy have suffered. Hopefully now that I’m in a new job I can start a schedule of things and stick to it.

Summer’s almost here what are you looking forward to reading and or doing?!