All About Books discussion

Please list here those books you plan on reading in April.

I plan on reading:

Fiction:
The Good People by Hannah Kent 4 stars read
No Man's Land by Simon Tolkien 1 star read
Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers 3 stars read
Follow the River by James Alexander Thom 4 stars read
When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom 3stars read

Non-fiction:
Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw 4 stars read
Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming 1 star read
The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King (started but finished in May)
How the Mind Works Steven Pinker 1 star DNF
Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. 3 stars read
Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon by Larry Tye 4star read
Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie 4 stars read

With Sandy's help I am now going to try Librivox again, so I have added this:
McTeague by Frank Norris 1 star read

I don't like to plan my reading. Reading comes with day. My daily reading is mostly digital, though I start the day with reading two morning daily papers. Then I switch on my pc and start reading what the world offers. I am surrounded by printed books in my house, and I always choose what to read at random. When I switch on my iPad I often stare at the bookshelves and don't know where to start. I must confess that I do hyper reading, Close reading is what you do when you get engrossed in a book. Hyper reading is what you do when you’re websurfing. This is not always a good thing ... close reading is much better ... What do you think?

I have a few plans for April:

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Dreadful Lemon Sky by John D. MacDonald
Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

and possibly:
The Island of Sheep by John Buchan
Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann

Antonio wrote: "I don't like to plan my reading. Reading comes with day. My daily reading is mostly digital, though I start the day with reading two morning daily papers. Then I switch on my pc and start reading w..."

I love planning. I rarely stick to my plan but the planning fun all of itself.

Antonio, hyper reading keeps me abreast of current or certain events but I find I often don't remember very well what I've read here. I much prefer close reading.

At the moment, I'd be happy with any type of reading; I've been in a reading slump for a couple of months here. Combination of health, lack of library and a dash of pure laziness I think is the main reason.

Read-a-longs:
Sophia
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

TBR:
Creation in Death
The Sleeping Doll
Unraveled
Deeper Than Midnight
Kitty Goes to War
Shadowfever
Lord of Misrule
Magic Bleeds
Faithless
Kissing Sin
Magic in the Wind

New Releases:
How to Tame a Beast in Seven Days
Immortal Unchained
The Chosen
Snared

Catchup:
The Canterbury Tales

My month is looking like:

After You - finished
In the Woods - finished
The Taming of the Shrew - finished
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption - finished and loved.
Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself - finished (finally)
All the Missing Girls - next month
Brave New World - will finish

Antonio wrote: "I don't like to plan my reading. Reading comes with day. My daily reading is mostly digital, though I start the day with reading two morning daily papers. Then I switch on my pc and start reading w..."

I think you mean by "hyper reading", skimming right? I do not do books that way! I do skim read stuff on the net though to choose which articles I want to read more closely. Books are different; those I want to sink into. I read a lot because my husband and I are now retired. I pick the books I will be reading in the coming month by choosing which audiobooks to purchase. I have poor vision and that is why I do audiobooks. Only for this reason! What I do is mix different types of books: fiction and non-fiction, classics and contemporary, authors I know I love and others of which I know nothing. I read one book at a time. I read only what I WANT to read, what I feel for reading at the moment, and I read all the books I have purchased before getting any new ones. The danger of piling up books is that by the time you get to them you may have lost interest in them.

Leslie, I will be reading a book by Christie, Come, Tell Me How You Live, this month too! the thing is it is not a mystery, but a collection of vignettes she compiled about her archaelogical experiences with her 2nd husband Max Mallowan in Iraq and Syria during the 30s. I was looking at The Woman on the Orient Express, because it was offered as a Daily Deal at Audible, and found this biographical / travel book instead! You know I am not really into mysteries, but Christie can write, so I figured this would be fun. I think in this case the non-fiction version might please me more than the fictional one.

I DO like that one you will be reading by Kundera!

I'll be reading -

Ulysses currently listening
Villette 3 stars
The Great God Pan 3 stars
My Ántonia 3 stars
The Love of the Last Tycoon 2 stars
Poems and Fragments 2 stars
Doctor Faustus 3 stars
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Negroland: A Memoir 3 stars
The Underground Railroad
The Tidal Zone
The Lesser Bohemians 5 stars

my plan to read in April :
Slammed by Colleen Hoover
Jane Eyre
Girl in Pieces
All The Bright Places
It Ends With Us

I wish I could read all of them this month, but I have to focus on my study for exam :(

The Hate U Give
The Circle
The Girl in Cabin 10
Great Expectations

Pink wrote: "I'll be reading -

Ulysses currently listening
Villette
The Great God Pan
My Ántonia
The Love of the Last Tycoon
[book:Poems and..."

My Antonia is my all-time favorite by Cather. I wonder what you will think of Kundera's.

I'm having trouble finding a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I checked online and my library has 5 editions, 4 of which have been missing for years, the other one says it's currently at another location, so I'll have to see if I can get it first.

I'm going to start My Antonia very soon, everyone seems to have good things to say about this :)

Chrissie wrote: "I plan on reading:

Fiction:
The Good People by Hannah Kent
No Man's Land by Simon Tolkien
Reflections in a Golden Eye ..."
I'm on book 5 currently of the Cazalet Chronicles, Chrissie. Sometimes against my better judgement, I care about nearly all the characters.

Leslie wrote: "I have a few plans for April:

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Dreadful Lemon Sky by John D. MacDonald
Dragonfly in Amber..."

I thought Invisible Man was stunning, Leslie.

Non fiction plans

The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables
March 1917: On the Brink of War and Revolution
The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria
Please Enjoy Your Happiness
A Colony in a Nation and A Surgeon in the Village: An American Doctor Teaches Brain Surgery in Africa

Poetry
The Woods Are On Fire: New and Selected Poems

Essays
The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature's Great Connectors

Gill wrote: "I'm on book 5 currently of the Cazalet Chronicles, Chrissie. Sometimes against my better judgement, I care about nearly all the characters. ."

I definitely enjoyed the first in the Cazalet series, so even if I usually do not like long series, I thought I had to continue at least a bit more. I plan to continue book by book, unless I start getting bored! My thinking is that I will perhaps more appreciate the new biography Elizabeth Jane Howard: A Dangerous Innocence which came out in 2016, two years after her death. That is super encouraging to hear that the characters, all of them, are so well drawn.

Re Invisible Man

I reread this a year or two back. I did not like it as much as when I read it the first time around. When it was published in 1952, what it had to say about racial bigotry was spanking new, but now today there are so very many books that focus on the racial divide. For ME, it felt dated on the reread; it didn't move me at all as much as the first time I read it.

Pink wrote: "I'm having trouble finding a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I checked online and my library has 5 editions, 4 of which have been missing for years, the other one says it's currently at ..."

Pink, I do hope you can get it!

In April, I need to clear out the books I have checked out or on hold from the library:
Allegedly by Tiffany Jackson
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest by Beth Macy
A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates
Song of Susannah by Stephen King

In addition, I've got at least two group reads I'd like to do:
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story by John Barendt

I'll keep reading aloud to the kiddos at night:
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

And in between other books, I'll keep working through:
Christianity and the Social Crisis of the 21st Century: The Classic That Woke Up the Church by Walter Rauschenbusch (with modern-day response essays by others)
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I suspect some of these books will still be on the list next month, although I did finish Allegedly last night/this morning.

This month I would like to read:

The Neverending Story and a book I bought one week ago but hadn't time to add the book info here on GR. It's a non-fiction with interviews to refugees where they talk about the trip they had to afford in order to escape wars and to have a better life.

And of course I hope to finish reading The Perennial Philosophy that I started in March.

I've just placed a library hold on: Embers and The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe.

Love Embers, Alice. Pretty sure you will too.

Alice wrote: "I've just placed a library hold on: Embers and The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe."

As Diane, I'm sure you will like Embers. It was a 5* book for me.

The Good Man of Nanking is in my wishlist. I've seen the movie about John Rabe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ra...
It was a tough movie from an emotional point of view!

Diane and Alice, I have Embers on my tbr and am looking forward to reading it.

I am reading 20000 Leagues Under the Sea and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (May group read for another GR group). Planning to finish The Poisonwood Bible and then start The Circle, before the movie comes out in a few weeks. I'd also like to squeeze in Moonshadows by Julie Whitesel Weston - a GR giveaways win. My last day of work is April 18th (end of tax season!) so my life frees up soon. Can't wait!

I like to read whatever catches my eye with very little planning! However, the various challenges I love are conspiring to force me to change my very nature. I actually read a Harlequin Romance earlier this month! So for April I need to finish A Red Herring Without Mustard, The Cold Dish, The Angel's Game and I need to find a book the the word 'some' in the title with a author's last name the behind with A. Don't even ask why!