Monthly Wrap Up: April 2023

April was a great month for content, not as great for my reading. I had such a great January-March period that I expected this (a bit!) and I’m really not disappointed. I may have read fewer pages and books, but I did read two amazing ones.

If you’d like to look at the TBR I set for myself, find it here.

Before I begin, here’s a table of contents to help you navigate easily.

1. Reading
2. DNF Books
3. Audiobooks
4. Blogging
5. Around the blogosphere

Reading

I read six books every month in the first quarter, but this time, I read five. Here’s what I read in April:

---

I finally got around to reading two books that I’ve had in my possession forever, INFINITY GATE by M. R. Carey, and OUR HIDEOUS PROGENY by C. E. McGill. The former really impressed me, and as someone who studied mathematics, I really enjoyed the way the author brought many concepts to life in a very simple way. The latter sang to me, it was a delightfully feminist, modern spin-off of Frankenstein that reworks the themes in the classic, and adds more commentary. I highly recommend this, and will review it soon.

COLD WEST by Clayton Snyder was an impulse buy. This book was published very recently, and is a well-written novella. Funny thing, I did not know it was grimdark, and as someone pointed out to me on Twitter, the author is great at maintaining a balance between ‘grim’ and ‘too much’ that worked for me very well. I was struggling through the first half of INFINITY GATE due to some long workdays, and this was a perfect read at that time.

My other chunky read for the month was THE BOOK THAT WOULDN’T BURN by Mark Lawrence, which I’m a bit on the fence about, solely due to prose and pacing. The prose wasn’t to my personal taste, so discount this. The pacing could’ve been better. No matter all that, because it was still a fascinating story, and was centered around a library, so I would expect it to work for a broad audience.

I read a non-fiction book, and I am as shocked, if not more, than you are. ONCE UPON A TOME: THE MISADVENTURES OF A RARE BOOKSELLER by Oliver Darkshire is a memoir that has an exaggerated recollection of his time working at a rare book store, and I found it very enjoyable.

DNF Books

I was looking through my Goodreads shelf looking for a shorter read to go with the chunks I was reading, and I came across THE DEVIL’S INTERN by Donna Hosie. Alas, it did not work for me. It features a teen who died of an accident and works at Hell, in the accounting department. I picked it up for the setting and was disappointed, because it felt more like a small modern kingdom, but with the devil himself.

I bought this book on the Narratess Indie sale I mentioned in last month’s wrap-up. It seemed short, and was highly praised by the few people who seemed to have read it, so what could go wrong? A lot, that’s what went wrong. It was full of clumsy, awkward sentences that made it very painful to read. I made it to 20% when there was a passage that described the passage of time with a metaphor that made me give it up. I don’t often say this, and I don’t say it lightly or disrespectfully, but this is a book that simply needs refinement on a sentence level.

Audiobooks

I mentioned I was struggling with audiobooks on social media, and asked the wonderful community for some pointers. One of the most prominent suggestions was to listen to something I am already familiar with, to train my brain to process audio. And what better than Quenby Olson’s MISS PERCY’S POCKET GUIDE TO THE CARE AND FEEDING OF BRITISH DRAGONS? I love this book, and I am pleased to admit that I am a few hours into the audiobook, and it’s not as hopeless a venture as I thought it would be.

Blogging

Here’s a round-up of all the reviews and blog posts I put up last month:

• Book Review: In The Shadow of Lightning by Brian McLellan
• Book Review: Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson
• Book Review: Cold West by Clayton Snyder
• Book Review: Juniper and Thorn by Ava Reid
• Book Review: The Housekeepers by Alex Hay
• Book Review: Infinity Gate by M. R. Carey

In addition to these reviews, I made my opinions on the necessity of star ratings in a review in this discussion post, and had the opportunity to Interview Maiya Ibrahim, author of Spice Road, here at the Fantasy Book Critic.

While it wasn’t the greatest month for reading, there was. a lot of blogging overhead since I was busy with setting up a couple of interviews with authors, and I expect to see answers soon, so stay tuned. Interviews are easy to format, but trying to come up with engaging questions is not easy, I have learned.

Some time ago, a lot of indie authors expressed an interest in hearing more about what the blogger-author relationship is, from a bloggers perspective, and what might be a suitable way to solicit reviews, and I made a detailed Twitter thread about it here. If you have anything to add, feel free to do so there, and authors, if you have any questions, please hold them, for I am working on translating this into a blog post that can hold more detail.

Around the blogosphere

• Reading is a very subjective experience, and not all books are going to be for everybody. Of course, not every member of the reading community might read an author’s work in good faith, and this has been addressed by BookRiot in this article titled “Writing for the Bad Faith Reader”
• Last month, a self-published author found themselves having to pay over 500$ (I forget the exact amount, but it was bigger than this for sure) because a bookstore ordered 50+ copies of their book through Ingram and returned it. They had no way of knowing the whys and whats of the situation, and had to cough up. They seem to be fine, but this is something anyone looking to self-publish should look into carefully, and here is an article that might help you understand how book returns with IngramSpark work
• We frequently see many people talking about how “parents should discuss the topics in the books with their children“, and Briana @ Pages Unbound has a detailed discussion around this here
• We all learned that Amazon is shutting down Book Depository, which has been handy for anyone living internationally, or those is different territories, gain access to printed copies of books in specific editions with affordable shipping. BookRiot has put together a list of affordable alternatives here
• SPFBO8 has a clear winner at the time I am writing this, and it is SMALL MIRACLES by Olivia Atwater. Head here for all the finalist scores on Mark Lawrence’s blog. This was a very exciting season, and I can’t wait to see what the next one brings.

---

How was your reading month? If there are any posts you loved, feel free to link them below!

---

View my monthly wrap-up for March 2023 here.

---

Not a WordPress user? No problem! Subscribe using your email here:

• Instagram
• Twitter
• Goodreads