April 2024 Reading Recap

Well, I’m really glad I didn’t put blogging on my goals list for the year because I would be WOEFULLY behind on that goal. But here I am, reflecting on my month of reading for the FOURTH time this year.

First ,let’s checkin on my “book” goals for the year now that we’re in Q2!

No Book Buying During The 1st 3 Months of the Year: Those 3 months are over! But I still need to be really really careful on my book buying because I am also addicted to the library.

Finishing Books I’ve Owned Forever–I’ve read 2 of the 5 books on the list I made for myself—I’m the Girl and Reign, the final American Royals book. Maybe I’ll try to get through A Thousand Heartbeats next. It’s long, but I do Kiera Cass. Will I finish this by the end of June? Probably not. By the end of July? maybe.

Library Limits: I gave myself a limit of 60 books out from the library at the time, which seems ridiculous, but I’ve consistently hovered around 30 for the past few months so maybe the joke was on me. Part of the success here is that I haven’t done any little “projects” where I evaluate a spate of books in one category or theme, so that has helped.

YMA Winners: I’ve officially done this and read every 2024 Caldecott, Newbery and Geisel winner and honor book!

Flannery O’Connor: Nope. Haven’t touched her. Real over her, haven’t thought about her in weeks. Whoops.

PD Book: I screwed this one up royally. The book I chose for March was DENSE and very European and scholarly and I didn’t finish it til uh…today, May 12th. Whoops. I’ll try to do one more lighter one in May and then do 2 in June to make up for it? I figure if I get to 12 by the end of December that basically counts as being successful, right?

Now, let’s get into the nitty gritty of my reading in April 2024. I had a crappy reading month in March, and I set a goal for myself to read 100 books in April. I got really really close! I was 84 books–including finishing an audiobook I’d been listening to for like a month and a half.

This breakdown included:

• 16 Heidi Heckelbeck books (I know..I know.)
• 1 DNF’d YA novel in verse
• 1 YA novel I’d had for tooo long: Imogen, Obviously
• 1 BOTM novel I’d had for too long: The Fury
• The New AJ Finn book which I DNF’d after 50 pages.
• A really good middle Grade novel: Eli Over Easy
• 2 Who HQ audiobooks
• And a HECK TON of picture books and other fun 2024 things 🙂

Should I be spending precious reading time reading Heidi Heckelbeck books? No. But I’m so close to having read them all that I might as well. We had our 1st Capitol Choices discussion in April, and I had to join the 10-14 group because of Caldecott, so I am enjoying some more middle grade readers, but my holds didn’t come in on most of them nominated so far until early May, so expect to see those on the next recap.

For May 2024, I’m hoping to continue my picture book fiestas, catch up on some Capitol Choices middle grade novels, and read 3-4 adult prose novels, plus one of my “5 books I’ve owned for too long” books. I need to get back into my audiobook game as well, especially if I want to do a special little challenge this summer and am going to be taking a lot of walks.