April wrap-up

[Rachel]

Discuss the book or books that you read this month, if you liked them and if you'd recommend them!

[Jamie]

I read Sappho's Bar and Grill by Bonnie J. Morris.



Lonely women's history professor Hannah Stern walks into her local lesbian bar one winter night, seeking love advice from her old friend and bartender, Isabel. "Women's history will be my date this year!" Hannah raises her glass in sarcastic tribute, resigned to life as a scholar, but her remark sets in motion a wild, sexy-smart romp through time. Much to her astonishment, Hannah soon finds herself meeting up with the actual figures and foremothers she assigns her college students to learn about. She's caught in a time-travel vortex: one that seemingly emanates from Sappho's Bar and Grill.

This was a very interesting book, in a good way. It was unique and beautifully written and richly weaving together important ideas and women throughout history. I think the end lost me a bit to be honest but overall, well done.

[Eve]

Jamie wrote: "I read Sappho's Bar and Grill by Bonnie J. Morris.



Lonely women's history professor Hannah Stern walks into her local l..."

This sounds amazing!! Added it to my list :)

[Rachel]

Jamie wrote: "I read Sappho's Bar and Grill by Bonnie J. Morris.



Lonely women's history professor Hannah Stern walks into her local l..."

i never heard of this?! sounds great!

[Cathryn]

Sappho's Bar and Grill sounds great! I added to my tbr.

I read 11/22/63 this month. I was going to try and read Kindred as well, but I think I need a break from time travel.

I enjoyed 11/22/63, but imo it was a little too long. The middle section dragged a lot and I had a tough time getting through that part. This really lessened my enjoyment of the whole book because even though I liked the ending, I was kinda over it by the end and I just wanted to be finished.

[E]

I have been pretty awful about the challenge this year. I've signed up for too many! :-( I need to figure out how I can kill several birds with one book. :-P

Someone mentioned this in a book post and it ends Wednesday, so I thought I'd slap it here.

If there is a free book thread in this group, please let me know!

https://www.amazon.com/article/read-t...

For World Book Day (April 23rd), Amazon is offering 9 books that have been translated into English from around the world. Countries: MX, NL, ES, DE, IL, SE, JP, AR, NO

I think this ends at midnight (PST?) Wednesday, April 24th, and I believe it is available worldwide (would suck if it's not). Unfortunately, none of these are fantasy or science fiction - there needs to be MORE translations of those!

The Murmur of Bees (Literary Fiction - Mexico)
An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew (Biography - Netherlands)
All This I Will Give to You (Mystery - Spain)
The Hangman's Daughter ((Mystery - Germany)
About the Night (Historical Fiction - Israel)
The Dark Heart: A True Story of Greed, Murder, and an Unlikely Investigator (True Crime - Sweden)
Go ("Book Club" Fiction - Japan)
The Passion According to Carmela (Historical Fiction - Argentina)
This Life or the Next (Literary Fiction - Norway)

[E]

And as a followup to my post, I'm getting reports that some different books are available for different countries. And it looks like Amazon is doing home languages for each of their websites (i.e. amazon.de has books in German).

So if you're going EH about the books I posted (they are the US selections), just check around. Could be helpful if you don't have something picked out for the Luxembourg challenge.

[Irene.]

omg, E, thank you for the Read the World link. I'm 100% a judge a book by it's cover brat and a lot of those jump out at me so I'm gonna take a peek at the plots and grab some for later.

Also, Sappho's Bar & Grill sounds neat, might add it to my TBR too.

[Dainey]

For this month, I read The Psychology of Time Travel and really enjoyed it. Nicely diverse cast of awesome women, and the book really does what it says on the tin; explores not the world-changing consequences of time travel but actually focuses on what it can do to a person.

The murder mystery is just a bonus, and what I feel is the weakness of the book. The author didn't quite find that balance between letting the reader try to work it out and twisting the plot.

[Sasha]

Darn, I missed the timing on that link.

I'm also adding Sappho's Bar and Grill to my tbr list.

This month, I read Slaughterhouse-Five, which I enjoyed. I haven't read Vonnegut before and I knew the book had time travel, but didn't quite know what I was getting myself into. I loved the repetition and some of the dark humor. There were times where it was absurd, almost in a Douglas Adams type way, which I enjoyed as well. But, there were times where it was horrible (not the writing, but what was going on) and uncomfortable, and even though this story deals with a man time traveling, he's still at war.

Something else that added to my reading experience was that I went to Berlin, for the first time this month. We did a walking tour and learned a bit about what had happened in the past century and were able to see, first hand, how some of the buildings were impacted.

[Julie]

I read Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier for this month. Definitely YA, had some chances to include more history or fantasy than it did. Ended abruptly and has a sequel that I assume I will read out of obligation. Fairly predictable elements but I didn't hate it.

[Tejal]

I read The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and I liked it enough. I didn't love it but it was gripping enough to keep me reading until the end (despite the slow start) and I appreciated that it was a nice twist on the time travel/murder mystery genre.

[Kat]

I read Here and Now and Then, which has a slow start but a pretty good ending.

[Hannah]

I read Here and Now and Then. I don't read a lot of time-travel related stuff so I wasn't sure what to expect. It was a decent book but a lot less thrilling than I expected.

[Sara]

I read Kindred, it was not bad I guess I was expecting a little more.

[Undine]

I read The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book and liked them well enough, so I’ll finish the rest of the books eventually. I’ve been putting the series off because I was worried it’d be twee or up its own butt, but they weren’t that bad!

[Rachel]

I finally finished The Anubis Gates.

I really liked it. It was far from perfect, but overall very enjoyable for me! I bumped up my rating to 5 stars but it was a 4.5.

[Eve]

I finally finished my second book!

My first book was Hazards of Time Travel, which frankly was trash. I think I was a bit too generous giving it 2.5 stars in my review. It had such potential but it was quickly squandered. I've heard great things about Joyce Carol Oates but since this is a new book of hers, maybe I need to go back a bit to get to her good stuff.

My second book was Doomsday Book, which took me forever to read but I finally finished it! It was a bit tedious because it felt much longer than it needed to be, but I got attached to the characters and I think it was well-written, just needed some strong editing. It did NOT need to be almost 600 pages.

[Kristen]

I finally finished Outlander!!! I can't believe that fucking book took me almost two months to read. My poor reading challenge needs to be recovered fast.

I will say the second half was better than the first, but I just need to accept this series is just not for me. Over 800 pages of that book what was I thinking??

[Nicole]

Super duper late to this challenge but I finally finished The Night Mark. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, even if it was not perfect. I think I would recommend it. It's tough at the beginning (the character is seriously depressed) but it's romantic af and you end up feeling satisfied.