What have you been reading this April?

[Audrey]

I enjoyed The Sword of Shannarra despite the LOTR vibes but have only read one more in the series.

[Faith]

My review of Infinity Gate by M.R. Carey

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[myla]

Reading Passage to Ararat. Next up will either be Armenian Tales or Like Water on Stone.

[Jim]

Get the classic novel Dracula delivered to your email inbox, as it happens.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel - it’s made up of letters, diaries, telegrams, newspaper clippings - and every part of it has a date. The whole story happens between May 3 and November 7. So: Dracula Daily will post a newsletter each day that something happens to the characters, in the same timeline that it happens to them. Sign up here:
https://draculadaily.substack.com/about

[Andrea]

Jim wrote: "Get the classic novel Dracula delivered to your email inbox, as it happens.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel - it’s made up of letters, diaries, telegrams, newspaper clippings - and ev..."

It's a bit like reading A Night in the Lonesome October except stretched out across several months

[Jim]

That's what I thought, Andrea. That's the best way to read Lonesome October. I wonder how well Dracula will go. It's been a long time - maybe 40 years - since I read it. Pretty dry, IIRC.

[Andrea]

My cousin had this DOS Dracula game and we kept dying, or getting turned into a vampire or getting locked in an asylum so we thought maybe reading the book would help. So we read it aloud to each other whenever we got together (we lived in different cities). Took us a few years but we did it...didn't help with the game though. We tried to read Frankenstein that way too but guess we were too old for that work as well and we gave up pretty quick. But because of that I have pretty fond memories of reading Dracula (I have since read it a second time, normally of course)

[Audrey]

Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of Dracula. The middle dragged.

[Tony]

I also found Dracula to be a somewhat boring read. I much prefer the other Stoker novels I have read - The Jewel of Seven Stars and The Lair of the White Worm.

[Barbara]

Ukulele of Death by E.J. Copperman

This is a fun cozy mystery whose two main protagonists, private detectives Fran and Ken Stein, were put together from parts.....like Frankenstein.

Entertaining book. 3.5 stars

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Andrea]

Finished Running with the Demon, pretty dark but not really darker than the other demon themed Shannara books.

Also finished the library book Le Cle the Braha, I'd gotten a free copy of the 11th book in this 12 book series and enjoyed it, kind of a Percy Jackson kind of thing but in French, so I've been borrowing the rest. Will have to wait till someone returns the third book before I can continue.

Up next is a little SF detour with Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini. I won this through Goodreads and hopefully the fact I didn't read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars won't be a problem while reading this prequel. To Sleep is about 800+ pages long so wasn't something I could just squeeze in :)

And from the library I grabbed the 5-book Spiderwick Chronicles, starting with The Field Guide. I saw the movie and have been wanting to read the series for a while now.

[Tony]

I have finished Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth. It has a wealth of Tolkien lore, it's just frustrating that these aren't complete stories. I quite enjoyed it, but it won't be for everyone - probably best avoided by those who struggled with The Silmarillion, although I found this easier to read.

I have started Dragonlance Classics - Vol 1.

[myla]

Finished Passage to Ararat and Armenian Tales. Reading A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking and very much enjoying it.

[Audrey]

Defensive Baking is a cute book.

[Michelle]

I finished number 6 in the Matthew Corbett series Freedom of the Mask, and it was again a five star read. The series is an historical fiction/thriller/adventure/mystery/horror hybrid.

Now I'm reading the much-anticipated, (at least from my perspective), Tsalmoth.

[Tony]

I have started reading The Boats of the Glen Carrig

[Pierre]

Ancillary Justice: DNF at 60% of the book. It is not for me. I could not get into it. I am starting Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds, since i enjoyed the three previous books in his Inhibitor Space series.

[Audrey]

I couldn't get into Ancillary Justice, either. You made it a lot farther than I did.

I finished "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character, which I really enjoyed.

[Andrea]

Finished Fractal Noise. I'm of two minds. The angsty characters got on my nerves a bit, the protagonist in particular was mired in the loss of his wife so I felt like I was rereading Forever, Interrupted (I got this book by mistake when I ordered some others, but since I wasn't charged, it was a freebie). But there were some intriguing bits, presumably that pay off in the first book of the series, To Sleep in the Sea of Stars. Anyway, I liked it enough to want to tackle the most than double the length TSitSoS, just need to find some time to squeeze that in :)

Back to sort-of-Shannara with A Knight of the Word by Terry Brooks

[Georgann]

I'm slowly making my way through A Half-Built Garden. I like the characters but it is slow going somewhere, I can't even tell where. I might take a break and read something else for a while.