Overview: April Reading

Reading Overview & Genre Breakdown

Another slow reading month *sigh*. Maybe it's time to face up to the fact that this is the new normal, and adjust my expectations accordingly.

Books read in April: 13
Books read YTD: 62

Fiction Titles: 12

• 12 Romance (5 historical romance, 6 contemporary romance, 1 historical paranormal)

Non-Fiction Titles: 1

• 1 Scientific Journalism/Personal History

Poetry Titles: 1

Noteworthy Novels

• Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas
• Goodbye Paradise by Sarina Bowen
• The Undateable by Sarah Title

Noteworthy Non-Fiction

• N/A - Once again, I only read one non-fiction book this month, and I'll be damned if  I let it win by default, because it was self-aggrandizing and tone-deaf Kindle Single about Henrietta Lacks, written by the journalist who originally broke the story. I only bought it because I can't afford The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks at the moment, but I wish I hadn't. 

Noteworthy Settings

• Mumbai & Fatehpur - Girl from Fatehpur by Sarita Varma
• France in the reign of Louis XIV - The Princess and the Diamonds by Lila DiPasqua
• Hell (yes, you read that right) - Happily Ever Afterlives by Olivia Waite

Kick-ass Characters

• Bernie from The Undateable by Sarah Title - A great unlikeable heroine
• Nate & Robyn from Perv by Dakota Gray - They're the dirty, fucked up couple you didn't know you needed in your life. Nate's your classic playboy with a fresh twist, but Robyn's not buying his practiced routine.
• Gabriel from Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas - Come on, he's Evie and Sebastian's son. It was genetically impossible for him not to be kick-ass, but he endeared himself to me in the way he dealt with Pandora's worries about losing her legal personhood.

From the Internet this Month

• Viet Thanh Nguyen Reveals How Writer's Workshops Can Be Hostile by Viet Thanh Nguyen at The New York Times - On Writer's Workshops as a construct that normalises and institutionalises Westernness, whiteness and masculinity
• Mapping the Fairy-tale Heroine's Journey by Theodora Goss
• Not Your Belly, Not Your Business: On Serena Williams, Reproduction and Athleticism by Jenn Jackson at Bitch Media
• How the Covers of Your Favourite Romance Novels Get Made by Eliza Thompson at Comsopolitan
• The Female Gaze through 70 Years of Magnum by Giles Tremlett at the Guardian
• Tradition and Superstition: The Jinn in the Family Closet by Karuna Riazi at Tor.com

Overview: March Reading

The blog's been pretty quiet this last month, because I've been drowning in uni work. I've come up now for a quick breath of air, but I suspect I'll be pulled back down in a week or two. Apologies in advance for that.

My uni commitments also meant this wasn't a very prolific reading month for me. Reading in English also seems to interfere with my ability to slip back into German when I step out my front door or put away my book at the end of a bus trip. Nonetheless, here is my reading for the month, in all its underwhelming glory:

Reading Overview & Genre Breakdown

Books read in March: 14
Books read YTD: 49

Fiction Titles: 13

• 13 Romance (4 historical romance, 7 contemporary romance, 1 fantasy & 1 mixed anthology)

Non-Fiction Titles: 1

• 1 Social History/Theology

Since I started this feature in January, I've been playing around with what I want it to look like. The previous months have focused heavily on setting, but I'm not sure that interests anyone as much as it interests me, so I've come up with something new and different this month that I think has better long-term potential (and is less time-consuming so maybe I'll actually get these posts up on time, even if I am busy). Also, if you have any opinions about what you would like to see in these posts, feel free to give me a shout.

Noteworthy Novels

• An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole
• Peter Darling by Austin Chant

Noteworthy Non-Fiction

• N/A  - I only read one NF book all month, although I suppose that means that Geering and God 1965 - 1971: The Heresy Trial that divided New Zealand wins by default!

Noteworthy Settings

• Neverland - Peter Darling by Austin Chant
• Antarctica - Heating it Up by Elizabeth Harmon
• Civil War-era American South - An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole
• 1890s Boston - Against the Tide by Elizabeth Camden (review here)
• Sydney, Australia - Spiritbound by Dani Kristoff

Kick-ass Characters

• Elle from An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole - Elle is a free woman with an eidetic memory, who goes undercover as a slave to pass information to the Union during the Civil War
• James Hook from Peter Darling by Austin Chant - not all anti-heroes wear capes, but James probably would if you gave him the chance

From the Internet this Month

• The Trauma of Facing Deportation by Rachel Aviv for the New Yorker - In January I reviewed A Time to Dance, A Time to Die by John Waller, in which Waller contends that the 1518 Dancing Plague of Strasbourg was a case of the subconscious mind physically manifesting psychological distress in cultural determined ways. In this long-form journalism piece that is both heartbreaking and enlightening, Aviv explores something potentially: children - largely from Roma and Uyghur families from the ex-Soviet and Yugoslav states - who fall into a coma-like state after their families are denied permanent asylum in Sweden, despite having nothing medically wrong with them.
• Danielle Steel Loves the Weather and Elmore Leonard Hates Exclamation Points: Literature by the Numbers by Ben Blatt at Publisher's Weekly - Particularly interesting to me is the way this data tells a story about the genre fiction/literary fiction divide
• The Diversity Gap in Children's Book Publishing, 2017 by Hannah Ehrlich at Lee & Low Books
• Why My "Read Across America Day" Was Different by Katie at Blavity - on Dr Seuss' racism
• How Not to Suppress Women's Criticism: On Neil Gaiman, Shirley Jackson, and the importance of not erasing women's writing by Carmen Maria Machado at Electric Lit
• Diversity, the Stella Count and the whiteness of Australian publishing by Natalie Kon-yu at the Conversation
• How Romance Novels 'Imagine a World in Which Women Can Win' by Eleanor J. Bader at Rewire

Overview: February Reading

This month was a bit of a slower reading month than January, mostly because of a big personal change that happened in my life: I moved to Germany to study!

Reading Overview & Genre Breakdown

Books read in February: 15
Books read YTD: 35

Fiction Titles: 12

• 11 Romance (2 historicals, 8 contemporaries, 1 historical fantasy)
• 1 General Fiction

Non-Fiction Titles: 3

• 2 History
• 1 Sociology/Social History

I am currently reading Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, but I don't anticipate will be finished by the end of the day, so this will appear in March's stats. 

Setting Statistics

USA: 5

• Stealing Mr Right by Tamara Morgan - read my review here.
• Driven to Distraction by Olivia Dade
• Along Came Love by Tracey Livesay
• The Melody of You and Me by M. Hollis
• Hard Knocks by Ruby Lang - review possibly to follow (partially set in Canada, but primarily set in Portland)

UK: 4

• Wanted, A Gentleman by K J Charles - I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it, but I don't think I'll get around to reviewing it. 
• Sweetest Regret by Meredith Duran
• Pretty Face by Lucy Parker - This was - predictably - brilliant. Again, I don't plan to review it, but it has snarky humour and all the feels, and you should definitely read it. 
• Graveyard Sparrow by Kayla Bashe

Australia: 1

• Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms by Anita Heiss - this was my General Fiction read. Engaging and eye-opening story about a Japanese escapee from a POW camp in Cowra and the Wiradjuri family who shelter him. Romantic elements, but non-HEA warning!

Nigeria: 1

• A Tailor-Made Romance by Oyindamola Affinnih - Cute romance where the conflict comes from the heroine's perception of a class difference between her and the hero. Had some trouble with her self-absorption, even though it makes sense in the context of the story.

Philippines: 1

• Tempting Hymn by Jennifer Hallock - see my review here. 

Non-Fiction with a Setting: 3

• The Divorce Colony by April White (US)
• New Myths and Old Politics: The Waitangi Tribunal and the Challenge of Tradition by Tipene O'Regan (NZ)
• The Cathars by Sean Martin (Europe, primarily France)

Non-Fiction without a Setting: 0

As you can see, I'm still mucking around with the format for these monthly overviews. I liked the idea of highlighting books I read that took place outside the dominant settings of the US and UK, but I also don't want to focus on that at the exclusion of marginalised and/or ownvoices authors, and characters that are something other than the white, cishet able-bodied default. So we'll see what I end up feeling comfortable with; it may be that it continues to differ from month to month. 

Overview: January Reading

This year, I thought it might be fun and enlightening to crunch some numbers at the end of each month. It'll give me - and you - and overview of what I've been reading, and help keep me on track with the resolutions I made at the end of last year: to be better at reviewing diverse fiction I enjoy, and to read and review more Australian and New Zealand literature.

Reading Overview & Genre Breakdown

Books read: 20

Fiction Titles: 17

• 15 romance (5 historicals, 10 contemporaries)
• 1 Literary Fiction
• 1 Short Story Collection

Non-fiction Titles: 3

• 2 Gender Studies/Feminist Theory
• 1 History

Setting Statistics

USA: 9

Canada: 1 

• His Heart's Revenge by Jenny Holiday

Australia: 1 

• In At the Deep End by Penelope Janu - review to follow

New Zealand: 2 

• The Pretty Delicious Cafe by Danielle Hawkins 
• Hide Your Heart by Tracey Alvarez

Philippines: 1 

• Iris After the Incident by Mina V. Esguerra

Spain: 1 

• A Dream Defiant by Susannah Fraser - review to follow; characters are British

Fictional setting: 2

Non-Fiction with a setting: 1 (New Zealand History)

Non-Fiction without a setting: 2 (both Gender Studies/Feminist Theory)

I'm interested in the statistics about setting because calssifying my reviews my setting a few months ago really drove home how much of the literature I read is set in the US. 

I just did a quick tally, and of the 234 books I read last year, about 106 were fiction with a US setting (and that's excluding books only partially set in the US, or set in an alternate universe US). I thought that the UK wouldn't be far behind, given how many historical romances I read, but it's pulling a distant second with roughly 33 books. Even though I I've spoken about my disillusion with my Beyond a Single Story Challenge, I still think it's important to be aware of US (and British, and English-language) cultural hegemony in literature, and the effects that it can have.

At this point, I'm not aiming to read less books set in the US this year. I just want to keep an eye on the statistics, rather than being hit with a fait accompli in December. As you can see, 9 out of 17 fiction books I read this month were set in the US; that's 53%. I've also listed the books with real-world non-US settings in case people are interested, and made notes of which ones I intend to review. Hopefully that make me feel accountable and those reviews will get past the draft stage!