ShelfLove Update!

Welcome to April! This month I’m going to consolidate my April TBR list with my ShelfLove update, since they go together well

• Books bought this year so far: 59 (out of 250 max).
• March budget: £53/£60.
• Owned books read: 37/200 (13 books behind).
• Books read overall: 73/366 (18 books behind).

Uhoh. Clearly I need to get reading. That might be a little difficult this month, since I’m meant to be moving and running a bunch of experiments for my course. But you never know when I’m going to suddenly read everything in sight, so all’s not lost. Here’s the books I definitely must read this month, including the one from last month’s list I didn’t get round to.

• Bitterblue, Kristin Cashore. Owned for far too long, and in fact I was halfway through it at one point. Oops?
• Century Rain, Alastair Reynolds. I need to catch up to my sister in our Reynolds Reread.
• A Civil Contract, Georgette Heyer. A book I’ve had for quite a while, and apparently one of Heyer’s less conventional romances. Sounds good!
• Demon Road, Derek Landy. Received to review, along with the second book, so it’s high time I got to this one.
• Knight’s Shadow, Sebastien de Castell. I need to get to this finally, because I have the third book ready to read too.
• Passenger, Alexandra Bracken. Another I received to review, and about which I have seen intriguingly mixed reviews.
• Red Moon, Benjamin Percy. Random selection from the library pile which looks quite interesting.
• Tam Lin, Pamela Dean. Was on last month’s must read pile.
• Too Like The Lightning, Ada Palmer. Love her work as a singer, and this is due out in May, so it seems an ideal choice for the month’s must reads.
• Wolfsbane Winter, Jane Fletcher. Due back at the library, so it’s time I tackled this one.
• Wolves, Simon Ings. I’ve had this library book for, uh, months. Definitely oops.

Obviously, I hope to read more than these ten (plus the one from last month) books this month, but these are the ones I’m committing to. Wish me luck?

And now for the discussion theme for April via the ShelfLove challenge. Apparently, the second week of April is library week, which I think means I timed both my post deploring library closures and my library ban badly, but ah well. Right now I actually have three “local” library systems, and I’m a member of all three, of course. Between the three of them, that means a great selection, and a lot of books I can borrow at once. Up until I started trying to reduce the number of books I had out, I constantly had all three cards “maxed out”! The library staff have always been helpful and friendly, especially when it comes to renewing my books when circumstances mean I can’t make it to the actual library.

But the local library I really miss, which I only just left behind, is Caerphilly Library. They have a great selection, both upstairs in the main area and downstairs in the quick picks area, which includes all sorts of genres and suits all sorts of tastes. And bless every single librarian who let me take out more than the maximum allowance of books (12) pretty much every time, with nary a blink. I miss you guys!