Six Books in April

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]I think this video is proof that BookTube warps your sense of what normal reading is.

[00:00:10]Hello and welcome back to back to Bookish and welcome to my wrap-up of what I read in April.

[00:00:15]In an April I only read six books which you know at one time in my life I would have thought six books was was quite a few books to read.

[00:00:26]But at this point you know in BookTube I I usually read a few more books than that every month. Part of the reason why April was a slower reading month for me was because I got to keep my granddaughter for nine days and she's two and that means that during the day there's very little time for reading and at night I was too exhausted to do anything really but veg out in front of the TV for an hour before falling asleep. So shout out to you know all the moms and dads in the world of young kids.

[00:00:57]You know it was a it was a real reminder of how much work effort energy that all takes but also a reminder of all the joy that comes from that.

[00:01:09]So April was People April month and I read four books for People April. I was one of the co-hosts of People Hate April along with Hannah from Hannah's Books and you know our organizer and fearless leader Ross from Scallywag about the books. And I read four books one to go with each of the prompts and then the group read. So I'll talk about those really quickly even though I don't think there's a whole lot to say about any of them. As a matter of fact I don't have a lot to say about any of these books that I haven't probably already said. So one of the books I read was Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L.

[00:01:42]Trump and it is its title says it's about you know Donald Trump and his obsession with you know getting more and an insight into who he is. And there is some of that. I mean certainly Donald Trump is portrayed by his niece in a negative light Um and there is a discussion of what he was like as a young man and how he treated her and her family in the book, but it's really not a lot of insight into I think kind of why he behaves necessarily the way he does today.

[00:02:15]Really what the book is is a discussion about how Mary Trump's father, who I I think his name was Robert, essentially died young as an alcoholic because his family treated him badly. His father Trump's father Fred treated Robert badly because he wasn't particularly interested in business in the same way that Fred was and essentially they wrote the whole family out of the will and they, you know, comparatively to everybody else they got really very little money and her dad died in in really awful circumstances and certainly I don't think there's any doubt that the Trumps are not a warm and welcoming family and that Donald Trump figured that he could move into what would have been his older brother's place by ingratiating himself more to his dad and behaving more like his dad and and in a sense that worked out. It does kind of give you some real insight into exactly how many hundreds of millions of dollars Trump managed to get from his family over the course of his life and bailing out of bankruptcies and all kinds of bad situations like that and that his father Fred essentially overlooked all these shortcomings on his part and kept trying to help him out. You know, it was an interesting read if you want to read about kind of where Donald Trump came from and what Donald Trump's family dynamic was like growing up and then as a a younger man in the business world.

[00:03:44]The second book I read for people April was I know why the caged bird sings and this I listened to this as an audio book as a matter of fact I think of the books here, yeah, three of the books here I listened to as as audiobooks. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first in a series of memoirs by the American author and poet Maya Angelou. And this one talks essentially about her childhood growing up primarily in the home of her grandmother in Arkansas, but brief interludes in which she lived with her mother and had dealings with her father when their lives and a really frenetic, oftentimes unfortunate childhood where her grandmother was the the only real source of stability, and yet it was in that place when it was to that place that she went after she was essayed by a friend, a a boyfriend of her mother. And so that story is told here in in I think it just really painful reveals about what a child goes through and what a child goes through mentally when they've been the victim of been an essay victim and how that works out and how they blame themselves and how they thought they were the ones at fault and how they thought they were the ones being punished and how oftentimes society might treat them that way however unfairly that was. And you know, one of the great things about listening this audiobook is that Maya Angelou read it herself. She's a brilliant speaker with a with a wonderful rich voice and so that added to it.

[00:05:25]Other things about it that I liked is it it it was set, you know, in the South in Arkansas. You know, I grew up in East Texas, but there are elements of you know, the society, the world there that that I still recognize having grown up in a not dissimilar place in the 1970s in East Texas. There are places there that that I recognize and there is a brilliant chapter um about the Joe Louis championship fight against Max Schmeling that really I think you could take that out and it would be one of the great, you know, short chapter short story stories uh that you could possibly read about how important uh Joe Louis and his victory was to uh the black community across the United States of America. It is just incredibly great writing uh and I really enjoyed uh that and I enjoyed uh enjoyed might be the wrong word. For the other elements of why the caged bird sings. This book used to be one of those books that was frequently banned uh from school libraries in the United States and I think that is unconscionable uh as all book bannings uh really are because um this book is is the kind of book I think that uh young people um should be able to have access to uh if the need arise if the interest arise. The third book I read for people April was One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty.

[00:06:47]Uh and this is a really slim book from the short story writer American author uh Pulitzer Prize winning American author from Mississippi named Eudora Welty who wrote stories like The Wide Path and Why I Live at the A&P and and so many others as well as some novels that they gained some attention none of which I've ever been able to to sit down really and read though I have uh two of them um but this was really you know, you think One Writer's Beginning is going to be kind of about you know, how she came to be a writer and it is but not in the way you might think. It really is about her experiences as a young person and the things she saw and the things she did and the way she was treated and the way she grew up and how those things influenced her ability to be a writer how they influenced her powers of uh of observation how they influenced her power her appreciation for the use of language. And it really is just a a lovely book about a a person's experience uh in their formative years and how that influenced, you know, to a certain extent their ability to uh write the way that Eudora Welty did. Which, you know, is not always to my taste, but when Eudora Welty's stories are on, they're they're they're nearly perfect, I think.

[00:07:59]And the group read for people April was The Bluestockings uh by Susannah Gibson.

[00:08:03]The full title is Bluestockings: A History of the First Women's Movement by Susannah Gibson.

[00:08:09]Uh and this was a group read. We had a We had a discussion on um on uh what is that?

[00:08:16]Discord. There's a Discord server server discussion which was lively and great and really interesting and I enjoyed that. I enjoyed talking to everyone over there and sharing a few of my thoughts about the book. Uh the book really centers, and this is a book I'll talk a little bit more about. The book is really good. And if you've read uh Jane Austen's Bookshelf by the author Rebecca Romney, which came out last year, in which I think was my top nonfiction book of the year uh last year. This book is a really great companion piece which gives you some insight into the world in which women lived uh a little bit more and a little bit more depth and a little bit wider variety uh than Romney does, even though I think the Romney book is still uh better. But this book centers primarily on two women. And the kind of I'm going to call them salons uh that they uh had in their homes. These were two wealthy women, one named Elizabeth Montagu, uh and the other named uh Hester Thrale. Uh they were wealthy women who were interested in the writing and in the arts and those kind of things. Both of them were friends with Dr. Johnson of, you know, famous dictionary uh fame and all those kind of things.

[00:09:25]They knew a lot of the literary, cultural, elite, artistic elite uh in England at the time.

[00:09:32]Um and they kind of fostered and created these communities in which women could be creative, express their creativity, write, take an interest in uh politics, and literature, and art, and all those kinds of things. And as such, they became known as this group of women, which is initially not a pejorative. They became known as uh the Bluestockings.

[00:09:53]Uh these women with this interest in the life of the mind. And this is at a time in which women were not expected to be capable of thinking deep thoughts or writing serious things.

[00:10:05]And so, you know, it it's really it really gives you a lot of insight into that. To give you some ideas, this would be the uh the world of England in the 1700s.

[00:10:15]Let's say the mid-to-late 1700s. So, uh you know, before the Victorian period, a little before Jane Austen, uh and and really really great stuff about how women came to be writers, about what was necessary. If you've read Virginia Woolf's uh uh A Room of One's Own, you kind of it it kind of feels like these women were were living the situation in which uh Woolf you know, describes as being necessary for women to be able to be creative, to have the same time, space, uh privacy, if you will, to be able to create. Some of these women were able to create that through either their tremendous wealth, which primarily came through uh marriage, or because they married men who were perfectly accepting of them leading a life of the mind, and of writing, and all those kinds of things. They faced tremendous pressure and sexism and, you know, from outside their families and from within inside their families. Um some of them married happily, some of them married unhappily. Um probably the the most horrific story is the story of incredibly wealthy and creative woman named Hester Thrale, who I think she had experienced something like 18 pregnancies in something like I mean, I might be exaggerating. It seems like 18 pregnancies in like 20 years uh and just uh her life kind of proves how tenuous the life of a child was and how difficult pregnancy was that she survived all these things is somewhat amazing.

[00:11:47]She was devoted to her family and her kids and despite her husband's dalliances, she still seemed to have some affection for him particularly when he died. He left her a rich woman which she then used to do the things she wanted to do and she remarried and became a kind of a social pariah and an outcast for remarrying somebody who people thought was below her social rank. One of the things I think is great about Bluestockings is it doesn't hide the class divides that exist here. So, you know, even the Bluestocking women, these women who you know Susanna Gibson credits as the first women's movement, there was no solidarity among women across class lines. You know, wealthy women might help poor women, but they still looked down on them as being less. These women who were open-minded and you know, wanted to lead this life of the mind were nonetheless you know, enforcing these kind of rigid ideas about propriety and what should and shouldn't be done and they didn't necessarily stick up for one another when society turned against one of them for various reasons. This is a really good book, a really good book with a lot of insight. I would put it in that list of books like like you know, Jane Austen's bookshelf and Square Haunting which I believe is written by Virginia Woolf. It is kind of this great group biography which gives you insight into a social moment, a social movement, a time and place in the world. I thought it was really rewarding and really well worth reading. The other two books I listened to were works of fiction. One was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I've been informed I I I listened to it it was not an audiobook. I listened to the 1834 edition, which has been was revised by Mary Shelley, you know, when she was, you know, at least 16 years older than she was when the 1818 edition came out and that it is somewhat different. I might I do have some interest in reading the 1818 edition, but I have a review of that. I'll leave a link to it at the end of this video if you haven't seen it.

[00:13:46]And then that really just leaves me with one book and that's moderation by Elaine Castillo. This is a book that was nominated for the Women's Prize and kind of almost accidentally without a tremendous amount of intention I find that I've read quite a few books on the Women's Prize long list and I've already read four of the six books on the Women's Prize Women's Prize short list and I just found out that my library has a copy of Flashlight, which is available, which I'll probably go check out today and I just finished I think the fourth book that's on the on the short list, which is Kingfisher, which I'll probably review either standalone or maybe I'll do a review of the books on the short list that I've read. I think, you know, when I finish reading Flashlight, I'll just have one left. But I did read Moderation this month. Again, I listened to it as an audiobook. You know, that I at least every two weeks I travel to go visit and spend time with my mother and so I'm always looking for an audiobook to listen to.

[00:14:48]Moderation was available to me through one of the online book apps through my library and so I listened to it. So, Moderation essentially involves a young woman of Vietnamese descent who is involved in initially involved in content moderation for online websites and she's really good at it. And she's particularly good at, you know, CSAM moderation and we're going to find out, you know, why that is at some point. And so the book opens up in incredibly kind of harrowing descriptions of some of the things that are taking place. And you get this appreciation for Gurley's ability to identify correctly what is in fact violates the content rules of whatever website or company she's working for and what does not. And then we begin to get insights into Gurley and her family and we learn that her family has taken on tremendous amount of debt because they invested in um real estate in and around Las Vegas before that collapse that she left behind a home that she really liked and a father who died in circumstances that that relate a lot to her situation. I think the fact that her name is Gurley is really important. And then she goes to work for a virtual reality company where she meets a man named William to whom she feels an almost immediate attraction and there is this kind of difficult relationship. Um I will say that I I didn't think the novel was particularly good. I thought the first part was much better than the rest. That once we get to where she's working for this virtual virtual reality company that things just aren't as good. That it isn't as interesting. And as I I frequently do with books like this, I did keep notes which I had to like write down after I got to the end of my drive every time so I could write them down.

[00:16:47]But I do have some notes here and I'm just going to read through them so you get some impression of how I felt about the book as it was going on.

[00:16:54]So, this might These are my notes for moderation. Gurley works as an online content moderator specializing in CSAM and she'd been doing this for 10 years when the book starts. She's really good at it. She seems not to have been affected by anything she sees. One of the things he talks about is the attrition rate for people in that job.

[00:17:08]They just break down and can't do it anymore.

[00:17:11]William, the CEO or something of a company, hires her work as a moderator and they're are to one another. And then the next note I have is bored.

[00:17:20]And I write I want more about Girly's family and less about the virtual reality company she works for. There's something unnerving about reading descriptions of a digital virtual reality scene in a book.

[00:17:30]There's too much exposition.

[00:17:32]At one point we actually get a character delivering an entire speech at corporate event. The main character is bored listening to it and you know so are we.

[00:17:41]I'm not even sure that was really necessary. Girly's been the victim Girly's been a victim as a child she's oppressed this is why she's good at CC moderation. And this book ends up being as much of a romance as it might have been a science fiction or a mystery.

[00:17:59]Found the resolution of Girly's PTSD to be not covered in enough detail and have a far too simple solution. I won't read the rest of that because there's spoilers there.

[00:18:10]And then the virtual reality company only really exists to facilitate the change in Girly's behavior and her mental healing.

[00:18:18]Which which just bothered me. They're just elements of the story which just bothered me and then elements of the story I thought were were boring. I thought in a sense the author Elaine Castillo had in a sense perhaps wasted a great character a great opportunity to write about a great character in Girly. It's not that she's not a really good character and well drawn it's just that you want so much more of her and less I think of her interactions with these other characters or I did with the other characters or with this company and less about the company and and what you know what's going on behind the scenes there.

[00:19:00]But that's kind of my rating it didn't make the short list and I I think that's fine.

[00:19:05]I I think that was probably a good decision a good decision. Anyway if you have different thoughts about moderation or any of the books I've listed or talked about here in reviews, please leave those comments in the comment section below. And as always, thank you for watching.