As projected, we had a lot of cold weather and rain in April, so I ended up reading a lot. Which is perfectly fine with me, though I would have enjoyed more hikes.

Science

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012 (2012) Edited by Dan Ariely and Tim Folger (9/10)

Mystery

Miss Buncle’s Book (1936) D. E. Stevenson (8.5/10)
A Red Herring Without Mustard (2011) Alan Bradley (7/10)
The Golden Egg (2013) Donna Leon (6/10)
The Lighthearted Quest (1956) Ann Bridge (5/10)

Fantasy / YA

The Raven Boys (2012) Maggie Stiefvater
The Dream Thieves (2013) Maggie Stiefvater (9/10)
The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire (2012) Abigail Gibbs (7/10)
Girl of Nightmares (2012) Kendare Blake (5/10)

Audio

The Raven Boys: Audible Version (2012) written by Maggie Stiefvater and narrated by Will Patton (7/10)
Last Watch (/2010) by Sergei Lukyanenko translated by Andrew Bromfield and narrated by Paul Michael (7/10)

Fantasy

London Falling (2013) Paul Cornell (9/10)
The InCryptid Short Stories: Jonathan Healy and Frances Brown (2013/2014) Seanan McGuire (8/10)
The Shambling Guide to New York City (2013) Mur Lafferty (7.5/10)
Black Magic Woman (2008) Justin Gustainis (7/10)
Half-Off Ragnarok (2014) Seanan McGuire (6/10)

The books I especially enjoyed this month were:
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012 (2012) Edited by Dan Ariely and Tim Folger
London Falling (2013) Paul Cornell
The Dream Thieves (2013) Maggie Stiefvater

Apparently, I held no paper books in the entire month of April–everything was audio or eBook. Which is fine, but feels rather odd in retrospect.

Both the audio books were of books I’d read previously (which is my preference, as strange as that may seem). But otherwise I managed to cut back on my re-reads. Not that there’s anything wrong with re-reading a book. I just have so many other books I haven’t read, I start to feel bad for the ignored books.

Lots of fantasy this month, though several of the fantasies were also mysteries. And I finally finished the non-fiction book I’d been reading for months. It was fabulous–far and away the best book I read all month. If you at all like science writing, I highly recommend The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012–I actually, I’ve enjoyed all the ones I’ve read in this lineup.

I’ve swung back to reading more female authors, which has dropped the percent of mail authors down below 50% for the year.

Now that it’s May, theoretically I’ll read fewer books and spend more time outside.

We’ll see.