M. Suzanne Terry

It is National Poetry Month, and the book stack in the office is ready!

In my quest to read 180 books this year, I am consistently lagging behind by a count of two. This is encouraging, because it means that I have at least found the pace that’s necessary to meet my goal – I just need to sneak a couple of extras in there somewhere. And I know there are several pockets of time throughout the year when I typically finish more books than usual.

April is the first of those times. 

I know the list this month looks long, but all of the ones listed under my collection section and most of the TBR section are poetry books that I can easily read in a few hours, even as I savor them slowly, recite them out loud, and re-read poems I particularly love three or four times.

Book Clubs

• Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney
• One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus
• Follow the Reader – Choose your own poetry adventure (i.e., read poetry and bring your faves to read to/with the group) – see most of the TBR and Collection selections below
• Weyward by Emilia Hart and The Spite House by Johnny Compton for Rise & Shine’s paranormal fiction theme
• Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
• Ana Maria and the Fox by Liana De la Rosa
• The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland

Collection

• Welcome to Midland by Logan Cure 
• King of Pain by Christine Neacole Kanownik
• The Time Traveler by Joyce Carol Oates
• A Self-Portrait by May Sarton 
• The Silence Now by May Sarton
• Ladies & Gentlemen by Michael Robins
• Neruda’s Garden: An Anthology of Odes by Pablo Neruda
• The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón

TBR

• Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones
• Balefire by Elizabeth Wilder
• Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón
• Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light by Joy Harjo
• Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
• Winter Recipes from the Collective by Louise Glück 
• I Hope This Finds You Well by Kate Baer (Girlxoxo selection – keyword “found” – a stretch but different tenses are allowed under their “synonyms and different suffixes” clause)
• Women Talking by Miriam Toews
• The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

Audible (an extension of TBR, really)

One of the things I’ve been doing to streamline my finances this year is looking at all the subscriptions I have and evaluating which ones I use enough to justify the cost. I do use Audible frequently, as I do all my bookish apps and subscriptions, but it doesn’t offer anything extra that I can’t get from:

• Libro.fm (which gives a kickback to my favorite local bookstore) 
• Kobo (which is about 2/3 the cost of Audible) 
• Scribd (which I love and use the most often) 
• The audio apps through the public library (which have limited selections but also the shiny, winning element of being free)

Factor in the delight I will experience by putting fewer dollars into the Amazon machine, and Audible is the obvious choice for the chopping block. So for the next few months, I’m focusing a lot of my audio selections on listening to the unfinished books in my Audible library so that I can dump it altogether without losing what I’ve already bought.

• Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation by Hannah Gadsby
• Hello, Molly! by Molly Shannon
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (narrated by Maggie Gyllenhaal)
• Where the Rhythm Takes You by Sarah Dass

So that’s the plan for reading this month.

What have you read and loved lately?