Somehow April felt like another very long month, yet I’m surprised that it’s already over. Time sure is funny sometimes. I hope everybody is staying safe out there. I ended up getting a few more books than I expected I would this month, which is always nice. Can’t wait to share it with you.

Without further ado, on to the books!

New Books

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle is a book I’ve had my eyes on for a while, and one of two I bought this month to give some business to a local bookshop. It’s not properly open, but still allows for curbside pick up. I read Darnielle’s other novel Universal Harvester a couple of years ago and liked it fairly well. I’ve been continuing to listen to the podcast I Only Listen to The Mountain Goats, which Darnielle is on, and have really enjoyed listening to him talk about art of all kinds, so I decided to finally pick this book up too.

Calypso by David Sedaris is another that’s been on the backburner for a while, purchased at the same time as Wolf in White Van. I don’t actually know a lot about this collection, I just really like reading Sedaris’s work. I also love this cover; it’s so simplistic yet ridiculous.

The Death of Grass by John Christopher I purchased because I felt a sudden determination to own the book. I’ve come across it twice while reading other books: first in Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction by David Seed back in 2016, which prompted me to add it to by to-read list on Goodreads and let it languish.

I read about it again this year when I read The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler. That had me thinking about it more and more during the past few months, and I managed to come across a copy being sold on Amazon by a third-party seller for a decent price. With every other option being surprisingly expensive, I decided to snatch it up for myself while I still could.

Novel Discoveries

A fair few books were added this month, which I’m seeing as a positive over previous months and their lackluster showings.

The Last Human by Zack Jordan I read about on another blog’s WWW post, though I sadly cannot remember where. It’s a space opera wherein humans have been nearly annihilated by a super-advanced alien civilization, deemed too dangerous to be left alive. It follows a young woman living among other aliens who is impossibly the last human, despite them having been wiped out hundreds of years before.

Something is Killing the Children by James Tynion IV et al is a graphic novel that caught my attention just from the title. It’s about a small town where children are disappearing and a monster hunter who arrives to slay the creatures taking them away. I’m rather looking forward to checking this one out.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is one of those books I just know I’d heard of, but knew little about. I can’t rightly remember what drew my attention to it recently, but I’ve got a $10 mass market paperback on order now, so something about it must have grabbed my attention.

I don’t normally include Star Wars books here, since I consider my interest in the franchise’s novels a given, but these are the first two major releases in the High Republic era that they’re creating to expand the universe, set 200 years before The Phantom Menace, when the Jedi were at the height of their nobility in the Republic. Most of what I’ve heard is fairly conceptual so far, but it’s an intriguing premise and I look forward to seeing what they’ll create. With Claudia Gray authoring one of the first books, Into the Dark, I have a good feeling about this.

Too Much by Rachel Vorona Cote is another book I came across in another blog’s WWW post. It’s always interesting to take a look at what we see as old-fashioned or outdated social practices and attitudes and realize how they’re still affecting us in ways we don’t realize. This book looks like it’ll do that really well.

Closing Thoughts

I feel like this is the first post in a while where I haven’t bought a single digital purchase. You’d think with things such as they are there would be an increase in digital purchases, but I just won’t let my physical media go. May the forth is coming up though, so I’m sure I’ll have a few new Star Wars comics on my tablet by next month.

Until next time, thank you for reading.