A pretty great month of reading if you look purely at the numbers:  23 total books, 3 of them 5-star reads and 4 just missing perfection at 4.5 stars.  Just one DNF.

Slightly less great is how many of those came from my April TBR Pile:  just the 6 listed above, although I'm currently reading 2 of the others: The Folio Book of Comic Short Stories and The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.  

That means I've totally blown off reading Undeniably Yours and A Morbid Taste for Bones.  I'd look at them on the table and just think "meh", then go find something else to read. The monthly stacks are working though; I'm getting to the books that I want to read but keep getting nudged aside for newer books.

Non-fiction read (* = 4.5/5 stars):

*The Etymologicon

*The Hotel on Place Vendome

Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris

Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening 

Dr. Seuss & Co. Go to War

Fiction read (* = 4.5/5 stars):

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

*The House at the End of Hope Street 

Love in a Nutshell

*Something Rotten

Crime and Poetry

The Conspiring Woman

Whispers in the Reading Room

Austenland 

*The Madwoman Upstairs 

Counterfeit Conspiracies 

The Cracked Spine

*The Other Side of Midnight

Hope everyone had a great April.

While this is a beautifully constructed, high-quality book that was a joy to hold and look at, it was ultimately disappointing.  I suppose strictly speaking, it does what it sets out to do: share a history of gardening through 50 garden tools that the RHS has deemed pivotal to modern gardening.  But I should have devoured this and instead I struggled to stay focussed.  The layout is really attractive, and break-out boxes had interesting and useful tips about choosing, using or caring for specific tools, but the writing would have benefitted from stronger editing.  The narratives lacked anything pulling them together and they often felt rambling and disjointed.  More often than not I was skimming and left wanting more.

Since I did much better with my semi-planned reading in March than I thought I might, I'm trying it again this month with the above books, some of which have been sitting in the TBR pile for a very long time.  No non-fiction bricks this month, so perhaps I can get through the stack this time.

Happy reading!

4 new books arrived this week - all of them ones I'm really looking forward to reading.

RHS Tales from the Tool Shed: This one was an impulse purchase during a bookdepository.com sale.  It's in the same vein as History of the World in 50 Objects - only garden implements - and it's gorgeous.  Really nicely made and illustrated.

High Rising - Angela Thirkell :  Another impulse BD buy but it sounds like a lot of fun.  An old vintage comedy from the 1930's.  A total bonus is that this ends up taking place during Christmas.

Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County: I get to go home again.  :)

Where'd You Go, Bernadette: Because I've heard so much about this one.  I had to find out for myself.  (Also, BD sale.)

New books: 4

Boos read: 3

Total physical TBR: 172