April 2026 Monthly Wrap Up -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

April 2026 Monthly Wrap Up

April was a good reading month for me. I finished rereading the Narnia Chronicles for the first time since I was a kid and I knocked six books off my TBR 26 in '26 list. See any favorites?

The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

The Other Family by Joanna Trollope. I always enjoy her books. This one is about a musician whose death forces his his partner and their children and his ex-wife and oldest son to interact. 

Showing the Flag by Jane Gardam*, short stories from the author of the Old Filth trilogy. I'm never as fond of short stories as I am of longer fiction (Somerset Maugham being the exception), but some of these were very good, particularly the title story. 

Homecomings by C.P. Snow.* I’m determined to finish his Strangers & Brothers series even though I find them pretty dry. This one at least had some personal story, and wasn't focused entirely on a work situation. 

Foxed Quarterly (Issue No. 51, Spring 2017). I’m working my way through some back issues. Because the quarterly is devoted to backlist and out of print books, the old issues are never out of date. 

When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor... and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. This was interesting to read but is focused on foreign missions and I was looking for local guidance.

The Food of Love by Anthony Capella* is a cute, foodie romcom set in Italy, a modern retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac.

Death Takes a Bath by Sharon Lynn. This cozy mystery set in Bath, England is the first of a series. The heroine is a 19-year-old college student, so I'm not the target audience and am unlikely to continue with the books, but it was fun to read in preparation for a trip to Bath. 

Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore, a reread. More psychology than I remember. I had it confused with The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life, which I loved and now need to reread.

Steaming to Bamboola by Christopher Buckley*, his memoir about a year in the merchant marine. 

The Boss Dog by M.F.K. Fisher*, a fictionalized account of living in Aix with her two daughters. It was fun to read, but repetitive of her nonfiction about her life in France.

Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love by Anne Fadiman* was a letdown. Read my review here. 

Frozen Assets by P.G. Wodehouse. Hilarious, as always.

NOTES

* Denotes a TBR 26 in '26 book. 

What was your April favorite? 

Rereadings, edited by Anne Fadiman -- BOOK REVIEW

 

Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love

BOOK REVIEW

I wanted to like this book more than I did. Anne Fadiman's collection of essays about books and reading, Ex Libris, was wonderful. Her book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, is some of the finest nonfiction writing I've ever encountered. I grabbed Rereadings off my shelf with those two experiences in mind. 

Only then did I catch the subtitle and realize that Fadiman didn't write the essays in this book. She is the editor of this collection of essays by 17 other writers. Specifically, these are essays originally published in a literary quarterly called The American Scholar, written on the theme of revisiting a book originally read prior to age 25. 

I was disappointed that Fadiman wasn't the author, but the premise still appealed to me. I'm a subscriber and big fan of Slightly Foxed, a literary journal dedicated to celebrating backlist books. The essays in Rereadings sounded like those I gobble up whenever a new issued of Slightly Foxed arrives. I didn't recognize any of the essay writers in Rereadings, but I don't recognize the essay writers in Slightly Foxed either, and that doesn't dampen my enthusiasm. 

What did dampen my enthusiasm -- and my spirits -- was the tone of most of the essays. In Slightly Foxed, people write about books they love and want you to read. Some are books they have reread many times, sometimes they only reread a book in order to write about it in Slightly Foxed. But they are excited to explain the joys of the book and encourage you to read it.  By the time I finish an issue of Slightly Foxed, my book wish list is noticeably longer. 

In Rereadings, most of the essays were about how a book the writer loved as a child, teen, or college student didn't stand up to reading again as an adult. Maybe the story seemed too simplistic when read with adult eyes, or the book hit wrong to current sensibilities, but for whatever reason, the magic was gone. Well, OK. But I'm an adult reading about these books now. I can't experience what it was like to read them as a teen ager so share their lessened appeal on rereading. Reading about why they are disappointing to an adult reader was a downer. I finished Rereadings with a list of books people no longer liked. 

That's not to say the essays were poorly written. They weren't. They were all polished and well-argued. But they didn't inspire me to read more, certainly not to reread. 

NOTE

Rereadings was one of the books from my TBR 26 in '26 list. I'm glad the challenge got me to finally read this one, but I won't be rereading it, that's for sure! 

Chocolat by Joanne Harris -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Thank you for joining me this week for Book Beginnings on Fridays where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy sense of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot anecdote to winter.

-- from Chocolat by Joanne Harris.

I saw the movie adaptation of Chocolat with Juliette Binoche Johnny Depp back when it came out in 2000. But the book has sat unread on my shelf for years. I have this weird hang up about watching an adaptation and reading a book (or vice versa) back to back. I think it stems from my deep love of plot that makes me wait until the plot has faded in my mind before consuming the story in the other format. The problem is, I often forget to read the book (or watch the movie). That's what happened with Chocolat. I put it on my TBR 26 in '26 list to push myself to read it. 

Now that I am almost finished with the book, I regret having it take up shelf space for so long. It's a fun romp of a story, but Harris paints it with such a broad brush it's cartoonish. The sexy cholate-making stranger blows into the village and squares off with the mean priest. She's good. He's bad. Get it? It might be the rare exception to the rule and the movie is better than the book. At least the movie condenses the simplistic story into two hours. 

Have you read Chocolat or watched the movie? What did you think?

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below. If you participate or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so other people can find your post.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 asks participants to share a two-sentence teaser from their book of the week. If your book is an ebook or audiobook, pick a teaser from the 56% point. 

Anna at My Head is Full of Books hosts The Friday 56, a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please visit My Head is Full of Books to leave the link to your post. 

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Chocolat:

I remember now; the boy supporting his mother's arm as they passed on their way to church. Alone of all Lansquenet's children, he has never bought chocolates from La Praline, though I think I may have seen him looking in at the window once or twice.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

In tiny Lansquenet, where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin to play havoc with Lenten vows. Each box of luscious bonbons comes with a free gift: Vianne's uncanny perception of its buyer's private discontents and a clever, caring cure for them. Is she a witch? Soon the parish no longer cares, as it abandons itself to temptation, happiness, and a dramatic face-off between Easter solemnity and the pagan gaiety of a chocolate festival.

 

My Sign Up Post -- TBR 26 IN '26 & MT. TBR CHALLENGES

 

THE TBR 26 IN '26 CHALLENGE

THE MT. TBR CHALLENGE

My Sign-Up Post

This is my sign-up post for the TBR 26 in '26 and Mt. TBR Challenges. If you want to join me in the TBR 26 in '26 Challenge (and I hope you do), go to the main challenge page, here. Bev at My Reader's Block hosts the Mt. TBR Challenge. You can find the details for that one here.

My shelves of unread books are groaning under the weight of my TBRs. According to my LibraryThing spreadsheet, I have over 2,800 books on my shelves, waiting to be read. Good thing I’m now (all but) retired. I plan to spend more time with my nose in a book!

Last year, I read the 25 books I picked for the TBR 25 in '25 Challenge, plus another 104 books for the Mt. TBR Challenge, for a total of 129 books read from my TBR library. My goal was to read 100 off my TBR shelves, so I am very pleased with 129. I’d like to exceed that number in 2026.


TBR 26 IN ‘26

You don’t have to pick your TBR 26 in '26 book ahead of time. You can. Or you can pick them as you go. Or you can pick and then change your mind. The only "rule" is that the books have to have been on your shelf before January 1, 2026.

Here are my TBR 26 in '26 picks, in the order they appear in the photo above. I'll read them in any old order. There was no rhyme or reason for how I picked these. I didn’t try to overthink it, I just grabbed what caught my eye.

LEFT STACK: NONFICTION

Hiroshima (1946) by John Hersey FINISHED

Steaming to Bamboola: The World of a Tramp Freighter (1982) by Christopher Buckley

Rereadings (1995) by Anne Fadiman

A Walk in the Woods (1998) by Bill Bryson FINISHED

Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor (2009) by Tad Friend FINISHED

Overdrive: A Personal Tour of American Politics (1983) by William F. Buckley Jr.

Discovering Main Street: Travel Adventures in Small Towns of the Northwest (2010) by Foster Church

Curriculum Vitae (1982) by Muriel Spark

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage (2013) by Nicholas Wapshott

The Merry Heart (1959) by Robertson Davies

A Dash of Daring: Carmel Snow and Her Life in Fashion, Art, and Letters (2016) by Penelope Rowlands

A Cook’s Tour of San Francisco (1983) by Doris Muscatine

The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard (2017) by John Birdsall

RIGHT STACK: FICTION

A Severed Wasp (1970) by Madeleine L’Engle FINISHED

Showing the Flag (1999) by Jane Gardam

Homecomings (1956) by C. P. Snow 

The Last September (1929) by Elizabeth Bowen

The Boss Dog (1949) by M. F. K. Fisher

The New York Trilogy (1985) by Paul Auster FINISHED

Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream (2005) by John Derbyshire

The Paris Directive (2000) by Gerald Jay FINISHED

The Food of Love (2001) by Anthony Capella

Chocolat (1999) by Joanne Harris

Women Like Us (1999) by Erica Abeel

The Wonder Worker (2002) by Susan Howatch

My plan is to start strong in January so I have momentum to read these and then move on to my Mt. TBR books.


MT. TBR

I don't know which books I'll read for Bev’s Mt. TBR Challenge. I decided to push myself and signed up for the Mt. Olympus level to read 150 books off my TBR shelves. That means I need 124 in addition to the 26 listed above. I'm ready to climb!

The TBR 26 in '26 Challenge -- WRAP UP PAGE

WRAP UP PAGE

FOR THE TBR 26 IN '26 CHALLENGE

January 1, 2026 to December 31, 2026

THIS IS THE PAGE TO LINK YOUR WRAP UP POSTS

TO LINK A REVIEW, GO TO THIS PAGE

TO SIGN UP FOR THE CHALLENGE, GO TO THE MAIN CHALLENGE PAGE OR CLICK THE CHALLENGE BUTTON ABOVE

LINK YOUR WRAP UP POSTS HERE

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WRAP UP LINKS

If you complete the challenge, please link some kind of wrap up post in the Linky box above. That way, I know who finished the challenge. If you just update your original post and do not do a wrap up post separate from your sign up post that's fine! Please still add the link to the updated post in the box above.

If you have trouble adding your link, leave it in a comment and I will add it or email me your link at gilion (at) dumasandvaughn (dot) com and I will add it for you. Please put your name and the name of the your blog or your social media handle and the platform in the comment or email so I can find you. Thanks!

REVIEWS

If you review a book for the TBR 26 in '26 Challenge, please add the link to your review on the review page. Please link to your review post, not the main page of your blog or social media account.

You do not have to have a blog to participate in this challenge. If you review books on Instagram, goodreads, or some other social media, use the link from your social media review post in the Linky box on the review page. Please link to the review, not your profile page. If you have questions about how to find the URL for a social media review post, leave a comment, email me at gilion (at) dumasandvaughn (dot) com, or DM me on Instagram @gilioncdumas.

The TBR 26 in '26 Challenge -- REVIEW PAGE

REVIEW PAGE

FOR THE TBR 26 IN '26 CHALLENGE

January 1, 2026 to December 31, 2026

THIS IS THE PAGE TO LIST YOUR REVIEWS

IF YOU HAVE FINISHED, WRAP UP POSTS GO ON THIS PAGE

TO SIGN UP, GO TO THE MAIN CHALLENGE PAGE OR CLICK THE BUTTON ABOVE

LINK YOUR REVIEWS HERE

Please put your name and/or the name of your blog or social media handle and the name of the book you reviewed. (EX: Rose City Reader, War & Peace, or @gilioncdumas, Pride & Prejudice.) Please link to your review post and not your blog home page or main social media profile page.

 

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LINKS

If you review a book for the TBR 26 in '26 Challenge, please add the link to your review in the Linky box above. Please link to your review post, not the main page of your blog or social media account.

You do not have to have a blog to participate in this challenge. If you review books on Instagram, goodreads, or some other social media, use the link from your social media review post in the Linky box above. Please link to the review, not your profile page. If you have questions about how to find the URL for a social media review post, leave a comment, email me at gilion (at) dumasandvaughn (dot) com, or DM me on Instagram @gilioncdumas.

If you have trouble adding your link, leave it in a comment and I will add it or email me your link at gilion (at) dumasandvaughn (dot) com and I will add it for you. Please put your name and the name of the book you reviewed in the comment or email. Thanks!

BOOKS AND REVIEWS

You do not have to review books to complete the TBR 26 in '26 Challenge.

The only point of the challenge is to clear 26 books off your TBR shelf in 2026. You can pick all of them them ahead of time, some of them, or none of them. You can choose at whim. If you pick them, you can change your mind later and switch books. The only "rule" is that you must own the book before January 1, 2026.

Your TBR shelf can include a virtual shelf of ebooks or audiobooks, as long as you owned them prior to January 1, 2026. It does not include library books.

This is supposed to be fun!

WRAP UP

If you complete the challenge, please link some kind of wrap up post on the wrap up page. That way, I know who finished the challenge. If you just update your original post and do not do a wrap up post separate from your sign up post that's fine too! But please still add the link to the updated post on the wrap up page.