What I Read: April

April was a slower reading month for me, but still a good one overall! I managed to slip in a couple of rereads. As usual, you can click on the titles to see my Goodreads reviews of the books. Here's what I read...

Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer. I didn't love it as much as I did Cinder, but it was still really, really good! I liked how instead of focusing completely on the new characters, it intertwines their stories with those of the other ones. I liked Scarlet as a character, though I was a little iffy about Wolf and the romance aspect. Anyway, I'm so excited to read Cress soon! :)

The Midwife, by Jennifer Worth. I love the show Call the Midwife, so of course at some point I was going to read one of the three memoirs that the show is based on. This is the first of them, and I really enjoyed it. I love seeing how accurate they've been in adapting the stories for the series! There are stories taken from this book in all three seasons so far. If the show makes you queasy, be warned that the book is about the same, of course, in regards to all of the births and medical aspects. (If you do read it, please know that you can completely skip the chapter called "Cable Street." It was unnecessarily graphic, in my opinion. More on that in my Goodreads review.)

Free-Range Knitter, by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. I've read Stephanie's blog for several years now, but this is the first of her books that I've read. I picked it up when I wasn't even ten pages into Mansfield Park because I needed something lighter, ha. :) I enjoyed it so much! I was definitely in the mood for a book of knitting-ish humor this month. I don't agree with all of her views, but overall I loved this little book.

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen. I usually consider this to be my least favorite of Austen's novels. This was only my second time reading it, but I think I liked it more this time! Even though I found it pretty readable (more so than Sense and Sensibility, anyway), it still felt slow at times and took me quite a while to get through it...about two and a half weeks, actually. I'm glad I reread it, though! (I started rereading all of Austen's work last year, but I ended up only getting to S&S and P&P, so I'm trying to finish up the rest this year.)

The Princess Diaries, by Meg Cabot. It's no secret how much I love the Princess Diaries film. As a young teenager, I read at least the first five or six books, and lately I've been wanting to reread and maybe even finish the series. After reading Mansfield Park, I needed something quick and fluffy. :) I didn't like this one as much as I did when I was younger...this is one of the rare instances when the movie is so much better than the book! I still want to reread at least through the third book (I remember that one being my favorite), but I'm not so anxious to finish out the series now.