Wow! I love your brilliant plan to cross-pollinate 5 different readathons (6, counting the fact that April is Poetry Month). And I’m excited that you will be reading Ducks! Add me chiming in also to the Maggie O’Farrell what-a-good-choice-for-the-People-April-group-read chorus.
It's good to see you and I hope your recovery is going as well. I'll be taking part in People April but I have no set tbr yet. I'll check out the Discord page.
So good to see you, Ros! I hope you continue to mend. I have a dear friend who had a bad fall recently, and I believe she has the same injury that you do. I really hope you are feeling better soon. I’m very excited to participate in People April this year. Take care!
It's good to be emerging from the cloud Pat. I sympathise with your friend. Apparently it's a classic older person's injury but don't tell her that! I'm trying not to be too upset by that myself.
Thoroughly enjoyed hearing your plans Ros and I will endeavour to read some books about people in amongst the library books coming in for the women's prize. Ducks made it on to my best books of the year last year 😊 The picture book you mentioned - what a beautiful idea, I found it so touching. I'll see if I can get it. How wonderful about the diaries and letters website, I will absolutely have a look now!
I'm happy that some of the Women's Prize nonfiction list like Thunderclap and A Flat Place work for People April. Ah so your round up of the year was one of the places I heard good things about Ducks. I knew it wasn't just Lindy but I couldn't remember.
So good to see you back in semi-action, Ros! Your selections look like a great month in store. I read The Facemaker for nonfiction November; it was interesting. The puoneering work was remarkable; I liked the book but it didn't blow me away as a piece of writing. I think I'm going to buy Thunderclap - it keeps standing out whenever I hear about it. I hope you heal fast!
Thanks Angelia. I improve every day although a long way to go. Interesting to hear your view of The Facemaker. Tallies rather with Tilly's. We'll see if I get to it. Definitely more excited for Thunderclap as keep hearing positive opinions of that.
I’ve just finished Strong Female Character on audio. It’s very good. She’s painfully honest. As a mother of an adult son with autism, she was brutally honest about meltdowns etc
I’m glad that your are feeling a bit better - how painful that must have been! I love Letters of Note - they now have live shows where famous actors read them and they are on RU-vid! Highly recommended! I LOVED Welcome to St Hell- I read that for People April and Trans Girl April last year. So glad you found a copy of The Dam! Memoir and biography are some of my absolute favourite things to read so I’m very happy you are running it again. I’m currently reading Take Away by Angela Hui and Karma by Boy George. Happy reading Ros!
Not sure how I missed replying to this. I am steadily improving but tired and frustrated trying to do things one handed. I have already devoured Welcome to St Hell. Great book. Will reread The Dam a few times I think. Takeaway appeals to me.
Happy to see you're mending, even if it's slowly I can't wait to check out the Diary site! I have a book of Alcott's Journals & Letters that I will have to dip into also!
When I first saw “Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands” by Kate Beaton, I thought, “Why would I want to read anything about the oil sands?” (insert snore here.) However, I’m glad I took a chance on it and I hope you’ll enjoy it, too.
Steve Donoghue mentioned this reading event in his video on biographies, and while I don't NEED another reading event for the month, I do have a significant stack of biographies to read. This should be fun.
Great list. I just got A Flat place today and I am also planning to read it for People April. I am now reading The Dictionary People which would probably also fit.
We can compare impressions on Discord I hope Alina. Dictionary People looks good. Some years ago I enjoyed The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester about one of the contributors who was in an asylum.
I read Facemaker last year for book tube prize, its a bit gruesome at the beginning, but I think very compelling looking as the social and medical conditions for this to occur and so many innovations. The audio was quite good and narrated by a descendant of Gilles. It could also cross over with transgirlapril, as at the end it does briefly cover his having innovated the first surgical transition procedures.
I'm so sorry that you have to suffer through the healing process of another broken bone. You really shouldn't make a habit out of it, Ros. 😉 I was quite impressed that you still joined the plodalong, that must have been not an easy thing to do. Also I'm very impressed how organised you are with everything that's going on in April alongside People April. Thanks for sharing, I will try to combine some of the things you mentioned!
Normal Women is definitely calling my name but my library has a long hold list, never mind lots of other options to choose from! I’ve seen a couple of the letters from Letters of Note being read online by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Wilde, both were really funny, what a great resource. I’m currently reading Anthony Trollope’s letters myself which fit right into this readathon and they are also mainly a joy although there are rather a lot to do with the workings of the postal service 😉 Here’s to fast healing Ros!
Tilly gave me Normal Women for my birthday. She saw a review and thought it would be a Ros book. The readers he gets for the letters are so good. I started the Mothers collection this weekend as it is a library loan. Miriam Margoyles and Benedict Cumberbatch are particularly strong. I smiled at the thought of thrilling post office content in Trollope's letters. I am feeling grateful to him though as the first week after my accident I couldn't read but listened to The Last Chronicle of Barset as an audio book. Lots of rewinding after nodding off but it was just the thing.
Oh no, hope you're feeling better! I remember I was reading the early chapters of I am I am I am on my commute and suddenly found myself tearing up in public (a rare occurrence). Wonderful choice. I have been hearing great things about A Flat Place so far and it's one I'd like to read soon as well. Look forward to hearing your thoughts when you get to it!
I'm so sorry to hear you were unwell for a while! The irony of you posting this today is I was just sitting here tryin to figure out which of the books I could apply to both the reading challenges I'm doing and which I absolutely wanted to read for people April. And, huzzah! Library had "I am, I am, I am" available so I snagged it to start on the first! I for sure need to read "wise girls" as I bought it specifically as an excuse. It's about women spies in the early days of the CIA by an author who's work I've liked before. I think it would be good if in companionship to that I read another I just bought, "Queen of Cuba" about a woman who evaded the CIA for over a decade and a half. I also recently acquired "Defiant Women" which is a biography of PEggy Shippen (Benedict Arnold's Wife) and Lucy Flucker (a camp follower wife of Henry Knox). Other top options: halfbreed (memoir of a Metis woman, canadian first nations) White Torture (interviews with women in an Iranian prison) Beyond Belief (memoir of someone who had been involved with Scientology) Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere (bio of a man's grandfather who came from Puerto Rico to NYC in 1920s -cover has tennis balls, circles, to fit another readathon's prompts) though i may read something adjacent to the readathon from that area as I've had a book on the Young LOrds from that region cued for a while too. "Reconciliation" (a Pakistani women's memoir about us-Pakistan relations as she was involved) "unprotected" (memoir from Billy Porter, Broadway actor) or Chita (another though more historical figure from Broadway) and....sadly? that's only the top of the possibilities!
Oh my goodness how will you choose from that lot? I am delighted I Am I Am I Am is top of the pile. I have heard good things about Halfbreed and Wise Girls sounds appealing.
I too really like graphic biographies. Ducks is fantastic and one of my favs. The pictures do a wonderful job enhancing the narrative. I have not chosen a graphic biography for People April. I am reading a non-fiction graphic book called Guantanamo Voices. Not sure if its a group memoir/biography or what exactly. I also have a couple options on my shelves I'm looking forward to picking up. Look on the bright side. At least you broke your arm after your trip to Greece.
Good to hear you rate Ducks highly too Sarah. Guantanamo Voices sounds hard but interesting. And that's a very good point about the timing of this break. It could have been much worse.
Sorry to hear of your fall:-( Letters of Note - hooray for mentioning!!!! I love this book so much. I see it winking at me from the bookshelves of Eric Carl Anderson - must be this book it is distinctively light blue and much taller than an average book - he has it in a special shelf for taller books. It has such a range of letters, many from famous writers but to their family - funny, touching, sad, unexpected. Terrific!
I have dipped into that big one at the library and it was tremendous. The themed ones are a nice length for an audio book. Such a good project altogether.
@@scallydandlingaboutthebook2711 Do you know, I bought "the big one" and it is infinitely 'dip into'-able. But then, I am a fan of people's correspondence as somewhere where people are often more relaxed, open and working to be amusing and tell anecdotes. I am wondering how biographers will gain material when they have to dig through emails for insights. Surely not the same as loveletters in a shoebox at the back of a wardrobe.
@@scallydandlingaboutthebook2711 Its price is £30. I very very rarely buy new books but this one took a long time to research, is huge, beautifully laid out with many illustrations, is a reference book for life and solidly made. So I think that's worth paying. Same price as for a few new fiction paperbacks which I may not want to reread. Don't be jealous - with a £15 book token, you're halfway there (start dropping hints!). I thought the book was such quality, I wanted to encourage its author/editor.
I’ve heard good things about _In Parenthesis_ but so far when I’ve flipped through the pages it hasn’t beckoned strongly - I very much want to get there though.
