52 Books in 52 Weeks - April's Books
I was hoping that April would be the month in which I cross over the "halfway" mark and hit book 26, but a busy work schedule and a lot of free time spent playing Battletech and God of War held me back.
Despite those (more than worthy) distractions, I read five books, totalling 1,083 pages:
"The Burning Land" by Bernard Cornwall
"How to Stop Brexit" by Nick Clegg
"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
"Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman
"The Communist Manifesto" by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx
April was probably the most varied month, when you look at the subject matter of the books. From military fiction to politics to post-apocalypse and mythology.
There was one major disappointment amongst the five - The Road. I had heard such great things about the story and yet it just didn't grab my interest. The setting is beautifully described and the characters well realised. The writing is tense and dramatic. I just couldn't get past McCarthy's very. Short. Sentence. Structure. It was haltering and tough to read for me.
Neil Gaiman's modernisation of Norse Mythology was an exceptional read, and especially timely considering I was playing God of War, which riffs off of many of the established Norse myths. The Eddas were things I had down in my "to-read" list and I'm glad I could get a taste of them from Gaiman's work. He really brings the stories to life, and it's not hard to imagine them being recounted around a hearth in the frozen wilds of Norway.
Rounding off the month, and the book I'm currently reading, is Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Dogs of War" - a SciFi story about a team of genetically-engineered animals which questions the nature of humanity and science gone too far. It's gripping so far, so expect an update on it when I round up May's books!