122/2024 (II) – March & April Book Recap

I realized I forgot to post my March recap, so here are my thoughts on all the books I’ve read in the last two months. I’m a bit behind on my reading goals, but I’m sure I’ll get there. I just need to step up my reading a bit like I at the beginning of the year.

Screenshot of my reading stats, number of books, pages, minutes
2024 in books so far

Mad Woman (Bryony Gordon, 2024)
★ 4.25
Another great memoir style book from Bryony about how she managed to live through various (mental) health issues in the past 3 years. Some felt familiar from own experience but also from her previous books. In small parts dialogues or events felt a bit “staged”, which might be due to the need to condense events or keep privacy of people involved. Either way her experience of having symptoms dismissed by (male) mental health professionals because she’s a larger woman fills me with rage. We’ve still got such a long way to go.

This Must Be the Place (Maggie O’Farrell, 2017)
★ 4.0
This was my first ever O’Farrell novel and I think I might like to read more of her as I enjoyed her writing. The characters came to live for me and even though the plot meandered I was hooked to see how they got where they were the the story started or where they’d go. The plot move backwards and forwards through time with each chapter which sometimes was a bit difficult to follow, especially as there were multiple narrators. Each chapter had a different point of view and sometimes that even was a supporting character, which was something to get used to, but also made the storytelling quite unique for me. Sadly the switching back and forth between points of views sometimes made it harder for me to connect with the character’s emotions because we only ever got a quick spotlight of them. But all in all definitely a book I’d recommend.

Date with Justice (Julia Chapman, 2024) [Audiobook]
★ 3.75
Another quite enjoyable story from the Dales Detective / Dating Agency. I was wondering which sort of story it would be without the big archenemy out of the way and I have to say this still worked for me in the most part. Some connections – Sarah knowing Louise Dinsdale (listened to the audiobook, so not 100% sure on spelling) and also the victim from uni – felt a bit far-fetched. I loved the whole “Who’s the owner of Fellside Court?” plot and even the cupcake thief, though the revelations fell a bit short. Still haven’t figured out how they actually got into the cafe? But it moved another romantic plot forward, finally!

All in all, this would work well for me as a finale to the whole series. But of course I’d also like to hear more about all of the characters I’ve grown to love over the years.

Honey Girl (Morgan Rogers, 2021)
★ 3.75
I liked this one. For me the writing had a distinct lovely vibe and I appreciated the overall story arch and could even relate to it to some extent. I wish we had learned more about Yuki’s backstory and I sometimes thought there were a tad too many supportive characters. They all seemed interesting enough on their own, but there wasn’t room enough in the plot to fully get to know them.

Happiness Falls (Angie Kim, 2023)
★ 3.75
I was hooked on this story for most of the time I read it. I loved the narrator’s voice and all the family members. The investigation had enough twists and turns to stay interesting. I also appreciated the insight this story gave me into the world of nonspeaking people. The “HQ” storyline was super interesting at first, but got a bit much in the end. And I admit I had hoped for a different kind of ending, so the way it DID end left me a bit disappointed.

Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect (Benjamin Stevenson, 2024)
★ 3.5
Last week I re-read, well rather skimmed, the previous book to get reacustomed to the unique style of these books and to the main character. I loved the narration here, breaking the fourth wall all the time and being all meta about this crime novel, while he was part of the crime novel. The plot and what’s going on and what has been going on in the past felt a bit farfetched, more so than in the first book. But it was still fun.

Dances (Nicole Cuffy, 2023)
★ 3.25
This was an interesting read about a young black woman in the ballet world. I do like watching ballet in the theatre from time to time and am always so impressed by the dancers skills. This story gives a good insight how much you have to want to do this and how much it takes (physically, emotionally) to get to the top. Or even to be able to do this for a living.

Part of the backstory about Cece’s family could have been a bit more fleshed out and even though I absolutely understand why the writer uses so many ballet terms in writing, it made it difficult to read sometimes.

Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? (Crystal Smith Paul, 2023)
★ 2.75
I’m sad to say that I never really connected with any of these characters, except for Kitty in the past. To me the story dragged and especially the present felt overly complicated. All in all I often lost track of the many different characters mentioned. I also found the writing a bit bland. I loved the social and political issues raised here, but the way the story was told bored me a lot of times.

Rise to the Sun (Leah Johnson, 2021)
★ 2.25
This obviously wasn’t for me. I had enjoyed Jackson’s previous one, but to me this plot felt all over the place and tried too include too many current social issues. I also didn’t like either main characters all that much.

119/2024 – “I Keep Having Dreams…”

Lyrics: “I Am Disappeared” – Frank Turner, 2011

A few thoughts about my two main fandoms and my current read

Fandom I – Frank Turner | If I’m using numbers in any form or priority here, Frank has to come first. Not just because it’s only 5 more days till the new album will be out. [Note to self: Schedule time to listen to it at home in the morning before heading into work.] I am one of those fangirling types that listen to all the podcast interviews and read all the print (or rather online magazine) interviews he’s doing. There have been a few interviews recently and then of course the first two episodes of the “50 States in 50 Days” documentary, which I’ve mentioned earlier this week. I watched both episodes by now and very much enjoyed them and will definitely watch them once again before the last two episodes come out and probably all four in a row once more before my time (60 days?) to re-watch runs out. I might do sort of a review once all four are out, but what can I say so far? I like Frank! Obviously! Once again it’s been nice to see him interact with people who like his art (and him) in the patient, friendly, kind and empathetic way that he does. Not to mention the interesting tiny insights into life on the road.

Fandom II – Outlander | I’ve been re-watching the first half of season 7 (because I’ll be off Amazon Prime again by the end of next week) to refresh my memory before the second half will be released in the autumn (I think). I’m not an avid fan of the TV show anymore or at least I’m not following the news online all that much anymore. But I have to say: they do know how to make engaging television, whether they have stayed close / true to the books nor not. If I’d have to pick I’d always pick the books over the TV show, but as I’m more of a reader than a TV viewer anyway, so that’s no surprise. Re-watching this now tempts me to reread – if not the complete series – but at least the 2nd half, I guess. I’ve reread the first half a few times when I first discovered the series almost 15 years ago and then I think again when the TV show started about 10 years ago. The last one from 2021 contains some new clues about one character’s backstory, which made me want to go through previous ones to see if I can make sense of it or rather if it really was planted many many books before. I do have them all as audiobooks so maybe I should make more use of that, because when else shall I find the time to re-read old tomes? I’ve got so so so many new / unread books on my shelf as well.


Current Read | The adult in me will now postpone sharing more random observations and thoughts to later this week, because I really should got to bed soon. I will read some more in bed, but at least I will already be in it. I’m currently reading “The Great Divide” by Cristina Henriquez, which is set in Panama over 100 years ago during the construction of the Canal. I sort of like it, even though the narrative is not structured like I would have expected it from the summary on the cover, if that makes sense. The summary mentioned 3-4 people and I thought the story would focus on them and I’m sure it will at some point and the various plots will come together. But at the moment there is still a lot of backstory to each one of these 4 people and side characters and backstory of the side characters. It will be interesting to see how it will all converge, but I’m about 1/3 in by now and hope it will start converging soon.

115/2024 – 24.04.2024

Isn’t today date nice to look at? I’m a nerd for numbers sometimes, so maybe it’s just me. Though for me the 24.04. is always nice to look at, because it’s my birthday. Of course a part of me wondered if mentioning this here could be seen as fishing for compliments (or rather well wishes I guess) and if I maybe should not mention it at all. Which is ridiculous, because it is a fact. It IS my birthday today. In the future for this blog I should more often remind myself of a Frank Turner lyric “I’m the one who’s got the microphone here”.


My day started crazy fangirling at 3 AM (I did say crazy, didn’t I?) with watching a 30 minutes Q&A with Frank and Aaron David Roberts, who accompanied Frank, band and crew in 2022 for the “50 States in 50 Days” endeavour in the USA.

After the Q&A the first of four episodes was aired as well (on Veeps), but I went back to bed. So, a bit sane after all. It was a good Q&A all in all, I saw many friendly faces – or rather names – I know, which is always lovely. A few days ago I left a question each for Frank and Aaron on an Instagram post that asked for question. Aaron, who sort of was the host, picked one of mine. 

“I’ve got one from dennasus”  (he pronounced it den-NA-sus stressing the middle part, whereas I’d always more stressed the first part DEN-na-sus, but I usually don’t often think about how to pronounce it, because it’s a written/read screen name most of all) “I’m going with that [way to pronounce it]” to which Frank then replied: “That’s Susanne. I know her”. Which was lovely to hear, as you can imagine. I mean, I know that he knows me and that he knows that I am dennasus online. I’ve been actively fangirling online and offline long enough now, so I shouldn’t be surprised. And I wasn’t really. But I was still delighted. What can I say?

When I got up after measly two more hours of sleep – and I hadn’t gotten that much sleep earlier in the night to begin with – for a moment I wasn’t sure if that delight really had been worth it. But yeah it was. Of course. As always.