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Ashley IN MEDIAS RES

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine  by Mike Michalowicz
• Ninja Selling: Subtle Skills. Big Results by Larry Kendall
• Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Nikki IN MEDIAS RES

• Sanditon, Lady Susan, & The History of England: The Juvenilia and Shorter Works of Jane Austen by Jane Austen
• Lift Like a Girl: Be More, Not Less by Nia Shanks
• My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Ashley FIN

• The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
• A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler
•  Love on Beach Avenue by Jennifer Probst
• The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Miguel Ruiz
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
• Badd MotherF*cker (Badd Brothers #1 by Jasinda Wilder
• Tattered Loyalties (Talon Pack #1) by Carrie Ann Ryan
• Spying on the South: Travels with Frederick Law Olmsted in a Fractured Land by Tony Horowitz
• Teasing Destiny (Wishing Well, Texas #1) by Melanie Shawn
• The Kennedy Debutante by Kerri Maher

Nikki FIN

• Circe by Madeline Miller
• A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas
• The Centurion’s Wife by Davis Bunn and Janette Oke*
• I Ain’t Doin’ It: Unfiltered Thoughts From a Sarcastic Southern Sweetheart by Heather Land
•  Love on Beach Avenue by Jennifer Probst
• Broken Throne (Red Queen 4.5) by Victoria Aveyard
• More Than Words by Jill Santopolo
• Badd MotherF*cker (Badd Brothers #1 by Jasinda Wilder
• Tattered Loyalties (Talon Pack #1) by Carrie Ann Ryan
• Marilla of Green Gables by Sarah McCoy
• Spying on the South: Travels with Frederick Law Olmsted in a Fractured Land by Tony Horowitz
• Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• Teasing Destiny (Wishing Well, Texas #1) by Melanie Shawn
• The Kennedy Debutante by Kerri Maher
• Galatea by Madeline Miller

Nikki:  Oh dear readers, this list makes me feel ever so much better than last months, but these are overall much shorter titles than last months, so the page counts do matter.  I did actually read a couple of stories in Sanditon, Lady Susan, & The History of England: The Juvenilia and Shorter Works of Jane Austen this month, so it’s back on the list.  I read these as I was being a nice reading buddy and (attempting to) patiently wait on my buddy to finish a title so we could start a book together. 

I should also admit here that I had a minor conniption early in April about the number of loans I had out from the library and the amount of titles that needed to be read for our plans for the blog.  True to my nature, I made a schedule based on my general number of pages I read on a weekday and made it happen.  Ashley and I also added three titles that were just for fun because these times feel heavy and we decided we could fit them in, mostly.  

Speaking of buddy reading, we did a lot of that this month.  As usual, we also selected some other titles of interest to one of us but not the other, and this month, as we do on rare occasions, one of us (me) took one for the team.  There was a title we were both interested in knowing about but we needed a trusted source.  Y’all, even if you haven’t read The Red Queen Series, perhaps you know the internet has strong feelings about these books, and they are on opposite ends of the spectrum.  I think I speak mostly for both of us when I say this premise is very intriguing, but the series didn’t live up to its potential.  It was just ok because of the writing and the character development but it could have been amazing.  Also readers, you know an epilogue is a big, HUGE deal to me, and the epilogue of the last book was obnoxious.  It opened more doors rather than working to close any, and only left me with more questions (mostly of the WTH variety).  So, when Broken Throne was announced I wanted it to be the epilogue readers deserved, understanding it was going to include a couple of previously published novellas.  While it wasn’t everything I wanted, it was better than I expected.  For those who have read the rest of the series and are lukewarm but still want some closure, here’s my advice: if you haven’t read Queen’s Song and Steel Scars, definitely start there, in that order, for Coriane and Farley’s backstories.  If you have read those, then start with Fare Well, then Iron Heart, and end with Fire Heart.  It is FINALLY the epilogue readers deserve, rather than that teaser in War Storm listed as an epilogue.  Ugh!  If you love The Red Queen, tell us why in the comments. We love a good bookish conversation!

~Nikki

Ashley:  I, too, feel so much better about the amount of titles I read this month. I finally finished The One Thing which I had been repeatedly checking out from the digital library since January. It was a re-read so I didn’t feel too terrible about it, but I definitely need to own a copy. I love it so much which is why it made the Books for Grads list. I did quite a bit of reading/reading plans for the Books for Grads post this month, including The Four Agreements and The Last Lecture. I had one more on my planner TBR, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, which has been on my mental TBR for a long while. I found a hardback copy for $2 at McKay Used Books in Nashville at the beginning of March before everything shut down, so it’s still waiting for me to get farther along than the preface.  Extreme Ownership and The Last Lecture didn’t make the cut for the post, but they were both on the short list. (I was having trouble deciding whether or not I wanted to do a top 3 or top 5 books for that post, and the fact that I couldn’t in good conscious suggest some of the ‘top books’ on GoodReads or Amazon and other book lists for the romance/dating wedge decided it for me.)

I had watched Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture (YouTube link to the video of the 2007 lecture given at Carnegie Mellon University) at some point in the past couple of years because it came up on the internets and I had a lot of time to kill in California. It is over an hour long, you have been warned. I had suggested that Nikki watch it at some point, because it really struck me about how he talked about going back to his childhood dreams created the impetus for his adult goals, and she took it to mean read the book. Which she did last year, but I had never actually read it. I had just watched the video of the lecture. I found a copy of it at McKay the same day I found Extreme Ownership, and read the book in one sitting.  (It’s short and very giftable!) Dr. Pausch did the lecture as a farewell to the faculty and students, and friends and family, as he was facing terminal pancreatic cancer. I’m not a weeper, but there might have been some sniffles both while watching and reading (Nikki: same, same, but it was 100% worth it). It is, however, a book and lecture about hope. Everyone needs hope and to feel like they are taking control of their own life and destiny. 

Besides this collection of nonfiction, we’ve been scouring Amazon for literally free kindle books of the romantic variety, because that’s what we love to read when we feel a little out of control in life. We found quite a few this month, and we read 3 of them together (and some were still free at this writing, so click above as you’re interested)! I’m not remotely sad about that, and honestly we probably could have fit more of those in but we do try to limit schmexytimes books for the weekends so that Nikki gets sleep during the workweek (as we *may* have started one of the above titles one evening and finished it before going to sleep). 

And don’t forget, dear readers, that if you also like to read e-books for FREE, the 2 months of free Kindle Unlimited promotion ends on Thursday 30 April! Get it while you can. Because we intend on reading these free books while we have the opportunity over the next couple of months, our Reading Life Review will be very romance heavy (with a side of Harry Potter for Nikki), and quite a few of the books we have planned on sharing with you on the blog are available on KU, so please join us if you would like to read along!

Lastly, don’t forget that this FRIDAY 1 May is our first ever Virtual Book Club where we are going to discuss Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Sign up Here, get your favorite beverage chilling, and prepare to join us at 7:30pm Central Time.

~Ashley