April 2026 Reading Wrap Up: reading all the trendy novels in one go & creative burnout
April started with me devouring To Rest Our Minds and Bodies over a weekend because it is an incredibly fast read. Then I fell into a slump because I was caught between what I wanted to read and what I felt like I should be reading. I read lots of parts of things that I abandoned. I was kind of aimless. The next book I finished was Famesick, which I had Lena Dunham read to me. For the duration of the book, all I wanted to do was sit and listen. It took over my life. Now, finally, I'm also slowly making my way through Girls. In this time, I managed to finally finish The Observable Universe, which I'd been slowly making my way through since the beginning of March. I was glad I let myself savor the book. With it being composed of little vignettes, this felt like the way it was meant to be consumed.
The next mad rush was reading Yesteryear, which I honestly was tempted to DNF at times. Caro Claire Burke made me so mad! There were parts that were gripping and other parts where I was questioning how the book ever got the hype it did. I'm still wondering about that. The entire construction just felt deeply flimsy and underdeveloped. My hot take, not that everything is a one-to-one comparison, but of Lost Lambs and Yesteryear, the splashiest debuts so far this year, both trying to be topical and unique, reading Yesteryear made me appreciate Lost Lambs more than I had before. There are plenty of misses in LL, but at least Madeline Cash is making artistic swings. She's really trying! There's an integrity there. If you missed my Insta stories rant about Yesteryear, I'll maybe write about it at some point. We'll see. But it's always interesting to read the books everyone's talking about and form your own experience. Poor Zoie probably feels like she read the book too with the number of updates I sent her. I also finished Barbieland on audio. I was excited about this book after hearing the author on a podcast, but I found it generally disappointing.
I didn't pick up a book again until the plane ride to London. The blessed LA public library whose Libby I still have access to bought more copies of The Corespondent, so I was able to finally read this one! Virginia Evans went to the M.Phil I'm in a few years ago, so I was very curious to read it after hearing a lot about it. It was the perfect Kindle read while traveling because each letter is short and self contained, and it's a quick read. I was able to finish it across 3 legs of travel—the flight to and from London and the train ride home from Galway the next day. It was a perfectly enjoyable time that reminded me of exchanging emails with my grandmother.
Then I moved onto Transcription by Ben Lerner. I'd gotten my hands on an ARC of it and figured that at 130 pages, it'd be a good in-between book while I decide on my next big read. I've heard about Lerner for so long and do have a passive interest in autofiction, so I decided to give the book a go. I read it very sporadically between trips so it took longer to finish than it should've. I liked it, but I finished it and wondered if I'd really read a novel. I've also been continuing to try to make progress through the essays in In Love With Love, which I really need to get back to the library since I've had it out since the beginning of March. I've been super slow with my nonfiction reads. That rounded out my 7th book of the month. Not too bad considering there was a point mid-month where I thought I'd be lucky to finish 4 books.
April was a somewhat frozen month for me. Through the beginning of the month, I only worked on one piece, an essay that I turned in as a final assignment for one of my classes. Beyond that, I felt frozen. I felt exhausted and overwhelmed. Physically and mentally tired. And also like I'd taken in so much information that I didn't know how to write anymore. I was far too in my head, and I didn't know what to do to fix the mixed up mess that had consumed my creativity. So I decided for the first time in a long time to let it go. Not force myself to read or write or think. Waste days watching YouTube. Go out late, spend entire days with friends. Wait to feel called back to it again. And I found that I did. After not really working all month, I ended up feeling such a relief when I sat down with my laptop on the train to Galway. I knew that a lot of my friends were going out of town for the month of May, and I made peace with the fact that April was for refilling my cup. In May, the real work would begin. In the second half of the month, I got a fair bit of work done—everything that seriously needed checked off. I got a draft of an important proposal done in a three hour spontaneous session at the Centre. I got lots of posts drafted on the train. I filed another book review. I ended up reading over some old short stories, and I reread the whole novel draft from last March that's the basis of my dissertation project. I've realized that none of it except its heart is usable, but I reverse outlined it anyway to reacquaint myself with the story. Between the public library and my favorite cafe, I constructed the outline and then journaled about what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to discard and what I wanted to replace the discards with. I don't have any firm outline ideas, but I'm on a track now and will hopefully get help from my supervisor soon. I always feel like I'm not doing enough work, but I'm trying to acknowledge that I'm getting everything done. At least the big important things. I tend to work in productive bursts that have a lot of thinking time that comes beforehand, but that doesn't help when I'm trying to tally up a word count or tangible progress for the day.
April did have some very cool bookish moments. I went down to the Cúirt book festival in Galway for a panel with Tolka and a few authors that was interesting as well as a workshop led by Lucy Caldwell about writing adult coming of age stories. The class was super interesting, but I also am starting to realize that I might be a little burnt out on workshops at the moment. Sarah coordinated two extra guest lecture classes with her friends, which was incredibly exciting. First was with Sarah Rees Brennan. Then, with a few hours notice, she brought us in to chat with Caroline O'Donoghue. Which, The Rachel Incident was a life changing book for me, and my friend recently got me into Sentimental Garbage, which made it extra fun. It was so cool to hear Caroline talk about starting her own blog when she was coming up and using the internet as a creative space to workshop the ideas that eventually show up in your writing. As a blogger and someone who loves to post, I love hearing people I admire validate the internet as an important creative space—something Sarah does often as well. Elena had the genius idea that we needed to go get copies of The Rachel Incident (all our OG books were at home) to get them signed. I will treasure this copy forever now (despite the UK cover not being as good as the US one I have at home), and I think it might be time for a reread. At the end of the month, I got to see Polly Barton talk about her new novel What Am I A Deer? at Books Upstairs, which was fascinating. I got my copy signed before we had to rush off to the movies and got a very cool stamp in it. I'm loving the book so far, but the sentences are so long and the paragraphs too that it takes some serious concentration. It's not a book I can read when I'm sleepy before bed. I've been reading it in many glorious parks and on the pitch. After all that rain, it feels like a miracle to be reading outside.
In May, I want to have a fiction and nonfiction book on the go at all times cause there's now a lot more nonfiction that I either want to read in print or don't have access to on audio. I have a stack of books out from the library that my teenage self would be proud of and a giant stack of books I own as well as rereads I want to do, so I'm hoping my new well of excitement about reading will allow me to keep moving through these books. Look out for a summer TBR post very soon.
I guess if I had to sum up April's reading, it would be: reading all of 2026's trendiest books in one month.
Posts from April
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