Monthly Wrap-Up | April 2015

Is it just me or did April fly by? It went so quickly! It's actually a little scary how quickly 2015 seems to be going, so I try not to think about it too much. Things at work got a lot busier last month, but I still managed to read quite a bit and have a pretty good month!

Ms. Marvel, Vol.2: Generation Why by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona and Jacob Wyatt (4 Stars)

Reviewed here!

Copperhead, Vol.1: A New A Sheriff in Town by Jay Faerber, Scott Godlewski and Ron Riley (4 Stars)

Reviewed here!

Well-Read Women by Samantha Hahn (5 Stars)

Fables, Vol.1: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham, Lan Medina, Steve Leialoha, Craig Hamilton and James Jean (2 Stars)

Reviewed here!

Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan (3.5 Stars)

Reviewed here!

American Vampire, Vol.2 by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Mateus Santolouco (4 Stars)

Reviewed here!

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (4 Stars)

American Vampire, Vol.3 by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Sean Murphy (4.5 Stars)

Reviewed here!

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler (2 Stars)

As you can see I'm still loving graphic novels - in fact I enjoyed all the ones I read bar one - and I was able to read a bit more work from Shirley Jackson and Jenny Colgan. Very, very different authors, but I enjoy both of their books!

GAME OF THRONES IS BACK AND I AM VERY NERVOUS.

I'm very, very, very worried about Sansa and I want to take her away from all of the creepy men in her life. I want her and Arya to let Brienne take them to Dorne, and then I want the three of them to stay there in the land where they don't hurt little girls.

STOP HURTING HER!

As always I'm tired of the constant female full-frontal nudity. Do we get to see any dicks? Nope. Now I'm not saying I want to see a dick because, sorry boys, they're not particularly attractive, but I think it's only fair we get male full-frontal nudity, too. I'm sick of the way women are treated in this show, and I know a lot of people wonder why I watch it if there are so many issues with it, but the truth is none of these issues are going to be solved if we all just turn a blind eye. If something's wrong we have to acknowledge it and try our hardest to fix it, not just pretend it isn't there.

On the completely opposite end of the scale, I also watched the 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility last month. I'm probably never going to get around to reading all of Jane Austen's books because unfortunately I've never really enjoyed her books that much, but I do enjoy the storylines whenever I've watched an adaptation in the past. I love Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, and it was certainly a nice film to sit back and watch, but honestly I found it a little boring and I didn't particularly like the ending. I feel like both Marianne and Elinor deserved better.

I bought myself the season 2 boxset of Orphan Black and I've been watching that again, along with my Dad, in preparation for season 3 which isn't in the UK yet. Boo! It's such a good show, and so far my Dad seems to be enjoying it, too, which is quite something! I think I get my fussiness about TV shows from him...

This has nothing to do with watching Season 2, this is just one of my favourite Felix quotes.

Oh, and my brother-in-law went to see The Avengers: Age of Ultron. I thought it was alright. It was entertaining enough to watch but I'm not a massive superhero fan, although I do love the new Ms. Marvel comics. I'm more of an X-Men girl than an Avenger girl.

I had a great blogging month in April. I took part in the A-Z Blogging Challenge for the very first time and I did it! I was really proud that I actually managed to schedule my posts so I was never typing something up at the last minute, and though I missed a few days (three, I think - I couldn't think of any authors whose surname began with Q, U or X) I wrote something for the majority of them. The only thing I really failed at was regularly looking at other people's posts, which is very naughty of me, but to be honest I just wanted to take part in the challenge to see if I could do it, and I could!

Because I was on such a blogging high I wrote a bunch of other blog posts, too; not only for April, but for this month, too. I have a lot of posts scheduled already, which is good because May's going to be a very busy month at work.

It was Easter last month - hooray! I had a pretty quiet Easter, not that it's a holiday I've ever done anything special for, it was nice to get a few days off work. My sister and her family came to visit and on Easter Sunday we all went to Folly Farm, which is a diabetes-inducing name of a local zoo/farm. There's everything there from pigs to giraffes to lions to owls, and it was a really nice day weather-wise, too!

I found myself in Swansea a couple of times last month, too. For any of you who might not know I live in south Wales, and one of my friends from my MA course recently moved back to Swansea (she did her BA there, but her MA in Lancaster like me!) so it's been nice to have a friend nearby. The two of us went to a book launch together - the launch of New Welsh Short Stories, published by Seren Books where I work! - and then on the last Sunday of the month I travelled through to Swansea to go to a new book club that my friend has started.

There were six of us in total who turned up - which actually worked out really well because we read The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler, which just so happens to have six main characters! - and while I knew two of the ladies already, one of them being my aforementioned friend, I also met some really lovely new people. It was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to the next meeting where we'll be discussing Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment!

The book club doesn't have a theme exactly, but those of us who attended the first meeting are all really interested in gender, feminism and sexuality, so if that sounds like your kind of thing and you happen to live in the south Wales area why not join us? You'd be more than welcome! Check out the Facebook and the Twitter.

How was your April?