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Books I read in April 2026
May. 18th, 2026 08:25 am Total: 8 books
--So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell;
--The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones;
--The Round House by Louise Erdrich;
--Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie;
--Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Piccoult;
--The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff;
--The Testaments by Margaret Atwood;
--The Reformatory by Tananarive Due.
Short stories:
-- A Drug Called Tradition by Sherman Alexie;
-- Matchimanito by Louise Erdrich;
-- Na Na and Other Nazis by Irvine Welsh;
-- Victory on New Year's Day by Irvine Welsh;
-- Ceremonies by Sherman Alexie (poem);
-- Country Lovers by Nadine Gordimer;
-- The Termitary by Nadine Gordimer;
-- The River by Flannery O'Conner;
-- A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor.
Essays:
-- First Things First, Petersen (analysis of feminism in Things Fall Apart);
-- Decolonizing Culture, Katrak (feminism and anticolonialism);
-- Under Western Eyes, Mohanty (ethnocentric universality in Western feminism);
-- The British Indian Writer, Salman Rushdie;
-- Dream-England, Salman Rushdie;
-- You Will Always be a Paki, Hanif Kureishi.
The only book that I didn't LOVE-love is the William Maxwell novella, and even that was very good. It was published in the 80s and tells the story of a murder between friends/farmers, from the perspective of a boy who was himself a friend (briefly) to the murderer's son. Very good, great prose, and there's commentary about class and change that explains why it's a classic. I just didn't super connect with it, so it didn't become a favorite. I felt like I was at a bit of a remove.
Reservation Blues was probably my favorite of the month, and is now one of my all-time favorite books. It follows characters from his short stories (and also Smoke Signals if anyone here has seen that) as they form a band using a cursed guitar they borrowed from the undead legendary blues singer Robert Johnson. Round House was also fantastic, and I'm now on a Louise Erdrich reading binge. Weirdly, although I didn't like it *as much* as Reservation Blues, I do like her better than Alexie *as a writer.* And Alexie is also one of my faves, has been for like 15 years.
The Only Good Indians was good but not great; I think the sequel is gonna be more my taste, it comes out later this year. I got the sense that Graham Jones really struggled with his first draft and didn't do enough editing to hide that. The first half stalls out, then leaps forward in startling ways that don't fully make sense or feel coherent. The second half is smoother. It indulges, sometimes, in cheesy 80s slasher homages that don't really fit the overall tone.
The Reformatory was stellar. Instantly recced it to my mom, and she blitzed through it as well. It's a horror book set in the South in the 50s or 60s, when a 12-year-old Black boy named Robbie is sent of to the local reformatory. There he encounters the sad, frightening, untrustworthy ghosts of Way Too Many Dead Boys, and the seedy, abusive headmaster who has a liking for little boys. There's some excellent twists and really devastating deaths; the prose is excellent, the dialogue is on-point, the character arcs are delicious, it's scary as hell... 10/10 horror book. I tried to read Ring Shout right after this (different author, but a lot of the same people who recced Reformatory to me also recced this; I ignored them because I didn't think a KKK horror novel could be done tastefully. Reformatory proved me wrong) and was immediately put off because, like Reformatory, it's written in dialect, but unlike Reformatory, it sounds really forced and artificial. I'm gonna still try to finish it but it's dropped several spots on my list and I think I'd rather just explore the rest of Tananarive Due's books instead.
The Barracks Thief was great, and very similar to Maxwell's novella. It's also short, it's written in a similar style. But I connected with the characters and themes way better. It follows three young soldiers who are stationed together in North Carolina, waiting to ship out to Vietnam. The other soldiers have largely come and gone to Vietnam already and have formed an exclusive brotherhood that makes the newbies feel inferior. One of them starts stealing from his fellow soldiers at night, and a witch hunt ensues.
The Testaments was mostly great, but also a little silly at times, and occasionally felt rushed. I gave it a high 4 out of 5. The majority of the criticism I saw was just, "We didn't need a sequel," and I??? guess??? If you don't want a sequel you don't have to read it, but like, the author clearly felt she had more to tell. I thought I would enjoy the scenes that take place in Gilead best, and would be bored by the scenes in Canada, but ultimately I found all of them equally compelling, I just thought it fell off at the end, kinda like Atwood lost interest in the home stretch and just wanted to wrap things up as quickly as possible. I found the interview at the back even more interesting than the novel; Atwood details her research process there.
Nineteen Minutes: not much to say here. I saw it on a list of banned books, and I'd never read Jodi Piccoult before so I decided to give it a try. Fun, compelling, but bloated. A fun time capsule of 2007. Zigzag parts and problematic jokes. An understanding of mass shooters that has fallen out of favor in 2026 (bullying victims in 2007 vs. privileged fascist misogynists who are upset they didn't get riches and hot girls by age 16).
I liked all the short stories, especially Matchimanito. For the essays, the first three feminist essays hurt me head. The rest were fun, readable, informative. Let me ask y'all something: am I wrong to be afraid of Rushdie's novels? I've read two essays and a memoir by him now, and liked them all. But I've always shied away from his novels because they're so massive and I was afraid he'd have a stiff, formal writing style that was difficult to get into.
--So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell;
--The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones;
--The Round House by Louise Erdrich;
--Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie;
--Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Piccoult;
--The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff;
--The Testaments by Margaret Atwood;
--The Reformatory by Tananarive Due.
Short stories:
-- A Drug Called Tradition by Sherman Alexie;
-- Matchimanito by Louise Erdrich;
-- Na Na and Other Nazis by Irvine Welsh;
-- Victory on New Year's Day by Irvine Welsh;
-- Ceremonies by Sherman Alexie (poem);
-- Country Lovers by Nadine Gordimer;
-- The Termitary by Nadine Gordimer;
-- The River by Flannery O'Conner;
-- A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor.
Essays:
-- First Things First, Petersen (analysis of feminism in Things Fall Apart);
-- Decolonizing Culture, Katrak (feminism and anticolonialism);
-- Under Western Eyes, Mohanty (ethnocentric universality in Western feminism);
-- The British Indian Writer, Salman Rushdie;
-- Dream-England, Salman Rushdie;
-- You Will Always be a Paki, Hanif Kureishi.
The only book that I didn't LOVE-love is the William Maxwell novella, and even that was very good. It was published in the 80s and tells the story of a murder between friends/farmers, from the perspective of a boy who was himself a friend (briefly) to the murderer's son. Very good, great prose, and there's commentary about class and change that explains why it's a classic. I just didn't super connect with it, so it didn't become a favorite. I felt like I was at a bit of a remove.
Reservation Blues was probably my favorite of the month, and is now one of my all-time favorite books. It follows characters from his short stories (and also Smoke Signals if anyone here has seen that) as they form a band using a cursed guitar they borrowed from the undead legendary blues singer Robert Johnson. Round House was also fantastic, and I'm now on a Louise Erdrich reading binge. Weirdly, although I didn't like it *as much* as Reservation Blues, I do like her better than Alexie *as a writer.* And Alexie is also one of my faves, has been for like 15 years.
The Only Good Indians was good but not great; I think the sequel is gonna be more my taste, it comes out later this year. I got the sense that Graham Jones really struggled with his first draft and didn't do enough editing to hide that. The first half stalls out, then leaps forward in startling ways that don't fully make sense or feel coherent. The second half is smoother. It indulges, sometimes, in cheesy 80s slasher homages that don't really fit the overall tone.
The Reformatory was stellar. Instantly recced it to my mom, and she blitzed through it as well. It's a horror book set in the South in the 50s or 60s, when a 12-year-old Black boy named Robbie is sent of to the local reformatory. There he encounters the sad, frightening, untrustworthy ghosts of Way Too Many Dead Boys, and the seedy, abusive headmaster who has a liking for little boys. There's some excellent twists and really devastating deaths; the prose is excellent, the dialogue is on-point, the character arcs are delicious, it's scary as hell... 10/10 horror book. I tried to read Ring Shout right after this (different author, but a lot of the same people who recced Reformatory to me also recced this; I ignored them because I didn't think a KKK horror novel could be done tastefully. Reformatory proved me wrong) and was immediately put off because, like Reformatory, it's written in dialect, but unlike Reformatory, it sounds really forced and artificial. I'm gonna still try to finish it but it's dropped several spots on my list and I think I'd rather just explore the rest of Tananarive Due's books instead.
The Barracks Thief was great, and very similar to Maxwell's novella. It's also short, it's written in a similar style. But I connected with the characters and themes way better. It follows three young soldiers who are stationed together in North Carolina, waiting to ship out to Vietnam. The other soldiers have largely come and gone to Vietnam already and have formed an exclusive brotherhood that makes the newbies feel inferior. One of them starts stealing from his fellow soldiers at night, and a witch hunt ensues.
The Testaments was mostly great, but also a little silly at times, and occasionally felt rushed. I gave it a high 4 out of 5. The majority of the criticism I saw was just, "We didn't need a sequel," and I??? guess??? If you don't want a sequel you don't have to read it, but like, the author clearly felt she had more to tell. I thought I would enjoy the scenes that take place in Gilead best, and would be bored by the scenes in Canada, but ultimately I found all of them equally compelling, I just thought it fell off at the end, kinda like Atwood lost interest in the home stretch and just wanted to wrap things up as quickly as possible. I found the interview at the back even more interesting than the novel; Atwood details her research process there.
Nineteen Minutes: not much to say here. I saw it on a list of banned books, and I'd never read Jodi Piccoult before so I decided to give it a try. Fun, compelling, but bloated. A fun time capsule of 2007. Zigzag parts and problematic jokes. An understanding of mass shooters that has fallen out of favor in 2026 (bullying victims in 2007 vs. privileged fascist misogynists who are upset they didn't get riches and hot girls by age 16).
I liked all the short stories, especially Matchimanito. For the essays, the first three feminist essays hurt me head. The rest were fun, readable, informative. Let me ask y'all something: am I wrong to be afraid of Rushdie's novels? I've read two essays and a memoir by him now, and liked them all. But I've always shied away from his novels because they're so massive and I was afraid he'd have a stiff, formal writing style that was difficult to get into.
