Whew. After two months of falling short of my blogging goals, I picked the pace back up in April, posting 24 entries. Not bad at all, considering the last two weekends (when I do a lot of my blogging for the week) have been eaten up by family weddings - I actually only got back from the last one an hour and a half ago!
The good thing about traveling for those weddings was it meant I had plenty of reading time, first on the bus to and from Baltimore, and then as I flew back and forth from my husband's hometown in Ohio.
April was also a busy month for me as my husband and I joined a gym on April 1st (no foolin'!). I'm a pretty sedentary person by nature, but I've really been enjoying working out so far. My favorite time to go is first thing in the morning on Saturday and Sunday - after lifting some weights I get out my latest book and settle back on one of the stationary bikes to peddle for awhile. It's definitely helping me work through that pile of library books (which is still almost unmanageable. At the end of March I had 29 checked out. As of today I have 26).
April was also a busy month on various blogs, as we had the 24 hour read-a-thon, the top 100 children's books, library appreciation week, and then at least two controversial articles in the media, first about parents in YA lit, and then about one person's perception of a lack of rigor in blog reviews. It was also National Poetry Month, which doesn't really light my fire, but I read two verse novels and made sure they were reviewed before the month finished.
I read some really great and some really not-so-great books this month. The conclusion to the Last Survivors trilogy with This World We Live In, The Less-Dead and Out of my Mind were three excellent novels, with Out of My Mind already guaranteed a spot on my "best of 2010" list. In not-so-great news, there was the short story collection How Beautiful the Ordinary. But I do have to thank that book for one thing - apparently someone out there in the real world was talking about that blog post at a party. One of the partygoers happened to be one of my best friends from elementary and middle school who I haven't seen in years and years. I'd heard she moved out to New York at some point but we'd completely lost contact. Well after that party, said-friend searched out the blog and found me on Twitter and now we're planning on getting together in the next week! Behold the power of blogs :-) And whoever is talking me up at parties - I love you. Can I get an invitation next time? ;-)
