April 2021 Books

I've been watching more shows during work than listening to audiobooks lately and April was a dismal month. I only read four books! May isn't shaping up to be any better but there's always June! Here's what I read last month:

♥ Night by Elie Wiesel - It was not easy reading Elie Wiesel's experiences of the Holocaust but it was such an important story that needed to be told and I felt compelled to read it. I love stories of survival, of people that go through something unimaginable and are able to come out and move not beyond, but above the experience. To allow it to shape you in a way that makes you a better person. To not give in to hatred and anger but to build atop that which nearly destroyed them and create from it something extraordinary - a good life.

♥ Iris Apfel - Accidental Icon by Iris Apfel - After the last book I wanted something light and cheery. Iris Apfel is a beam of sunshine and joy and it was so lovely to read through the book about her life and see her fashions laid out. For when one thinks of Ms. Apfel, one most certainly thinks of her immensely brilliant clothes. 

** Anne of Green Gables ¹ by L.M. Montgomery - To start, I did not like Marilla. She annoyed me to no end. Anne was fun and kind-hearted and prone to falling face-first into mischief without meaning to do so, but she was absolutely guileless. It irked me that Marilla never showed Anne warmth or acceptance until the very end. Anne seemed so easy to love - Matthew liked her almost instantly - and I could just never understand Marilla. The narrator, Susie Berneis, also read The Secret Garden and she did a wonderful job on this as well. 

Monuments Men ¹ by Robert M. Edsel - I love real-life stories but this book felt like a text book and I couldn't really get attached to the characters. Definitely an important book that documents some extraordinary people but I wish it had been told more like a novel (think In Cold Blood) where the reader could become invested in the lives of the people hell bent on restoring and preserving some of the world's most important pieces of art.

¹ - audiobook
² - abridged version
* - liked
♥ - loved
Any unmarked titles were, in my opinion, so-so.