Read:
So Long, See You Tomorrow – William Maxwell (Vintage International, 1996)
Kin – Tayari Jones (Viking, 2026)
The Distance of a Shout – Michael Ondaatje (McClelland & Stewart, 2026)
The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street – Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho (Douglas & MacIntyre, 2026)
Chernobyl Prayer – Svetlana Alexievich (Penguin Audio, 2021) (translated from the Russian by Anna Burnin & Arch Tait) (narrated by Andrew Byron & Sasha Alexis)
Fukushima – Adrian Penketh (BBC Audio, 2026)
Hunger & Thirst – Claire Fuller (Tin House, 2026)
The Correspondent – Virginia Evans (Crown, 2025)
A Little Feral – Maria Giesbrecht (Write Bloody Publishing, 2026)
A Far-Flung Life – M.L. Stedman (Scribner, 2026)
The Art of Looking Back – Theresa Kishkan (Thornapple Press, 2026)
The Remembered Soldier – Anjet Daanje (New Vessel Press, 2025) (translated from the Dutch by David McKay)
Currently Reading:
The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Wax Child – Olga Ravn
Who Else in the Dark Headed There – Garth Martens
Son of Nobody – Yann Martel
Go Gentle – Maria Semple
Thoughts:
I was determined to up my numbers a bit in April after my lax reading in March. This was helped along by numerous library holds coming in at once and making me panic a bit. I still have several that are New books (only 2 weeks check-out) so I have needed to stay focused and read. I actually started The Remembered Soldier as an e-book via the Libby app and brought it along on our Hong Kong trip but didn’t make a lot of progress. I wanted to finish it, especially when it showed up on the International Booker List, but knew it would work better for me in a physical format. I also finally finished listening to Chernobyl Prayer. I followed it with Fukushima when that popped up for me as an ALC on Libro.fm. Initially, I had the idea to do a double-barrelled book review about nuclear accidents. But after finishing both I felt vastly unequipped to make any sort of commentary on nuclear accidents. Aside from that, they are two vastly different stories and ways in which those stories are told so it didn’t feel like putting them together made much sense.
What’s Next:
Aside from The Wax Child and Son of Nobody, I also have Mother Mary Comes to Me and Beasts of the Sea and Colm Toibin’s new story collection out from the library. That will bring me mostly up to date with my holds. After those I hope to focus a little more on some of my long-term TBR titles already in my house. I’m also toying with the idea of reading Emily Wilson’s The Odyssey but might save it for the summer.
2026 Reading Goals:
42/100 books (12 in March)
Theological: 0/12
Translated Works: 4/12 (Chernobyl Prayer from Russian and The Remembered Soldier from Dutch in March)
Pre-2025 TBR: 8/25 (So Long, See You Tomorrow since 2018 and Chernobyl Prayer since 2020)
Goliaths: 5/6 (The Remembered Soldier at 562 pages)
Owned: 7/25 (Kin and The Distance of a Shout in March)
Current TBR: 153 (previously 145)
Pearl’s Books (what my 11-year-old read in April)
Jolly Foul Play – Robin Stevens
Princess Academy – Shannon Hale
Mistletoe and Murder – Robin Stevens
The Poisoned King – Katherine Rundell
A Spoonful of Murder – Robin Stevens
Eldest – Christopher Paolini
Karissa Reads Books 
A nice selection of books. I will be interested in your review of The Wax Child, should you write it. I liked Olga Ravn’s novel The Employees, which I found both quirky and disturbing, but there is something about the premise of her new book that puts me off. Perhaps it is something to do with the fact that it is based on a real story of a Danish witch trial? and I am sceptical about the reimagining? Anyway, I am curious.
I hope to! I’m not really sure what I think about it yet. I’m about halfway through.
I loved Chernobyl Prayer when I read it – such an affecting strategy for showing the disaster’s consequences for the lives of regular people.
It really is! I read The Unwomanly Face of War by Alexievich, which has a similar style and is also very effective. I learned a lot from this one.
Nothing quite like panic to force a person to read. Karissa! Girl, be KIND TO YOURSELF. You’re reading so fast that most of your books don’t have links to your reviews, and we absolutely want to hear from you. As for your comment about not having anything to say about the nuclear disaster: that sentence made me realize I often feel like I have nothing to add to serious conversations about slavery, sexual assault, etc., but that my “job” as a reviewer is to A) convince readers to get the book, B) convince readers why they should not get the book, or C) be the readers’ first exposure to the book, so they can check it out themselves.
Reading books and writing reviews scratch different parts of my brain, you know? Sometimes I want to do one more than the other. But I’m working on catching up on reviewing some of these. As to the nuclear disaster books…it was also largely that I expected the two stories to have more overlap and they were really so different that it didn’t make sense to put them together. It also took me a while to finish Chernobyl Prayer, which never helps me write a proper review!