This month was composed of the ups & the downs, the highs & the lows of reading experiences. Nevertheless, 2 out of the 5 books will very likely make it into the top picks of 2020, so that makes it a good month in my point of view! Regardless of being in the situation of the COVID-19 virus lockdown, stuck at home for weeks/months & not working anymore, I somehow still didn’t find myself reading more than regularly.

I didn’t have an exact reading goal set at the beginning of the year but have rather decided to see how my reading will flow. Ever since I joined a couple of book clubs (the 1st one in October 2019), I have managed to get through much more books than ever before in my life. While increasing the quantity of my book game, I also managed to elevate my “reading quality”, which was the most unexpected & pleasant personal discovery. Looking back at the past 4 months, I noticed that I managed to get through about 4-5 books on average per month, even on the side of my full time job. That’s when I decided to challenge myself & set the goal to read 50 books this year (which will be the highest number of books read per year in my entire life!), while writing detailed reviews about each & every one of them! Let’s see how this journey will end in 6 months 😉

Concerning the current daily life, I guess nowadays quite a bit of time gets taken away by the cooking, doing groceries, cleaning more frequently than usual, catching up with friends & family & so on. A new little routine also made its way into my day – watching movies on a video projector in the evenings, which I can’t complain about 😀 All those activities have replaced quite a few reading hours but I’m trying not to force myself, rather take the time as it feels most natural to me.

For the books that I got through in April 2020, they managed to stay varied:

• 2/5 books were written by female authors (like last year, I set a goal of having the balance of 50/50 among female & male authors by the end of the year);

• 2/5 books were written or translated in German (1 of them was an original, the other a translation; I’m aiming at switching up my predominantly English reading with some German & Russian);

• 2/5 were non-fiction books (I have been predominantly reading fiction my whole life, so I’m trying to change that up & end the year with around 30-40% of the total of the books read to be non-fiction);

• 2/5 of the authors were American (I realised that I tend to get stuck in a bubble of American authors, so I try to change that up a bit more).

Here the list in the chronological order that I read them (the complete reviews are linked within the titles of the books):

• “Vox” – Christina Dalcher: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)
• “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” – Ocean Vuong: ★★★★★ (5/5)
• “Why We Sleep” – Matthew Walker: ★★★★★ (5/5)
• “How To Do Nothing” – Jenny Odell: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
• “Qualityland” – Marc-Uwe Kling: ★★★★☆ (4/5)