Happy Thursday, bibliophiles!
This is a scheduled post, so I’ll be going back into my gopher hole for at least another week (or thereabouts), but one thing about me is that I love to categorize and wrap things up, in spite of it all…
Let’s begin, shall we?
GENERAL THOUGHTS:
I’ve been in the weeds of finals for the past few weeks, and I only just submitted my last final. Which also happened to be my last final…and the last assignment I’ll ever submit for undergrad. Jesus. I graduate college tomorrow (!!!), and I’ll continue to be busy, so expect that I’ll be radio silent for at least another week, with the exception of one other scheduled post aside from this one.
As you could probably gather from the amount of times I randomly dropped off the face of the Earth this blog, March and April have been very busy for me. It’s been a time. In late March, I defended my honors thesis, which was nothing short of nerve-wracking. But it was worth it—guess who’s graduating summa cum laude?? After that, I barely even considered that there would even be a semester after my honors thesis, since working on it swallowed up most of my semester. Of course, I only had a week or two before finals swallowed everything, but such is life. And college.
And now I’m about to graduate. What people don’t tell you about college is that, aside from graduation, there’s no real fanfare for the end of college. I just had a single, completely uneventful class on Thursday afternoon, and then I was just…done. With undergrad. Four years, all culminating in some random class I only took for the upper-division elective credit. You expect it to end with firecrackers and confetti and not just shuffling out of class and taking the bus home, but that’s the way things go sometimes. Sometimes things just end. And that’s okay. But maybe it’s fitting, in a way. I spent so much of my life being petrified at even the thought of going to college and being away from my parents. There was so much catastrophizing in the years and months leading up to college. But it ended so quietly, so ordinarily. In the end, it was uneventful, and it was all fine. Well, more than fine, I’d say. I came away with a GPA that wasn’t too shabby, so many wonderful friends, a ton of new experiences that I’ve braved…not to mention that summa cum laude I mentioned!! Come on!
So maybe it’s for the best that things end quietly. I can look back and be at peace, knowing that everything I struggled through was worth it, and hardly anything turns out as badly as your anxieties make it out to be. About a month back, one of my best friends introduced me to Rilo Kiley’s song “A Better Son/Daughter,” which…first off, you know who you are, and that was diabolical to do that to me right before graduation. Dastardly, even. OW. But I find myself drawn to it again and again, knowing some of the lows I’ve experienced recently in college (and in life), and that I came out the other side a more independent, self-assured, and hopefully more whole person. I sure feel better, knowing that I’ve made it to this point in spite of it all. So thank you, said friend, for bringing that song into my life.
MARCH READING WRAP-UP:
I read 13 books in March! Unfortunately, I had my first DNF of the year (I gave it an extra star because there were a few good ideas in it, but overall, Pleasure Activism got on my nerves and life is short), but aside from that, I had an excellent reading month! I focused on books by women for Women’s History Month, and I had a blast with new-to-me authors, longtime favorites, and treasured re-reads.
2 – 2.75 stars:
- Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good – adrienne maree brown (anthology) (DNF – ⭐️⭐️)
- The Lightest Object in the Universe – Kimi Eisele (⭐️⭐️)
3 – 3.75 stars:
- Thrill of the Chase – Kathryn Nolan (⭐️⭐️⭐️.25)
- Who Fears Death (Who Fears Death, #1) – Nnedi Okorafor (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
- Greenteeth – Molly O’Neill (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
- She and Her Cat – Makoto Shinkai and Naruki Nagakawa (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori) (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
- The Actual Star – Monica Byrne (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)
4 – 4.75 stars:
- Red Star Rebels – Amie Kaufman (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
- A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community – Natalia Molina (for school) (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
- To Ride a Rising Storm (Nampeshiweisit, #2) – Moniquill Blackgoose (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
- Black Disability Politics – Sami Schalk (for school) (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
- Five Ways to Forgiveness – Ursula K. Le Guin (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
5 stars:
- The Stardust Grail – Yume Kitasei (re-read) (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH (not counting re-reads): Five Ways to Forgiveness – 4.5 stars
REVIEWS:
- Red Star Rebels (3/3/26)
- To Ride a Rising Storm (3/10/26)
- Greenteeth (3/17/26)
- The Actual Star (3/31/26)
SUNDAY SONGS:
BONUS:
APRIL READING WRAP-UP:
I read 13 books in April! Ratings-wise, this month was a rollercoaster—I had a 5 star read and my first DNF of the year one after the other (I kid you not), so there have been lots of ups and downs. But most of the books I read came out somewhere above average, so I can’t complain. The ones that were excellent made up for the bad and the mediocre.
1 – 1.75 stars:
- Escape Velocity – Victor Manibo (DNF – ⭐️)
3 – 3.75 stars:
- How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain – Lisa Feldman Barrett (⭐️⭐️⭐️)
- Nightshade and Oak – Molly O’Neill (⭐️⭐️⭐️.25)
- According to Plan – Christen Randall (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
- Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age – Manuel Castells (for school) (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
- You Started It – Jackie Khalilieh (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
- Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi – anthology (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)
- The Serpent Called Mercy – Roanne Lau (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)
4 – 4.75 stars:
- Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot – Mikki Kendall (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
- Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
- Tall Water – SJ Sindu (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
- Slow Gods – Claire North (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25)
5 stars:
- Tune It Out – Jamie Sumner (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Tune It Out – 5 stars
REVIEWS:
SUNDAY SONGS:
BONUS:
Today’s song:
That’s it for this wrap-up! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 