Required Reading 2013: APRIL

And just like that, another month has gone. Actually, the first quarter of the year has just flown by, and I hardly even noticed!

So, 

image from weheartit

A new month means choosing a new set of books to read, but before that, a recap of last month's picks is in order:

• Every Day by David Levithan - [carried over from February] A fresh start, every day. 4/5
• Hunger by Knut Hamsun - Utmost destitution! 5/5
• The Passport by Herta Muller - Sacrifices and hopes. 4/5
• Astigirl by Tweet Sering - I just wanna be an astigirl! 4/5
• An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro - A Japanese artist's reflections. 5/5

I am so glad I don't have anything to carry over from March to April (but Wolf Hall is still screaming at me from the shelf, heh) so I'm feeling a little brash foolish bold with this month's picks. :D

The books I included in this month's reading list are all Pulitzer winners - nominees for the month's book club F2F discussion. The fourth one is my first chunkster for the year - not that I'm aiming to read any number of them for a certain period - but I just realized that I haven't read any thick books lately. (And by "thick" I'm thinking books with page counts exceeding 700, in trade paperback form.)

• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - The book that won the book club's polls for April and my first Marilynne Robinson. 
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri - I have, for the longest time, been wanting to read a book written by Lahiri. I'm taking the opportunity to do so this month. 
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz - Another one of those authors whose works I am aching to read. 
• Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - Pimped by cousin Aaron and mommy Louize, I will be reading this alongside bookish friends for the entire month. Just to get an idea of how much I'm required to read for a specific period (one volume per ten days!), I marked the beginning of each volume with a post-it: 

One post-it means one volume. One volume is as thick as your usual novel.

Yes, my required reading for April is a bit ambitious, but I'm going to stay positive! For, after all, in the event I am unable to finish all four books this month, there's still May, right? :D