Words of April || Wrap-up

I think this is the latest I've written a wrap-up, at least in the last few years. My April was pretty busy and the busyness went up several notches since it ended, giving me no time to even think about looking back on the month, let alone write about it.

Now that I finally have a few moments of peace and no plans, I can tell you all about what I did in April. I haven't looked back on what I did yet and I've kind of forgotten a lot of it so we'll find out as this post goes, haha. Grab a cup of your favourite drink and settle down, let's chat 🍶

books 📚

I read 8 books in April. 7 ebooks, 1 paperback. 6 romance books, 1 non-fiction, 1 fantasy. 2 were rereads. Quality-wise, I wouldn't say it was a great reading month but it was not bad. There were a couple of books that made an impression on me.

Let's talk about the new books I read:

Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake by Mazie Eddings. I picked this up after seeing it on a book blog. Unfortunately, this book wasn't my thing. My main problem with it is how similar it was to Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating. Not in terms of plot, but in terms of the characters. I appreciated the ADHD rep, but that's it. I did not like the writing style, I did not like the relationship progression, and I didn't like the pairing at all. It reminded me so much of Josh and Hazel that I just kept comparing the stories in my mind.

When Alec Met Evie by Jenny Proctor was cute! I quite liked this one. The plot is pretty simple and not ground-breaking, but the way it was written was lovely. I liked how the characters were written and how their relationship grew. I liked that the author used the main characters' relationships with supporting characters to show who they are, instead of only focusing on the main couple. It felt like a fully formed story that I can easily imagine in the real world. I loved how the main characters communicated and held each other up. And again, the story was very cute.

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami was a random pick from a library browse. I wanted a short book and this fit the bill since it's essays and wouldn't take long to read. It actually took me longer than I expected because I was annotating so much. I really liked this group of essays. I wrote all my thoughts in my review here.

Just Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane. I've seen praise for the author's books but I hadn't picked them up until this one. It's a me-thing but I always struggle with British novels for a while in the beginning because of the distinct writing style that many authors have. I don't know how to describe it—it's a bit dreary and the conversations are weird and I don't get the jokes. I got used to it after a while so it took me even longer to understand the point of the book. I got the plot but there should be a point too, you know? It came in that one monologue at the end when the main character showed her growth. I LOVED that speech. Everything I kind of missed from the initial chapters made a lot of sense when I read that speech. I couldn't help but go over the plot again in my head after I read the book because of that speech. Great book.

Two Can Play by Ali Hazelwood. This was a quick and cute read with all of the usual Ali Hazelwood story elements. It was predictable but I still liked it. This is the first book of hers where they have more communication. The main character clears the air pretty quickly (because it's a short book) so I didn't become annoyed with draggy plot as usual. It was a nice one-time read.

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid. After having it on my TBR for months, I finally picked it up. I'd heard mixed reviews and one of my friends didn't like it, so I was intrigued about the story but didn't expect to like it. I really liked it, actually. My favourite aspect was the atmospheric writing that reminded of older Faerie stories I've read. I loved that it was eerie and a bit confusing and a bit maddening to read. The main character is... going through some things in her head and since we're reading from her POV, we feel like our minds are messed up a bit too. I loved the ending of the story. I predicted the twist earlier but the ending was still super satisfying. The last line of the book?! What an ending.

Oh by the way, I officially DNFed Katabasis by RF Kuang. The friend I was buddy reading with speed-read it to finish it and said that there was nothing redeeming later so I didn't even bother trying.

content consumed 📺

Movies & TV Shows

• XO, Kitty Season 3. I don't know why, I thought it would end with season 3. Apparently not?! This season was as dramatic as I expected. Nothing was simple. I didn't like that it changed some of the characters in a bad way. I was actually lukewarm about the romance considering how hyped I was in season 2. It was not done well. The show had some good parts, though. Overall, it was okay. I will be watching season 4 which hopefully is the last season.
• I watched The Drama movie with a few friends. I was interested in watching it because I saw that people either loved or hated it and I was curious. We were lowkey traumatised by it. The movie is written, directed, and edited very well. I believe it's meant to be unpleasant to watch. The problem is that it was so unpleasant and the movie basically threw things at the audience without a break for 2 hours—my friends and I were silent for about half an hour after exiting because we were still processing it. 3 of us had a 3+ hour conversation on it the next weekend. It was a good movie because it creates conversations and brilliantly did what it intended to do.
• Still Shining Kdrama. This looked sad from the trailer and it was accordingly sad to watch throughout. It was a sad drama. Completely. I think I teared up once. The story has all the sad stuff required. It did not have even a sufficiently happy ending. It was an open ending with sadness. I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to watch something consistently sad.

YouTube

• This book was cancelled. The reason should scare you. This was a pretty good discussion on the rise in AI usage in publishing, how we're not equipped to deal with it right now because quality checks are trending downwards and how AI is making things worse even for authors who don't use it.

Articles

• Why Amy March Was Right in “Little Women”

Blogs

• 11 Days, 3 Countries – Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore Travel Story with Countless Queues, Chaos and lots of fun
• Books That Changed My Perspective
• Why Influencer Culture Is Facing Backlash: Cancel Culture, TikTok Fame & the End of Relatability
• 17 Songs You Should Listen To Even If You Don’t Like K-Pop // A Lovingly Compiled List Of K-Pop Song Recs
• Books About the Pursuit of Knowledge
• Over a Cuppa: Twenty Two (Stories, Sun, & Soil)
• 2025 Stats Transparency

Music

I don't usually talk about music but I just have to share some new songs that I've been loving. After I watched Building the Band in March, I gave one of the bands' music a shot and slowly became obsessed with the album. Midnight Til Morning is a boy band from the show. They were pretty good but I didn't pay them much attention because the other bands stole my attention. However, they're the only ones with an album out now so I listened to their music and wow. I immediately liked Ghost of Us (the video is meh though) and slowly fell in love with Edge of Amazing to the point of obsession.

Seriously, give this song a listen. It's so good. I can easily imagine it in movies about epic stories. I'm slowly liking their other music as well but Ghost of Us and Edge of Amazing are my favourites. I'm still disappointed by the band's live performances that I found on YouTube. Performing is definitely not their strong suit but they're improving. It's just that Edge of Amazing has a great potential for a live performance, if the band properly owns the stage and connects with the audience. Hopefully, they'll get there. It's fun to like a boy band again haha.

It's also interesting to like bands which is still fairly small. I'm a part of the r/BuildingTheBand because I genuinely like 4 of the bands (still waiting for SZN4 to come out with a powerful song...) and I want to keep up to know about new music. It's interesting to see the conversations. They're much more thoughtful because there are fewer people and the conversations are different because these bands are still figuring out their first steps. There just isn't enough promo material or music at this point to have a bigger following but it's exciting to see them get opportunities and the different ways their journeys are shaping up.

blog 👩🏻‍💻

I didn't write much in April. One post was the book review on Novelist as a Vocation which was my first book review in several months. It took me a while to write because I forgot how to write full reviews lol.

The other post was a Top Ten Tuesday post called Top Ten Book Titles That Describe Me/My Life. This was definitely the highlight of the month. It was such a fun post to write and I loved blog hopping to see others' versions of the post. It ended up becoming the top post engagement-wise in the last couple of years! As of now, it has 45 comments! I actually had to set aside time to respond to comments every day to keep up haha. It made me happy.

Speaking of engagement and stats, my blog shows a sudden jump in subscriber count because of... calculation changes? If I look at the new subscriber list, there haven't been many new subscribers in the past couple of months. However, the number that WordPress/Jetpack shows is much higher. It went from 2693 subscribers to 2701 in one day. I'm guessing that the jump is because it now counts email subscribers in the overall count when it, presumably, didn't before? I remember being able to see email subscribers separately before but I can't now. Did anyone else see a difference?

I mentioned an interesting trend in my stats back in March and wondered if it would continue in April or if I'd figure out the reason for it. I couldn't figure it out and the pattern broke. It's back to being a bit random. However, in other news, April stats showed upwards trends in everything. If the number of views was only a bit more than last month, I'd have correlated it with the Top Ten Tuesday post but the view count is 25% higher than March.

Getting 12.4k overall views in April when there's no specific season or a specific post trending is atypical. I believe the middle months of April-June to be the low-traffic months (at least for my blog) so it was surprising that, this time, April did better than February. How is your blog doing? Is there a break in pattern compared to previous years?

I decided to take a break from writing blog posts from mid-April simply because I was busy and had a few things coming up. I assumed I'd return to writing in the first week of May but I didn't. Since one of my goals this year is to blog whenever I want to and not force myself for it or schedule it, I just waited until I wanted to write and had the time to do it. I'm quite enjoying this expectation-free way of living that allows for other spontaneity.

hobbies & social life

I tried to return to working out in April. I ran a couple of times (my first 2k and 3k without breaks since being diagnosed with Graves'!), played badminton once, and went to the gym for the first time ever. I kept an eye on my heart rate during runs and badminton and it was not bad. Still high but not worrying. Hopefully, it's just because my body has become unused to working out and will reduce over time.

A small highlight in the month was one Sunday morning when I made the best matcha I've ever made. It was perfection. I was so impressed by it and I loved the taste of it and the feel of it. It was amazing and it made my day.

I spontaneously started learning how to read and write Tamizh again. It's never far from my mind. I attempted it a couple of times in the past but didn't get far enough to be comfortable with it. It's hard to learn a language when there's a sense of shame rooted in it and you don't get chances to use it naturally. But I am trying again! The letters came easier this time because of my previous attempts so I could move on to trying to read the newspaper and attempting writing it. I used an empty notebook in my Traveler's Notebook for it to make myself more excited about it.

Speaking of, my TN setup is popping off. I love it. I took it with me on a trip for the first time (more on this below) and I bought a couple of things that I'd been eyeing for months. My TN setup at this moment is exactly what I envisioned when I bought it last year. I'm considering making a post on it, TBD on when, though.

My social life was FULL in April. I did so much. The month started with another reading event in my city (I left early because the crowd was not good that day). I went to a book talk event with a different organiser and a whole different crowd which was lovely. Then, I had a day out with a few friends I made over a few reading events. 7 of us went to a bird sanctuary nearby which was really cool and then we went for The Drama movie. The next weekend, we went to a flea market and I took them to my favourite café spot where one of them tried a matcha latte for the first time (he is slowly converting into a matcha fan 👀). We had a very fun evening where we just sat in a park and spoke/argued about The Drama movie for hours haha.

I went to Bangalore for a few days in the last weekend of the month and basically hopped from friend group to friend group haha. I was SO BUSY. The day I arrived, I got an impromptu (and overdue) haircut and met a few college friends for matcha and dinner since it was one of their birthdays. The next day, I did a work-from-café day with friends from my previous job. After work, I went to an old friend's home and met his wife for the first time. It was a chill dinner.

On day 3, I left super early to travel across the city to meet some friends. I used my TN in a café for the first time while waiting instead of scrolling on my phone. (I can see why people carry their TNs every day, I kind of want to as well). After that, I went to one of the friend's homes to hang out more and hang out with her family for a bit. Then, I went out to dinner with another group of friends across the city which led to a game of Catan at 1 am. We finished it at 4:30 am lol. On day 4 (which still felt like day 3 to be honest), I slept at 5 am and woke up at 8 am to go to my friend's home for breakfast with incredibly tired eyes. I was surviving on a nap, lol. After breakfast, I travelled across the city again to finally go home. I freshened up and had a much-needed long nap.

Early next morning (at 3 am), I set out to begin a trip with a (different) group of friends from my previous job. We spent a week travelling in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Gangtok. Although we saw a lot of tourist places, it felt like a trip of foggy vibes because of the weather haha. My favourite parts of the trip were the slow times when we explored on foot, stayed in for a day at a great stay, and scenic drives. We visited the Nepal border and the China border (my phone was having a conniption with timezone switches near the China border haha). I experienced snowfall for the first time and it was so cool! I may write a post on the trip later, I'm not yet done documenting the trip on my TN haha. These photos are a sneak peek until then 😌

chat with me

How are you? What have you been upto? What have you been obsessed with or what are you working on currently?