A selection of quotes and pictures to represent April’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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“A man cannot fight a disease in his body, but he can fight against wickedness if he is so minded – therefore he must be blamed for wickedness.”

Rosabelle Shaw by D.E. Stevenson (1937)

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“It’s more like my missus’s skein of knitting wool, after one of the kittens has had it, than a decent murder case. I mean, you get hold of one end and start following it up, and all it leads to is a damned knot worked so tight you can’t do a thing with it. Then you grab hold of the other end, and start on that, and what you find is that it’s a bit the kitten chewed through that just comes away in your hand, with the rest of the wool in as bad a muddle as ever.”

They Found Him Dead by Georgette Heyer (1937)

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‘Sometimes it’s as though life is a balance sheet of who you have in your life and who you’ve lost. And very often they aren’t fairly weighted.’

The Household by Stacey Halls (2024)

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It was, Nat thought, like air raids in the war. No one down this end of the country knew what the Plymouth folk had seen and suffered. You had to endure something yourself before it touched you.

A Different Sound, edited by Lucy Scholes (2023) – quote from The Birds by Daphne du Maurier

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Even temporary lovers are apt to leave scars on their departure. Permanent lovers leave a cut that never quite heals.

Caroline England by Noel Streatfeild (1937)

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It was perhaps a paradox that forty years as a criminal barrister had persuaded him to see the best in the worst of people, but then again he had always worked in defence and had learned that although everyone had the capacity to commit murder, even the most cold-blooded killers had a grain of goodness buried somewhere inside them, if you just looked hard enough. Fear, guilt, remorse…it took many forms, but he had never met anyone with no humanity at all.

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz (2024)

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Even in an unfair battle, there must be some way forward, some missed road to victory. Once one recognises that not all fights are won with square blows and that anything can go, there are no unwinnable fights.

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein (2023)

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There is perhaps nothing that gives one so strong a sense of theatre from the inside as the sound of invisible players in action. The disembodied and remote voices, projected at an unseen mark, the uncanny quiet offstage, the smells and the feeling that the walls and the dust listen, the sense of a simmering expectancy; all these together make a corporate life so that the theatre itself seems to breathe and pulse and give out a warmth. This warmth communicated itself to Martyn and, in spite of all her misgivings, she glowed and thought to herself, “This is my place. This is where I belong.”

Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh (1951)

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Favourite book read in April:

Close to Death

Authors read for the first time in April:

Diana Gardner, Penelope Mortimer, Frances Bellerby, Inez Holden, Attia Hosain, Sylvia Townsend Warner (all from A Different Sound), Kevin Jared Hosein

Countries visited in my April reading:

England, Scotland, Trinidad (must do better next month!)

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Reading notes: My reading in the first half of April was dominated by books for 1937 Club; I enjoyed all three of my choices and am now looking forward to 1970 Club in October! I was also pleased that I found time to fit in a book for Reading the Theatre. In May there are no reading events that I’m planning to take part in, so I will focus on catching up with my NetGalley review copies and maybe making some progress with my Classics Club list!

How was your April? What are you planning to read in May?