Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell with Ann Marie Gideon (Narrator)

I had fun with Wordslut that I quickly listened to the next Montell book. For some reason, she did not narrate this one. The narrator did a good job though. While some bits of the book were interesting including the section about fitness, the actual cults did not have a lot of new to me info. I still like Montell’s writing and will listen to her latest book this year as well.

April 13-18, 2026.

Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie with Juliet Stevenson (Narrator)

We had listened to a few of these already in the other anthology collections. It was still good because I really like Miss Marple and I adore Juliet Stevenson’s narration. I thought most of the stories were well done and generally more consistent than the Poirot short stories.

April 8-18, 2026.

Evenings & Weekends by Oisín McKenna

Another Irish literary novel. I am hoping to read about five this year as opposed to the dozen last year. This one was very similar to Greta & Valdin and had a similar style to Sally Rooney but with quotation marks. It was set in modern London and most of the events of the book happen over the course of one day. The setting did a lot of the work for me since I lived in the same part of London as one of the main characters. I regularly visited the same big Tesco. London was one of the characters and the author was able to describe the tired and scummy yet alive feeling of London in summer. There were themes of repression, miscommunication, stress, and past trauma. There were too many characters and perspectives and it could have been tighter around the main core characters. It was a nice debut.

April 15-19, 2026.

Grandma’s House by Alice Melvin with Alice Melvin (Illustrator)

This was a lovely children’s book which used cutouts in the illustrations. Very cozy and I would have loved this kind of book as a kid as well. As I learned English through ESL, I had less time with children’s books so I am discovering a lot of them now.

April 19, 2026.

Crumble by Meredith McClaren with Andrea Bell (Illustrator)

This was in my library pile for awhile. I kept putting it off because the art style looked too bright and juvenile. I was not sure if I would like the visuals. I grew to like it with the good writing. It felt like a cozy video game. It had baking, grief, family, and friendship. Very well done middle grade graphic novel.

April 19, 2026.