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House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson - I can describe this one in 5 words: goth horror lesbian softcore porn. Its setting is pretty much Victorian England without being named England; our protagonist, Marion, is scrabbling out a living in the poor part of (not)London and may or may not have killed her abusive brother. Desperate to escape, she answers an ad for a "bloodmaid" for an ancient dynasty in upper (not) England, where the rich congregate. Bloodmaids essentially let the (not) vampire rich nobles feed off of them, and after seven years of service to their house, they're released and given enough severance pay to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. Of course it's not as easy as it sounds, and complicating matters is the romantic (or rather sexual) relationship between Marion and Countess Lisavet, the richest and most powerful of all the (not) vampires. Honestly, I don't know what summary I read when I added this to my "must read" list because this really isn't my cup of (Victorian) tea at ALL but I must admit it was not a horrible book and it was nice to read something considerably less thought-provoking than my April reads, though I'm sure the author intended the book to be scathing commentary on the haves taking advantage of the have-nots. I'm going to give this one a B...for "bite me" (literally <g>).

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier - Chevalier is best known for her book Girl With a Pearl Earring, in which she takes the subject of Johannes Vermeer's famous painting and gives her a backstory. I greatly enjoyed that book...this one, not quite as much. This time Chevalier tells the story of Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot who were fossil hunters in Lyme Regis, England in the early 1800s. Mary Anning is best known for discovering the first plesiosaurus, at a time where the world hadn't yet learned of dinosaurs. The book had so much potential but instead it just dragged on endlessly, with little action. The best parts were the two women, who were about 20 years apart in age, fighting to be credited for their discoveries (EP had a pretty impressive fossil collection of her own) and fighting a church that refused to believe God would make creatures only to have them go extinct. C+

I started There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafek but I gave up after a couple chapters because it was just too brutal for me. I was not even far enough into the book to give you a summary of it. If anyone has read it, and loved it, I'd love to know more.

In addition to reading two books (and two chapters) in April, I also read about four issues of a magazine called Cloth, Paper, Scissors. I picked up the issues at the last free craft supply swap at the library, mistakenly believing there would be some fun crafts to try. Instead they covered the works of various amateur (but very, very GOOD) artists who work in mixed media (fabric, paper, usually beads or metal, etc.) and even when the artists tried to explain how to duplicate their work, I got lost both in the page long list of supplies and the frequent terms of the trade that I didn't understand. The pictures were pretty though!

I've also been working my way through Archive Of Our Own's The Umbrella Academy's fanfiction. AO3 usually has more "serious" writers who tend to write either longer stories or more complex (and sometimes downright confusing) stories. Also, AO3 stories tend to heavily skew towards slash*. While I absolutely don't mind a good slash fic and have read (more than) my share of them, I get to the point where I'm oversaturated on slash and just want a good story (AO3 also goes hard--pun intended--with the "plot? what plot?" works that are pretty much nothing but sex). I have to give some credit to the TUA authors on AO3...yes, there's plenty of slash but it's usually more in the context of the story (yay!) rather than being the entire point of the story (boo!).

* I had to give up on reading Hawaii 5-0 fanfiction on AO3 because about 99.9 % of it is just Steve/Danno and new and creative ways for them to get it on. I prefer Steve and Danny as friends, and I really want to read more case fics and maybe some "missing scene/epilogue" tales but nope. Just S/D all the time.