April 2019 Wrap Up

This post contains affiliate links. This means I’ll earn a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through these links. To learn more, read my disclaimer

Happy new month everyone. I don’t know about you but April was such a stressful month for me. Doing school work, working on my final year project and blogging on my blog as well as Book Riot has really not been easy.

But am I going to stop blogging? Nope. I love it too much to stop.

Sometimes I just get a bit discouraged because you can put so much time and effort into blogging and some times you just don’t really get much back. That’s why I loved reading CW @ The Quiet Pond’s post about the time book bloggers spend curating their content and how they balance blogging with their lives. If you haven’t read it yet, please do. It’s really an insightful read.

Anyways back to the wrap up. This is my first wrap up post of the year and the first one since I went self-hosted.

BLOGGING

I launched the African Book Reviewers Directory . I got inspired by Shealea and Kelly to create one for African book reviewers.

It’s currently 40+ members strong and I’m so happy people are signing up and I have a lot of plans on making this into a community and increasing the visibility of African reviewers in the book community. If you want to support us, please follow the twitter account @AfriReviewers and help boost the voices of African book reviewers.

Also I got a new blog logo and header created by Vicky @ Vickyreads and I love it so much. I’ve put it up since march but every time I see it, I blush a little ?. It’s a perfect representation of me, my heritage and my interests. What do you think about it? Would you be interested in reading a post where I talk about what inspired it and what the little things in it mean?

Shameless self-plug here but I’m so proud of this post I wrote about diverse anthologies. There are several anthologies here that aren’t getting any hype even though they feature stories by amazing authors.

BOOKS READ IN APRIL

April was a bad reading month for me and I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll keep having bad reading months as long as I’m back to school. I finished one book and started like three others that I still haven’t finished reading yet. I’m going to cheat and add them all under books read in March ?. Here they are.

• Kingdom Cold by Brittni Chenelle: I got a review copy cause I was part of the blog tour and I enjoyed reading it though there were parts that made me cringe so hard. Full review to come. I rated it 3 stars
• The Gilded King by Josie Jaffrey: Why did I wait so long to start reading this? It’s so good and I’m halfway done. I mean Fanna @ Fannatality loved this book and she has great taste so I should have started it sooner but no I just didn’t listen ?.
• Imposter Alert by Uduak Akpabio Umoren : I featured this book in my post, Books by Nigerian Authors coming out in 2019, so I was glad when the publisher reached out to me and sent me a review copy. I’m about three chapters in but the print is so small, it’s making my eyes hurt. So I’m reading it slowly.
• Do It Scared by Ruth Soukup: Self-help novel about conquering your fears and doing things even if they scare you. I got an early copy of this as well but I’m not done reading it.

LIFE

Well I’m back to school for my final year, which is great but this also means there is even more work load but I’m putting my all into it.

In my quest to reduce some of the stress I’m feeling, I started illustrated journaling, which is basically like making doodles of events that happened to you in a month or week or a particular period. I watched this class on Skillshare called Draw Your Life: Introduction to Illustrated Journaling by Mimi Chao and got started on it. I’m really shy about sharing this here but ta-da here’s my first attempt (p.s: picture quality isn’t so good, I’ll upload a clearer one when it gets brighter).

I really enjoyed drawing this and I’m going to keep at it as it’s a great stress reliever for me and its fun as well. If you are interested in learning more about this, watch the class. It’s really easy to follow and it’s crafted for beginners, even if all you can draw is a stick figure.

p.s: If you use my link, you get two free months of Premium Skillshare so you can watch this class and many others.

GREAT POSTS FROM AROUND THE BLOGOSPHERE

• Vicky @ Vicky who reads post about adapting book covers into horizontal headers is great. I’ve always wondered how such graphics are created and this tutorial posts shows you how to create them with easy to follow step by step instructions.
• Nandini and Shruti’s comprehensive guide to social media success for book bloggers is a must-read.
• Shealea wrote a really touching review of With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo. Seriously though, how can I be this eloquent in my reviews? Most times I’m just like I loved this book and can’t think of anything else when I try to write reviews.
• Angela @ Stray Curls talks about how to plan your blog content for a WHOLE year. It seems wild but she gives some really good advice on planning your blog content in advance.
• This fun quiz on whether you would survive the battle of Winterfell. Are you a Game of Thrones fan? If you’ve watched the recent episodes, then check out this quiz. If not, stay away as spoilers abound in this quiz. In case you’re wondering, I did not survive.

Chat time! How was April for you?. If you’re a college student like me, how do you handle the stress from school? Which books did you read in April? Let me know in the comments. Wishing you a great and stress-free May.