April 2025 Book Haul

As a reader, you never really know how many books you will buy month to month. Some months are light, while others are filled with books. April started with almost no books purchased, however, I then discovered an amazing used bookstore jam-packed full of so many books, it’s a miracle I only bought a relatively small pile of them. My April 2025 book haul is here to share all of the books I picked up during the month.

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April 2025 Book Haul

Komi Can’t Communicate Vol. 31 by Tomohito Oda

The journey to 100 friends begins with a single conversation.

Socially anxious high school student Shoko Komi’s greatest dream is to make some friends, but everyone at school mistakes her crippling social anxiety for cool reserve. Luckily she meets Tadano, a timid wallflower who decides to step out of his comfort zone in order to help her achieve her goal of making 100 friends.

Tadano and Komi are going to the summer festival together! It’s a classic date destination, almost a rite of passage for couples. But rites of passage come with high expectations and high pressure—especially when it seems like the whole world is out to ruin your night! Can Tadano and Komi save their date from bad luck and worse weather?

Komi Can’t Communicate Vol. 32 by Tomohito Oda

The journey to 100 friends begins with a single conversation.

Socially anxious high school student Shoko Komi’s greatest dream is to make some friends, but everyone at school mistakes her crippling social anxiety for cool reserve. Luckily she meets Tadano, a timid wallflower who decides to step out of his comfort zone in order to help her achieve her goal of making 100 friends.

It’s Komi’s final year of high school, and she only has 21 more friends to make before she hits a hundred! But when her friend Emoyama faces a crisis, Komi is ready to put all her friend-finding activities on hold in order to help out. Can she and Tadano work together to soothe Emoyama’s wounded spirit, or will Komi suddenly need to make 22 friends?

Komi Can’t Communicate Vol. 33 by Tomohito Oda

The journey to 100 friends begins with a single conversation.

Socially anxious high school student Shoko Komi’s greatest dream is to make some friends, but everyone at school mistakes her crippling social anxiety for cool reserve. Luckily she meets Tadano, a timid wallflower who decides to step out of his comfort zone in order to help her achieve her goal of making 100 friends.

With Tadano’s loving encouragement, Komi is spending her final year of high school slowly expanding her comfort zone. Volunteering to be the class representative, resolving to win the sports festival, even talking to strangers—is there anything Komi can’t do?!

A Fish Caught In Time by Samantha Weinberg

The coelacanth (see-lo-canth) is no ordinary fish. Five feet long, with luminescent eyes and limb like fins, this bizarre creature, presumed to be extinct, was discovered in 1938 by an amateur icthyologist who recognized it from fossils dating back 400 million years. The discovery was immediately dubbed the “greatest scientific find of the century,” but the excitement that ensued was even more incredible. This is the entrancing story of that most rare and precious fish — our own great-uncle forty million times removed.

A Whale For The Killing by Farley Mowat

In the 1960s, Farley Mowat was living in the tiny fishing community of Burgeo on the southwest coast of Newfoundland. When an 80-ton fin whale became trapped in a nearby saltwater lagoon, Mowat rejoiced: here was the first chance to study at close range one of the most magnificent animals in creation. Some local villagers thought otherwise, blasting the whale with rifle fire and hacking open her back with a motorboat propeller. Mowat appealed desperately to the authorities, but it was too late-ravaged by an infection resulting from her massive wounds, the whale died. A plea for the end of commercial hunting of the whale, this moving account blends all the tension of the life-and-death struggle for one animal’s survival with the drama of man’s wanton destruction of life-bearing creatures and the environment itself.

Virunga: The Passion of Dian Fossey by Farley Mowat

On December 28, 1985 after eighteen years of research in the dripping rain forests of the Virunga volcanoes in central Africa, Dian Fossey was brutally murdered. Though not quite fifty-four years old, she had lived a life as remarkable and rewarding as that of any woman of our time.

Dian Fossey went to Africa at the urging of famed anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey to study one of the rarest, most mysterious animals on earth: the wild mountain gorilla. She found the great, gentle apes threatened on all sides by zoo collectors, poachers, herdsmen and scientists. Slowly, she came to understand the magnificent creatures on their own terms, to understand and admire–even to love them. She became their greatest champion–and their greatest martyr.

Virunga is the startling true account of Dian Fossey’s life as told by Canada’s favorite wildlife writer, Farley Mowat. Based on Fossey’s private correspondence, journals, camp records, personal papers and interviews with her colleagues, friends and enemies, it is the story of one woman’s inexhaustible passion for life–and the creatures who share it with us.

Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat

More than a half-century ago the Canadian Wildlife Service assigned the naturalist Farley Mowat to investigate why wolves were killing arctic caribou. Mowat’s account of the summer he lived in the frozen tundra alone-studying the wolf population and developing a deep affection for the wolves (who were of no threat to caribou or man) and for a friendly Inuit tribe known as the Ihalmiut (“People of the Deer”)-is a work that has become cherished by generations of readers, an indelible record of the myths and magic of wild wolves.

Sea of Slaughter by Farley Mowat

Farley Mowat, bestselling author of Never Cry Wolf, A Whale for the Killing, and The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, calls Seal of Slaughter his most important work…a book he felt compelled to write after witnessing the drastic decline in the rich diversity of wildlife along the Northeastern seaboard.

Farley Mowat does not tell of the extinction of one species. His unforgettable narrative tells of the devastation of all different types of animal life from a region where the forests once teemed with game, where the fish could be scooped up with baskets…and where the Eskimo curlew fell in clouds of thousands to sportsmen who used them for target practice before turning their guns to clay pigeons.

With his unique storytelling gift, Farley Mowat details why some creatures, such as the gentle penguin-like great auk, have vanished forever. And he astounds us with his account of the killing that continues–of wolf and whale, seal and bear, fish and fowl. Monumental in scope, chilling in its impact, Sea of Slaughter is a warning, a vision, and a powerful testament for preserving the living grandeur fast disappearing from our world.

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley

First published in 1941, Walter Farley’s best-selling novel for young readers is the triumphant tale of a boy and a wild horse. From Alec Ramsay and the Black’s first meeting on an ill-fated ship to their adventures on a desert island and their eventual rescue, this beloved story will hold the rapt attention of readers new and old. 

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are heart-wrenchingly difficult, such as one to an old man in the village whose very ill dog is his only friend and companion, some are lighthearted and fun, such as Herriot’s periodic visits to the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo who throws parties and has his own stationery, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening, such as Herriot’s recollections of poor farmers who will scrape their meager earnings together to be able to get proper care for their working animals. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.

All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot

All Things Bright and Beautiful is the beloved sequel to Herriot’s first collection, All Creatures Great and Small, and picks up as Herriot, now newly married, journeys among the remote hillside farms and valley towns of the Yorkshire Dales, caring for their inhabitants―both two- and four-legged. Throughout, Herriot’s deep compassion, humor, and love of life shine as we laugh, cry, and delight in the portraits of his many varied animal patients and their equally varied owners.

I hope you enjoyed my April 2025 Book Haul. What books did you purchase this month?