March 2020 Wrap Up
I was reading pretty consistently in the first 85 days of March but by the last 5, I couldn't hang on to my momentum. March was just interminably long! And I thought January was long!
I ended up finishing 10 books in March, and for the last 5 days I read a bunch but I started 5 books, so I didn't finish anything. Le sigh. I'm like a cow off my feed. I just nibble a little at lots of things and don't make any progress in any of them.
Operatic by Kyo Maclear and Byron Eggenschwiler - This was a fun little middle grade graphic novel about a girl who has a teacher who wants to teach them about different kinds of music and help the students find a new style they like. It's also about how hard it is to fit in in middle school and how mean kids can be when you are different.
A Heart So Fierce and Broken by Brigid Kemmerer - This is the sequel to last year's A Curse So Dark and Lonely which I adored. This one wasn't quite up to that level, but I still enjoyed it. This one follows Grey, who was the Prince's captain of the guard. I can't really say anything else about it without spoiling the end of the first one, so that's all I got.
Blood Countess by Lana Popovich - I did not particularly care for this historical fiction told from the perspective of one of Elizabeth Bathory's chambermaids. It was supposed to be a YA horror novel, and it was gory, for sure. But it used a bunch of manipulative tricks like: of course the main character has a little sister she wants to protect from the Countess, and of course the Countess goes after her. The end didn't make a lot of sense, but I was glad it was over.
Love Poems for Married People by John Kenney - My coworker handed me this one day, so I sat down and read it. It's hilarious. It has poems from husband to wife and vice versa. It's about learning that you hate the sound your spouse makes when he chews, and finding out you're a blanket hog. Stuff like that.
So You Think You're a Bookworm by Jo Hoare - I found this at Barnes and Noble on the clearance rack for $5 so I bought it. It has hilarious lists about different kinds of book lovers. My favorite was the various types of book club members.
Artemis by Andy Weir - This was the book club book for the book club that hasn't happened yet. I really enjoyed this one. The main character is a young woman who was raised on the moon. Her dad is an upstanding welder, but she is a smuggler. She gets caught up in some corporate mobster business and has to work her way out of it. She is smart and sarcastic and hilarious.
Flowers In the Gutter by K. R. Gaddy - I kind of hate the title of this book, but the book itself was pretty good. It's about a group of teens in Cologne who resisted against the Hitler Youth and the S.S. It has lots of pictures and apparently the books was compiled from a bunch of journals and interviews with the kids in question. I liked that it didn't talk down to it's readers. I hate when non-fiction YA books define half the words in the body of the text. Ugh!
Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles - In this one, our main character is trying to get together with a girl he's admired for years. He joins a Purity Pledge at their church to try to convince her he's a good guy. I got really frustrated with this kid because he just wasn't getting that he couldn't MAKE her like him. He kept trying to force the issue and getting angry when she didn't cooperate. Finally, at the end, he started to see the light. It's about boys being taught that women's bodies are theirs for the taking whether the women want it or not.
The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller - This is my favorite book so far this year! Alessandra Stathos is a second daughter of a baron and has plans. She's going to catch the eye of the Shadow King, convince him to marry her, then kill him and take his throne. It's all going to plan until her ex shows up and threatens to tell the king about their previous relationship unless she introduces him into society. She does catch the eye of the king, but he refuses to take their relationship past friendship. He wants their relationship to fool the council into thinking he has found a wife, but not actually fall in love. If he touches someone with his skin, he loses his shadows around them. His shadows protect him from hard. If he touches someone and can no longer be protected, it makes him vulnerable to attack by the same people who killed his parents. It is complicated and witty and romantic and I really enjoyed it.
Theodosia Burr by Karen Cherro Quinones - I woke up at 5:30 one morning. I don't know why. My sleep schedule is all screwed up. Anyway, I picked up this YA non-fiction book and read the whole thing. It was fine. I didn't know anything much about Aaron Burr and his family, other than the one thing everyone knows. This author wrote very highly of Burr and his daughter who was brought up unlike other girls in that she was educated like she was a boy.
And that's it. That's what I read in March. We will see what April holds for me.