TSS: March Wrap-Up

March was a crazy month for me – pretty much my whole life changed in the space of it!  I had an interview, got a job, found a flat in the space of a week (actually my husband mostly did this but it stressed me out too!), started the job, moved, and have been adjusting ever since.  It’s been overwhelming at times, but the end of moving may be in sight now and we’re settling in nicely.  I can already tell that working is making me happier and I’m actually less stressed.  So far I’m pretty good at my job, I have more of a purpose, and I am relieved knowing that I can finally cover my half of the bills, and now I don’t have to spend my savings to pay my student loan debt.

I still managed to read 19 books, too, which I think is pretty good, and they’re not even all concentrated at the beginning of the month.  Considering I spent almost the entire month trying to motivate myself to read Lorna Doone, I think that’s pretty good!  This was Classics Month for me and Tasha and I admit I dropped the ball a little.  I still read classics, but I didn’t really say much on my blog about them like I had planned to simply because I haven’t spent any time at all on my blog in the past three weeks.  All those reviews you’ve been seeing were written before my job even started.  And it turns out I’m not very good at theme months.  I love classics, but after I’d read three I was ready to read modern fiction.  I’m actually still working on Villette.  I did read/post about five classics this month, though:

• Nadja, Andre Breton
• The Warden, Anthony Trollope
• To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
• Lorna Doone, R.D. Blackmore
• The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

Tasha also wrote a guest post for me on Gawain and the Green Knight and I featured a guest post from Nicole at Linus’s Blanket on her top three classics.

I also read a lot of other stuff.

Historical Romance

• Reese’s Bride, Kat Martin
• The Duke of Shadows, Meredith Duran
• Bound by Your Touch, Meredith Duran

Mystery/Women’s Fiction

• Truly, Madly, Heather Webber

Historical Fiction

• The Lute Player, Norah Lofts
• A Poisoned Season, Tasha Alexander
• The Corinthian, Georgette Heyer
• The Tale of Murasaki, Liza Dalby

Contemporary Romance

• Vision in White, Nora Roberts
• Bed of Roses, Nora Roberts

Literary Fiction

• The Uninvited, Geling Yan
• The Boat to Redemption, Su Tong
• Hector and the Search for Happiness, Francois Lelord (actually a modern fable – best fits here I think)

Science Fiction/Fantasy

• The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
• The Bookman, Lavie Tidhar

As you can see I still have a bunch of reviews to write.  I’m hoping to catch up today, but we’ll see how that goes.

My plans for April mostly include catching up on review copies.  I seem to have had a semi-storm of them lately and I want to get them read and reviewed ASAP.  I don’t mind too much, I just have limited time with the job and constantly being in the car on the weekends moving stuff.  I’m also joining Carl’s Once Upon a Time IV challenge, so I hope to start reading some fantasy soon!  I’ll have a pool up in a few days.  I’m also signed up for the Read-a-thon next weekend and just can’t wait!  I’ll be putting together a pool for that as well, but might not post about it until the day.  I have a few books I’m hoping arrive this week that will pretty much be the planned reading.  And I REALLY want to read Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran this month.  I absolutely loved her first two and I’ve just heard that I’m getting the fourth for review.  You could have heard my squee across the street!

Lastly, I have mostly given up reducing my TBR pile.  It’s going to grow and I think maybe I should be happy to be surrounded by books instead of feeling guilty about them!

Oh, and of course, happy Easter to all those who celebrate!