Hey all, Dani here.
Wow, it is April already. Actually, as this post goes live on my blog I will be at a Barnes & Noble in Columbus, Ohio, at a book release event for Emily A Duncan and Christine Lynn Herman. Damian and I took the day off of work to guarantee that I would not be late for this event, because Duncan’s debut, Wicked Saints, is definitely one of my favorite books and I need a signed copy of it in my life. Also I really wanted to read Herman’s debut as well, so this is definitely a good day for me.
But, today is about wrapping up the entire month of March and looking ahead at April plans. I have quite a few books to talk about, as well as some movies, TV shows, and all kinds of other updates, so let’s just go ahead and jump right into it, shall we?
As with previous months this year, let’s start with talking about where I am with my 2019 goals, and then I can talk about the books I’ve read, the books I’ve purchased, and then the books I am hoping on reading in the month of April.
- Reading: I am still supremely ahead of my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal for this year–something like 30 books ahead, according to Goodreads. But that definitely means that I can take a step back and work on longer reads as well as to give more focus to my writing. But obviously I’m hoping to keep up with my reading enough to keep having good bookish content here on the blog.
- Blogging: So because of all of the packing and moving and everything in March, I ended up having to cut back on posting every single day and leaving my weekends free. This led to a fairly drastic drop in views, but the overall view count is still great compared to my previous years of blogging. Still, I did manage to write up 26 posts in the month of March, which I think is pretty impressive.
- Writing: I did writing prep this month. I’m gearing up for Camp NaNoWriMo, so I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to write instead of actually writing. But that ended up working really well for me, considering that we were packing up everything and shoving all of the notebooks, and writing utensils, and all our gadgets and gizmos into boxes. Next month’s writing update should be a great deal more exciting than this one.
- Conventions: Didn’t really do a lot in regards to convention planning…unless you count buying tickets to see Critical Role Live while we are at Gen Con. Oh, and set aside money from a couple of paychecks to pay for the hotel stay. Once the hotel is paid for, everything else saved is for food and spending.
All right, next up is the recap of all of the books I read in the month of March. As always, if I have a review up for the book, I will include the link in case you missed the post before.
Again, But Better by Christine Riccio — 5 stars (review coming in April)
City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab — 4 stars
Story Thieves: The Stolen Chapters by James Riley — 4 stars
Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee — 5 stars
The Missing: Sent by Margaret Peterson Haddix — 3.5 stars
Fablehaven by Brandon Mull — 4 stars
The Storm Runner by J.C. Cervantes — 4.5 stars
Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend — 5 stars
The Gamer’s Guide to Getting the Girl by Kristine Scarrow – 3.5 stars (review to come in June)
Sal & Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez — 4 stars
Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte — 4.5 stars
After books, I guess it is time to talk about our watch list: Captain Marvel (5 stars), Up (???–the DVD from Family Video was scratched so it skipped a lot. I’ll need to watch it again to give it a rating), Robin Hood (4 stars), Oliver & Company (4.5 stars), Sword in the Stone (4 stars), Mulan (5 stars), Tarzan (4.5 stars), Coco (5 stars), Doctor Who – Season 8 (4.5 stars), Doctor Who – Season 9 (4 stars).
Current watches or continuing watches include Black Clover (season 2), Wynonna Earp (season 2), Doctor Who (season 10), and of course, Critical Role (campaign 2).
Next up is the book haul portion, and I think I did a pretty good job of not buying a lot of books, though I did have to get a few. And there’s actually three books that aren’t included in this haul, because of a mailing snafu due to our address changing. But they should be arriving to the house today, so I’ll go ahead and include them in my already large book haul for April. My book buying restriction almost went a whole two months; I’m actually somewhat impressed with myself.
Finally, it is time to talk about my April TBR. So I’ve already talked about my TBR for Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon on April 6th, but other than that I’m not really going too crazy with my reading plans…because I hope to spend most of April writing. But I do have a couple upcoming releases that I want to read and get my reviews posted so I can keep improving my NetGalley review ratio.
So here’s a few options in addition to the books on my Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon TBR. In the month of April I can definitely say that I want to check out Wonderbook, because Susan Dennard talks about it being a rather helpful writing book, and I actually enjoy studying the craft of writing to better inform my own writing and writing process.
That should be all for my wrap up. How was your March? Let me know in the comments, and I will be back soon with more bookish content.
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