March 2023 Wrap Up: found my energy?!

~reading

How many books that I planned did I read?

I planned 4 books in my first TBR, and then added nine more midway through the month in a frenzy. Of the original 4, I finished 3, and of the added nine I finished one, attempted one, and am in progress with one. Kind of all over the place!

In total? I read NINETEEN BOOKS WHAT THE F**K.

The Plan:

The Result:

Alright, I want to address Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik right away, because wow was that book just not able to capture me. I’d been avoiding reading it as I just had that feeling that it wouldn’t quite work despite sounding good on paper and enjoying some of the author’s other work. And I was correct. It jumped around between characters so quickly that I was never able to sink into any of them and was just annoyed to keep changing what I was thinking about. The story itself also just didn’t feel important or compelling to me. I got halfway through, slowly and painfully, and I’m just calling it: not for me.

A surprise winner, however, was A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon! I don’t know a) how I missed hearing about it until a day before it published or b) how I still managed to be first on the waitlist for the library copy or c) why there’s so much witch-based romance novels in the last few years. However, it was extremely fun and spicy and I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. It reminded me a ton of the webcomic Brimstone and Roses that I loved, so it was great to have a novel of that, essentially. ^.^

Since there are so many here let me briefly summarize my thoughts on them:

~stats

• My reading was 16% nonfiction this month
• My top genres were romance (7), young adult (6), and fantasy (5)!!
• I mostly read books that were lighthearted, funny, or emotional
• My average rating was 3.11
• I traveled to England, India, and Philippines. In the United States I went to California (twice!), New York (twice!), Georgia, Pennsylvania, Montana, and Colorado.

~life

What happened in March? Honestly, it was a decent month overall! Probably one of the best March-s I’ve had in a few years.

First and foremost, my mental health was GREAT compared to how it usually is. I attribute this to:

• therapy last year that helped me learn some coping strategies and ways to identify and be okay with negative feelings
• learning more about Buddhism by accident with David Michie’s books which had a lot of great ideas on happiness and general ways of living and existing that helped to center me in tough moments
• being better at going outside fairly consistently and getting fresh air and sunshine (when it was here!)
• planning a trip or two to look forward to 🙂

Work was kind of hectic this month to be honest, but that didn’t typically push me too far off track because I had so much else good to focus on instead. There was also an open beta weekend for Diablo 4, which I didn’t think I would play or be interested in but after seeing my boyfriend play it for Early Access beta weekend, I dove into furiously and now I’m hyped for it’s full release in June.

And, of course, I read lots of good books. 🙂

~blog

I’m really fascinated by the results this month, which I’ll dive into more below:

• Views: 5155 (37 more than Feb)
• Likes: 189 (100 more than Feb)
• Comments: 115 (82 more than Feb)
• Followers: 419 total @ end of month

What’s bizarre here is that in February I posted 10 times and in March, 25. And yet the view results were not so far off! Unsurprisingly based on what I’ve seen previously, I had a lot more comments when I posted more consistently even though the views were only about 30 more than February. I think part of this was that the Kindle 2023 New Year Reading Challenge Guide was completed in March, so that may have garnered some more comments as it was found more. 🤷‍♀️ Anyway, that’s my monthly data!

Here are some of my favorite posts I worked on this month, in case you missed them!

• 2022 Year in Review, Part 1: Goodreads & Storygraphs Base Stats Version
• A-Z Challenge 2022 Complete!
• Word Origins: Vampires, and vamps, and …lamias?
• My favorite style of book cover is the half-face because of this:

And here are some of my favorite posts by other bloggers!

• The Forest Keeper: The True Story of Jadav Payeng by Rina Singh by Carla @ Carla Loves to Read (added to my TBR and looked up this interesting history!)
• Rewind | Did I Read Those Listed Backlist Books from 2018? by Annemieke @ A Dance with Dragons (accountability!! xD)
• Reading plans for spring by Holly @ Nut Free Nerd (lovely imagery plus just good reading ideas 😊)
• Woodland Treasures {A Forest Photoshoot} by Allison @ Allison Marie Alexander (lovely forest photos)