March Wrap-Up & April Reading Plans

Well March was a very busy month! As usual, the back-to-college transition was a bit hard for my sleepy brain but I think I’m okay now! 

Even if the month was busy, I’m still happy with how it went. I moved, I started a new  semester, made some new friends (since 99% of my friends are doing their internships at the other side of France), joined a student organization and started searching for my own internship. Of course, I did all of that plus all the normal college work and blogging as often as I managed to! All in all, it was a pretty productive month!

Books Read in March

• Before Mars by Emma Newman ★★★★
• The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson ★★★★★
• Clarkesworld  #148 edited by Neil Clarke ★★★★1/2
• The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson ★★★1/2      (review to come)
• Apex Magazine January 2019 edited by Jason Sizemore ★★★★
• Embers of War by Gareth L. Powell ★★★★1/2     (review to come)

Reviews Posted

• Short Fiction Sunday: February Highlights
• The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden
• The Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
• Before Mars by Emma Newman

Favorite Reads

 

I enjoyed all those works for very different reasons. The Traitor Baru Cormorant was a re-read, I loved it when I first read it back in 2015 and I loved it even more the second time around. Seth Dickinson’s writing is delightful, I found myself reading and re-reading some sentences and paragraphs just because I loved how they were written. I read this book with Imiryl (go check her blog, it’s awesome!) and it was my first buddy read ever! Since I was so busy, it took me quite a long time to read but I loved every second of it. I’m might update my old review of this book but I’m afraid to read it again. I don’t know why but I hate re-reading my old reviews. It’s probably because I always spot the mistakes I made and completely missed at the time.

Anyway, I also loved the January issue of Clarkesworld, all the stories were great and I’ll discuss my favorites at length in my next Short Fiction Sunday!

As for my third fave, it’s without a doubt Embers of War by Gareth L. Powell! I loved that book, I couldn’t put it down. I know I’m very late to the party but, yeah, I agree with everyone, it’s great!

DNF

Okay, I can hear you freak out. I’m not dropping this because it’s bad, it’s not. However, I picked this up on audio and I cannot do audiobooks for novels, I just can’t. I always fall asleep after two minutes and then, when I wake up because of the noise in my ears, I’m completely lost. If I try to go back to where I was before falling asleep, I never manage to find the exact spot and I have to listen to the same parts over an over again. If I don’t try to find where I was before, I skip sections of the story and I’m lost.. So yeah, audiobooks aren’t my thing;  I’ll give this book another shot when I’ll be able to read it with my eyes!

Currently Reading & Tentative TBR

I’m currently reading New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color edited by Nisi Shawl and I’m enjoying it a lot so far, I just have a couple of stories left so I should finish it pretty soon. I’m also reading the January/February issue of Uncanny and so far, it’s very “meh”, I read three stories and a couple of poems and I found them underwhelming… We’ll see if the rest of the stories are a bit more interesting or not.

Anyway, here are the other titles I would like to read in April!

• String City by Graham Edwards
• Clarkesworld #149
• Europe at Dawn by Dave Hutchinson
• Time Was by Ian MacDonald
• Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett
• Interzone #279
• Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

I think this list is pretty doable since a lot of titles are on the shorter side, but we’ll see!

 

How was your month of March? What’s your favorite read of the month? 😀