Monthly Wrap-Up: March 2023

What happened to March? I’m honestly not even sure what I did with the month other than participate in Trope-ical Readathon. lol. That being said, I did read a record (for me) number of books. So, I guess it was a good month…

Books I’ve Read

I managed to finish all of the Trope-ical Readathon prompts in March and ended the readathon with 12,787 points, which is the highest number of points I’ve ever earned. šŸ™‚ Here are the books I read and the corresponding general prompts (the ratings link to my review, if available):

  • Absent/Dead Parents: The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry (4.25⭐)
  • Love Triangle: Immortality by Dana Schwartz (3.25⭐)
  • A Group/Buddy Read: A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas (4.25⭐)
  • Dark Academia: I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (4⭐)
  • Takes Place in Another Country: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (5⭐)
  • Blast from the Past: These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong (3.25⭐)
  • Mixed Media: Always the Almost by Edward Underhill (3.5⭐)
  • Apocalyptic/Dystopia: Exo by Fonda Lee (4⭐)
  • Found Family: Something Wild & Wonderful by Anita Kelly (4.75⭐)
  • Coming-of-Age: Anatomy by Dana Schwartz (4⭐)
  • Multiple POV: Solomon’s Crown by Natasha Siegel (3.75⭐)
  • Bookish Themes: You & I, Rewritten by Chip Pons (3.25⭐)
  • Retelling: Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes (3.5⭐)

I also finished my team-specific prompts and books. This round I was part of team Science Fiction, even though most of the books I read weren’t sci fi. lol. I just wanted to switch it up from being on team Fantasy for a change, and these prompts were more interesting to me this time. Here are the three team books I read (the ratings link to my review, if available):

  • Team Book: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older (4⭐)
  • Book with the Multiverse Trope: A Gathering of Shadows by V. E. Schwab (3.5⭐)
  • Book with the Science Gone Wrong: Don’t Do That! Trope: Rubicon by J. S. Dewes (4.75⭐)

Finally, I somehow found the time to do some mood reading this month, as well. Thanks, insomnia. 🤣 It actually pushed my total of books read to 31!!!! Here’s all the other books I read this month (the ratings link to my review, if available):

  • On or Off Vol. 1 by A1 (5⭐)
  • On or Off Vol. 2 by A1 (5⭐)
  • On or Off Vol. 3 by A1 (4.5⭐)
  • Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee (5⭐)
  • A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon by Sarah Hawley (4⭐)
  • Into the Light by Mark Oshiro (5⭐)
  • Right Where I Left You by Julian Winters (4⭐)
  • The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix (4⭐)
  • Play the Fool by Lina Chern (3⭐)
  • All Systems Red by Martha Wells (5⭐)
  • Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (5⭐)
  • The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian (4.25⭐)
  • Brave Face by Shaun David Hutchinson (5⭐)
  • A Complicated Love Story Set in Space by Shaun David Hutchinson (4.75⭐)
  • Spear by Nicola Griffith (4.5⭐)

Progress On My 2023 Reading Goals

Goodreads Challenge

I’ve set my annual reading goal at 100 books for the year. I read 31 books in March, which is the most I’ve ever read in one month. It is actually more than I used to read in a year before I started blogging. So, I’m pretty happy with the number as well as the quality of all the great books I read. This brings me to 70 books for the year so far!

NetGalley Progress

I want to end the year with at least 150 reviews completed for NetGalley and a feedback ratio of at least 81%. In March, I completed 6 reviews for NetGalley, which brings my total up to 113 reviews. My ratio increased to 84%!

Make Some Progress On My Backlog

This year I’ve set the goal of having at least 25% of my reading be from my owned TBR purchased prior to 2023. This could include books on my physical or digital shelves, excluding ARCs. In March, I read 5 books from my shelves, which was only 16%. This brings books from my shelves to 23% of my total reads for the year. I read so many library books and ARCs this month that it dropped my percentage back below my target. I’m going to try to do better at this one in April, but I doubt I’ll succeed since there are a ton of new releases I want to read…

Re-Read More Books

Last year, I didn’t get to re-read much of anything. This year I’d really like to return to some of my favorites. So, I’ve set the goal of re-reading at least six books. Unfortunately, I didn’t make any progress on this goal in March.

Participate in Challenges

I’ve got a few different challenges going this year. Here’s a quick update on each one of them! I finally did graphics for one of them. lol. I plan to add at least one new graphic for these each month, but we’ll see how that goes…

POPSUGAR Challenge

I’ve completed 28 out of the 40 main prompts and finished 40% of the bonus prompts, as well. So, I’m still slowly chugging along with this one.

12 Months, 12 Books, 12 Friends Challenge

For this challenge, I read Spear by Nicola Griffith. So, I’m still on track for the time being. Hopefully I can continue to keep up with it as the year goes on.

The Year-Long Scavenger Hunt

This scavenger hunt is being hosted by Jordyn @ Birdie’s Book Nook. So far, I’ve found 30 out of the 31 prompts! The only thing I’m missing is a book with time travel, which I should be able to pick up with one of my April ARCs. So, I’m almost done with the first round! šŸ™‚

Magical Readathon: Adventure in Aeldia

This month my character, Padwin, had to fight a giant (book over 500 pages). I used A Court of Wings and Ruin to fill that prompt.

Finish Five Series

I plan to finish or catch up on the following 5 series by the end of this year:

  • A Chorus of Dragons by Jenn Lyons
  • Timekeeper by Tara Sim
  • The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
  • A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
  • The Magicians by Lev Grossman

I made a little progress on this goal. I finished the third ACOTAR book in March, A Court of Wings and Ruin.

Final Thoughts

I did a few blog and meme posts in addition to my reviews, and you can find those in my blog archives if you are interested in checking them out.

Overall, this has been another good month of reading. My average rating was 4.23. My favorite was probably The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, but there were so many this month that I loved. What was your favorite book from March? Let me know down in the comments!

Thank you to everyone who has visited the blog and engaged with comments and/or likes! I appreciate all of you and always enjoy reading your input in the comments. I hope everyone is having a great April!

10 thoughts on “Monthly Wrap-Up: March 2023

  1. 31 is a brilliant amount of books to read in a month and well done for getting your NetGalley rating up too. You’ve read some brilliant books too.

  2. That’s amazing you read so much last month! And that you finished all of the Trope-ical Readathon prompts! I was happy to just finish 4 or 5 or whatever it was, which was really good for me compared to previous iterations. As for the insomnia–ugh, why didn’t I think of reading when I had a really bad episode of that on Monday night?? Idk what was going on, but I hadn’t experienced that much insomnia since year 1 of the pandemic. Sigh. Hopefully you’re getting some sleep!

    • That’s good! I’m glad you were able to get more prompts done than usual. I’m pretty sure my team came in last despite my best efforts to lead us to victory. lol.

      Yeah. The insomnia has been ongoing for a while, but it has been worse the last couple of months. I’m really hoping it gets better sooner rather than later because I’m always exhausted.

  3. Wowow, you’re totally slaying these challenges and reading in general! šŸ˜ What an awesome month, Chris! There are a few books you’ve read last month that I’m hoping to pick up really soon so I’m glad to see that you really enjoyed them. I can’t wait to dive into the books. I hope April continues to be an amazing reading month for you!

    • It really was an awesome month of reading. I still cannot believe I averaged a book a day. This month is definitely a bit more slow going, but I’m enjoying savoring a few books I’ve been dying to get my hands on. šŸ™‚

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