Okay, so here’s the deal. This month was rough in so many ways and unfortunately my reading really suffered. I managed to finish 2 books this month, which still leaves puts me 7 books ahead of schedule for my goal for the year so I’m not going to beat myself up too much for it. I read a total of 591 pages this month and I actually gave both books 4 stars which was really nice.

Lets have a little look at which books I picked up!

MARCH BOOKS READ

‘Dying for a cause doesn’t do a bloodydamn thing. It just robbed us of his laughter.’

Red Rising, Pierce Brown

I’ve been eyeing up this series for what feels like forever. As a dystopia lover, this one has been on my radar for the longest time as it’s often compared heavily to The Hunger Games and it definitely didn’t disappoint, I was already crying in the first 50 pages. I never knew where this one was going to go, there were so many plot twists and I don’t think I guessed a single one of them? I found the dialogue really clever, plus for a book with so many characters they all had such clear voices that I never found myself lost in their witty exchanges. This was so close to being a five star read for me, the only thing holding it back for me was the world-building. I found it very difficult at times to place where we were in this dystopian Mars setting and understanding the colour hierarchy and military terminology was a lot to take in with a lot of telling as opposed to showing. I snuck a look in the next book in the series and it actually has a breakdown of most of the systems I was struggling with in the opening pages so hopefully we’ll get to see and understand the full scale of this world as the series progresses. Overall, I really enjoyed this one and I’m excited to see whats next for Darrow of Lykos.

Find Red Rising on: Goodreads | StoryGraph

---

How can there still be homophobia when Elton John wrote The Lion King? What does he have to do?

Help, Simon Amstell

Me and my mum used to love and watch a show called Never Mind the Buzzcocks, a comedy panel show based on pop music which the author used to host. We both used to love him, so when I heard he’d written a memoir I was really interested in picking it up but it’s unfortunately sat on my shelf for quite a while now. I definitely think I picked a really great time to finally give this one a go though as it felt very relevant to my own life — one of those right place, right time kind of reads. The format is a mixture of material from Amstell’s stand-up and anecdotes from his life which help give background to where he was in his life during the time, which means that what was meant to be a celebration of his comedy turned into an essay on anxiety. In short: I loved it. I have more tabs in this books that any other because there was just so many relatable moments for me and quotes that made me absolutely howl. Reading this felt exactly like listening to his stand up, the intelligent yet awkward choice of phrasing was very clearly Simon’s brand of self-depcrecating humour and I bet the audiobook of this would be a great listen. Help is also packed with social commentary, particularly surrounding Simon’s experiences growing up in a Jewish household, coming to terms with his sexuality and the many trials and tribulations of his dating life. It did start to fall a little flat towards the end as caught up to present day but it was still a really enjoyable read and I’d definitely recommend it to any of my fellow anxiety sufferers who want to a) feel seen and b) have a good laugh.

Find Help on: Goodreads | StoryGraph

---

READING GOALS

Okay, so reading goals check-in. As I said earlier, I’m still on track for my 50 book goal despite not having read much this month. One of my two reads was a non-fiction book and I also didn’t buy a single book in March, both of which I’m pretty proud of. However, I didn’t manage to read anything towards the Buzzword Readathon March prompt of ‘time’ – I started the audiobook for The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas but I just could get into and so put it to the side for now. Both books I read this month were also by white men (they needed a shot to be fair, they were my first male-authored reads of the year) so hopefully when I’m back in the swing of things with reading schedule next month I’ll be making my way through more of the own voices books on my TBR.

---

POSTS I’VE BEEN LOVING

Given that this is a much shorter post than my previous wrap-ups, I wanted to take this extra space to shout out some of my favourite blog posts from this month!

• The teatimelit ladies, as always, provided some excellent content which I really loved…
  • Caitlyn posted her 12 Book Recs for Theatre Nerds and I have never clicked on a blog post so fast.
  • Cossette shared her review for Lost in the Never Woods which has me even more excited to pick it up.
  • Mary’s How the Kindle Changed My Life only confirmed my suspicions that I probably need to get my hand on my one very soon…
• My lovely friend Saima launched her blog this month and straight out the gate she shared an amazing review for The Atlas Six!
• I loved Becca’s review of Six of Crows so much and now I’m dying to reread it myself.
• Beth from BooksNest shared 5 recs for short books that make great weekend reads, most of which went straight to my tbr.

That’s is for this month! I’m hoping my reading picks up again when I had back to work this month so fingers crossed I’ll have more to report for you in my next wrap-up. Let me know how your reading went in March!

Lots of love,
Quinn 💛