Month In Review: March 2019

March turned out to be another busy month where I celebrated my birthday, filled my shelves with new books and ordered some more and where I finally stepped up my Bookstagram game. The weather has been going crazy down here, going from heat to rain and cold weather and back again… Preventing us from going on another camping trip and resulting in me having to prepare the garden for winter early. Bad weather did mean I was able to read a lot more than expected… And I’ve been having fun preparing for this month’s Magical Readathon as well.

Now to the bookish numbers:

• Number of books read in March: 24
• Total number of books read this year: 71
• Total number of pages read in March: 7.811
• Total number of pages read this year: 23.320

March turned out to be an excellent month and I definitely read way more than anticipated. I managed to get two! new 5 star reads and a whole pile of other excellent reads as well… I did have another DNF, but with only three books with a rating below 3 stars in total I’m calling March a success.

MARCH READS

5 STARS: Absolutely and entirely mind blowing! I suggest you to pick up a copy now.

A Thousand Perfect Notes – by C.G. Drews // The Travelling Cat Chronicles – by Hiro Arikawa

4.5 STARS: This one was almost perfect. Surely fantastic! 

And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer And Longer – by Fredrik Backman // The Bones She Buried – by Lisa Regan // The Enchanted – by Rene Denfeld // The Dry – by Jane Harper // Harry Potter Y El Cáliz De Fuego (reread) – by J.K. Rowling // Daisy Jones & The Six – by Taylor Jenkins Reid

4 STARS: Wow, this was really good. Close to amazing!

The Secret Child – by Caroline Mitchell // The Courier – by Kjell Ola Dahl // Verity – by Colleen Hoover // Wicked Saints – by Emily A. Duncan // We Are Of Dust – by Clare Coombes // Wolfhunter River – by Rachel Caine

3.5 STARS: Great read. Really entertaining!

The Fever King – by Victoria Lee // Then She Was Gone – by Lisa Jewell // Tell The Wolves I’m Home – by Carol Rika Brunt 

3 STARS: It was a nice read, but not fantastic.  

Here We Are Now – by Jasmine Warga // Smoke And Key – by Kelsey Sutton // I Know You – by Erik Therme // Every Exquisite Thing – by Matthew Quick

2 STARS: It was ok. But mostly ‘meh’.

The Fourth Courier – by Timothy Jay Smith // 99 Percent Mine – by Sally Thorne

0 STARS (DNF): I didn’t even bother to finish this one. Either horrible or definitely not for me!

Fat Angie: Rebel Girl Revolution –  by E.E. Charlton-Trujillo

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I joined more challenges than initially planned in 2019, but I feel all have doable goals that shouldn’t take too much work to finish. Things are going way better than planned so far! I’ll need to keep an eye on the Reading Through The Centuries one though because it’s going to be tricky to get enough new years in otherwise. But it looks like the other challenges are well on track without even trying. Not bad at all. 😉

# CHALLENGES #

• • Goodreads 2018 Reading Challenge: 71/150  
  • 2019 Beat The Backlist Challenge: 23/80 books read published in 2018 or 2017 and 23/30 books read published 2016 or before. A total of 46/80 books.
  • 2019 Beat The Backlist Epic BTB Bingo: 46/81 books read
  • Reading Through The Centuries: 0/5 
  • 2019 Netgalley And Edelweiss Challenge: 25/50
  • 2019 When Are You Reading?: 8/12 
  • Double Trouble ABC Challenge: TITLE 19/26 // AUTHOR 17/26

As for my other goals… Things are going better than expected! I managed to reread my second book of the year (also counts as my first Spanish read) so that’s one less goal to worry about! I failed to keep my ARC/backlist title ratio below the 40% limit though, but that is no surprise because I have a huge pile of ARCs pending. My TBR pile in general is pretty hopeless as well, but at least I’m well on track with my TBR jar picks, so that’s something. xD

# OTHER READING/BLOGGING GOALS #

• Read at least 3 (modern) classics (rereads don’t count) 3/3 DONE!! (The Painted Veil // The Big Sleep // A Wrinkle In Time)
• Complete at least 10 series (rereads don’t count) 4/10 (Anastasia Phoenix // The Conqueror’s Saga // Women Are Some Kind Of Magic // Fire And Thorns)
• Reread at least 2 books 2/2 DONE!! (The BFG // Harry Potter Y El Caliz De Fuego)
• Bring my physical TBR pile below 450 books and keep it that way. 580/450
• Read at least one book over 800 pages 1/1 DONE!! (813 pages; Colombiano)
• Keep ARC/backlist title ratio below 40% 40,8%
• Read at least 2 books in Spanish 1/2 (Harry Potter Y El Cáliz De Fuego)
• Read at least 1 book in Dutch 0/1
• Read at least 15 international authors and/or translations  6/15 (Mala Vida (France) // The Painted Veil (France) // When Dimple Met Rishi (India) // And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer And Longer (Sweden) // The Courier (Norway) // The Travelling Cat Chronicles (Japan))
• Read at least 10 TBR jar picks 4/10 (The Insect Farm // The Shattering // Be Frank With Me // Tell The Wolves I’m Home)
• Join at least 5 challenges during the year 5/5 DONE!!
• Keep my Netgalley ratio above the 80% 94%

Happy April and Happy Reading! 

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