Rearview Mirror // March 2018

Well, this hasn’t been my best month on the blog if I’m honest.  While I’ve still been reading a lot, I’ve been feeling really ambivalent towards blogging.  I think it’s partially because I’ve been doing a lot of updates for my Etsy shop, so I haven’t felt like spending extra time on the computer beyond that.  Maybe it’s also been the weather?  March has been cold and cloudy, with below-average temperatures and even snow!  I enjoy winter when it’s wintertime, but I am very ready for spring!

Anyway, almost all of my March reviews ended up being minireviews, so nothing super exciting.

Favorite March Read

Basically any time I have a month with a Wodehouse book, the favorite book is the Wodehouse book – in this case, Uneasy Money.  But it hardly seems fair to all the other books, since Wodehouse exists in a class of his own, so I also have to give a co-award to This Adventure Ends by Emma Mills.  I just loved all the characters so much that I wanted to book to go on forever!

Most Disappointing March Read

While I didn’t have very high expectations for A Daughter’s Legacy, I also didn’t expect to completely despise it – which I did.  There was a decent premise, but I kept waiting for the explanation as to why Kelli’s mom sucked and treated Kelli like trash… and it never came.  Apparently Kelli’s mom was just a jerk who really did think that her career was so much more important than being a mother that she shipped the recently-bereaved-of-her-father Kelli, as a little child, off to her grandmother.  I mean seriously.

Other March Reads

• Adorkable by Cookie O’Gorman – 3.5/5 – cute chick lit that I would have enjoyed more if Sally’s mom and best friend hadn’t been so obnoxious
• Beauty by Robin McKinley – 4/5 – an old favorite that I really enjoyed revisiting
• Black Beauty by Anna Sewell – 4/5 – classic
• Black Beauty’s Clan by Josephine, Diana, and Christine Pullein-Thompson – 3.5/5 – an interesting collection of short stories about horses
• Black Beauty’s Family by Josephine, Diana, and Christine Pullein-Thompson – 4/5 – historical fiction through horse stories
• Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu – 3.5/5 – I wanted to like this book but just… didn’t really
• The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls by Claire Legrand – 3.5/5 – a bit too horror-y for me
• Child of Grace by Irene Hannon – 4/5 – a surprisingly gritty little story
• Curse Workers Trilogy by Holly Black – 4/5 – a really good story that gave me all the feels and left me wishing there were lots more books about these characters.
• George Washington’s Secret Six by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger – 4/5 – really intriguing nonfiction
• The Heart’s Song by Winnie Griggs – 4/5 – cheesy and predictable yet somehow enjoyable
• Hidden Identity Trilogy by Lynette Eason – 3.5/5 – engaging and exciting although sometimes a bit too simplistic
• I See You by Clare Mackintosh – 4/5 – I was totally clued to the pages of this one
• The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham – 3.5/5 – a decent thriller, but one I just couldn’t get into all the way
• The Patmos Deception by Davis Bunn – 3/5 – needed a bit more thriller and a bit less love triangle
• The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald – 3/5 – cute, but kind of abrupt
• The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald – 3.5/5 – pretty adorable little fairy tale
• Rescue Dog of the High Pass by Jim Kjelgaard – 3.5/5 – not his best book, but still interesting and entertaining
• The Road to Forgiveness by Leigh Bale – 3.5/5 – not a bad story except the ending made no sense
• The Rumpelstiltskin Problem by Vivian Vande Velde – 3.5/5 – a fun collection of short stories attempting to make the traditional fairy tale a bit more plausible
• Sing by Vivi Greene – 3/5 – just a smidge too fluffy to really be good reading
• Tulipomania by Mike Dash – 4/5 – quite interesting but in desperate need of pictures

Last March…

I read what was one of the worst books I read in 2017 – Dead End Close by Dominic Utton.  Especially disappointing because I quite enjoyed his debut, Martin Harbottle’s Appreciation of Time.  But Dead End Close was so incredibly depressing and pointless that I could hardly bear it – I’ve rarely read a book so completely devoid of any sense of hope.

TBR Update

For those of you who don’t know, I’m weirdly obsessive with organizing the TBR, and have it on a spreadsheet divided into five different tabs:

• Standalones:  819 (down EIGHT thanks to some culling!)
• Nonfiction:  81 (down one!)
• Personal (which includes all books I own (fiction and nonfiction), but lists any series I own as only one entry…):  695 (down six!)
• Series (each series counted separately, not each book within a series):  230 (up one)
• Mystery Series (each series counted separately, not each book within a series): 109 (up four)

Awaiting Review

I cleared out a bunch with three batches of minireveiws at the end of the month, but still do have some in the wings…

• The Perfectionists and The Good Girls by Sara Shepard – a lot of mixed feelings on this duology
• The Runaways by Elizabeth Goudge – so adorable I could hardly stand it
• I’m reading my way through K.M. Shea’s Timeless Fairy Tale collection.  I’m on book #7 right  now.  They’ve had their ups and downs but overall enjoyable, if slightly fluffy, fairy tale retellings.
• My current mystery series is the Adam Dalgliesh series by P.D. James.  I’ve never read any of James’s books before, and enjoying this foray into her work.  I’m on book #3.
• The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge – reading The Runaways made me want to pick this one up immediately afterwards.
• The Princess by Lori Wick – an old fluffy favorite
• The Squire’s Tale by Gerald Morris – I can’t believe how long it’s been since I read these books!  Spontaneously reading this (the first in the series) made me want to reread them all.  They are books I’ve been meaning to purchase anyway, so the next three in the series are on their way to me now!

Current Reads

• The Man Who Made Lists by Joshua Kendall – a biography of Peter Roget, who wrote Roget’s Thesaurus
• Sleeping Beauty by K.M. Shea – the next Timeless Fairy Tale
• Unnatural Causes by P.D. James – the next Adam Dalgleish mystery
• The Darkest Hour by Tony Schumacher – a free Kindle book set in AU 1940’s England where the Nazis won the war

Approaching the Top of the Pile

The probable next five reads…

• The Frog Prince by K.M. Shea
• Shroud for a Nightingale by P.D. James
• Come On, Seabiscuit by Ralph Moody
• The World of Captain John Smith by Genevieve Foster
• Piccadilly Jim by P.G. Wodehouse