I am that person who loves data, charts, and lists. So every month, I recap what I read and what books I acquire along with anything else I think is of value or interest. Let me know if you have any ideas!

March was by best reading month so far this year – in quantity and quality. In total, I read 9 books plus part of a book that I decided not to finish. I read six books that I rated four stars or higher, including my first five star book of 2023. I also worked toward my reading goals by knocking out two books from my NetGalley backlist. While I wish I would have read more books, I am satisfied with what I did read considering constraints.

Breakdown

• Books read: 9

• Pages read: 3,176

• Percent female authors: 88.9%

• Percent BIPOC authors: 33.3%

These charts are primarily from the Storygraph app, which is an alternative to the Amazon-owned Goodreads.

Books read

• I Will Find You by Harlan Coben | ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Night Wherever We Go by Tracey Rose Peyton | ⭐⭐
• Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life by Margaret Sullivan | 🎧⭐⭐⭐
• The Measure by Nikki Erlick | ⭐⭐⭐
• The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore | 🎧⭐⭐⭐⭐💫
• We Were Once a Family by Roxanna Asgarian | 🎧 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka | ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫
• The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer by Liza Rodman & Jennifer Jordan | 🎧 DNF
• Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai | ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫
• Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin | ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

Books in progress

I started three books in March that I plan to finish in April.

• White Hot Hate: A True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America’s Heartland by Dick Lehr 🎧
• All That Is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay
• Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains by Alexa Hagerty

Books acquired

In March, I definitely added more books to my shelves than the number I took away. Hopefully, in April I will be able to take some boxes of books to a used bookstore and off load them.

Aardvark Book Club

• Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
• 48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister by Joyce Carol Oates
• How to Turn into a Bird by Maria Jose Ferrada

Book of the Month

• Weyward by Emilia Hart
• The Last Russian Doll by
• I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
• Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

NetGalley Approvals

• We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian
• Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America by Julia Lee (Pub 4/18/23)
• The Long Way Back by Nicole Baart (Pub: 6/13/23)
• The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger (Pub: 9/5/23)
• Happiness Falls by Angie Kim (Pub: 9/5/23)

Gifted Physical Copies

• The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
• Bittersweet: How Sorrow & Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain
• All That Is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay
• Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
• Other People’s Clothes by Calla Henkel
• Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains by Alexa Hagerty
• Take What You Need by Idra Novey
• Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond
• Lone Women by Victor Lavalle
• Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World by Gretchen Rubin
• Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture by Virginia Sole-Smith
• The Garden of Lost Secrets by Kelly Bowen
• Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

Penguin Reader Rewards Books

• Stone Cold Fox by Rachel Koller Croft
• Time’s Undoing by Cheryl A. Head

Indie Bookstore Buys

• The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality by Angela Saini
• The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan
• The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan
• If I Had Two Wings: Stories by Randall Kenan