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March Wrap-Up & April TBR

Welcome travelers to the Map Shop.

I hope all of you are safe and healthy during this time of social distancing. One small silver lining to all this is there's more time to read and write.

Today is another wrap-up and TBR post.

In March, I read a total of nine books.
  • The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  • A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
  • The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  • Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
  • Battle Angel Alita Delux Editions Vol. 1-5 by Yukito Kishiro
Out of all of them, Norse Mythology and Battle Angel Alita were my favorite. A Room of One's Own was interesting but it takes it's time getting to the point. Out of all of them, The Sun Also Rises was the most infuriating, mostly because nothing really happens in it. It left me angry. I don't appreciate that in a book.

April contains two challenges that I'm participating in on top of my usual reading challenges.

The first is Camp NaNoWriMo. This is another version of the usual November NaNoWriMo where you as the writer get to choose your own word goal instead of the per-determined 50,000 words. This year, I'm working on 30,000 words of a supernatural urban fantasy. I've pulled some characters from an RPG (Vampires the Masquerade) that I played with some friends a few years ago and put them into a new story. I liked them too much to just leave them at the RPG.

The second challenge is the Magical Read-a-thon. This is based on the Harry Potter series, complete with reading prompts, special challenges, and then there are careers that you aim for by completing certain challenges within the month. This round, I think I'm going to aim for the Magizoologist with a seminar on dragon tamer training.

This means I need to read:
  • a book with a creature with a beak on the cover- The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
  • a book with a white cover- Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes
  • a book that starts with an M- Martin the Warrior by Brian Jacques
  • a book that's under 150 pages- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
  • a book with dragons-The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm by Christopher Paolini
If anyone's interested in learning more or joining me, all the information for the prompts and career guides can be found here:  https://www.magicalreadathon.com/induction-to-magical-readathon

On top of these two challenges, I still plan on doing my personal challenges. Reading through the Decade, April is the 1930s. Now are some of the books that I actually enjoy. For anyone interested in joining me, your options are:
  • The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
  • The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  • Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  • Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
I know I'll for sure read The Hobbit (again) and I might aim for one of Steinbeck's books and possibly Murder on the Orient Express. I'm not sure about the others yet. With the state of the world right now, I'm going to be pulling more off of my shelves. This is where the OWLs books will be coming from. 

I'd love to hear what you're planning to read in April. Are you going to do any read-a-thons this month?

Until next time, travelers, stay safe.

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