March Wrap-Up

I'm linking up with the Wrap-Up Round-Up @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction

March Snapshots

The view from my backyard.

One of the many reasons I'm terrible at Bookstagram. Irritating creatures nap on my backdrop.

Green books for St. Patrick's Day.

1. Another year closer to death. It was my birthday in March! I’m now a 30-something instead of a 20-something. Considering how immature I am, that’s scary. I still laugh when ketchup bottles make fart noises! My birthday was the day after St. Patrick’s Day, so I celebrated by eating lots of green-frosted-everythings. I should probably change the title of this segment to “Ten years closer to death” because who knows what’s in all that green frosting.

Remember the birthday giveaway that I Tweeted about incessantly for a month? It’s over, and there were 740 entries! The winner is from Romania and chose A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. I hope they enjoy the book!

2. A mildly noticeable makeover. You’re not going crazy; the blog’s appearance did change slightly in March. I switched from a 3-column layout to a 2-column layout. The header, graphics, and fonts are different too. I hope the changes are tolerable because it took me a day and a half to make all these tiny alterations. Why did I think having a website was a good idea? I have no clue what I’m doing. Thank the deity of your choice for free web design tutorials.

3. So much winning. I have been acquiring a stupid amount of books lately. That’s why I participated in the Take Control of Your TBR Challenge in March. I had big plans for this challenge. I was going to read a middlegrade book every single day and get through the short story collections I had laying around. I was so hyped for March 1^st. Then March 1^st came, and I read nothing. Yep. I failed at all my big plans on day 1. Go me.

I did end up reading 12 books for the challenge, so I guess I didn’t fail that hard.

4. Stuff that happened on Twitter. I was reading articles about how to be a better blogger, and I came across one that told me I should be tweeting links to new blog content five times a day. I wondered if anyone actually does that. 

Nope. Literally nobody does that.

This happened, too:

5. Don’t gas me, bro! (On a related topic, I hope poison is good for humans.) Six hundred things die in the story I’m about to tell you, but I promise it has a slightly happy ending, so stick with me.

My favorite running path goes through a prairie dog colony. In March, I was out for a run and was getting near the colony when I started smelling something really nasty. It was like Raid bug spray, but extra intense. I slowed down because it was hard to breathe the Raid stuff. Then I noticed that it was eerily silent along the path. There weren’t any prairie dogs barking. When I walked under the bridge and into the main part of the prairie dog colony, there were exterminators gassing all the prairie dogs and flattening their burrows. NOOOO! I like the prairie dogs! The exterminators were killing them all!

I understand why the critters needed to be killed. They carry bubonic plague fleas, and they attract coyotes, which eat children and pets. Nobody wants a coyote to eat their baby. Still, I was sad that 600 prairie dogs got poisoned. That colony had been there for most of my life.

Here’s the somewhat happy part: A few days after the gassing, I ran past the colony and saw survivors! There were stunned prairie dogs wandering through the wasteland. From what I’ve observed, a prairie dog’s life consists of barking, eating, digging, and having tons of sex in public, so the colony will be back!

I realize that a lot of you are probably like, “Cool story, Aj, but what the hell’s a prairie dog?” Behold:

Wayward Googlers

Cait @ Paper Fury sometimes posts the amusing Google searches that led people to her blog. Today, I’m stealing her idea. Here are a few unfortunate souls who ended up on Read All The Things! instead of finding what they were Googling for.

“I speak fluent English.” OMG, me too! I know it’s hard to believe because I butcher the English language about 12 times a day.

“Theatre in weird settings.” You basically described my entire life in one Google search. Well done.

“Hearing loss drug compound.” Hold on. This blog is the last place you want to come for medical advice. If I invented a hearing loss pill, it would probably have terrible side effects. Like spontaneous decapitation or something. That would make your hearing loss worse, not better.

“Read dystopias?” YES. This is the most intelligent thing you’ve said all day.

“Roosevelt Recession.” I’m a book reviewer, not a historian, but I’ll give it my best shot. The Roosevelt Recession occurred between 1937 and 1938 in the US. During the recession, the economy briefly stopped recovering from the Great Depression and started to go belly-up again. The recession ended when Congress got its butt in gear and gave nearly $4 billion to various economic-recovery agencies. #TheMoreYouKnow

“Book Haul Blog.” It’s starting to feel that way around here, isn’t it? I promise there will be fewer hauls in the future. I actually have to read the books instead of just precariously stacking them on a shelf above my bed.

“Homer Simpson dancing.” As you wish:

Books I Read In March

In March, I finished 12 books and gave up on 1.

The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman

Saint Death by Marcus Sedgwick

Some Possible Solutions: Stories by Helen Phillips

Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson

The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts: Murder and Memory in an American City by Laura Tillman

Tin Man by Sarah Winman

The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

It’s Like This, Cat by Emily Cheney Neville

. . . And Now Miguel by Joseph Krumgold

Dome of the Hidden Pavilion: New Poems by James Tate (DNF)

I also made progress on my reading challenges. Click here to see how I’m doing.

Best Books Of March

1. The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

2. Saint Death by Marcus Sedgwick

3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Most-Viewed March Reviews

1. Scythe by Neal Shusterman

2. The Butcher’s Hook by Janet Ellis

3. Missing May by Cynthia Rylant

Most-Viewed March Non-Reviews

1. Discussion: How Accurate Are Goodreads Recommendations?

2. Top Ten Tuesday: Intriguing Quotes From Books I’ve Read Recently

3. The “Another Newbery” Book Haul

All The Things!

Distance I’ve sloppily jogged so far in 2018 = 77 miles (123 k)

Number of unread books on my TBR shelf = 54 books

I’m currently reading = Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman

What did you do in March?