April 1st, and I am just foolishly exhausted these days, my friends. Spring is a time of new growth, new beginnings, lots of changes, and that’s certainly true here for me. Good changes, to be sure, but a little unexpected, and it’s stuff that will definitely affect my reading for a while. But that’s okay. Change happens, it’s the only constant in life, really, and the only thing we can do is roll with it, lean into it, embrace it and make the best of it. And I am!

March was definitely an interesting month, for reasons I’ll get into a bit later. There’s been an interesting and exciting update for me in terms of reading as well – old hat for most of you, I’m sure, but huge for me. But we’ll get to that in a bit. 

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in March 2025

1. Almost Paradise by Susan Isaacs

2. Medical Terminology for Dummies by Beverly Henderson

3. Not Another Banned Book by Dana Alison Levy

4. Corrections in Ink: A Memoir by Keri Blakinger*

5. Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey

6. Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights by Ashley Hope Pérez

7. The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights by Archie Bongiovanni

8. Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam by Thien Pham

9. The Bad Seed by William March

10. Tear This Down by Barbara Dee

11. Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging by Julie Ryan McGue*

12. Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli*

13. Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand

14. The Sign for Home by Blair Fell*

15. The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman*

16. Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

17. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D Taylor

18. All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson

19. Where Are You, Echo Blue by Hayley Krischer*

So, one of the biggest surprises this month for me is that I have finally come to embrace the audiobook!!! For years before, I couldn’t do it; my mind would wander and I’d miss huge chunks and come back to find the characters in entirely different countries, and suddenly people were dead/missing/on fire, and I was like, “But wait, I thought they were in church/helping old ladies across the street/juggling pandas, what happened???” But this month, I was like, “You know, I think I’m ready to give this another shot.” And lo and behold, I loved it! I listen in the car by myself, while I’m in the store, when I’m preparing food and cleaning and hanging laundry, when I’m eating lunch in my car on my work Saturdays. Any time my hands are occupied and I’m doing manual labor or driving, I’m reading with my ears, and it’s amazing. The books marked with asterisks are those I listened to this month. 

Almost Paradise was a book I first read as a teenager and recently came across at a thrift store, so I decided to see how it had held up. There’s a lot more…weirdness…than I remembered, but I did realize that this book was and still is indicative of my enjoyment of family-saga-type novels, so that hasn’t changed one bit! The Bad Seed is the novel that spawned the creepy movie I watched over and over again as a kid, about a child serial killer. The movie followed the book exceedingly well, so kudos to the folks who made that happen. Rhoda is a creepy little shit. The Sign for Home, a dual narrative between a deafblind man and the man working as his interpreter, was excellent (even though I didn’t love the open-ended ending) and really informative about the deafblind community and experience. And…The Invisible Hour started out just fine, and then got weird about halfway through. Apparently Alice Hoffman was all, ‘What if a modern-day cult survivor had the hots for Nathaniel Hawthorne?’ Like…okay? It was good up until that point.

Anyway. Twelve fiction, seven non-fiction (including a few graphic nonfiction and graphic memoirs). Six audiobooks. Only three from my own shelf, but I’m reading one of those in chunks in between other stuff, so that kind of accounts for that. I think three of these were from my TBR? A few of them were, but I’m honestly not sure how many; some of them might’ve just been stuff I discovered in the New Books section of the website at work and slapped them on hold immediately. Hard to tell sometimes!

State of the Goodreads TBR

Up to four books right now. Three of them don’t come out for a bit – one *may* be out, but I’m #3 out of 9 to have it on hold at the library, so it’ll be a bit for that. The other one, it’s a political book, and I was on hold for it, but due to the changes in my life this month, I took it off hold, because I don’t have the time or space for it at the moment. I’m thinking I’ll get to it this summer (because heavy political reads make for great summer reading, right???).

Books I Acquired in March 2025

I don’t have a picture, unfortunately; my daughter has turned the living room into her craft emporium, and, well, that doesn’t look great in pictures. But picture a medium-sized stack of mostly hardcover books and that’s what I brought home from the latest $10/bag library book sale!

Some of them are for me, some of them I’ll read to/with my daughter. She also got some books, so we both walked away happy. 

I also purchased another huge and expensive book, but I’ll get to that!

Bookish Things I Did in March 2025

The book sale.

Working at the library.

Hitting the books (again, I’ll get to this).

Current Podcast Love

Still listening to Anne Bogel’s What Should I Read Next, which is always just a delight! I may even go back to the beginning once I get caught up and start over again. : )

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

I picked up my copy of All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs by Elie Wiesel, and I’m reading it in 50-page chunks at a time in between other stuff, so that kind of fits in here. It’s a beautifully written book, and, of course, emotionally devastating, and that’s why I’m taking it easy with this one.

Real Life Stuff

Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooo boy, friends. March was a surprise of a month!

I’ve mentioned that I’m planning on going back to school in the fall; I’m going to get my certificate to become a medical coder. Don’t get me wrong, I love love love my job at the library, but unless you have an MLIS, library jobs are almost never full-time, and while my pay is great for what I need at the moment, long-term, I’d like a job that actually pays a living wage, you know? Plus there’s the physicality of the job. Shelving is hard on the body, and I already live with chronic pain. I’m managing it well now, though I’ve dealt with a few issues that I’ve already had to work to correct (the development of some rotator cuff tendonitis, and some right-side spasming in my back after my shifts due to, I figured out, favoring that side because it’s my bad side!). I’d stay at the library forever if I could, but I also have to be realistic about my needs in all categories, and this isn’t what I’ll need long-term.

So. I’ve been planning on this for a while, and I’ve spent all this year studying an Anatomy and Physiology textbook, along with three medical terminology books, in order to prepare for going back to school. I had all my prior college transcripts sent to the local community college, and when appointments opened up for advising for the fall semester in March, I scheduled one and went in (this was the 24th). My advisor is an absolutely lovely woman; I liked her immediately. She and I discussed what I wanted to do there at the community college, and I showed her how I’d been studying already. She kind of laughed and told me I’d be overprepared for the program (hey, if you’re not overprepared, you’re underprepared!), and then she looked in her computer and said, “There’s a medical terminology course starting the 27th, do you want me to add you to that?”

Um. I thought I had a few more months to study before starting actual class, but then I thought, ‘You know, one less thing to do in the fall,’ and I said, “Sure, sign me up!” So she added me to the virtual class, I went around the corner and paid for it, and that was it.

I’m now enrolled in college!

I’ll have this class, two in the fall, and three in the spring (that’ll be a LOT, what with parenting AND working, but I’ve got this. Those classes *should* be less memorization-intense, so, fingers crossed). I went home from my appointment, and my older daughter, who is also a student at this community college, showed me how to log in to Blackboard, where we found that the class was already available! I figured out what book I needed, ran back over to the school (it’s only 10 minutes away), bought the book I needed, and started my schoolwork that night. 

I’m already several chapters ahead of where I need to be – mainly due to the fact that I’ve been working hours per day to learn all of this information since September.

I’ve also currently got a 99.2% in the class, after two tests. : )

So, you know, it pays to be overprepared! Thanks, past me!

So this is a huge reason why audiobooks are super helpful right now! Most of my reading time is spent with The Language of Medicine by Davi-Ellen Chabner. But I’m okay with that. I’m investing in myself and in my future here. : )

That’s my big news this month. I hope you’re all doing as well as can be expected under *gestures broadly* these circumstances. Be kind to yourself; it’s hard out there, and so much of *gestures again* is making it more difficult. Having something to focus on like I do definitely helps.

Wishing you all a month of great reads and warming spring temperatures!