Looking forward to May

Usually, I’m the type of person who changes the calendar on days before the month ends, always eager for a new start. Nowadays, all the months look the same as I count down until my July due date. For May, I’m celebrating my mom’s birthday and the end of the homeschooling year. I’m also steadily trying to shrink my physical tbr (to be read) stack.

Surprisingly, I’ve read a ton of books last month. 21 books to be exact. My favorites were:

• Lumberjanes Vols. 1-9 by Noelle Stevenson (comics)
• A Child is Born by Lennart Nilsson (nonfiction)
• The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex (middle grade)
• Ms. Marvel Vol. 2: Generation Why by Willow G. Wilson (comics)

Now that May’s here, I scoured my tbr shelves and found the following books to tackle:

• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (for next week’s Socratic Salon discussion)
• Where Women Are Kings by Christie Watson (fiction)
• The Best American Essays 2011 by Edwidge Danticat (I started this collection years ago and never finished it.)
• When The Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka (fiction)
• The Voice of the River by Melanie Rae Thon (fiction)
• For Today I Am a Boy by Kim Fu (fiction)
• Economix: How Our Economy Works (And Doesn’t Work) by Michael Goodwin (graphic nonfiction)
• Your Best Birth: Know All Your Options, Discover the Natural Choices, and Take Back the Birth Experience by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein (nonfiction)
• The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell (nonfiction)
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (fiction)

Some of these reads are pretty heavy, but I’m hoping that I can get through them all by the end of the month. I’m already in the middle of Economix and Citizen and both are really good reads with post-its sticking out.

What are you looking forward to reading in May? Do you make a monthly tbr list?

February Wrap-Up and Memoir March

It’s ridiculous how fast this year is going by. I did read somewhere if there’s nothing new and different going on in your life, it seems like time is passing by fast. Do you guys think that’s true? Looking at my life, I’m not really doing anything different – yet. It’s just the usual with school for me and homeschooling for the kiddos. I need to change that.

In February I read a total of 16 books, a combination of children’s books, graphic novels, and exactly one book of fiction. Highlights include:

• The Wizard by Jack Prelutsky (Thanks, Andi, for the recommendation.)
• Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
• Boxers by Gene Luen Yang
• Malcolm Little by Ilyash Shabazz
• Light in the Darkness by Lesa Cline-Ransome
• Off to the Market by Elizabeth Dale
• Mousterpiece by Jane Breskin Zalben
• The Tree Lady by Joseph H. Hopkins
• Aphrodite by George O’Connor

Favorite children’s book: Malcolm Little by Ilyash Shabazz. The book is about Malcolm X’s childhood. It was a sweet read though a bit sad. I expect it to win some awards next year.

Favorite adult read: Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi. You can read my thoughts here.

Overall, February was a pretty good month with a lot of interesting reads especially with all the nonfiction picture books.

Looking forward

One of my goals for this year is to tackle my tbr mountain but I’ve been ignoring it. It’s so hard to read from your own stac k when there are so many shiny new library books to read.

Chris and Debi have decided that their reading theme for March will be Memoirs and I think joining in will be a good way to help me get some of my own books
read.  I haven’t made a list just yet but give me time.

What are your plans for March?