March reading preview

Today, I’m going to walk you through my reading goal check-in, and then write a little about some of the books on my TBR (to be read) for March!

Yearly reading goal report card

At the start of each year, I create some reading goals to challenge myself and help me broaden my reading. Here’s a run-through of my goals for 2021, and where I’m at with each of them two months into the year.

Primary Goal: Read 30 Books with 400+ Pages: 6/30

My main goal this year was to challenge myself to read longer books, and I’ve currently completed six out of thirty. This is a little behind where I would like to be, but I’m still on pace to complete the goal at year’s end. One thing I want to avoid is having to play catch up on this goal at the end of the year, so I will keep on pace with this.

Secondary Goals

Books at Least 600 Pages: 0/5

Books Published Pre-2000: 3/5

Translated Works: 0/3

Finished Series (read at least two books from the series to complete): 0/5

This is the set of goals where I have the most work left to do. I have yet to read a book that tops out over 600 pages long, a goal I created to encourage myself to read some of the doorstops that sit on my shelf. I’ve also read no translated works yet, and have yet to complete a series, though to be completely fair I did catch up on the Wayward Children series by reading Across the Green Grass Fields this month. That series itself isn’t complete, so on a technicality I won’t be able to count that this year.

Genre Goals

Fantasy: 4/5

Science Fiction: 0/3

Biography/Memoir: 1/5

Nonfiction: 2/5

Short Story Collections: 0/5

Poetry Collections: 3/3

For my genre goals, I’ve made solid progress, and completed my goal of reading three poetry collections, up from the zero I’ve read for the past few years. Fantasy is one genre that hasn’t been in my reading repertoire for most of my life, but I’ve had a lot of fun exploring it and I will absolutely blow through that goal by the year’s end.

March’s TBR

Keeping my reading goals in mind, here are some of the books I plan on reading this month.

Toni Morrison

Heading into March, I’m going to continue my Toni Morrison read-through with her next novel, Tar Baby, published in 1981, and followed by Beloved and Jazz.

While my plan is to complete all three this month, I began to feel some bit of fatigue at the end of February from reading her dense prose in back-to-back-to-back novels. I will try to break these three up a little bit more, so don’t be surprised if Jazz reappears on my TBR in April.

Fantasy Series

This month, I want to complete my fantasy genre goal – and then some. The Dragon Republic is the second book in The Poppy War Trilogy, which I started last year and really loved. Both Jade City and The City of Brass are the opening books to well-loved fantasy trilogies and I hope to get sucked into them this month. A bonus is that each of these books is at least 400 pages, so it would help me continue my progress with that goal as well.

Short Story and Essay Collections

Looking at my goals, one area where I need to make up some ground is short story collections. This month, I want to check out Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez, an acclaimed horror collection set in Argentina, as well as Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans, whose most recent collection The Office of Historical Corrections was one of my favorite books of 2020. Finally, I want to get to Braiding Sweetgrass, a collection of nature writing by Native American scientist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Book Club Selection

Lastly, my book club’s selection for March was Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall, a critique of the modern-day feminist movement and a rallying cry for how the movement can go forward with an intersectional and anti-racist approach.