March 2021 Monthly Wrap-Up & Best of the Bunch

Posted March 31, 2021 by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction in Best of the Bunch, Monthly Recap / 11 Comments

My Goings-On in March:

I now share so many details in my Sunday Posts about everything that’s been going on that it feels really redundant to share here as well. So I’m only sharing the most important things that happened this month.

Here are the things stand out to me this month:

Most of this month has been spent planning for future things…

  • Vacation planning. We haven’t been on a vacation in almost two years, so I’m excited to finally be planning one! In August, we’re going to head out to the Ozarks in Missouri, where we can spend lots of time outdoors (and hopefully not have to worry much about COVID—really hoping we’ll be vaccinated by then).
  • College research. I spent a lot of time this month helping my daughter narrow down the impossibly long list of colleges she might go to. She wants to go into environmental science, which might mean she needs a master’s and also isn’t the highest paying field in the world, so figuring out what colleges will give her a great opportunity without putting her in massive debt is a chore.
  • Garden planning. Ever since our pipes burst at the end of 2019 and the plumbers had to dig up our front yard, our front landscaping has been kind of a mess. I’ve been doing lots of research lately on what to plant there and ended up going with a pre-planned garden. We should be getting it soon. Hopefully it turns out nice!
  • Researching invisible dog fences. Since we back up to a preserve, we’ve never wanted to get a physical fence, but leashes cause so many issues. We’re going to try an underground dog fence and see how it goes (we had one at our previous house for our dog at the time, and it worked out great for him, but that was over 15 years ago, and that dog was pretty chill).

Features & Discussions:

March 2021 Discussion Challenge Link-Up & Giveaway
Balancing Spending on the Blog, Making Money, and All the Moral Dilemmas that Go Along With It
I’ve Been Stalking Your Goodreads. Let’s Discuss.
March 2021 Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up Link-Up & Giveaway

My 2021 Reading Progress:

I read 9 books in March, putting me at 24 books so far this year and on track for my Goodreads goal of 100.

March 2021 Reviews

I posted eleven reviews in March. And, yes, I’m STILL making my way through my Cybils reviews—I think I might only have one more set.

  • Legendborn by Tracy Deonn | Review
  • Ana on the Edge by A.J. Sass | Review
  • Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez | Review
  • The Mystwick School of Musicraft by Jessica Khoury | Review
  • Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed | Review
  • List of Ten by Halli Gomez | Review
  • A Game of Fox & Squirrels by Jenn Reese | Review

  • Wishes and Wellingtons by Julie Berry | Review
  • Mulrox and the Malcognitos by Kerelyn Smith | Review
  • Cleo Porter and the Body Electric by Jake Burt | Review
  • Another Dreadful Fairy Book by Jon Etter | Review

March Best of the Bunch:

(Best of the Bunch is hosted over at Cocoon of Books. We link up our favorite reads of the month!)

My MG choice was really tough once again because I still have all those outstanding Cybils books competing with books I’ve just read. I ended up just going with my gut and picking Ana on the Edge because I decided I wanted my favorites to reflect this year’s reading, but almost every MG book I reviewed this month could have claimed the top spot.

I also had a hard time with my YA choice because I really loved both Legendborn and List of Ten, and they’re so different. Why do I force myself to choose!?


2021 Goals Progress:

Last year’s goals basically just gave me something to feel guilty about for most of the year, so I’m giving myself a break this year. The Discussion Challenge is my one and only goal for 2021.

 

Progress: 4/21-30 Discussions (Chatty Kathy)

I posted 2 discussions this month.

Balancing Spending on the Blog, Making Money, and All the Moral Dilemmas that Go Along With It
I’ve Been Stalking Your Goodreads.
2020 End of Year Book Survey (& Year in Graphs!)
Unbiased Reviews: Is There Such a Thing?

HOST/SIGN-UP LINK – Feed Your Fiction Addiction & It Starts at Midnight


Wrap-Up Round-Up!

Don’t forget to link your March wrap-up posts up to the Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up. And enter the giveaway!

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11 responses to “March 2021 Monthly Wrap-Up & Best of the Bunch

  1. You have a lot of great things going on in your home. Yeah for vacations. The Ozarks sounds wonderful. I had a great time in the various state parks I visited, and it was a lot less stressful being in wide open spaces.

  2. Okay, I just got caught on the part that you’ll be in my state in August! I live about 3 and a half hours away from Branson, not sure what part of the Ozarks you’ll be in, but maybe I can drive down and meet you over a weekend, because I’d love to meet you! Again, depending on COVID stuff at that point. We go to Branson every year on Memorial Day weekend, I’m already counting the days until then! You read some great books last month. We both loved List of Ten I think.

  3. Yay for vacation planning! We’re starting to (very cautiously) dip our toes into planning something for late fall/early winter, in the expectation/hope that we’ll be vaccinated and healthy at that point. It’s been too long since we’ve left our little bubble.

    Looks like you had some great reading this month! I’ve got Legendborn on my TBR for April, so I’m glad you see you liked it so much!

    Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits recently posted: Reading Wrap-Up: March 2021
  4. I haven’t had a vacation since 2015, so I’m envious. I hope your vacation is awesome. Good luck to your daughter! Most of the people at my job have environmental science or biology degrees. Starting salary is currently $13/hr. No paid sick days, no paid vacation days, mediocre health insurance, lots of stress, and you’re required to work weekends and holidays. So . . . yeah, not the best.

  5. Yay for vacation planning! I’m really hoping to get away a couple times this year, even if it’s not very far. It’s just nice to be away from home and relax a bit, what with everything going on in the world.

    I have to read Legendborn soon. I do have a copy so that’s one step closer. LOL

    -Lauren

  6. Last fall, I ripped out the kudzu and English ivy from my side yard and now I need some landscaping. Maybe I should look for a preplanned garden. I have a degree in biology because I wanted to be a zookeeper (which I was for a year). Thankfully we have a lottery-funded scholarship so I had no debt coming out of college. I worked on a Ph.D. after getting a job at a university because it is free to take classes as an employee. I wanted to go into environmental policy but then the recession hit and there weren’t jobs available so I abandoned my degree and worked on getting skills to do publicity and now that’s what I do for a research center. So my advice is to choose a school that will give her a lot of opportunities to experience a lot of different things.

    Donna recently posted: Some Spring Time Reading
  7. Jen

    Wishing you all the luck for figuring out which colleges your daughter wants to apply to! There are so many fabulous choices out there and here’s hoping the application process goes smoothly. I applied to one college, there was only one in the whole state of CA I wanted to go to lol, and was so beyond nervous. Everyone said I should have a couple of backups, especially since admissions was less then 20% but I didn’t want to go anywhere else. Thank the stars I got in lol ♥. Here’s hoping she gets in to where she wants to go too!

    Jen recently posted: Monthly Wrap-Up: March

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