Bookwyrm Breakdown: March 2022, the Month of Scrambling Around

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve been feeling like a scrambled egg lately, but I mean… since this is being posted a week and then some later than usual, maybe it’s a little obvious.

I’m actually still a little scrambled in April, too, if I want to be honest.

The weather seems to feel the same as well since St. Louis can’t seem to decide if it wants to officially welcome Spring or if it wants to hold on to a piece of winter. We’ll have days of 60-80F but then the next day we’ll have howling winds and 30F weather.

But anyway, this post might be as scrambled as me (it probably won’t look like it) because I definitely lost some sense of time at some point in the month.

This Month’s Posts

• [1 Mar] 2021 End of Year Wrap-Up: Books, Music, and Other Things That Made Last Year
• [6 Mar] Bookwyrm Breakdown: All of Winter Crammed Into One Month
• [11 Mar] Non-Heir by Rachel E. Carter ★★★★
• [11 Mar] Apprentice by Rachel E. Carter ★★★
• [11 Mar] Candidate by Rachel E. Carter ★★★★
• [11 Mar] Last Stand by Rachel E. Carter ★★★★½
• [15 Mar] Books from My TBR I Aspire to Read in Spring 2022
• [25 Mar] The Fallen Hero by Katie Zhao ★★★★

Books Hoarded

• The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu (eARC)
• Winnie Zeng Unleashes a Legend by Katie Zhao (eARC) – The Dragon Warrior, Zhao’s debut novel, is one of my favorites and I’m super excited to dive right into her next middle grade.
• Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao (eARC) – Although I didn’t like Iron Widow as much as everyone else seems to have, I enjoyed Zhao’s writing style and the book was just a lot of fun to read. I got started on it the other day and so far I’m loving it.
  • I might end up being annoying to my friends once I finish.
• K-Pop Confidential (not ARC) and K-Pop Revolution (ARC) by Stephan Lee – technically this came at the end of February but I shoved it in the corner of my room until March since I was preoccupied with other things and didn’t have time.

Books Devoured

March continues my slow reading month, but I’m also strangely okay with this considering my streak last year and life has taken me for a bit of a whirl lately. I’m actually a little surprised I finished seven books? It felt more like three books, but my reading app tracker and Goodreads do not lie.

• Quiet by Susan Cain (audiobook)
• Beasts of Prey by Ayana Grey
• The Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu (audiobook)
• Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren – at some point, I just needed a genre cleanse, which resulted in me picking up a romance and finishing it in nearly one sitting except sleep is important so that didn’t happen
• A Forgery of Roses by Jessica S. Olson
• How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland (audiobook) – more like How Sophia Fell in Love with this Book
• Unraveling by Brandon Leake (audiobook)

I gave my mom my Netflix password (or more accurately, she had me log into my Netflix), and so far she’s used it more than me in the very few times she does use it. She thinks I use it more, but I honestly haven’t touched my account since being besties with the flu back in December and January. 😂

Although I did touch it near the end of the month. I just didn’t finish an entire drama like she did…

• Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us – Look, don’t judge me for my choices here I missed Pikachu and Eevee.
• King Arthur: Legend of the Sword – I think poor choices were made by me here, I don’t know. I remember nothing.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender – I’m sorry to inform you all that I have not, in fact, watched ATLA but I’m also happy to inform you all that I started watching and of all the movie/TV show choices I’ve made this month, I don’t regret it.
  • To be fair, I didn’t grow up with cable or internet access. I actually still don’t have cable, and I’d probably still not have the latter (outside of my phone data) if I weren’t working hybrid.
  • I kind of stopped watching it because I got busy reading books and Adulting.

As for music… I kept up with music, but I didn’t actually keep up in terms of listing my favorites of the month. Something tells me I may regret this at the end of the year if I decide to do an end-of-year wrap-up like I did for 2021.

That being said, some of my favorite and well-liked artists released new songs or albums and it’s only fair that I share them with the rest of the universe void I screech into

• AleXa performed Wonderland on American Song Contest representing her home state of Oklahoma and made it to the semi-finals.
  • Send help, I can’t stop putting this song on a loop.
• KINGDOM released their latest mini-album, History of Kingdom: Part IV. Dann with the title song Ascension.
  • Have I watched the music video? No… but I haven’t touched my YouTube in weeks. 🙈 Did I put the entire album on my Spotify playlist? Yes, thankfully, and while I didn’t like Ascension at first, I actually really like it.
  • That being said, my favorite song might be Blinder along with the intro and instrumental for their title track.
• Stray Kids released their newest EP, Oddinary with the title song Maniac.
  • A few favorites: Lonely St., Freeze, Venom, and Waiting for Us. I guess overall, I like everything in the album except for one song, and not because it was bad. It just isn’t my type of song.

And of course, since I haven’t posted the wrap-up for March, this isn’t exactly March excitement but PERCY JACKSON CASTING WAS ANNOUNCED YESTERDAY and I absolutely must scream about it?!? No way am I pushing this to April’s wrap-up. Walker Scobell looks so precious but also omg he came to the chemistry read wearing Annabeth’s cap if that’s not dedication. 😭🥺

I can’t believe this is real this is one step closer to the reboot we all need and deserve. I’m not screaming, you’re screaming.

The Breakdown

What catastrophes have the universe handed us throughout the month? Let’s find out. 🧐

Bullet journaling? What’s that?

In other words, I pretty much abandoned my bullet journal and here I thought this would actually last longer than a year. 😪 But I did play around with Notion finally for the purposes of blogging and keeping track of things, along with getting an overview of my blogging calendar instead of relying on my laptop calendar all the time. It’s been bringing me a lot of joy with the aesthetic vibes that I honestly can’t see myself ever creating in my bullet journal (I’m not that talented).

Sometimes I’m tempted to just move my bullet journal to Notion but I think I’ll just pretend it doesn’t exist either, I don’t know.

Mostly, life has been busy with working on some of my personal goals and I’ve needed a lot more rest than usual because I’ve been draining myself a lot more. (Which is probably I’ve completely abandoned my bullet journal.) But on the bright side, my allergies seem to be leaving me alone? Finally?! (At least until winter begins again?)

Let’s talk: do you use Notion? What have you been up to or reading recently?