Raw Data:
Books – 12
Pages – 6228
Words – 1753.6K (ie, 1.75 Million words)
Average Rating – 3.75 Stars
The Mediocre:
SF Hall of Fame, Vol. 2A – 2 Stars
NPC’S – 3 Stars
The Good:
The Great Hunt – 5 Stars
Academ’s Fury – 5 Stars
The Arcane Casebook Series – 4 Star Average!
Movie:
Started the 10th Kingdom mini-series by Hallmark and had a blast.
Ramblings & Miscellaneous Posts:
I read some real Chunksters this month and as a result my page and word count were pretty impressive. Or I messed up my count. I’m going with “Impressive” 😀
I wrote a lot this month, so I’m just going to bullet point them all, sorry.
- A Quote from: Lightning
- How do YOU find new bloggers to follow?
- Bookstooge conducts his first (and last) Author Interview
- #6Degrees – Wolf Island to…
- PSA: When is Big, Big Enough?
- MTG: Lands Matter – The Ecology of Magic the Gathering
- To My Recent Followers—A Love Letter
- LibraryThing Goes Free!
- The Wanderlust book tag
Personal:
March was something else, for sure. Work stress, car stress and Wuhan-chan stress. I ended up stress writing and that gave me a whopping 24 posts this month (including this one I believe).
Car stuff. We’re a two car family and I’ve known since last year that the car I drive wasn’t going to pass inspection this year. The mechanic barely passed it last year and he told me he wouldn’t do that again. It was rusting out all over the place so I knew I needed a replacement by the first week of April. I began scanning craigslist (we can’t buy a new car outright and won’t go into debt for one) and eventually found one. Coordinating schedules was stressful enough, but then my car just outright died about 3 days before we could pick up the new car. And then dealing with the town offices as they all were preparing to shut down due to Wuhan-chan. It just made for an incredible amount of stress over something that really shouldn’t have been. 
Then of course, right at the end of the month joining the rest of the World in shutting down until May. Thankfully, both Mrs B and I work in “Essential Businesses” but for me, work is now on a day by day basis. A lot of uncertainty swirling around, that is for sure.
Thankfully, the reading was great. The Arcane Casebook series was a delight to read and I looked forward to a new book every week. That was a nice feeling. Highly recommend the series.
Book Give-Away:
Doing a Hardcover Michael Crichton book giveaway this month. It is open until April 11 and I’ll contact the winner April 12. Due to the uncertainty of just about everything, I think I’m going to be holding off doing any more Give-Aways until we’re in a more settled place.
Cover Love:
I talked about this cover in my review of Ghost of a Chance, but my goodness, is that cover spiffy looking or what!?!? Best of the bunch in my opinion.
Plans for Next Month:
I don’t know if this will be a regular new feature for my Roundups, but I’ve seen other bloggers do them as a separate post and I like the idea. It also works well to help me construct the narrative for the blog for the coming month. I realize most of you are never going to notice something like that, but it helps me as the content creator.
Even though I only wrote a tiny bit more than I did in January, March just felt like I wrote and wrote and wrote. So I’m going to use April to re-charge. I’ll be doing my book reviews and the next 10th Kingdom movie review, but I suspect that will be about it.
Oh, Mrs B says she’d be interested in showcasing some more artwork so maybe you’ll see some of her drawings on random weekends. I should probably come up with a clever series title for them but nothing immediately springs to mind. Suggestions are welcome.
And with work being so uncertain, I don’t know if I’ll be stuck inside reading, whatever. So I might end up needing to write to vent and blow all of the above right out the window. Things are changing so fast that planning for an entire month is almost impossible now.
Artsy Fartsy Friday????🤷🏼♂️. Lol man if there is one thing i am glad about living in Netherlands is that i can go almost anywhere by public transport or cycle. its sad to read about your car dieing. I am still going to a six degrees post sometime this year. I would like to connect some books in some way, hope i can make you proud… ill be stalking your blog throughout the day as it seems i missed a bunch of posts again. Sorry for that
LikeLiked by 1 person
No worries. And it is just for such occasions that I do these posts 😀
LikeLike
Look at that high average rating! 😉
You did get the new car though after all the chaos, right? I hope it’s working out well!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was pretty happy with how the month turned out. We’ll see how April turns out
We did get the car. We picked it up on a Tuesday, the one night the town offices were open late. We got there at 6:15, got it registered and then found out that was the last day the town offices were going to be open. We got in just under the wire 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Whew, I’m glad you got it!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I might dive into that ‘Arcane Casebook’ series. Should I start with book #1 or #0?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’d actually recommend #0. Plus, it’s free 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Got it. Thanks!
LikeLiked by 1 person
LOL Wuhan-chan. Sorry to hear about your car troubles, and just about life being upended in general. But I hope you guys are staying healthy and safe! And I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know roundup posts definitely help me get organized!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sometimes I wonder why we expect life to go smoothly. It never does, and yet it continually surprises us when it doesn’t. Almost like this wasn’t the way things were supposed to be 😉
I’m finding a side benefit of these posts is that it helps those who didn’t catch all my posts during the month.
LikeLike
Having an outlet for all that stress (either the virus-related or the “ordinary” daily stress) is a blessing indeed. As is the possibility of forgetting the world for a while as we get lost in a book. Or two. Or ten… 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Man, I hope April is a good reading month too!
LikeLiked by 1 person
There’s a few minutes each day that I wish my job was a little less “essential.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m over-the-moon that I get to telecommute and add a layer of protection for my immuno-compromised son. But, man…I wouldn’t mind a day or two off.
Nothin’ worse than car troubles–dealing with them right now? No thank you.
And you still managed to read a decent number of good books? Nice!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hear you. We’re “officially” down to a 3 day work week and I’m loving it. At least for now. And we don’t know if it will stay at that level or become less. Things are shutdown until May 4, that seems like forever.
I’m hoping with this new (to us) car and the one we bought for Mrs B last year, that we should be ok for a couple of years.
I’ve been pretty happy with my reading this year. Definitely liking the upward trend in my monthly rating! 😀
LikeLike
I listened to the audio book version of Lightning not too long back. It was such a good book. It was my first Dean Koontz novel. Can’t believe I almost passed up the chance to give it a try.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Glad you had that as your first Koontz. He can be real hit or miss, so it’s always a crap shoot about what you’re going to read 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m glad that your reading was good-it helps to take the mind off the stress of this virus stuff. I find writing about it and sharing fears about it has helped me like some form of therapy!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks!
Writing out our fears (whether online or in a journal) is one of the best ways to allay them. As long as we don’t get ourselves panic’d that is 😀
LikeLike
The timing with your car issue and Wuhan-chan is pretty unfortunate. Can’t imagine how stressful it must be. And going forward, even post-Wuhan-chan, I feel like the interaction between people will be far more complicated than cessary hahaha I do hope that you and Mrs. B will remain safe until all this blows over, whenever that is.
And wow. 12 books. It’s like 2018 Bookstooge made a comeback!!! 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, that timing was about as bad as it could get. Thankfully, it all worked out in the end so we weren’t stranded. Just another couple of white hairs in my beard
I have a feeling April is going to have even more books, what with not working full time 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow that’s a lot of posts in March! Sorry you’ve been stressed- unfortunately it’s going around. That sucks about your car. It’s good you’re still able to work through.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, as I was writing this post things started getting out of hand for the whole world. Kind of put things in perspective!
I am very thankful I’m still working. I’d go stir-crazy if I wasn’t…
LikeLike