READ:
We Should Not Be Afraid of the Sky – Emma Hooper (Penguin, 2022)
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents – Julia Alvarez (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1991)
A Thousand Ships – Natalie Haynes (Harper Audio, 2021)
The Bandit Queens – Parini Shroff (Ballantine Books, 2023)
La Guerre, Yes Sir! – Roch Carrier (House of Anansi, 1970) (translated from the French by Sheila Fischman)
Memphis – Tara M. Stringfellow (The Dial Press, 2022)
Blue Hour – Tiffany Clarke Harrison (Soft Skull Press, 2023)
Orphaned Believers – Sara Billups (Baker Books, 2023)
Daisy Jones & the Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid (Audible Audio, 2019)
Reading with Pearl & Rose:
Cats at Sea – Lisa Martin & Valerie Martin (on audio)
Tuesdays at the Castle – Jessica Day George
Did Not Finish:
The Idiot – Elif Batuman
I was listening to this on audio from the library and ran out of time and wasn’t motivated enough to renew it. I even listened to it on 1.5x speed, which I’ve never done before (and was slightly off-putting). It’s an interesting concept but not a lot happens in the book and I found myself slightly frustrated with the main character.
When We Were Birds – Maria Mutch
I was looking to see if my library had another book with this same title and then thought this short story collection looked interesting. In the end, it was a little too weird for me. Which means pretty weird because I like strange stories.
CURRENTLY READING:
Glory – Noviolet Bulawayo
The Memory of Animals – Claire Fuller
2023 GOALS:
Books Read: 30/100
Translated Works: 2/15 (La Guerre, translated from French)
Books I Already Own: La Guerre (from a library book sale), Orphaned Believers (purchased new)
Books From the TBR pre-2020: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (from 2016)
Current TBR: 219 (previously 211) (yikes)
THOUGHTS:
9 books in total for March which was honestly better than I expected since two weeks of this was Spring Break with my kids around! I do feel like I’m making great use of my local library as most of my books this month as all but two of my books this month came from there. The Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist came out and after perusing it I thought I’d read a few and added several to my TBR. That prompted me to read The Bandit Queens and Memphis, both of which I really enjoyed and neither of which I’d really been drawn to before so I’m excited to get my hands on a few more. In fact, there weren’t really any duds in March. La Guerre, Yes Sir! wasn’t exactly my favourite book but I can appreciate what the book was about and what it was attempting to portray.
WHAT’S NEXT:
I had my books really lined up for March, planning out what I was going to read and in what order. Now I feel like I’m going into April with a big shrug. I have no idea what I’m reading when I finish what I’m reading now.
Karissa Reads Books 
I think How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents is on my Classics Club list! How did you find it?
I liked it! I should have a review up in the coming week!
I always have mixed feelings about speeding up audiobooks since, as you say, they can sound a bit strange. But sometimes the narrator is slow! It pleases me that your TBR is so much higher than mine… 😉
That TBR is awful, isn’t it?!
I don’t like speeding them because I do find it jarring but since I only have most of them for a limited time from the library, it’s turning out to be occasionally necessary. I recently listened to an audiobook where the narrator seemed to spend a lot of time sighing.
I had to speed up an audiobook by Chimamanda Ngozi, and it sounded weird but the narrator was so slow. I wanted to hear all the Nigerian words said properly. Do you feel hesitant about going into April with no reading plans?
I like audiobooks for books like that, so you know you’re getting the correct pronunciation!
No, it doesn’t bother me. I’m certainly not lacking in books to read and I have a few I’m waiting on from the library. Sometimes it helps to have a really clear line-up but sometimes it’s nice to feel a bit more free in my choices.
I also just read We Should Not be Afraid of the Sky. It was nothing like what I expected, but I loved it. So unusual. And even though I knew what was coming, I still thought “what?!” at the end.
I loved that it was based on a historical story but obscure enough that I had no idea where it was going!