Forward March! (March Book Wrap-Up)

I am the busiest woman on the planet nowadays. Word of advice for future college students: do NOT take three lit classes and a writing course all at the same time. You will regret everything. Anyway, here we go!

Writing
All of my writing is currently focused on the story I'm working on for my YA Fantasy class, which is still untitled. Since the last wrap-up I've written a few more chapters that are kind of scattered - I've been skipping ahead so my instructor can critique the later parts of the story as well as the earlier. As it stands right now I have 10,921 words written.

I am also currently participating in the first Camp NaNoWriMo of 2016! My goal for Camp - as always - is 10,000 words that will be put towards this same story. Right now I'm only a few hundred behind. Not bad! I fully intend to get that winner's certificate. It is going to be gorgeous.

During Spring Break I was able to write and post one more chapter of my fanfiction over on Wattpad, much to my readers' joy. It will be a while before I'm able to get another one out, but hopefully they'll be as loyal as ever and have patience with me while I finish the semester. My current stats for "Worlds Collide" are 1,638 reads; 132 votes; and 69 comments.

Reading
For the first time all year I'm ahead on Goodreads; I credit this to the insane amount of reading I'm doing for my classes right now. However during March I was able to sneak in a couple of personal books as well, thanks to Spring Break.

• The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
• The Tempest by William Shakespeare
• After Alice by Gregory Maguire
• Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
• The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

The Golden Compass gained five stars from me, which is not an easy task. It was a beautifully written novel with characters and situations not easily forgotten. This was the first book my YA Fantasy instructor had me read, and as soon as school is over I intend to read the rest of the trilogy. It was amazing. The Tempest was the first comedy by Shakespeare I've ever read. It had an interesting story, though admittedly my class' discussions on this piece were much funnier than the play itself. I still liked it, though.

I have an interesting relationship with After Alice. I think I phrased it the best in my review on Goodreads: "Subtly brilliant, simply hilarious. There were a lot of profound passages and great quotes in this book, as well as several one-liners that made me laugh out loud. However the story itself was a bit repetitive; it was basically Ada going through Wonderland and meeting the same characters a few paces behind Alice. Meanwhile back in the real world everyone was like, 'Oh, the girls are missing? No big deal.'" Like I said. It's an interesting relationship. I gave this book two stars.

Long Day's Journey Into Night was a book I had to read for my U.S. Literature class. I thought it was all right, but nothing spectacular. However The Word for World is Forest is a book I believe everyone should read at some point in their lives. It's less than 200 pages, so it's fairly short and manageable even to those who dislike reading. The message is excellent and the ideas presented simply cannot be ignored. I consider this novel a masterpiece.

Winnie-the-Pooh was a fun trip back in time for me. I remembered watching the old cartoons growing up with almost perfect clarity as I read the several short stories within this book. It's amazing how almost perfectly accurate the originals were before the more fun, expanding-the-world episodes were aired. I loved revisiting my childhood through the pages of Winnie-the-Pooh.

No rest for the weary! See you next time!