1979; Beacon Press, 2003

What kind of print were you buried in this month? What are you looking forward to finishing (or starting) in March?

My posts in February were all inspired by Black History Month, beginning with Baratunde Thurston’s How To Be Black. ( It’s wickedly funny: check it out!)

Did you read anything with Black History Month in mind? I understand the objections to this event — the injustice of suggesting that such a celebration should be limited to a single month — but sometimes events like these can help root new ways of thinking, with new reading habits, new thinking habits!

Other great non-fiction included: Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously (awesome title, isn’t it?), Roland Laird’s and Taneisha Nash Laird’s Still I Rise (a graphic history), Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns (a favourite of my reading month), William Loren Katz’s revealing Black Indians (the 25th-anniversary edition), and Afua Cooper’s The Hanging of Angélique (exposing the “secret” of Canadian slavery).

A novel by the inimitable Octavia E. Butler, and many short stories (including a new MRE author for me, an early heavily politicized collection by Alice Walker, and a tour-de-force of interconnected stories).

And, for younger readers (but not exclusively so!), a gorgeously illustrated work of non-fiction, and two beautiful tales with memorable illustrations.

New Challenges, Read-a-Longs, Events:

Random Reading Facts:

  • First reads for various challenges: the Chunkster Challenge, the Australian Women Writers Challenge, and the Dystopia Challenge
  • I’m trying to read from my own shelves more than I have been in recent reading years; so far, the average length of time this year’s shelf-sitters have been neglected? A little longer than 12 years
  • Wanted to spend all day February 29th reading, but instead I’ve booked it off for the next leap year; a four-year-plan is quick moving for someone working with a 12-year-shelfsitter-average

Looking ahead: 

  • Except for Kristin Lavransdatter (which I’m really enjoying, it’s just soooo heavy), I’ve finished all the odds and ends that have been straggling, so it’s all fresh blood for a new month
  • I’ve reduced my library stack to 20 books (that’s not including family borrowings, but it’s not cheating, either, cuz I could pretend that *all* the kidlit and YA titles on my card are for the girls) but I’d like to tidy that up a little more
  • If I can swing that, I’m tackling the stack of magazines, cuz there’s such good stuff in there and the books have been taking every match in that tournament
  • But dang, I forgot about the Orange Prize longlist announcement (anyone know the exact date yet?), which is always rough on my library card
  • And, ooohhh, I’m so excited about the three trilogies I have planned to read; I’m starting the first one this weekend (what was it again? The Sand Mouse of Chaiwan?)

What about you? How was your month? Did you join any new challenges?

Will you be following TMN TOB? Will you be going to see “The Hunger Games”?

What’s your favourite trilogy? What one have you not read yet, but have been eyeing?

Here’s to being buried in all our favourite kinds of print in March!