Literature
March is a month with literary blog events all over the place. As you can see, I found a way to tie into a number of them, including March Magics (the last, alas) and Reading Ireland Month, along with the 2023 LoveHain readalong and my own ongoing challenges.Half of a Yellow Sun was a particularly educational but wrenching read that I reviewed for Shiny New Books (featuring the new Folio Society edition). I also posted my review of Joy Harjo’s beautiful spiritual memoirs.
In the end I needed to just relax a bit so I read some Georgette Heyer mystery novels for a change of pace. April is Reading the Theatre, which will also bring some welcome variety.
What did you enjoy reading most this month?
Books read in March
- A Pilgrimage to Eternity by Timothy Egan – Spiritual Memoir Challenge
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Around the World, Nigeria/Biafra
- City of Illusions by Ursula K. Le Guin – #LoveHain
- Unexpected Magic by Diana Wynne Jones – March Magics
- Haven by Emma Donoghue – Around the World, Reading Ireland Month
- Footsteps in the Dark, Death in the Stocks, Behold, Here’s Poison by Georgette Heyer
Language
I have been plugging away at German. I tried out a program called “Deutsch Gym,” where you meet with other learners on Discord and discuss various topics. A native speaker visits occasionally to give help and feedback. It’s nice to get together and talk with interesting people, but I found it very difficult and tiring to speak only with other learners, trying to understand them through their various accents and mistakes. And in the groups I was in, the teacher held back and hardly said anything. I would want more input from the teacher if I were to do a class like this.
More effective, I find, are the private online lessons I’ve been having — with one teacher I read actual German classic short stories, and with the other I have been reading stories she’s written around various elements of vocabulary and grammar. Naturally, learning through reading is the method I find most enjoyable, and I think I’m making progress, too.
Life
I shared my Four Somethings for the month, what I’ve been loving, learning, seeing and eating.
In writing news, I shared a poem published in Kosmeo Magazine, Advent/Lent, and my poem “Geode” was published in the Winter Collection of Ekstasis. While my son was away on a class trip to Florence in the last week (oh, to be young again), I used my freed-up time to do a five-day writing challenge with Creative Nonfiction teacher Nicole Breit, whose offerings so far have been fantastic. Each day is a different prompt and writing exercise that results in a 100-word story–an excellent challenge for me, as I tend to be too verbose. Maybe I’ll share some of the results, if anyone is interested.
On the more humdrum level of things, I finally did our Swiss taxes, more or less by myself. An online portal is provided, which I used for the second time, and it was much easier than doing it by hand since lots of information could be carried over. So happy to cross that off the list till next year.
What’s been challenging or inspiring you this month?
Linked at The Sunday Post at Caffeinated Book Reviewer, the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, and the Monthly Wrap-up Round-up at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
Looks like a good reading month Lory. I only managed to join in with Paula’s Dewithon but no other reading events this month. Death in the Stocks is the only one of your March books that I’ve read and which I enjoyed very much as well. Wishing you a great month ahead!
Georgette Heyer is one author I can generally count on to amuse me.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ursula LeGuin, and Diana Wynn Jones are all wonderful authors! Good list.
best… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
They are amazing, aren’t they.
Well done on your reading, Lory, and speaking personally I’m so grateful for your participation in #LoveHain through reviews and comments. 🙂 Like you I’ve joined in reading Irish and Welsh titles (Heaney’s ‘Beowulf’ translation and C S Lewis, Catherine Fisher and Arthur Machen) plus a Pratchett and a DWJ title.
Also like you I’m a little sad that Kristen’s stopping hosting March Magics, but as with Witch Week I’m very tempted to host it, albeit very informally, as an excuse to read more of those authors or revisit them. I’ll think about it.
Well done on your tax return! Now that we’re retired I no longer have to declare income after also ceasing piano teaching, so form-filling is no longer needed. I still get to accompany for rehearsals and to join in concerts with Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra who while all trained musicians are ‘amateur’ in the sense that they love playing and receive no fee for performing! We did Bernstein, Piazzolla and much else at our last concert, and it looks like I’ll have to reprise my stab at playing the organ for ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ for a family prom concert in the summer…
Thank YOU for doing the Hainish readalong, I am certainly profiting from it enormously.
Glad you get to play so much wonderful music! Enjoy.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about A Pilgrimage to Eternity. I’ve read Egan’s The Worst Hard Time, and I am always interested in spiritual memoirs, but I’m not sure about this one if he takes a journalistic approach.
I’m glad to hear about your writing in March. It sounds like you are moving in a direction that you are enjoying. And you seem to know more about what works for you in learning a larguage, too.
It’s that sort of personal journalism where he mixes facts and anecdotes from his own life. If you enjoyed his other book you might like this one, but the spiritual element was not of the strongest. I could have done with more of that.
Georgette Heyer is always good comfort reading when you need to relax, although I prefer her romances to the mysteries. I’m glad you’re hosting Reading the Theatre again – I’m not sure if I have anything suitable, but will join in if I can.
Please do! I include performing music or opera in the “theatre” category, by the way.
I’m impressed that you’re learning German! It seems like a difficult language. But how wonderful to be practicing with private online lessons. I wonder if doing Swiss taxes is similar to doing our taxes in the states…
It’s difficult in some ways, but in other ways I find it easier than French. If I don’t bother about correct declinations, then it’s not too hard to bumble along. What I need now is more vocabulary and to practice unraveling more convoluted sentences. Getting there!
Oh, and Swiss taxes: plus side is that doing them online is free. For my US tax software I’ve been paying an ever-increasing amount! There are weird things like the fact that you are taxed on assets, as well as income. You have to state your bank balances and the value of vehicles. There is no standard deduction, so you have to itemize your medical costs, and work costs, including transportation, which are all deductible. If you don’t use public transport to work and want to deduct car costs, you have to state why you can’t take the train/bus. Those are the main things that somewhat surprised me.
I missed Reading Ireland Month, I didn’t see anything about it until halfway through the month.
I actually just happened to pick up Haven and then realized it was perfect for the month!
Half a Yellow Moon has been on my TBR for years…..I just don’t seem to ever be “in the mood”. I’ll get to it eventually and then probably be sorry I waited so long. Looks like you had a great reading month – AND learning a second language, wow. Wish I’d done that when I was younger! Hope you have a terrific April.
Terrie @ Bookshelf Journeys
https://www.bookshelfjourneys.com/post/wrap-up-march-2023
It took me a while to get through HYS. I had to take breaks because it was so harrowing. The format of the book — which itself makes breaks in time — lent itself to that fortunately. When you do get around to it you’ll feel you’ve been through a war with the characters, so you need to be in the mood for that.
I wish I’d learned languages when I was younger too! It’s a necessity now because I live in Switzerland and I need to improve my career prospects for when my husband retires. Slowly I do make progress…
That Discord group is something I need. I’m teaching myself German but, I need someone that knows the languages to help me understand it more.
Have a great April reading month.
This group doesn’t offer much instruction, just speaking practice. I highly recommend the free resources from Deutsche Welle, for example the course Nicos Weg, which has grammar instruction and exercises accompanying a video series – check out learngerman.dw.com
One of the only series that never captured me is the Chalet School, a boarding school series set in Austria. I read several and was intrigued by the fact that the girls alternate languages, English, French, German, and Italian, as I recall. They all picked up languages because they had to and I found that appealing.
Okay, this time I didn’t have to use Facebook.
Glad you did not have to use FB — I still see the option to enter name and email, hope that will still remain. Why do they have to mess these things up in the name of “progress”?
I still have not read any Chalet School books but I really should! How I wished I had “picked up” more languages as a young person. That would have been so useful now.