How is it March already?! The last weekend of February flew by with a trip to Exeter to visit friends. Between Saturday and Sunday we spotted: a humpback whale off the Devon coast at Slapton (occasioning many cries of “Thar she blows!”), a giant pug painted on an underpass, a mighty fine cream tea, and far too many secondhand books at Book-Cycle.

For me the month of March holds an alarming number of deadlines for book reviews: 15, to be precise. Yipes! Luckily I’ve already managed to submit two of these reviews, and I plan to write a third this afternoon. Most of those are as part of my paid work, but I’ll also be participating in two blog tours for nonfiction books on adoption and foxes, respectively, and contributing a review of Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn to Shiny New Books.

As to other planned blog posts for the month…

• Thanks to your comments I’ve started The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as my monthly classic (27 pages in and I’m loving it already).
• I’m doing some thematic reading for World Kidney Day on the 9th.
• I’m thinking of getting my first Haruki Murakami book, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, out from the library as my doorstopper of the month.
• I’ll be reviewing Narcissism for Beginners by Martine McDonagh (terrific) and The Family Gene by Joselin Linder (haven’t started yet).
• A couple more books may turn up from publishers if I’m lucky.

Some other themed reading challenges are underway but will probably roll over to future months.

Today I’m picking up three library holds: The Good People by Hannah Kent, The Best of Adam Sharp by Graeme Simsion and Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (this one’s for a BookBrowse review due in April). All are likely to be requested after me, so somehow I have to fit them in during the next three weeks. I do hope they’re quick reads!

So, a busy month – back to the reading! How does the month look for you?