March Wrap Up + April TBR

March was a great reading month as I completed 5 books and 2 comic books. I also tried to read one book and ended up DNFing it. Here are the books that I read in March –

• My most favorite read (5 stars read) in March is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte for which I did a full review here.
• My second favorite (5 stars) read was Dear Ijeawele or A feminist manifesto in fifteen suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I did not do a review of this book but wrote a post about my thoughts on the book here.

• Seven brief lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli was an amazing 5 star read too. If you love physics, please do yourself a favor by reading this book. I had no idea before picking this book that the author is co-founder of the loop quantum gravity theory in Physics. He talks about 20th and 21st century Physics, most of which is modern research. And the book was simple enough for normal folks to understand. You don’t have to be a scientist to read this book.

• Planetfall by Emma Newman – It is about this colony based on a planet where one day a stranger comes from nowhere. Except for the ending which was weird and did not make much sense (it was almost like 2001: A space odyssey like others have said), this book was brilliant. The characters, technology, 3D printers, writing, plot and the setting were all amazing. It had me hooked all the time and I was unable to keep it down ever since I started reading. I loved this book. I will definitely try other books by this author in future. The best part about this book was that the ideas were new. I have never read a sci-fi like this one which deals with a character who has mental illness and anxiety. The second half of the book was better with some plot twists that I could not guess. Also this book made me pretty emotional but I still loved it. I gave it 4 stars.

• Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty – Six clones wake up to find their previous clones murdered. They have no idea who killed them but the killer has to be one among them as they are the only people in the spaceship.  Even though it was a murder mystery set in space, it took me more than a month to finish it. That’s because it was not thrilling or nail biting mystery. It was like these cozy mysteries which move at a snail pace with lot of back stories and details which sometimes matter and sometimes are just fillers to the main story.
  The science element in this book was great. It was interesting reading about 3D printers and human clones. I found the back stories more interesting than what was going on in the space ship. Every single character has their own story on how they became part of the crew of the ship. Clone riots, codicils, mind mapping technology, DNA hacking – all these were extremely interesting topics. This is the first book about cloning that I read and now I am fascinated with this topic and planning to read more books on this. There is a lot of diversity in this book. If you are looking for diverse sci-fi, this might be the one for you.
  The ending and the story as such was something that did not make much sense to me. Also this book dragged in places by shifting between past and present. It never kept me on the edge to know what happened. I sometimes did not care who the murderer was. Also did not care for any of the characters.
  Interesting book though not as good as I expected it to be. 3 stars – mostly for the science and technology in this book.

• Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee – DNF – This is the kind of sci-fi that I don’t like. It is a sci-fi with no science in it. It should be just called speculative fiction. The author throws you into this already built world. There is no world building done of any sort for the reader. I didn’t like the writing style either. It sounded like a school kid had written this book. The book is full of conversations between some boring characters. There is no explanation to as what they are fighting this war against? What is calendrical rot or first tell me what this calendrical system is all about? Just throwing some made-up jargon like invariant ice, calendrical heresy, shuos is not going to make any sense to the reader unless you explain what it is. Also why do you need mathematics to break through a fortress? There is no explanation for that. Even the weapons have something to do with calenders, but we have no idea what it is. Looking at what others have written, people have just made assumptions on what these jargon might mean. I want my science fiction to have a well developed system which has a good backing of science. This is just a military fantasy book with more focus on characters and there is hardly any plot.
  Not my cup of tea. Even after reading 140 pages, if I have no idea what is happening in that world and couldn’t make out the head or tail of this story, then something is definitely wrong with the author’s writing or the book.

I also finished two comic books this month –

• Flashpoint by Geoff Johns and others – My first Flash comics. Of late hubby and I have been obsessed with Flash after we started watching the TV series. I had no idea Flash was this amazing else I would have picked his comics long back. I think if you are a sci-fi fan, Flash is a better superhero to read about.
  This book is about a parallel universe where Flash’s mother is alive but there is no Superman, Thomas Wayne survived while Bruce Wayne died. Wonder Woman and Aquaman are at war with each other. Cyborg, Element woman and many other super humans are trying to stop this war. The entire Justice League is there in this comic but it is about Flash. There is time travel, alternate universe and all such sci-fi concepts. It was amazing, even though I have never read about anyone in the Justice League, other than Batman. I am definitely going to read more Flash comics. 4 stars.

• Civil War by Mark Miller and others – My first Marvel comic book 🙂 I have always preferred D.C. Comics so I decided to give Marvel a chance this time. I have seen every single Avengers movie so there wasn’t anything new. I chose Captain America’s side, even though I am an Iron Man fan. I liked Captain America in this comic much more than the movie version. He was tougher here. There were many Marvel characters whom I didn’t know since I haven’t read about them earlier. This was a good introduction to the Marvel universe I guess as most of the super heroes are there. Wish x-men had joined the civil war. But they did make a brief appearance in the beginning. I enjoyed this book but didn’t quite like the ending. The artwork was amazing. 4 stars.

April TBR:

My TBR for April has lesser number of books as the ones that I am reading right now are chunky. I am reading Dune finally (after wanting to read it for so many years now). I am so glad I can tick that book off my list. I am also continuing my marathon of Bronte sisters with Anne Bronte’s book this month – “The tenant of windfell hall”. If time permits, I will read the other two books on this list.

What did you read in March and what are you reading in April?