March 2025 Reading Life Roundup
- Kara Monroe
- Apr 2
- 4 min read
My reading streak continued through March. As of March 31, I have read for 464 straight days. My stats for 2025 continue to be far ahead of my stats for 2025 - part of that because of a goal I had to complete this month. I’ve logged a total of 153 hours in 2025 - and increase of 57 hours over February. I easily got in 30+ minutes of reading nearly every day in March.
My three aims for my reading life this year are simple:
Keep my streak going
Share regularly about my reading
See books “in the wild”
We’ve already talked about my book streak. I’ll get into the details on what I read below.
I went to two new to me bookstores this month as a part of the Indy Indie book crawl! So fun.
I’ll definitely return to both Chapter Book Lounge in Noblesville and Turn The Page Book Shop in Westfield.
Finished in March 2025
The only goal this month in terms of what to read was to finish the Harry Potter books in advance of our trip to Europe where we’ll go to the Harry Potter Studio Tour.
Black List
📱 Read on screen
Author: Brad Thor
Why did I read it?: I’m continuing to read the Scot Horvath series by Brad Thor
Review: This was probably the most “out there” of the Horvath series. The company he works for has been placed on the Black List. If you’re on the Black List, you’re dead. This one didn’t seem to advance the overall story line of the series all that much, but it’s given some opportunities to introduce new characters in future books.
What’s Next?: I’m continuing on with the series, so next up is Hidden Order
Ratings: - Initial response: 3 - Structure: 3 - Storytelling: 3 - Coherence/World Building: 3 - Character(s): 3 - Creativity: 5
Overall Rating: 3.3 Stars: ⭐️⭐️⭐
Hidden Order
📱 Read on screen
Author: Brad Thor
Why did I read it?: Continuing the Scot Horvath Series
Review: Reading books like this, you can grow immune to the gruesome nature of some of the violence that is discussed. This one though made me cringe in a couple of places. With that said, the story line was one of the more creative and interesting - not the least of which because of a coincidence at a conference I was attended in August. The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond presented on research they are doing into equity in the higher learning space. This comes at a time when the federal government keeps backing away from equity. And yet, as I read in Thor’s book, the Federal Reserve isn’t really a government agency or unit. Reading Thor’s book caused me to do some more reading on The Federal Reserve system and its criticisms and benefits.
What’s Next?:
Ratings: - Initial response: 4 - Structure: 3 - Storytelling: 4- Coherence/World Building: 4 - Character(s): 4 - Creativity: 4
Overall Rating: 3.83 Stars: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Act of War
📱 Read on screen
Author: Brad Thor
Why did I read it?: Continuing the Scot Horvath Series
Review: This felt like it was back to the normal style of the early books of this series, although I can see that Thor is introducing a lot of new characters to create places to go in future books. This story line was interesting although drug a bit in parts where it felt like he was chasing the same goal from two different places. It’s almost like he tried to create a B story with the SEAL team that went into North Korea and that this story was only so he could introduce new characters. Their overall mission didn’t contribute to solving the problem “just in time.” I’ll be interested to see if those players do come back up again since we got quite a bit of backstory on them.
What’s Next?: Code of Conduct is next in the series. There were two short stories - Free Fall and Epilogue II that I realized later - were supposed to fall into the series near here so I might pop those into my reading line up as well.
Ratings: - Initial response: 4 - Structure: 3 - Storytelling: 3 - Coherence/World Building: 3 - Character(s): 4 - Creativity: 3
Overall Rating: 3.33 Stars: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Harry Potter Books 4 - 7
🎧 Listened
Author: J.K. Rowling
Why did I read it?: We’re going to be visiting London and taking part in the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour while we’re there. I wanted to re-read all of the books before we left on our trip.
Review: I decided not to do each of these separately. I really enjoyed my re-read of the series. I love the audio books narrated by Jim Dale. I finished all of the books with about a week to spare in the month and am now trying to make my way through the films, although I watch them at bedtime so at some point I nod off during each of them.
What’s Next?: Enjoying our trip
Overall Rating: I’ll be honest that I struggle in supporting J.K. Rowling as an author as her statements about those who are trans are completely inappropriate. I also know that the world Rowling created became a safe place of refuge for many young people around the world - and still is today. Re-listening to the books, I tried to see if I missed something in her writing that would have exposed her views earlier but I didn’t notice anything. This has made me think a lot about cancel culture and boycotts and whether they’re effective or worthwhile. Right now, I don’t believe that “cancelling” someone does anything to truly change that person or organization’s views. I think it’s more important to be aware and sensitive to the audience you’re working with so that they can be supported appropriately when you work with difficult material and material from people who have said and done hurtful things.
Stars: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️️️️
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