Reading Roundup: March 2026

March was a good reading month. I finished The Expanse series, I continue to love the Tiffany Aching books, and I started re-reading my old favourite Adrian Mole and found it even better than before. I also finally – finally, finally – read How To Be Perfect! I still need to make the time for my brain to process everything I learned from that book, but it feels like a big deal because I’ve really taken the time to make notes and absorb it!

Very unusually, I didn’t read anything in ebook form! I don’t know the last time that happened, many years ago, I think! This came about just because they are books we already had in physical format, but it was nice. There are always pros and cons to reading eBooks vs print.

I also had a delightful time reading Kelly Thompson’s 2018 limited series for my favourite X-Men couple, Rogue and Gambit. I just wish there were more than 24 issues!

March is the end of Q1 for 2026, so I think I will do a round-up of my progress on the Law of Fives bingo in a separate post.

6 books – 3 audio and 3 print books!

This was aprox. 1,021 pages read and 23.5 hours listened (of finished books). No eBooks this month for the first time in… years?! My Kindle will be feeling neglected.

The Rat Catcher: A Love Story by Kim Kelly ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A historical novella by an Australian author, which broke my run of (two) duds. I loved this so much! It tells the story of Paddy, an Irish immigrant in 1900s Sydney, and it’s so charming, sweet and uplifting. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator was wonderful.

Leviathan Falls (The Expanse #9) by James S.A. Corey – Series Finale ⭐⭐⭐

I finally finished this series! I found the ending to be lacklustre and disappointing, but it wasn’t bad. If I reread this series again in the future (which I probably will), I’ll stop at book 5 because nothing after that point really did it for me, and now I know the ending doesn’t either.

A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld #32, Tiffany Aching #2) by Terry Pratchett ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Another delight in this series! Tiffany is now 11 and leaves home to start her witch training with Miss Level, but she also has to confront some of the darker sides of herself when she gets possessed by a hiver. Granny Weatherwax makes a larger appearance in this one; you know I love Granny. There is some great stuff in here about self-identity and what it really means to be a witch.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 (Adrian Mole #1) by Sue Townsend 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

I loved re-reading this! It is so sharp and so funny, and I think I got even more out of it this time with 37-year-old eyes (shocking, I am now the exact age of Adrian’s mother!) and a bit more awareness of the ‘historical’ context (I’m sorry, but 1981 was over 40 years ago!). It’s a really brilliant snapshot of class and culture in the East Midlands at the time, but all told between the lines of the diary of a self-obsessed, pompous 13-year-old twerp who is oblivious to the struggles his parents are having. Few books make me genuinely laugh out loud, and this is one of them!

Wintersmith (Discworld #35; Tiffany Aching #3) by Terry Pratchett ⭐⭐⭐

I had some issues with the narrative structure, pacing and the Wintersmith plot in this, but I still immensely enjoyed all the witch stuff! This book sees a 13-year-old Tiffany in a new trainee position with the fantastically creepy old witch Miss Treason, who teaches her some valuable new lessons about the importance of a witch’s story, and that some theatrics can be necessary, but the main lesson is taking responsibility for mistakes and owning the consequences. There was more exploration of the differences between the older witches and the younger witches in Tiffany’s cohort, and some wonderful growth for Annagramma. The best bits were between Tiffany and Granny, who features much more significantly. There is even an appearance by Nanny Ogg!

How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Mike Schur ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I finished it! I enjoyed it, I learned some new things, and I hopefully will get a chance to write about it soon. If you are a complete newbie to moral philosophy, like me, then this is an easy way into it, written by Mike Schur, the creator of The Good Place. This is an accessible summary of everything Mike learned in the lead-up to creating that show and during the writing process. You do not need to have seen The Good Place to read this, but he does make occasional references to it, as there is a degree of memoir to this when Mike applies these theories to real-life situations. My plan now is to read a book of essays by moral philosophers – The Good Place and Philosophy: Everything is Forking Fine! by Kimberly S. Engels – and rewatch the show!

Marvel Unlimited: 44 more issues of X-Men

I read all the way through the limited series Rouge & Gambit (2018) and Mrs & Mrs X (2018), both by Kelly Thompson, after a quick stop off into X-Men Gold No.20 (2018) for their wedding. I then I read through the Messiah Complex story arc (2007), which was such a confusing mix of issues, I can’t be bothered to list them, but it ran across Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, New X-Men and New X-Men. After that, at Husband’s request, I moved onto 2010’s Second Coming story arc, which again spanned an annoying amount of titles: Uncanny X-Men, New Mutants, X-Force, X-Men Legacy, and the Second Coming special issues.

The Rogue and Gamit books, I loved everything about – well, not everything. I am quite tired of every Gambit story just being a rehash of the same New Orleans bullshit with the T’hieves and Assassins Guilds – and had the best possible time with. They were so much fun, and really showed the best of these characters and their relationship. In Rogue & Gamit, they are sent on an undercover mission together to a resort posing as a couple there for therapy (at this point, they are not an item), which forces them to discuss all of their issues and finally get together. This involved them having to fit a lot of clones of themselves and each other, which were really fun call-backs and made me glad I’d started from the beginning with reading X-Men, so I did recognise most of it! It was hot, I loved the art – Pere Perez draws the hottest version of Gambit I’ve seen! – as these two are, it was riotously fun, and it was emotional.

Mr & Mrs X are the pair embarking on married life, after their spontaneous wedding in X-Men Gold. It starts with them on their honeymoon in space, but then – of course – they end up caught up in some Shi-ar space bullshit, which includes Deadpool. Again, it was really fun, and it ended in a lovely place for their relationship, which is hopeful for the future. Also, Gambit has three cats, which I am completely into, and Rouge is very prepared to be a cat mum.

My problem now is that I really wish I could own the TPB collections of these limited runs, but because it is from 2018, it’s out of print and seems to be rare; the only ones I have seen for sale are insanely expensive!

Messiah Complex was not as fun. Part of the reason is that I had no idea what was going on, with no context for most of the characters. I’d only crossed into this era a little bit, reading X-Men Legacy. This storyline is in the aftermath of the Scarlett Witch’s “no more mutants”, which decimated the mutant population. Some mutants lost powers, and no new ones are being born. Then there is a baby born that everyone is extremely interested in and pits Cyclop’s X-Men against everyone, really, including (for a time) Cable. The missing context was quite annoying. I had no idea why Gambit was with the Marauders or why Mr Sinister had a dying Rogue (he was barely in it, which was also annoying). I didn’t like the art much, and Storm was barely in it. I think she had one line in 12 issues.

Second Coming continues this story when Cable returns from the future with a new teenage Hope. This was a very dramatic storyline that even got a bit of an appearance from The Avengers and Fantastic Four, and the main villain is Bastian in the future. There is a lot of action in this, and some characters die to protect Hope in the belief that she is the Messiah. The ending was a bit anticlimactic. From doing some Googling after the fact, it also seems the Hope Summers plotline never goes anywhere really after this, and she remains more plot device than character.

At this point, I was feeling a bit fed up with X-Men, but Husband wanted me to read Jonathan Hickman’s House of X/Powers of X, which leads into the Krackoan Era from 2019. This was his intro point to X-Men. More on that next month… if you know my reading taste, and that I started in the 1980s Claremont Era, you can probably guess what my thoughts on that will be.

I am a bit lost about where I want to go next in the Marvel Universe. I might go back re-read Carol Danvers stories from Ms. Marvel, into Captain Marvel.

Currently Reading

Currently, I am reading The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, and continuing to have a great time.

On audiobook, I have Gideon The Ninth by Tamsin Muir (a New Zealand author) which I have to say started out extremely rough for me and I thought I’d made a huge mistake because it is not a tone or type of character I really like, but miraculously the storytelling, the world and the not-Gideon characters have won be over and now I am all in. I am considering buying the eBook, though, because at times I find it very hard to follow on audio, and I am finding it nigh on impossible to exactly remember who everyone is!

Adding to TBR

I managed a no-book-buying month!