what i read: march 2025

March was a good month for me, reading-wise. I finished a few books, but mostly I kept moving through some I’d been reading for a while, started some, and decided not to finish others right after the month ended. If I’ve added a star, it’s one of my favorites of the month. Here’s my thoughts on them all!

Finished Books

The Overstory by Richard Powers

I had mixed feelings about The Overstory. I liked the concept and found the first two chapters beautifully written and engrossing, but I felt it dragged on and got confused at the end. There were a few sections I think about often since finishing the book — in particular the scenes atop Mimas and Ray and Dorothy’s story — which I wish had been more focal.

Though compelling and beautifully written, I’m not sure I would have finished this book as quickly as I did if not for an eleven-hour plane ride. I’m not even sure I would have finished it. I wouldn’t say it’s undeserving of a Pulitzer prize but it didn’t quite land for me.

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

Gender Queer is a short graphic novel and a quick read. I picked it up as part of a banned books book club (though I didn’t make it to the meeting for this book). This is a book I wish I’d found in high school. It’s an extremely personal story but one that I would have found refreshing at a time in my life when I felt similar to Kobabe about puberty and gender. Though I’ve sense settled comfortably into womanhood, knowing that my struggle wasn’t unique to me would have been comforting. It really is a shame that a book like this has been banned and challenged as much as it has!

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky 🌟

I rarely read books I can’t put down. This is one of them. I read it on recommendation from my partner and I’ve always been fascinated with caves and underground places, so it’s not surprising I was immediately engrossed by Metro 2033. The world and characters feel very real, deeply thought-through, and are written with compassion. In particular, Artyom’s growth from a character who things happen to, to a character who acts is compelling — even if it builds to an absolutely heartbreaking conclusion.

I think it’s worth noting I’ve never played any of the Metro games (and I probably won’t because I’m a scaredy-cat) so I went in to this story completely blind. All I knew was the basic concept. My expectation of an action-adventure was wrong in the best way. The biggest surprise turned out to be how subtle so much of the horror is in Metro. I expected a lot more monster horror, but the most frightening and intense scenes came from subtle unknowable horrors. A few moments unsettled me so much I had to stop reading Metro before bed! Additionally, the book is slow and deeply philosophical. The book spends a lot of time asking the reader to think. I like that.

The only place this book is not as strong is the translation, which is a shame. It may have just been the edition I read but I could feel a much better writing style straining under the translation — if only I could read Russian!

To anyone reading this who is interested in the book, I’d recommend having a map of the Metro handy while you read. I found one online that mapped the Metro as it appears in the book which helped me understand the scope of the journey. I also looked up pictures of the stations as I read. Some of them are absolutely stunning!

All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson

Read for the same banned books club. I missed this meeting as well. My thoughts are almost identical to Gender Queer. At one point, Johnson mentions never having really seen YA memoirs and I thought that was a good point. I haven’t either. Why is that?

This book is very sweet, very sad at times, and very personal. Johnson’s compassion for both their younger self and others in their life is so clear. It makes the book a joy to read! The prose didn’t quite work for me, but it’s geared towards a younger audience, so that’s fine. It’s a shame All Boys Aren’t Blue gets banned so often as well!

The Meadow by James Galvin 🌟

Read upon recommendation by my mom. Truly a special book. It takes place in a region not far from the region I call home and I felt it deeply connect with my own experiences. I haven’t read any of Galvin’s poetry, but I would love to now! His prose is (obviously) poetic and beautiful. The landscapes were already familiar to me and he renders them with such love I could feel it. I wasn’t surprised to find out after finishing The Meadow that Galvin lived in the area and there are strains of autobiography through the book. His experience and love of the titular meadow show throughout the book — the characters alone are so real. Lyle might be one of my favorite literary characters of all time! I can’t recommend The Meadow enough.

Abandoned Books

Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme

Just not the time for this. I read a few of the stories but kept not wanting to pick the book up. Some of the older cultural references were challenging for me in a way I didn’t have patience for this month. I like Barthelme’s style so I may pick this up again in the future, but this wasn’t the right time.

In-Progress Books

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

Listening as an audiobook. The references to old Hollywood are fun and I’m enjoying the story. I’ve found that I’ve slowed down on audiobooks quite a bit this year so it may be some time before I finish Moving Pictures. At this rate it could take me decades to work through the Discworld books, but I know I’ll enjoy the ride!

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Reading for a work book club. I thought I wouldn’t like it since it’s not the type of book I usually read and not the kind I usually like if I do. It’s repetitive and a lot of the advice feels obvious but the way Clear explains his system had me thinking more, well, clearly about habits. It’s got me thinking a lot about what habits I want to change or habits I want to pick up. Looking forward to reading more!

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

Started on recommendation from my mom. At first it reminded me of The Last of the Mohicans (which I enjoyed) but I found The Vaster Wilds too gross to finish right now. Too much talk of “wet hot shits.” I particularly didn’t like the baby squirrel moment. I’m not ordinarily this squeamish; I’ve read worse. I’m simply not in the mood at the moment, though Groff’s writing is beautiful. Spoiler: I decided not to finish this book early in April, before writing this post.

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas

Reading in the mornings when I’m sleepy. I’m not sure I’ll make it through. I thought I could, just for fun and to finish the series, but this book needed a stricter editor. It’s so boring! Spoiler again: I decided not to finish this book before writing this post as well.

The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro

I’ve stalled out on this tome, barely 4% of the way in. My plan is to pick it up again after I catch up on The Expanse and finish it then. I can’t read other things on the side with a book like The Power Broker or I won’t think to pick it up because it’s dense and quite literally very heavy.

airup vs. cirkul

Last year I was in a café in a small town near Portland, Oregon, when I overheard one of the baristas tell another, "I'm on, like, a water journey right now." I thought it was hysterically funny. Little did I know, I'd be on a water journey of my own a few months later.

I drink a lot of tea and that's all well and good,  but I know I'm not drinking enough water. Enter: AirUp and Cirkul. Both claim they will encourage you, the consumer, to drink more water. They use similar, though not identical, methods of injecting flavor into water and purport the nice taste will make you drink more (with their expensive bottles, of course). During the course of my water journey, I've tried both. Here are my thoughts on them:

AirUp 

Some of my AirUp flavor pods.

The first of the two I tried was AirUp. I'd seen ads for it on YouTube and, fool that I am, I thought maybe the YouTubers were telling the truth about how great AirUp is. I excitedly ordered a stainless-steel bottle and a number of flavor pods. I'm too embarrassed to share the total cost, considering that the bottle landed in a thrift store donation box less than a month after it arrived.

Before I go any further, a quick explanation of how AirUp works might be necessary. Before I ordered it, I was under the impression that it used the smell-taste connection that makes everything taste terrible when you're congested. So, you smell the pod and it makes the water taste good. I was skeptical, but not skeptical enough to not order. Turns out the way it really works is by injecting tiny bubbles of scented air into the water as you drink. This supposedly mimics carbonation.

Clearly I didn't like AirUp, but I did try to give it a fair shake. Accordingly, here are the positives:

1. The smells! I gave the ones I ordered a smell each, and they really did smell nice. I especially liked the peach tea smell.
2. The marketing is quite convincing. Their website looks nice.
3. The bottle has a straw, so you don't have to tilt it to drink out of it, which is nice for mindlessly sipping water while sitting at a desk, or something like that.
   

That's all that I found positive about it, to be honest. Here's what I found strange, annoying, or bad:

1. The system is designed more towards small sips than gulps. I'm not a sipper of any beverage, so I found myself trying to take big gulps of water and sucking in mostly air.
2. The flavoring isn't that effective. To activate it properly, you have to push the pod down on the straw to lock into place. Unfortunately, that means that you are letting a lot of air in when you drink. See above.
3. The bottle isn't dishwasher safe. I mean, come on... it's 2025. Even Nalgene bottles are dishwasher safe!
4.  It's expensive. More than it should be.
5. Customer service is not so great. Their return policy is even worse. After trying it, I thought I might try to return the bottle since I didn't like using it and felt it was a waste of money. Unfortunately, their policy doesn't allow that. I might have been able to return some of the pods, but that didn't feel worth it to me.

Verdict: It doesn't really work as advertised — or if it does, it just isn't for me. Unless you like water full of air bubbles with vague taste to them, I wouldn't recommend AirUp.

Cirkul

My Cirkul tumbler. I don't know why the caption has so much space around it.

The next step on my water journey was Cirkul. At first, I thought Cirkul worked the same as AirUp but it turns out Cirkul is much more mysterious. Instead of injecting air into the water, Cirkul's cartriges (they call them "sips") inject ... something. To be honest, I can't find much about this on their website (or any others — it all seems like AI slop copying their marketing copy ... dead internet, hooray!). But it's not air. I suspect it's either a liquid or a powder, but I'm not going to cut a "sip" open to find out.

I started with a Cirkul bottle, which I wasn't completely satisfied with. It required tipping the bottle, and due to the design of the "sip" nozzle, I had a similar experience to AirUp, where I couldn't get as much water as I wanted. I tried one of their new tumblers shortly after, which works much better.

But the real question is: does it taste good? Yes, actually, it does. The first "sip" I tried was a blueberry one. It was quite good. The second (and current) "sip" I've tried is a lemonade one which is almost too sweet to drink. And there's the catch: Cirkul lets you adjust the amount of mysterious flavoring substance that you inject into your water, but I've found that anything below 7-8 hardly tastes like anything and anything above is overpowering. Through some experimentation, I've found that if you let the tumbler sit for a while, the flavor "fills" more and tastes stronger (in which case I always turn it down), but if you sip constantly, you have to turn up the dial to taste anything. The numbers don't really mean much.

One thing to note about Cirkul is that it includes nutrition facts that can be essentially summed up as: there is nothing in this "sip." There's essentially no sugar or other ingredients, though some "sips" contain vitamins or other additives. I wish I understood how it works that it tastes strong, but contains negligible ingredients! 

Verdict: Cirkul is fine and it works, but it may not be worth the cost. The flavors taste good! However, the "sips" are difficult to calibrate consistently. I probably would recommend it to someone with kids (for their kids) more than I'd recommend it to an adult. 

Final verdict: between Cirkul and AirUp I would strongly recommend Cirkul, however...

Surprise Third Thing

That's right! Water-flavoring packets. They still exist and you can find them at the dollar store for like $1 per pack. They're cheap, they're easy to use, and they come in flavors ranging from Skittles to Sonic Cherry Limeade to Emergen-C (if that one counts). The nutrition facts aren't that different from Cirkul, and you can easily control the amount of flavoring. The conclusion of my water journey has been realizing that there really isn't much reason to spend ridiculous amounts of money on complex water "fixing" systems when you can just dump a Crystal Light flavor packet into your bottle (or just have a cup of tea). I still have to use up all my "sips" though.

a blog post about blogging

So for my second post I want to think about what I'm doing with this blog. It's silly but I've always thought it would be fun to have a blog (and always been too scared to actually make one and keep up with it). This is not my first attempt, nor will it likely be the last, knowing me. 

My goal this time is to get over being embarrassed to share thoughts with the world. Partly this is because I've realized that nobody really cares — and that's a good thing. I can write whatever and I want and it's likely hardly anyone will read it. That's freeing and fun and a reason to try. My goal is simply: post at least once a week. Doesn't matter what it is. I'm just here to have fun!

 Plus it's fun that Blogger still exists. All the themes look ancient. It's kind of cool!

 I am testing embedding Blogger as an iframe with this first post.

 

and it works!