Welcome to our wrap up for February in 2023. How was your month? Tell us in the comments.
February Book Selection
February was a productive month beyond my expectations! Pre-wedding planning I could read as many as 12 books in this short month. Post-wedding, I was excited to test out if that was still a possibility. I did great. 🙂
Non-Fiction
I read two non-fiction books this month!
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke [Goodreads] is a collection of ten letters, one poet to another, written in the early 1900s. It is amazing how much of the creative struggle and life situations from a century ago are still applicable today. This book is originally in German. I have come across two translations so far and it is interesting to compare the writing: the sentiment is kept but the writing varies in degree of formality. I have a lot of reflecting to do on this one! I probably highlighted a good quarter of the book. 😀
Ann Gomez recently came out with Workday Warrior: A Proven Path to Reclaiming Your Time [Goodreads]. I loved this book and feel that everyone who works would benefit from it. Accessible to works of all professions and years in the industry, Workday Warrior is easy to read with lots of examples and tools to manage time better. I was so excited that I implemented some of these before I even got the chapter to create them! Stay taunted for my review coming tomorrow and an interview with Ann towards the end of the month.
Fiction
I enjoyed a lot of great fiction in February from a variety of genres!
Final Term by Liegh Russel [Goodreads] was my first book of the author and 19th in the DI Geraldine series. I enjoyed this crime thriller where a teacher was accused of molesting a student who was found dead shortly after. An interesting take on how an investigation around this affected the relationship of the teacher with his wife as well as the truths that were revealed about the dead teen. Read my full review here.
Science Fiction
Ariel introduced me to B2W, a discord and Instagram community that reads BIPOC authors through tours and buddy reads. Their pick for February was Do you Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh [Goodreads]. This book had been on my TBR since 2020 so I carved out time for it and loved it so much. This book goes into the psyche of astronauts and what it means to take on a two decade journey to another planet to colonize it. There is so much to think about here and I am excited to find sometime to write about it.
Have you read Becky Chambers? I read the first book of the series, A Psalm for the Wild-Built [Goodreads] and loved it! It was a great audiobook experience. Set on a moon where machines gained consciousness and decided to live in the wild, humans have not come across machines in a long time. When Dex, a new tea monk, meets an android, their conversations on living and the world gives them and me insights! Another one I need to sit and reflect on.
Fantasy
Moving into Fantasy, I finally gave Daughter of the Moon Goddess [Goodreads] a read! My first buddy read with Jerusha, this was an action packed fast paced book with amazing work building. Ariel had enjoyed it too. Find her review here.
I made progress on my Inked Awards assignments! Second Star to the Left by Megan Van Dyke [Goodreads] is based on Peter Pan, focusing on Tinker Bell’s history and Captain Hook. If you are looking for a fantasy novel with lots of romance, give this one a read!
Last but not the least in fantasy, The Empress of Time [Goodreads], the final book of The Keeper of Night duology by Kylie Lee Baker blew me away! I was hooked by the audiobook – the narration is so engaging! – but as it happens when I listen while lying in bed, I fall asleep and miss things. So this one I read part audiobook and part physical book. SK and I had read the first book last year in April. We are working through our discussion and it is another epic one! The series is YA Fantasy Horror. The main character, Ren, is part Reaper and part Shinigami. In the second book, she is managing the kingdom of Yomi as the goddess of Death in Japan. After a decade of ‘peace’, the reapers have a bone to pick with her and they are coming.
Historical Fiction
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is one of my favorite authors. I have enjoyed her retellings of Hindu epics and with the release of her new historical fiction novel, Independence [Goodreads], I had the opportunity to explore something different in her writing. Set in the late 1940s in pre-partition India, this book weaves a beautiful story of three sisters living in Bengal, one of the states that was divided during the partition. My review was just posted yesterday!
Buddy read with Ariel, Dust Child [Goodreads] is our second novel by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. We had buddy read The Mountains Sing [Goodreads] last year and agreed that Dust Child was equally lyrical and a lot more impactful. I am excited to dive into our discussion for this book. Told from multiple perspectives, Dust Child is about American soldiers returning to Vietnam to be reunited with children that they fathered during the war in late 1960s. This was a heartbreaking tale based on history and real life experiences.
In the world of contemporary fiction, I dived into Episode Thirteen [Goodreads]. This is a horror novel about a ghost hunting TV show crew who are investigating an old paranormal research facility. This book is extra fun because of the episodary style with a mix of video transcription, personal diaries, text messages and conversations.
Lastly, I picked up the second book of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi: Tales from the Cafe [Goodreads]. A hidden cafe in Tokyo allows people to visit someone in a different time, past or future over a cup of coffee. The first book had been a buddy read with Ariel last year. This one I listened to as an audiobook and immensely enjoyed it. Looking forward to sharing the review with you in the future (not this month).
Total TBR: 313 (Feb 1) -> 323 (Mar 1)
When I went book shopping with my sister-in-law, I added the following to my home library and TBR: The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams [Goodreads], The Embroidered Book by Kate Heartfield [Goodreads] and Mansions of the Moon by Shyam Selvadurai [Goodreads].
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Watching Persuasion on NetFlix made me wonder about the appeal of Jane Austen novels so I also added Persuasion, Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice to my ever growing home library. Author friend Elizabeth Gilliland gave me many recommendations of books written by female authors in the 1800s-early 1950s. I can’t wait to explore this era of women literature! Making time for it though is a whole other challenge. 😉
Some noteworthy review copies that I added to my TBR this month were:
- The Book of Rain by Thomas Wharton [Goodreads] – scifi set in Canada!!
- Wedded Wife: A Feminist History of Marriage by Rachael Lennon [Goodreads] – review coming at the end of March!
- Blind Spots by Thomas Mullen [Goodreads] – speculative fiction about a world gone blind and the influence of technology… I am so in!
Writing
Updates on TBP (to be posted – reviews that I have written but not yet published to the blog) and TBW (to be written – books I have read but not yet noted down my thoughts about).
TBP: 14 (Feb 1) -> 13 (Mar 1)
TBW: 7 (Feb 1) -> 11 (Mar 1)
My favorite writing session this month was The Empress of Time! The exciting news of an interview opportunity with the author added fuel to my love for this book. Reviews for Independence (already out) and Episode Thirteen (this month) were immersive as well.
Have you written something lately?
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Blogging
In case you missed it, the non-fiction feature of February was The Book of Boundaries by Melissa Urban. I was on tour with Random Things Tour for Final Term (thriller) and Independence (historical fiction). Ariel and I shared our discussion of January buddy read: Our Share of Night by Mariana EnrÃquez. Ariel also wrote about The Faithless, second in the Magic of the Lost Trilogy. I reviewed The Last Tale of the Flower Bride (fantasy/magical realism), Artificial Condition (scifi) and Well-Behaved Indian Women (contemporary fiction).
I had the honor to chat with neurosurgeon Gary R Simonds about the profession.
The Scotiabank Giller Prize obsession did not get its own section today. I got myself a copy of We Measure the Earth with our Bodies [Goodreads] but I made no progress! As you can see, there were so many other books calling me.
But it is March and my goal of writing about each of the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists has to be completed! Stay tuned to the review of the five books, including We Measure the Earth with our Bodies at the end of the month.
Staging
My collection of photos is growing faster than I am posting. Isn’t that a wonderful place to be?
I posted two aesthetic photos related to journaling at the start of the month and fiction buddy reads. Accompanying the blog reviews, I shared a photo of All Systems Red and The Tale of the Flower Bride. My shopping trip with Lennea and the addition of 4 books to my TBR got a feature as well. So did, the upcoming April release, Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America’s Future by Jean M. Twenge [Goodreads]. I started guishing about Workday Warrior before finishing so you can get a preamble for tomorrow’s post here. I promised to work on some art and was able to create something each week. See my art account for those photos!
If you have a bookstagram, do you stage and post right away or do you generally have a plan around when to share certain photos? I would love to hear from you!
The Noteworthy: A random collection of findings
- Clinton and I are enjoying the time travel to our present show, Travelers, on NetFlix. It was recommended to me back in 2019 and I am really liking it.
- Three art accounts that I have been enjoying on Instagram: Fade to Colour, Marlies Draws, Vibrant Life.
Ariel’s February
Looking back on the month, I didn’t realize how few books I read this month until looking at my statistics, but they’ve been books that I’m very happy I read. I focused again mostly on upcoming Arcs that will be published in the coming weeks. A notable favorite was The Faithless, which was featured on Ariel’s Arcs. Another favorite was Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai which both Kriti and I are on tour for, and I’m very excited to discuss this with her on the blog!!
Book Total: 6
Audiobooks: 1
Ebooks: 4
Physical Books: 1
Library Books: 1
Netgalley Arcs: 4
Physical Arcs: 1
Notable Favorites:
Horror: The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown
Fantasy: The Faithless by C. L. Clark
Buddy Read with Kriti: Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Not books:
Favorite TV Show this month: Star Trek: Discovery
Favorite Video Game this month: Citizen Sleeper
Thanks for being a reader of my blog. Happy February! May you have a great one.
Lofi Girl art downloaded from UDH Wallpaper
I misread the Total TBR to be a TOTAL READ number and about died when I thought you read 323 books in 2 months. hahah
I would have the same reaction at 323. 😂 I look at people reading 30 books in a month and that already feels a lot.