February has been an up and down month. There have been stressful things to deal with, and medical appointments and tests to get through. There was also a broken Kindle Voyage (eek!). Things eventually began to be sorted out and towards the end of the month I got a replacement Kindle through the warranty, and we got some unexpected good news in the post. My husband had two weeks off from work and whilst I wasn’t well enough for us to do much, it was lovely to have the time together.
It’s been a fab reading month, I still can’t quite believe how many great books I read in February! Unfortunately, whilst I’ve been reading a lot I’m struggling to write reviews at the moment. This, in part, is because I lost my notes when my Kindle malfunctioned so I will have to write reviews from memory (and my memory is awful), but also because I’m in the middle of altering my medication and it’s a struggle for me to get my words down coherently. I may have to just write some very short, basic reviews in order to catch up as the amount I now have waiting to be written is starting to stress me out.
Here are the 26 books I read this month:
Well-Read Women by Samantha Hahn
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
The Secrets of Happiness by Lucy Diamond
Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian
Rage by Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
The Breakdown by B.A. Paris
The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel
F*cking Apostrophes by Simon Griffin
Just Kids by Patti Smith
A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah
Watch Me by Angela Clarke
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
The Child Who by Simon Lelic
Final Girls by Riley Sager
The Age of Bowie by Paul Morley
Black Wood by SJI Holliday
The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla
The Unseeing by Anna Mazzola
See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
It’s All Absolutely Fine by Ruby Elliot
Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
Everything but the Truth by Gillian McAllister
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Here are the blog posts I wrote:
I wrote my regular blog posts – WWW Wednesday, Stacking the Shelves every Saturday and a weekly wrap-up on a Sunday. Other than that I shared my January wrap-up post at the beginning of February. I also wrote about my fabulous birthday book haul too. I didn’t manage to write and post any reviews, which I’m really down about but as I said earlier life is getting in the way at the moment. Hopefully I can catch up soon.
The state of my TBR:
In January, I wrote a post about the state of my TBR and made a plan to try and read more of the books I already owned. This has already proved to be rather more difficult than I anticipated… I have read a lot more of my own books, rather than just focusing on new ones, but I’ve also been buying a lot of books. I did join the Mount TBR challenge on Goodreads in February though and have pledged to read at least 100 books that were on my TBR before the end of 2016 and have so far read 26 books that counted for that. This means that half of the books I’ve read this year so far have been my already owned books, and half were new or review books so am pleased with that ratio at the moment.
I’m also in the middle of a sort out of both my kindle books and my print books and am trying to make sure that all the books that are on my TBR are books that I really want to read. Anything that doesn’t appeal anymore is going to be deleted from my Kindle or taken to the charity shop. I’m also becoming much more okay with DNFing books – I’m fast realising that life is too short to push on with books that I’m really not enjoying. The combination of DNFing books and having an ongoing book cull has meant my TBR is currently going in the right direction! I now have 1861 unread books (as of 28 Feb), down from 1885 at the start of the year and hopefully I can keep reading my way through the TBR mountain.
How was your February? Did you read any good books? Please tell me what your favourite book from February was, and if you have a February wrap-up post on your blog please feel free to share the link below.