I'll give February a pass on flying by so quickly since it is a short month. Those two/three days clearly make all the difference. I'm getting pretty sick of having to bundle up in my hat-scarf-gloves ensemble every time I step out of the house and snow is getting a bit less charming than it was back at the beginning of Winter but today when I left the office it was sort of light and that, my friends, is progress! Spring is on it's way *sighs happily*
Book wise, there's been less travelling for work and more hours spent at my desk, which has knocked the pace a little. I've read another few terrific books though so I'm not exactly complaining...
Total books read in February 4
Pages read in February 1,144
A nice mix of genres this month: one thriller, one YA fantasy, one literary fiction and a little steampunk. Two were part of series, two were standalones. Unintentional variety is the best.
The Uninvited was something that I wasn't 100% sold on early on but turned out to be really rather good. White Cat was a Christmas present from Hanna - needless to say, I really enjoyed it. I actually hauled myself to Waterstones as I was getting to the end of this one to get the next in the series but was thwarted by them stocking the series but with different covers. No go, I'm afraid. The Penelopiad was fantastic and I'm newly dedicated to getting hold of both everything that Margaret Atwood has ever written and the whole Canongate Myths series. The Osiris Ritual was better than the first in the Newbury and Hobbs series and good fun.
Favourite of the month?The Penelopiad, easily.
The past week or so has been dedicated to A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. Yes, I've finally joined the mass of people at the train station reading one of the chunky instalments of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. While I am seriously enjoying this, I'm actually surprised about the wide spread appeal of the series. As far as epic fantasy series go, it's not the most accessible I've ever read. True, it doesn't have a very strong fantasy feel to it but it is most definitely epic. Maybe I'm underestimating people in general but I wonder whether there being a TV series means that people get to love the characters and follow them off the screen and into the pages of the books? Whatever the reason, anything gets people into epic fantasy series has to be good :)
February on the Blog
February was quite obviously quieter than January. I posted a quick re-cap of January's reading early on, which seems like such a long time ago now! I also started a new sporadic feature, Reading Room Wishlist, to post inspiration/objects of lust/colour schemes for the reading room that I will shortly get to install in the house that we'll be moving into in June - this month's was The Fairytale Library. Next time's is shaping up to be a colour theme (duck egg blue, if you're curious!).
I also finally caught up on watching the film of The Princess Bride by William Goldman and did a Book v. Film post. Great film but even better book!
Reviews this month (click on the titles for reviews):
