February was a pretty good month! I read some books I really loved (and a couple that were simply meh), I got in a father-daughter visit and had really good luck at Scrabble, the weather was mostly not awful, and even if inventory at work took longer than expected, I survived it without brain mush, which has happened before. I am still the fastest scanner! My title holds.
Regular readers will be unsurprised to learn that Eve by Cat Bohannon and Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse were my top reads of the month, or that What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher ranks third. My T. Kingfisher problem is at least a year old, after all. (Also I read a couple delightful picture books, so be sure to click through to find them!)
I'm personally more surprised by my lowest picks, because they both sounded so up my alley but fell flat for nearly completely different reasons. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store ended up feeling disjointed and like it was trying for a theme it couldn't quite grasp, and A Market of Dreams and Desires hit all kinds of tropes I love, right down to random Dickens references and weird steampunk machines, but tied everything together a little too neatly for me. Ah well.
And right in the middle of my list is my sole physical TBR read of the month: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. This managed to tick off "Canadian author" and "classic" at the same time, so I get triple points. (This might have had a hand in me picking it.) Duddy has aged surprisingly well, in that it's still pretty fast-paced and amusing and also in that Richler wrote it with the understanding that scam artistry, hypermaterialism, and misogyny were bad and y'know what? They still are. I would recommend if you're looking for a Canadian teen anti-hero, more than anything. Duddy is a trainwreck and you can't look away.
I managed to get through the month with only three books hauled. (We won't talk about ARCs but the book fairies were kind.) The Unfortunate Traveller and Under a Pendulum Sun were bought during the habitual father-daughter bookstore date, and both because I never thought I'd see them and figured I might never see them again. The Unfortunate Traveller is essays and travel writing by a guy who co-wrote with Shakespeare and I didn't know it even existed. Under the Pendulum Sun was recced to me somewhere (here? bookish website algorithms?) and since it's essentially a gothic novel with properly weird fairies, it's been on my list.
The third book was a total surprise. Apparently I helped crowdfund it in 2019 and they've only just managed to get it printed and also I said I wanted a physical copy? The things we learn. Anyway, it's essays on aromanticism, agender identity, and asexuality so that tracks.
And I know I said I wasn't going to talk about ARCs but I got some good ones this last month and also in January, and there's a lot of them that are out or soon to be out and I'm having that problem where I want to be reading all of them at once. March is going to be interesting and probably a little panic-inducing.
Click through to see everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.
Eve - Cat Bohannon
A history of human evolution, through the lens of the female body.
8.5/10
warning: touches on sexism, mental illness, suicide, miscarriage, and rape
reading copy
Mirrored Heavens - Rebecca Roanhorse
The fractures following the eclipse have deepened and no one can see a way back to peace that doesn’t involve bloodshed. Out in June
8/10
Indigenous cast, 🏳️🌈 POV characters (bisexual, third gender), 🏳️🌈 secondary characters (third gender, sapphic), Black-Pueblo author
warning: war, torture, mentions of child abuse
reading copy
What Feasts At Night - T. Kingfisher
Alex Easton has returned to kar hunting lodge to relax. Unfortunately, the locals claim there's a monster on a property.
8/10
🏳️🌈 protagonist (third gender), protagonist with PTSD
Library ebook
The Twilight Queen - Jeri Westerson
Will Somers, jester to Henry VIII, is caught up in another mystery, this time of a corpse in Queen Anne’s bedchamber.
7/10
🏳️🌈 main character (bi), 🏳️🌈 secondary character (gay)
digital reading copy
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Mordechai Richler
A delinquent teen grows into a hustler, against the backdrop of mid-century Jewish Montreal.
7/10
largely Jewish cast, Jewish author, 🇨🇦
warning: racial slurs, misogyny
Off my TBR shelves
The Woman With No Name - Audrey Blake
Lonely and craving war work, Yvonne signs up to be the first female spy for the Allies in occupied France. Out in March
7/10
half a 🇨🇦 author
reading copy
The Frame-Up - Gwenda Bond
Ten years ago, Dani turned her art thief mom in to the Feds. Now her mom’s mentor has given Dani an offer she can’t refuse: use her magic to pull an impossible heist, get her life back.
6.5/10
Black secondary characters, 🏳️🌈 secondary characters (sapphic)
reading copy
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store - James McBride
The Black and Jewish residents of a Pennsylvania neighbourhood are (mostly) in it together, not least of when the government decides to take a local Deaf kid to an asylum.
7/10
Jewish and Black cast, major character with chronic illness and a limp, secondary Deaf character, Black author
warning: ableist characters and institutions, racist and anti-Semitic characters, sexual assault and molestation, (largely) reclaimed slurs
library book
The Market of Dreams and Destiny - Trip Galey
Deri may have a chance to buy out his indenture early when he meets a princess looking to sell her destiny. But in the goblin’s Untermarkt, nothing’s ever easy.
6.5/10
🏳️🌈 main character (mlm), 🏳️🌈 secondary characters (mlm, genderfluid), British Indian secondary character, 🏳️🌈 author
warning: child abuse, enslavement
borrowed from work
Picture Books
No Cats in the Library - Lauren Emmons
Cats aren’t allowed in the library but that’s where all the books are!
🏳️🌈 author
Read at work
Family is Family - Melissa Marr
Chick gets a note before kindergarten, telling him to have his mom or dad walk him to school. Except that Chick has two moms.
🏳️🌈 secondary characters and themes
Read at work
Currently reading
Knife Skills for Beginners - Orlando Murrin
Paul Delamare is filling in at a cooking school when the resident celebrity chef has a, erm, "accident."
🏳️🌈 protagonist (gay), Black British secondary character
Reading copy
True North - Andrew J. Graff
The Brechts move to Wisconsin to restart a rafting business. They hope it’ll save their young family, but it might do the opposite.
library book
Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin
A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts.
The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Victorian detective stories
disabled POV character, occasional secondary Indian secondary characters
warning: racism, colonialism
Monthly total: 9 +2
Yearly total: 20
Queer books: 4 + 2
Authors of colour: 2
Books by women: 6
Authors outside the binary: 0
Canadian authors: 1.5
Classics: 1
Off the TBR shelves: 1
Books hauled: 3
ARCs acquired: 6
ARCs unhauled: 4
DNFs: 0
January
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If I Could Only Keep 20 Books, Here Are The Ones I Would Pick Tag Game:
A booktuber I sometimes watch, Chandler Ainsley, did a video titled this, and it prompted me to think about what books I would pick. As someone with almost 400 books, I thought this would be a fun challenge. I'm going to try to make it into a tag game, and see how it does.
The Twenty Book Challenge:
If you could only keep 20 books (physical/ebook/audio), which would be the ones you would keep?
Rules are simple:
1 book per author. 1 book per series. Tag #twenty books challenge
Tagging (no pressure): @yourneighborhoodbibliophile @e-b-reads @the-forest-library @ninja-muse @sixofravens-reads @ofliterarynature + anyone who wants to do this!
list of books in photo below the cut:
The Children's Book by AS Byatt
If W Were Villians by ML Rio
Babel by RF Kuang
Howls Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgen Burnett
The Return of the King by JR Tolkien
A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland
Wintersong by SJ Jones
Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
Fire by Kristin Cashore
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
The Naming by Allison Croggon
Nettle & Bone by T Kingfisher
Thick as Thieves by Meghan Whalen Turner
Woodswoman by Anne LaBastille
A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Kristin Lavrensdatter, book 1 by Sigrid Undset
Heart's Blood by Juliet Mariller
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