February was a nice, quiet month. The weather was mostly terrible, but I’ve enjoyed having some down time, particularly as March looks busy! The highlight was spending a weekend in Ilkley and visiting the wonderful Grove Bookshop. I was very restrained in my purchases, but it’s always a pleasure to visit an independent bookshop. It also stopped raining long enough for me to take a walk up to Ilkley Tarn which I’ve sadly neglected on previous visits.
My OH and I found a new (to us) local pub quiz on Thursdays, which has been a lot of fun. And we’ve done pretty well so far, coming joint first one week although we lost the tie-break question. While we both love quizzes, we do sometimes struggle from there only being two of us, but we do at least cover different areas of knowledge for the most part.
Reading wise, it’s been a good month. I read nine books, including two rereads which isn’t something I often do. I decided on a whim to reread Lord of the Flies before watching the new BBC adaptation, and I’m glad I did. I enjoyed the adaptation, but as ever I thought it lacked some of the nuance of the novel, and I appreciated having the context from my reread particularly as some events were reordered in the adaptation and made a little less sense in my opinion.
Books of the Month
On the Blog
Read in January, reviewed in February:
- The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
- Vianne by Joanne Harris
Read in February:
- The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
- Into the Dark by Ørjan Karlsson translated by Ian Giles
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- The Marriage Contract by Sasha Butler
- Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
- Lost Boys: A Personal Journey Through the Manosphere by James Bloodworth
- The Rush by Beth Lewis
- The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey
- D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber
Books acquired
Another modest haul. Can I make it three months in a row?!
TBR Watch
- Start of the month: 62 books
- Read / culled / DNFd from my TBR: 8
- Acquired: 4
- End of the month: 58 books
And that’s my bookish month! Happy reading! 🩷
Jo's Book Blog 
I am patiently waiting for The Bone Queen to arrive at my library. Any day now, I’m sure. 😬
Sounds like a lovely month, Jo, apart from the rubbish weather! x