Happy February Y’all
Last year was the first year I actually started to keep track of what I was reading and I didn’t even start doing so until about August. In an effort to keep tabs on my reading accomplishments better I’ve started to publish my reading lists for the month. I feel that this will not only keep my record straight but allows you (my readers) to read along with me!
January was the first month I’d ever given myself a reading list, I normally just read whatever I feel like at the moment. I’d say it went pretty well and I only had one slip-up, where I picked something not on my list to read. See my January Reading List here and see my January Reading Recap here!
February is a fairly short month, only 28 days! I took this into considering when picking out my reads for the month. January I read 3 books that were close to or over 500 pages! This month none of my reads surpass 350. But without further ado here’s what I’ll be reading this month!
February Reading List
1. The Tattooist of Auschwitz | Heather Morris:
“In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.
One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.”
2. The Water Cure | Sophie Mackintosh – I’ve heard a lot of good thoughts on this book but the goodreads rate is less than 4 stars. I really enjoyed The Handmaid’s Tale so hoping that this won’t disappoint.
But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men?”
3. Station Eleven | Emily St. John Mandel – I’m taking part in #notyomamasbookclub this month and we’re reading Station Eleven. I actually received this for Christmas this past year and the timing was just too perfect.
One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.”
4. The Library Book | Susan Orlean: This was Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club’s January pick. It caught my eye and so I’m adding to my February Reading List
5. Verity | Colleen Hover :
Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity’s recollection of what really happened the day her daughter died.
Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents would devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love her.”
6. Good Morning, Midnight | Lily Brooks-Dalton:
At the same time, Mission Specialist Sullivan is aboard the Aether on its return flight from Jupiter. The astronauts are the first human beings to delve this deep into space, and Sully has made peace with the sacrifices required of her: a daughter left behind, a marriage ended. So far the journey has been a success. But when Mission Control falls inexplicably silent, Sully and her crewmates are forced to wonder if they will ever get home.
As Augustine and Sully each face an uncertain future against forbidding yet beautiful landscapes, their stories gradually intertwine in a profound and unexpected conclusion. In crystalline prose, Good Morning, Midnight poses the most important questions: What endures at the end of the world? How do we make sense of our lives? Lily Brooks-Dalton’s captivating debut is a meditation on the power of love and the bravery of the human heart.”
7. Turtles All the Way Down | John Green:
Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts. “
8. The Only Woman in the Room | Marie Benedict:
But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she knew a few secrets about the enemy. She had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis…if anyone would listen to her.”
“Two estranged sisters, raised in Brooklyn and each burdened with her own shocking secret, are reunited at the Springfield Armory in the early days of WWII. While one sister lives in relative ease on the bucolic Armory campus as an officer’s wife, the other arrives as a war widow and takes a position in the Armory factories as a “soldier of production.” Resentment festers between the two, and secrets are shattered when a mysterious figure from the past reemerges in their lives.”
10. BOTM PICK: The Winter Sister | Megan Collins: I actually picked two books for my book of the month pick this one and The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer. I have a decent number of historical fictions on my list though so figured I’d aim to read this thriller instead. Also on the BOTM February list was Early Riser, but I already have a copy. Excited for all these books to come in!
Sixteen years ago, Sylvie’s sister Persephone never came home. Out too late with the boyfriend she was forbidden to see, Persephone was missing for three days before her body was found—and years later, her murder remains unsolved.
In the present day, Sylvie returns home to care for her estranged mother, Annie, as she undergoes treatment for cancer. Prone to unexplained “Dark Days” even before Persephone’s death, Annie’s once-close bond with Sylvie dissolved in the weeks after their loss, making for an uncomfortable reunion all these years later. Worse, Persephone’s former boyfriend, Ben, is now a nurse at the cancer center where Annie is being treated. Sylvie’s always believed Ben was responsible for the murder—but she carries her own guilt about that night, guilt that traps her in the past while the world goes on around her.
As she navigates the complicated relationship with her mother, Sylvie begins to uncover the secrets that fill their house—and what really happened the night Persephone died. As it turns out, the truth really will set you free, once you can bear to look at it.
11. A Gentleman in Moscow | Amor Towles – I’ve had this book in my audible account for going on a year. I’ve heard so many good things and am taking the plunge to dive into this story through the course of this month.
“When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.”
See anything that interests you? Read along with me this month and let me know your thoughts! If you have any good suggestions for what I should add to my March list let me know in the comments!
