The February Book Round Up

My January Book Round Up lead to such great discussion, I think I’ll do it every month and since I never claimed this blog was about spanking anyway, you’ll just have to live with it! February went so fast compared to how January seemed to drag on. In February I read 16 books, including several short stories. I’ve always loved short stories (and novellas) as a format. The ability to tell a complete story, in less words, almost feels like magic to me. I don’t benefit from the skill of brevity so condensing ideas is always a challenge and I feel triumphant when I am successful. In terms of audiobooks, they are also great for slightly longer car rides that aren’t quite road trip length, when you want a complete story.

The emotionally difficult things I am dealing with, are sadly, still unresolved. I had some hope in the last week that they may improve, but frankly, they may never. Coming to terms with that this week has been difficult and I’ve escaped into books (specifically the K.J. Charles series mentioned below). Kink still feels far away but Daniel and I have been connecting more, so I will likely write about that this week. I feel such a sense of loss though, in the friendships that have been lost and likely forever changed by what is going on. I’ve stayed busy this week and have a lot to look forward to, so I am trying to focus on those things as I process my grief mostly alone.

This month’s reads bring my yearly total so far to 26. Books after the jump!

1. I have read one of Madeline Miller’s longer works, Song of Achilles and really loved it. I’m actually not familiar with a lot of Greek/Roman mythology or religious history, so I find well written fiction accounts like these to be good spring boards for further digging. So I didn’t know the story of Pygmalion that Galatea is drawn from. Miller is a talented wordsmith though, and her unique take on these mythical characters really grabs your attention.

2. I had never read any Claire Keegan but there area number of short stories and novella’s of hers in audible. Small Things Like These was a poignant examination of Ireland’s Mother & Baby homes and a look into the way unwed mothers were treated.

3. Although I’ve read a lot of similar books by C.J. Archer, Death in the Spires was my first K.J. Charles novel at the recommendation of a friend who declared it her favorite read of the year (when she’d read it in January!). It’s good. The M/M romance and spice is well written and hot, the plot is unique and well written. It made me want to read more K.J. Charles! And I did, later in the month.

4. Wilberforce is a beast of a book, nearly 500 pages, and I started it last spring. The dialogue in the ebook was difficult for me to follow because H.S. Cross uses the em dash instead of quotations so I often struggled to work out who was speaking. It’s also dense and fast paced for something so long, set over such a short period. It’s an interesting take on the British boys boarding school genre (not that I’ve read a lot of them) and I really enjoyed it once I started to switch between the audio and ebook. I also found it more engrossing once I got into Part 2. There is a second book set at the same school (titled Grievous) but there is no audio yet so I may hold off but I definitely want to read it.

5. Another Claire Keegan short, Foster is a well written vignette that looks at the impact of poverty on a childhood, and the role of foster parents – albeit short term ones that were distant family members, in this telling, where there didn’t seem to be trauma associated with the placement.

6. Last year, I read a book called The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict, about the Mrs. Albert Einstein. Interestingly, she moved in similar circles to Marie Curie but I’d never heard of her own contributions to the scientific community. This short story looks at the early academic life of Marie Sklodowska – later Curie, wife of Pierre Curie but a prized physicist and chemist in her own right – because of her husbands support (unlike Mileva Merić-Einstein who was never credited for her contributions to her husbands work and whose contributions are oft-debated), and the story of their meeting.

7. This next one was my non-fiction for the month. A Well Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy is the memoir of Tia Levings, and tells the story of her upbringing in a far-right conservative evangelical southern baptist church and the spiral into the abusive and patriarchal cults of the IBLP (you know, like the Duggar family) and the IFB, religious based organizations that aim to oppress and control women & children and rely on both physical and psychological abuse to do it. The only unsettling thing for me about this book was to see Domestic Discipline weaponized as patriarchal abuse against Tia and her children, and thousands of other women.

8. & 9. are a short series by C.J. Archer and include some slight magical fantasy similar to her Glass & Steele & Glass Library series. Honor Bound and Kiss of Ash are light and easy reads with a good story line – mystery, murder (cozy?), love, and a touch of deception.

10. Ahhh, alas. I think Paulo Coelho is simply not for me. I know The Alchemist is a classic and honestly I am just glad I didn’t have to read it in HS. Don’t come for me! It was just a bit…sincere? for me? Again, too much god and religion and talk of fate and destiny – perhaps “journey” stories that are about a literal traveling journey that includes this sort of introspection and self-reflection, are not for me.

11. & 12. & 13. are a trilogy by K.J. Charles about a young man who served in WWI and returned to an economically depressed and flu-epidemic-ravaged England only to struggle to find work and feed himself. Set in 1920s London, the series follows Will Darling and his friend and lover, Kim Secretan, as they fall into working together in espionage for a secretive government agency, to take down a rogue communist organization

14. The cover of Zali’s Dog caught my eye and it was an interesting short story. I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it – this one, oddly, felt incomplete and not due to its length. I had never read Adam Wilson before and this didn’t draw me in. On checking his bibliography – that is probably not surprising but also I cannot think of where short fiction fits into his other writing.

15. Starchild in comparison was fantastic. I loved this look at mourning and parenting and a mother/daughter relationship. This is the kind of story that makes me want to look into longer works by an author so I will likely add Camille Acker to my TBR for March.

16. An indulgence into my favorite genre – WW2 historical fiction, and by two authors I love independently. Smoke Signal combined their storytelling skills – diving into the intimate lives of historical women (Marie Benedict) and giving life to war drama surrounding defeating the Nazi’s (Kate Quinn). I wish this had been longer as it expands on a bit of lore that lead Agatha Christie to being questioned by MI5 after she named a character “Major Bletchley” after the Bletchley Park train station. Her wartime book about spies with such a conspicuously named character raised eyebrows and Smoke Signal turns it into a fun jaunt.

Onward to March! My first March read is the audiobook for Kristin Harmel’s When We Meet Again. So far, I am really enjoying it. I’ve read nearly all of her books and loved them all (particularly The Forest of Vanishing Stars and The Book of Lost Names). Her next book, The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, comes out June 17 and I already have the audiobook pre-ordered. In terms of authors named Kristin who write historical fiction, I far and away prefer her to Kristin Hannah (The Four Winds was one of the worst and most painful books I’ve ever read!) which I know is an unpopular opinion.

We’ll be going on a cruise in a few weeks and I plan to bring one physical book, my Kindle, and have an audiobook to hand, as well.

-M