In spite of the excessive cold and what felt like near-constant snowfall, February was actually a pretty good month. I read a lot of books. I got a lot of things done. I did a lot of baking. The cats were happy to snuggle (they aren’t usually). So I have basically nothing to complain about. It was, overall, a laid-back month. With some record cold weather, but I could stay inside for the most part and had outwear enough to deal with it when I had to go outside, so life was good.

I didn’t read as many books in February as I did in January, but January’s twenty books was hard to top. And given that I read some pretty long books (The Luminaries, for example, was more than 800 pages), it turns out that I read almost as many pages in February (4682) as January (4740). And I enjoyed, in one way or another, basically every book I read. Neat!

• The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (The History of Middle-earth #2) by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
• Queens of the Crusades: England’s Medieval Queens, Book 2 by Alison Weir
• Bloodwitch (The Witchlands #3) by Susan Dennard, audiobook narrated by Cassandra Campbell
• Sister Light, Sister Dark (Great Alta #1) by Jane Yolen
• Opium and Absinthe by Lydia Kang
• If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, audiobook narrated by Bahni Turpin
• The Councillor by E.J. Beaton, ARC provided by NetGalley
• The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
• Intrigues (The Collegium Chronicles #2) by Mercedes Lackey
• The Orphans of Raspay (Penric and Desdemona #7) by Lois McMaster Bujold, audiobook narrated by Grover Gardner
• Dance With Death (Barker and Llewellyn #12) by Will Thomas, ARC provided by NetGalley
• Changes (The Collegium Chronicles #3) by Mercedes Lackey

Statistically Speaking:

• 75% of the books I read were by women, while 25% were written by men
• 66.7% were written by Americans, 16.7% were by English writers, and 8.3% each were by New Zealanders or Australians.
• 41.7% were ebooks, 33.3% were physical books, and 25% were audiobooks
• 33.3% were YA fantasy novels, 25% were adult fantasy, 16.7% were general fiction, while 8.3% of each were mystery, nonfiction, and historical fiction
• 41.7% were from the library, 33.3% were from my own shelves, and 25% were from NetGalley
• Publication dates ranged from 1974 to 2021

My favorite book of February were The Councillor by E.J. Beaton, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, and Changes by Mercedes Lackey. I can’t really say that I have any least-liked books of the month, as I enjoyed them all in one way or another.

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March plans! After getting through what felt like All The Big Books (even though it wasn’t), I decided March would be dedicated to reading some of the shorter books on my shelves because it’s easier to get through them, and I’m tired of having 90+ unread books on my shelves (she says, having bought herself two more books over the weekend for her birthday). So I’m going to get through a small flock of these shorter books to see if they’ll become new favorites, or if they’ll be heading to the used bookstore in the future.

• Roverandom by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Bridal Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter 1) by Sigrid Undset, translated from the Norwegian by Charles Archer and J.S. Scott
• Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi, translated from the French by Chris Andrews
• Persian Pictures by Gertrude Bell
• Melmoth by Sarah Perry
• Giving up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
• Deathless (Leningrad Diptych #1) by Catherynne M. Valente
• The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
• The Shaping of Middle-earth (The History of Middle-earth #4) by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

I’ll be reading Roverandom for a review of it I’m writing for Krysta and Brianna’s annual Tolkien event over at Pages Unbound. I’m looking forward to rereading it, since it has been a few years and I love this little story about an enchanted dog and his many adventures. The Decameron is my March selection for my big books challenge. I’m still amazed that I made it through so many Renaissance Art History classes without encountering it. The Bridal Wreath and Our Riches are two works in translation that I really want to get to this month, while Persian Pictures and Giving up the Ghost are autobiographical works of one kind or another. I’ve been curious about Melmoth for quite some time now– it sounds like quite the Gothic tale– and Deathless is a strange-sounding book by Catherynne M. Valente, who has a unique writing style that is difficult to find an equal to. And, at last, The Shaping of Middle-earth is the next volume of The History of Middle-earth, though I still need to finish The Lays of Beleriand.

Depending upon how far I get in these by the time March 15 rolls around, I may add another book, The Broken Crown by Michelle West as Sam at Thoughts on Tomes just announced another round of the Tome Topple readathon, which runs from March 15-28. The Broken Crown is the first volume in West’s The Sun Sword series. I’ve had the entire series since I found it for a song at the used bookshop downtown, and lately I’ve really been wanting to give it a shot.

So there are my reading plans for March. There aren’t as many fantasy novels as I normally read, but that’s okay. Variety is the spice of life, right? These all sound so interesting, and I’m looking forward to finding out if they live up to their descriptions.

What are your March reading plans?