February is often the month for reading

Liz & Monti January is fading away and, hopefully, it is taking the last of the ice and uncomfortably cold weather with it. I know, readers up in Minnesota are snapping the suspenders on their snow suits right now, chortling over the anguish we have endured here in the South. Three days ago it was practically beach weather and then an evil spirit flew in from the frozen badlands of ice and snow to the north and shut everything down: schools, banks, offices, churches, miniature golf, and the local jet-ski academy. Why, even I had cute little icicles dangling from the leaves of my magnolias and a crust of ice on my windshield in the morning.

But whether I sit out on the lanai on a sunny day or whether I am huddled up in a blanket in front to the electric fireplace (it’s all fiction, remember), I often am surprised that even though February is a short month, I seem to get a lot of reading done. Let’s see how it goes this year.

I just finished playing around with some of the titles I have been hoping to read, some of the titles I expected to read in January but wasn’t successful in reading, some new titles I have collected over the last few weeks, and this is the result:

Reading Pool for February 2014

How It Is — Samuel Beckett
The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western — Richard Brautigan *
Out — Christine Brook-Rose *
Nostromo — Joseph Conrad *
A Bad Man — Stanley Elkin
Zeroville — Steve Erickson
The Wine of Youth — John Fante
Independence Day — Richard Ford *
Sophie’s World — Jostein Gaardner *
The Ambassadors — Henry James
The True Deceiver — Tove Jansson *
Satantango — László Kransznahorkai *
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold — John Le Carré *
Uncle Silas — J. Sheridan Le Fanu *
Happyland — J. Robert Lennon *
The Golden Notebook — Doris Lessing
Mr g — Alan Lightman *
Martin Eden — Jack London *
The Infatuations — Javier Marías *
Runaway Horses — Yukio Mishima *
Doomed — Chuck Palahniuk *
The Helmet of Horror — Victor Pelevin *
Bleeding Edge — Thomas Pynchon [XFX] *
The Confessions of Nat Turner — William Styron *
The Palm-Wine Drinkard — Amos Tutuola *
I Spit On Your Graves — Boris Vian [FR] *
Filth — Irvine Welsh *
Stoner — John Williams *
The Garlic Ballads — Mo Yan *
The Fortune of the Rougons — Émile Zola [FR]

Of course, since I have slowed down my reading due to old age and failing eye-sight, I probably will be lucky to read eight of these books but the target is still twelve. Again I will keep the pool intact and append any out-of-pool reading I complete during the month.

So, do you see anything in this list to pique your interest? Any new authors that you might not be familiar with but are curios to try? Go for it!