Lewis Black points out in a recent rant that February is the shortest month but even so, it seems like the longest. His focus is on a Holiday for Love (Valentine’s Day) but I have always considered February as a challenging month for reading. My usual pace would have me reading eight to twelve books in the month and since February is shorter than other months, I might expect to read one or two fewer books. But historically I have filled this short month with beaucoup de reading: seventeen books on one occasion. I suspect it has something to do with being stuck in the house during a snowy winter with nothing better to do than read (television is too boring to rely on).
But who knows? Maybe this February I will only read a book or two and spend most of my time watching episode after episode of Mad Men or Rocky and Bullwinkle. But just in case, here is the reading pool for February (I wonder how I’ll do).
- Arrow of God — Chinua Achebe *
- Lucky Jim — Kingsley Amis *
- They Were Counted — Miklós Bánfy *
- Humboldt’s Gift — Saul Bellow
- Group Portrait With Lady — Heinrich Böll *
- The Man Who Was Thursday — C. K. Chesterton *
- Nervous Conditions — Tsitsi Dangarembga
- The Big Money — John Dos Passos
- The Forty-Five Guardsmen — Alexandre Dumas
- A Bad Man — Stanley Elkin *
- Independence Day — Richard Ford *
- Growth of the Soil — Knut Hamsun *
- Until I Find You — John Irving
- California — Edan Lepucki *
- Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel *
- Defiance — Carole Maso
- Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland — Carlton Mellick III *
- Doomed — Chuck Palahniuk *
- The Room — Hubert Selby Jr *
- The Secret History — Donna Tartt *
- Hell’s Angels — Hunter S. Thompson *
- The Ogre — Michel Tournier
- Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace
- Black Boy — Richard Wright
- Thérèse Raquin — Émile Zola
Extra credit …
A Celebration of Reading 