February being shorter might be assumed to be a lesser reading month, but historically it has often been a strong breakout month letting the longer months vie for the title of least books read. I guess it’s not the month but rather my mood.
Or maybe it’s the extreme cold? Naw, Florida is still relatively pleasant but the arctic weather being pushed more and more south by global warming is a scary threat even to Florida. Still, we’ll probably be underwater before we become the new Frostbite Falls
My mood is not great lately. A large part of January was consumed by Netflix movies and HBO specials.
Still I made a challenging list of books to read during February But I’m going to let you in on a secret (maybe this should be a regular thing, huh?) — The only book I hope to read in February is Virgil’s Aeneid. The rest is filler.
Just in case I complete Virgil early, there might be time to finish the boring Wolf Hall or even, based on the movie which I saw in the ’60s, the tedious Dr. Zhivago. Otherwise there are a few shorter, more fun works scatter throughout the list that will offer welcome relief.
Thus the pool of possible February reading:
- Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination — Peter Ackroyd
- The Monkey-Wrench Gang — Edward Albee
- The Ice Princess — Hans Christian Andersen
- Taduno’s Song: A Novel — Odafe Atogun
- Masks — Fumiko Enchi
- The Calcutta Chromosome — Amitav Ghosh
- A Single Man — Christopher Isherwood
- Tree of Smoke — Denis Johnson
- The Incendiares — R. O. Kwan
- A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig — Charles Lamb
- The Girl’s Guide to the Apocalypse — Daphne Lamb
- Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel
- Doctor Zhivago — Boris Pasternak
- The Big Blowdown — George Pelecanos
- Houses — Borislav Pekic
- The Snatch — Bill Pronzini
- Maigret In Antwerp — Joe Richards
- A Man’s Head — Georges Simenon
- The Aeneid — Virgil
- Death of a Red Heroine — Qiu Xiaolong
A Celebration of Reading 