Mt TBR Report: February 2022

February was the month of short: two short story collections, a book of short poems and a couple of novellas. Perhaps that’s fitting for a short month.

My reading has continued to be slower this year than it used to be. I’m doing my best to roll with it, but it trips up my planning from time to time.

Mt TBR Status

Mt TBR @ 1 January 2022: 360
Mt TBR @ 31 January 2022: 388
Mt TBR @ 28 February 2022: 389

Items Read

12. The Art of Broken Things by Joanne Anderton. Reviewed here.

13. Murder Most Actual by Alexis Hall. Murder mystery. Review forthcoming.

14. Arrival by Ted Chiang. Collection of science fiction short stories. Movie tie-in renaming of Stories of Your Life and Others. I read these over a number of weeks with a friend. While the stories weren’t always to my taste, they were always very thought-provoking and offered a lot of good points to discuss. It was fascinating to see the preoccupations that kept coming up: science and language; God and Abrahamic religions; human evolution and intelligence.

15. Haiku @ The Oaks: The Ink Sinks Deeper edited by Hazel Hall and Kathy Kituai. A chapbook of poems by haiku poets from Canberra. I enjoyed this little collection, which had some nice imagery and some excellent examples of the form.

16. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Book club pick. Science fiction. An amnesiac school science teacher finds himself the sole survivor on a desperate deep-space mission to save the Earth. This was a novel with a number of flaws, not strong on its characterisation and a bit tone-deaf in places. However, despite that, I found it reasonably fun and it took me some unexpected places.

17. Microscopes and Magic by Andi C. Buchanan. Contemporary fantasy. Second in the Windflower series. When Laurel’s magical succulents are infested by equally magical pests, it’s up to Marigold to investigate… when she’s not dealing with her PhD or coming to terms with her new magical ability. This was the second book with Laurel and Marigold as main characters. I’m not sure it really did all that much to advance their relationship (or threaten it in any way that was convincing; the low-stakes nature of the plot backfired a bit for me). I also found the scenes didn’t flow quite as smoothly and there were a sprinkling of errors. Lovely, but overall unsatisfying.

18. Alpacas and Apparitions by Andi C. Buchanan. Contemporary fantasy, f/f romance. Mildred, a witch and fibre artist, moves into a farm cottage, only to discover it’s haunted. She finds unexpected help from the alpaca farmer next door. Again, this was lovely but unsatisfying.

20. Aurora’s End by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. YA sci-fi. Review forthcoming.

Acquisitions

Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavours by Sonali Dev
Haiku @ The Oaks: The Ink Sinks Deeper edited by Hazel Hall and Kathy Kituai
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Aurora’s End by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
By Flame by T. Thorn Coyle
The Impossible Resurrection of Grief by Octavia Cade
A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark
You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson