February 2020 Reading Review

February has passed pretty quickly for me, but it’s also a short month and smack in the middle of the school semester so it’s not surprising really. Still, weird to believe that Spring Break is just around the corner and then, it’s only a matter of weeks until the summer break. Whoosh. Time does fly faster as you get older, doesn’t it? 😉

My February reading was steady but slow, sadly. The most impactful read for me (as part of Black History Month) was, no doubts about it, Invisible Man by Ellison. What an amazing read. (It’s also a Scary Big Book [in terms of page count – 581 pp], but the story carries you along nicely for the most part.  

I must admit to wading in the weeds of confusion for parts of it, but the big picture is that it’s a memorable read and is a classic for a reason.

If you haven’t read it, do pull this title off the shelf. Just know that there are passages that are a little dense (or perhaps it was me who was a little dense?) Just keep on truckin’ through these and know that it all makes sense in the end. 😉

To the actual titles:

• Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison (F) POC
• BlackkKlansman – Ron Stallworth (NF) POC
• The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears – Dinaw Mengestu (F) POC
• They Called Us the Enemy – George Takei et al. (NF/Graphic/Memoir) POC (post to come)

In progress:

• Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press – James McGrath Morris (NF/auto) POC
• Inside this Place, Not of It: Narrative from Women’s Prisons – Robin Levi and Aeylet Waldman (NF/bio) POC

• Total number of books read in February: 4
• Total number of pages read: 1,229 pages (av. 308 pages)
• Fiction/Non-Fiction: 2 F and 2 NF
• Male authors: 4. Female authors: 0. (Yikes.)
• Library books vs. books I owned (and thus removed from the home abode): 1 library book and 3 owned books. 0 e-books this month.
• Books off TBR pile this year: 12. (Go me.)

Plans for March? Spring Break is on the horizon, so very looking forward to that (as are the students!) I’m also going to continue the POC topic/author and the reading-my-own-TBR trends and yet, at the same time, open my reading selection up to the rest of my TBR pile.  There are some other authors I’ve been itching to get my little hands on…

And I’m not sure if I’ve told you this yet, but I’m also on a serious book-buying ban. It started on January 27 and I’m holding out until the end of April. An occasional library book can get thrown in the mix, but for the most part, my focus is on my own TBR. It’s going pretty well so far – only one book purchase and it was for the Kindle. :-}

Onward and upward, my friends.