February Wrap-Up
Today I bring you a very short Wrap-Up for a very short month. The looming university deadlines slowed down my reading (and lowkey crushed my mental health, yikes). But without further ado, here are the books I read in February!
Why We Sleep – Matthew Walker
I read this for the second round of The X Bookclub, run by Hannah and Kim. Each round we read two books about a particular theme, one of them from an expert and one by someone with lived experience! This round the theme was sleep so we read Why We Sleep (and Wide Awake and Dreaming by Julie Flygare which I didn’t manage to read in time). This was kind of a reread for me because I had listened to about 50% of the audiobook a while back. Sleep is very weird and fascinating and this book did a great job of providing scientific information in a way that felt accessible to me. It also made me scared of sleep deprivation so now every time I don’t sleep well I think about how that’s bad for my brain and body, whoops. Luckily, the book offers actionable advice on how to get better sleep and I’ve been trying to implement it!
Shadow and Bone – Leigh Bardugo
In light of the Netflix Shadow and Bone series, I decided to finally read the books! To be honest, I enjoyed this first book a lot more than I expected and was pleasantly surprised. The setting and magic is very cool and while this book felt mostly like the setup to the rest of the trilogy, I’m super excited to see where it goes!
I’ll be reading Six of Crows in March and I’m kind of scared I won’t like it as much as I hope so everyone please cross your fingers for me.
One of Us Is Lying – Karen McManus
I’m slowly making my way through a whole list of YA mysteries I want to read. One of Us Is Lying was available at my library so I took the chance and gave it a shot. It was a pretty solid mystery and I liked the different POVs, but the characters felt a bit more trope-y than I had hoped. It’s not a bad thing, just something to be aware of! I also realised that I’m desperate for Young Adult mysteries with characters that aren’t in high school anymore. So if you know of any good murder mystery with college-age characters…please tell me! Overall, this was fun and I enjoyed getting to figure out what actually happened. I also have the sequel on loan so you’ll be hearing my thoughts about that next month, hopefully.
I also reread The Martian for the first time this year and can report: it’s still a very good book. I’ll probably listen to it at least once more before Andy Weir’s new novel comes out later this year.
A Few Good Things That Happened
- I finally started properly working at my new job! This means you can currently find me digitising about a billion DVDs for 8 hours a week. It’s the perfect job for me because a) I have access to a whole library of films I now want to watch and b) I can read while I work because it’s mostly waiting for software to run!
- The DnD game I’m part of is now running semi-regularly for the first time in…ever. Coordinating four people with wildly different schedules is hard, but be did it and were rewarded with some of my favourite ever sessions. Did I mention I play a tiefling grave cleric with a sad and gay backstory? Because of course I do.
- I used a tiny milk frother thingy I bought ages ago for the first time and the amount of joy it brought me? Incredible. My hot chocolate is fancy now.
And that’s my February Wrap-Up!
How was your month? Was there any book that you had been meaning to read for a while? A reread? Tell me about it in the comments!
I hope you have a lovely day,
8 Comments
linesandlifemiriam
As I am slowly descending into what feels like a reading slump, I‘m proud of you for reading all the books you did in February!
Super curious on Why We Sleep!
And big yey for new jobs! 🥳
bookshelfsoliloquies
Sending good vibes and am crossing my fingers that your reading slump doesn’t stick around too long! And Why We Sleep was great, can highly recommend it if you want some scientific insight into all aspects of sleep.
look at us, getting cool new jobs 😌😂
Kat Impossible
I actually did a MasterClass on the Science of Sleep in February, so that feels very in tune with the first book you mentioned haha
What kind of job do you have? If you don’t mind me asking 🙂 It sounds like the dream haha
bookshelfsoliloquies
Oh, that Masterclass sounds fascinating! Was there anything you learned that was especially interesting to you?
I work at the media library for the media studies institute of my university! During regular semesters (aka not in a pandemic) it works just like libraries for books and students can come and get VHS tapes and DVDs for research. These days it’s all digital and there isn’t as much regular work to do, so I am slowly making my way through a giant shelf of DVDs (mostly old TV recordings) so we can get rid of the physical DVDs and just keep the digital files. And yes, it’s kind of the perfect student job for me 😂
Kat Impossible
It just talked about circadian rhythms and health benefits of regular sleep patterns. I think I knew about the general gist of it before, but it was interesting to see specific examples of studies etc.
That job sounds amazing indeed. Glad you god it at your university!!
abookowlscorner
All this excitement surrounding the Grisha trilogy has me itching to reread it before the show comes out! Although I do think Six of Crows is much better, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that you’ll also end up loving it 😊
And I’m always happy to come across fellow DnD fans 😉 My friends and I currently have a campaign running with eight people playing, so to say it’s chaotic is putting it mildly 🤣
bookshelfsoliloquies
Oh hi, fellow DnD player!😁 Eight people sounds like a great recipe for chaos… is your party as chaotic as organising the sessions? And are you playing a homebrew campaign or a pre-existing modules? And what kind of character are you playing? 👀 Oh no, I’m starting to get way too excited to talk about DnD again 🙈
thank you so much for taking the time to leave a comment!💜
abookowlscorner
Haha, by now we actually have a pretty good system worked out using doodle polls, but yes, the organizational part used to be extremely chaotic 🤣 And the big campaign we’re playing is Tomb of Annihilation, although our DM has made so many adjustments that the majority of it is probably homebrewn 😁 And after my original character (a halfling rouge thief) was dramatically killed off in order to give me a half-year break to study for exams, I am now playing a human bard. He’s an archeologist and married to a monk who is played by my best friend’s boyfriend, and so far, the genderswapped couple has been absolutely hilarious to play 😂 So yeah – chaotic pretty much sums our sessions up 😉