Wow. Didn’t February just fly by? I feel like the first few days of February dragged, and then hitting the second week in, the days went past like nobody’s business and now I’m sitting here and it’s the 3rd of March! I seriously cannot believe we are already in the third month of the year.
Anyways – this is my reading wrap up for February, and it’s a short one! I didn’t read a lot in February – not full books anyways – between returning to uni and doing assignments and getting back in to that routine I found myself not reading much of what I wanted to.
- The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein – Kiersten White (Feb 2nd – 14th, 1/5 stars)
I picked up The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein because it was my book groups – A Book Nirvana on Goodreads – readalong for the month. I had this on my shelf since it’s release date, so I was looking forward to reading it and comparing it to the original Frankenstein. I thought it would be interesting to see the story through a woman’s point of view, and to an outsider of the creation, but ultimately I was awfully disappointed. The pace was slow and uninspiring, the characters were dull and felt like they could belong in a pantomime (hello Victor), and ultimately White just very much insulted Shelley’s Frankenstein. I just don’t think the way she approached ‘criticising’ Shelley’s work was done in the right way, especially not when she could barely write in half of the depth that the original had. It was a cheap knock off. Sorry, Kiersten White.
2. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Feb 16th – 17th, 2/5 stars)
I read this for one of my classes at university. It wasn’t a god awful book, I just found the epistolary form quite draining. It felt more intense than your normal first person narrator. I just didn’t find this an interesting novel, but appreciated some of it’s literary merit.
3. The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon (Feb 20th, 3/5 stars)
I also read this for another one of my university classes, and quite enjoyed reading this. Except for the section that had no grammar for an entirety of about 10 pages. That just gave me a headache. But this was a decent book. It was interesting to see the perspective of the people from the Windrush generation and their experiences living in London & it’s take on colonisation etc. A very thoughtful book.
That’s all I read in February! 3 books. I started and ultimately did not finish many more (for uni) and read a bunch of random chapters and excerpts from other books as wider reading, but I can’t remember them all – and I like to keep this list to books I’ve finished. Let’s hope March is a better reading month for me!
A Gathering of Books & Magic 