February Wrap-Up

Here we are, another month over and I was not nearly as productive in February as I wanted to be which has put me behind in both knitting and reading. As always I have linked all the book titles to Good Reads (or Amazon if I can't find it on Good Reads).

On the plus side I obtained a lot fewer books than last month. But I still added five new ones. First up are the two that I actually purchased.First is The Longing in Me by Sheila Walsh. I bought this for the bible study I went to with a woman from my mother's church. I also bought the associated study guide. I haven't read it yet but the bible study was pretty good. I loaned the book to the woman at the church I went with since I'm quite behind on my reading. The other book I bought was yet another Leigh Bardugo book, this one is The Language of Thorns. It's part of the Grishaverse series and it's beautiful. As always I took pictures.
So we have the cover (plus dust jacket):

 The dust jacket is textured, all the design and lettering on it is raised and it feels rough, almost like cloth or something. Unlike other books that have plain covers, this one the naked hardcover is just as beautiful:

I mean look how pretty that is, I am in love with this book already and I haven't even read it yet. So this book is a little unusual too as it's illustrated. Every story has it's own illustration that starts out small in the corner of the pages and ends with a full page illustration at the end. For example this is the starting and ending illustration of the first story.
So the first story starts with this illustration of just a little castle tower in the upper right hand corner:

And it ends with this full page spread, notice the same little castle tower in the corner of it:

So yeah, completely in love with this book and its gorgeous illustrations. But those are the two books I bought this month.

In addition to these two books I also got three others in my book boxes this month. The first one was The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert that I received in my OwlCrate. It came with an exclusive cover and letter from the author. I've heard pretty mixed things on Booktube about this one but I'm still looking forward to reading it to make my own opinions. Next are the two I got in The Nocturnal Readers Box. The first one is S:ES by Koji Suzuki. It's the latest volume to be translated into English in The Ring saga which are the books the movie The Ring is based off of. The book was wonderfully macabre and I love it. The other book I got out of the box was Cast a Cold Eye by Alan Ryan. As always these are linked and if you want a better look at the books I have pictures of all of them in my unboxing posts.

As to my reading this month, I finished one book. Which is the book I started back in January: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo. This was the second book in the Six of Crows duology. And I loved it. Seriously I cannot recommend these books enough. I love Leigh Bardugo's writing and if she ever runs across this, she can write more books featuring these characters any time now.

So for anyone keeping score my Good Reads Reading Challenge is set at 50 books. With the two I read in January and the one I read in February I have 47 books left to read in 10 months. That's 4.7 books a month. I'm not feeling very optimistic about this to be  honest but I'm planning on at least 5 books in March so we'll see.

Knitting projects are still plodding along. I got a couple more squares done on my Hue Shift Afghan for my brother and his fiancee. Honestly, it won't be done by March 31st so I'm shooting for their first anniversary.

So my to be read (TBR) pile for March has a bunch of books on it and I'm going to pick five books from it as I go. It has three horror books from the last two months of The Nocturnal Readers Box: S:ES by Koji Suzuki from February, Hell Hound by Ken Greenhall and Everything That's Underneath by Kristi DeMeester both from the January box. In addition to those three there's four YA books as well: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo, and The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert. I'm planning to read The Hazel Wood when the Official OwlCrate Book Club starts it's read along of it. The others are up in the air as to which ones I read in which order and they may get switched in and out with other books as I want. But for now the pile looks like this:

I think I'm going to start with the two on the far left (S:ES and A Court of Thorns and Roses) and see how it goes.

Anyway that was February. Here's to March!
-Emma and Richelle