February 2023 Wrap Up

I didn't do a mid-month wrap up because I had only read, like, 3 books. Once again, I am here at the end of the month with a whole month of books to wrap up. I read 8 books in the month of February! Not bad for a month with only 28 days!

How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor: Critical Thinking in the Age of Bias, Contested Truth, and Disinformation by Thomas C. Foster - I have no idea why I love these books. I have an actual masters degree in information, so none of this was really new for me, but I loved how he presents it and that he's out here doing God's work trying to get people to question everything.

American Cozy: Hygge-Inspired Ways to Create Comfort and Happiness by Stephanie Pedersen - This was fun. And it helped me give myself permission to burn candles and get cozy when it's reading time. I usually don't bother because I know either a family member or a furry fellow will require me to get up and uncozy repeatedly during my reading time, but I do enjoy my reading time more when I've gone the extra step.

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn - This was tons of fun. These ladies may look like grannies (although they wouldn't pass for the grandmotherly types here in OK. They are too well fit) but they have spent their entire lives staying alive while unaliving bad people. Now there is a hit out on them, but they are not that easy to kill.

The Complete Chi's Sweet Home by Konami Kanata - I needed something quick and sweet to jumpstart my reading. My kid handed me thing saying, "This is just what you need." It worked. Chi is a little kitten who gets lost from his kitty family and picked up by a family who cannot have pets in their apartment. The cat's name is Chi, which apparently means pee in Japanese. People name their cats all kinds of weird things. Case in point: my in-laws with the cats named Zero and Dummy. Anyway, most of the action is around the family trying to keep the neighbors from finding out they have this cat.

Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan - This is completely the other direction. It's a comic series about a man and woman from warring races (species?) who fall in love and AWOL. She has their baby and they are trying to get off the planet and go somewhere safe for them all. It's told from the perspective of the girl as an adult. I started this a few years ago and was not in the right mindset for it. This time, I blew right through it. I will most likely continue reading.

SpyxFamily Vol. 2 by Tatsuya Endo - Ok. I know after I read the first one, I said I wasn't going to keep going with this series. But my kid said I had to at least keep reading til the dog comes into the story. Dog, you say? Ok Fine. This is not the one with the dog, but it was better than the first one.

Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna - This was the most difficult book I read in February. I mean, it's about the Khmer Rouge situation in Cambodia in the 70s. Horrible, horrible things happened to people. This particular family was lucky enough to make it into Thailand and eventually to the U.S. Many were not.

A Death in Tokyo by Keigo Higashino - I enjoyed this book a lot. I could see how some readers would not like the spare writing style, which is pretty much just how the Japanese write, but I liked it. It really evoked the setting. A guy is stabbed and then manages to stagger to a pedestrian bridge and die in the middle of it. Questions: Why was he even in that part of Tokyo that is nowhere near his home or work? Did the man the police caught with the dead man's wallet and briefcase actually murder him, or was he just in the wrong place and the wrong time? They would ask him, but in running from the police, he ran in front of a truck and got hit. He spent several days in a coma before dying without gaining consciousness. The main detective is like a Sherlock Holmes character. He thinks and thinks and keeps picking at threads until the whole knot unravels.

Okay. That's all 8 books I read in February. Were any of them on my February TBR? No. Am I okay with that? Hell yes.