It’s the first Thursday of the month. Time to report!
What’s the best book you read in February 2024 and why did you love it?
It doesn’t have to be a newly published book, or even SFF, or even fiction. We just want to share some great reading material.
Feel free to post a full review of the book here, or a link to the review on your blog, or just write a few sentences about why you thought it was awesome.
And don’t forget that we always have plenty more reading recommendations on our 5-Star SFF page.
One commenter with a U.S. mailing address will choose one of these prizes:
- a FanLit T-shirt (we have sizes M, L, XL)
- a book from our stacks.
- a $5 Amazon gift card (this is the only option for non-USA addresses).
Subscribe to our posts here (you can filter for giveaway posts if you prefer).
The best I read in February was The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar.
http://templetongate.net/olondria.htm#histories
If you scroll up from where that link lands you can read what I had to say about the best I read in January, A Stranger in Olondria.
Gail, I loved both of these! I’ve fallen behind on her work, but I think she has another book coming out late spring/early summer.
“The Chaos Code” by Justin Richards. On a school holiday, our hero must vanquish an evil villain with designs on all of planet earth, a man who will use Ancient Knowledge to control…everything.
best genre books were a toss-up between The Truth of the Aleke by Moses Utomi and The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed, with a close Honorable Mention to The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden.
best non-fiction: Papyrus by Irene Vallejo and translated by Charlotte Whittle (absolutely great book), with honorable mentions to Africa is Not a Country by Dipo Faloyin and Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle
Orbital (Samantha Harvey) follows a fictional crew of the International Space Station as the ISS goes through 16 orbits of the Earth in the near future. There’s another crew of astronauts heading back to the moon at the same time, and a monster typhoon that can be observed from above as it threatens the Philippines and Indonesia, but there isn’t really much of a plot to this and no melodrama. The four astronauts (American, British, Italian, and Japanese) and the two cosmonauts (Russian) each have a small amount of back-story sketched in, enough to give us some sense of their personalities and interior concerns, but it’s their common experience of the planet spinning below that is foregrounded. And the style in which this is written makes it almost an extended prose poem about the beauty of the world and the fragility of our individual lives in the vast depths of time and space. As I commented previously over on Rich Horton’s blog, this reminded me in a way of George R. Stewart’s novel Storm, where the main character is the storm itself, and the humans touched by the storm are only peripheral. In this one, the Earth itself as seen from space is the main character. The ISS, in its small scale way, is one of the few really worthy accomplishments of humanity (alongside domestication of dogs, baroque music, and some of our visual artworks), so it will be sad when it’s finally de-orbited.
I read in February My Effin’ Life: the Autobiography of Geddy Lee. Well, what else is there to say…it’s the autobiography of Geddy Lee, member of one of my favorite bands – Rush! But that alone doesn’t make it a 5 star book; it’s how it is written, almost as if Geddy is right there in the room with you reading it to you. He pulls you into the experiences of traveling on the road for tours, making albums and the highs and lows of it all (and sometime literally high 😉).
More importantly, it’s the human story that he weaves through it all that is the most captivating – the experience of being Jewish and his parents survival during the Holocaust for example. He makes it clear that this story is a very significant foundational grounding for his life. Also there are the difficulties of trying to keep a marriage together while he is “living the rock and roll dream”. And, of course, his thoughts and heartbreak on what turned out to be the last tour for Rush and the unfortunate death of Rush’s drummer Neil Peart.
All in all, the book is like many of Rush’s lyrics in their songs – deep, contemplative, emotional and questioning with a touch of the mysterious and the unknown blended together into a story about life and being human.
I think the best book I read was probably The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden, the second book in the Winternight trilogy. Her writing is so immersive and beautifully-crafted (without being “purple”). I think I liked this one better than the first.
Runner-up: A re-read of Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass (a.k.a. The Northern Lights). I read this book when it first came out in the 90’s but then never finished the series. I’m already almost done with the second book! They’re so engaging and suspenseful–but wow, a lot more intense than I would have thought for books that are often categorized as Middle Grade!
(Sorry, meant to put this at the bottom! :-( )
Not Entering.
Of associational interest from a new favorite author was Our Revels Now by Alexandra Caluen. Two long-term vendors at a renaissance fair have been eying each other for years, but having booths on opposite ends of the grounds hasn’t given much scope for meeting. The fair managers decide to shake things up, and why not put their booths side-by-side? Low-angst, although there is danger from a wildfire–this being set in the west.
Caluen’s books feature creative people–dancers, actors, jewelers, director, photographer, etc–and are set in LA or Vegas. She’s got quite a lot of books out so there are both MF and MM and other pairings.
Beyond that, lots of my fav romance authors had books out so a very enjoyable month in that regard.
In the third part of the Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novel trilogy “The Rift”, the recent rift between Toph and Aang and the longstanding one between Toph and her father are finally healed, while the spirit General Old Iron is convinced to stop his rampage by hearing the true story of what happened to his friend Lady Tienhai and how she became a mortal.
The next Professor Odd book, The Dogs of Canary Island, is an amusing read. I like talking animal stories that remind me of Homeward Bound with a twist, and this one has the Professor and her companions encounter a squad of cybernetic military dogs.
The best book last month was Scott Turow’s “Testimony”, a Kindle County legal thriller that delves into a twisted web of both American and international politics involving the unsolved disappearance of a Romani refugee camp after the Bosnian War. I’m impressed how Turow keeps managing to find new themes for the novels in this loose series.
The Girl With All the Gifts- M.R, Carey
The Forever War- Joe Haldeman
Andi B, if you live in the USA, you win a Fan Lit T-shirt (please specify 1st and 2nd preferred sizes) OR a book of your choice from our stacks, OR a $5 Amazon gift card. If your address is outside of the USA, you will get a $5 Amazon gift card.
Please contact me (Marion) with your choice and a US address. Happy reading!