January Wrap-Up and February Goals

January reads

January Wrap-Up

• Finished: 3
• Started but not finished: 3
• Total pages read: 1,756
• Average rating: 4.833

I didn’t finish that many books, but I did read more than I anticipated! And what’s more, the books I read were great, as attested by the average rating. The only novel I read in January was Naomi Alderman’s The Power (5/5 stars). It wasn’t an easy read, but I can already see it being one of my favorite books for this year. Click the link to read a longer review.

Non-Fiction Reads

I finished two non-fiction books. Tomas Hägg’s The Novel in Antiquity is an introduction to the ancient Greek romance novels. It gives basic information about the emergence of the genre, its readership, and its later imitators and admirers. The book also introduces the five extant novels and their contents as well as talks a little about the fragments of other novels that we know little about. If you’re interested in learning more about the earliest novels in the Western world, this is a great starting point, although the book is relatively old and some information in it may be outdated. I read this book as a warm-up to a big reading project I’ll be doing later this spring: I want to read all five extant ancient Greek novels. I’m hoping to do a buddy read on Instagram if other people are interested in reading them with me.

I also read The Second Sex, Part I by Simone de Beauvoir. This is a feminist classic and as such, I obviously highly recommend it, although parts of it are clearly outdated. De Beauvoir’s argumentation may be hard to follow if you don’t have a lot of background information about philosophy etc., so it might be helpful to read this with an introduction to her thinking.

I’ve previously read an abridged translation twice, but this time I wanted to read a newer, complete translation of the book. I must say that I understand the previous translator's decision to leave some things out from the earlier translation, as I didn’t find everything said in this book that interesting, especially the chapters on what male writers have said about women. I’m curious to see how I like the second part. I remember that when I first read this book, I liked the second part more than the first, and on my second read I liked the first part better than the second, so it will be interesting to see whether I prefer the first or the second part this time around.

 

February Hopefuls

February hopefuls

In February, I’m hoping to finish four books and start three. I’m currently reading Hajusteentekijän tytär by Finnish author Kaisa Åkerman. I only have about a hundred pages left, and then I will start another big book, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (provided that my book order arrives on time – I ordered the book a few weeks ago and still haven’t got it).

I’m also in the middle of the first book in Stephanie Garber’s fantasy trilogy Caraval. I’ll finish Caraval soon and continue to the next book, Legendary.

The other three books are non-fiction. Like I said above, I want to continue with Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Part II. The second part is longer than the first, so it will take me until March before I finish that. I’m also reading two more non-fiction books about ancient Greek novels, Tim Whitmarsh’s Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel and Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel edited by Simon Swain.

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If you want to see more about the books I’ve read, check out my reading wrap-up video below: