February Wrap-Up and March Goals

February Reads

February Wrap-Up

• Finished: 4
• Started but not finished: 4
• Total pages read: 2,012
• Average rating: 3.75

I finished four books in February, and two of them were novels. The first was Stephanie Garber’s Caraval (4/5 stars). It was an enjoyable young adult fantasy, but I admit I had expected a lot more from it. It didn’t quite reach my expectations, as you can see from the four-star rating. Click the link to read a longer review.

 

Historical Fiction in Finnish: Hajusteentekijän tytär by Kaisa Åkerman

I also read one historical fiction novel in Finnish, Hajusteentekijän tytär by Kaisa Åkerman. As the book hasn’t been translated into English (at least not yet), I will not write a full review here, but I do want to say a few words about it, because I did enjoy the book. The title of the book translates to “The Daughter of a Perfume Maker.” The book is a fascinating historical fiction set in the ancient Assyria, Hittite, and Egypt. The author is an assyriologist, so you can be certain that the rich historical details are accurate. However, it’s also the author’s first novel, and unfortunately that shows. There are some awkward expressions, and the plot could definitely have been tighter, but nevertheless it was an enjoyable read. I gave it four stars out of five. Hopefully this book will be translated into English, as I would love to recommend it to fans of historical fiction.

Non-Fiction Reads

I finished two non-fiction books, both of them about ancient Greek novels: Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel edited by Simon Swain and Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel by Tim Whitmarsh. My goal is to read all five extant ancient Greek novels this spring, and alongside those I’m reading non-fiction books about the novels. Last month, I read a more easily approachable book, Tomas Hägg’s The Novel in Antiquity, but the two books I read this month are more scholarly and not something I would necessarily recommend to a casual reader.

 

March Hopefuls

March Hopefuls

I’m currently reading four books that I will continue in March. The first is the second book in the Caraval trilogy by Stephanie Garber, Legendary. I also started reading Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. As it has over thousand pages, it will take me several weeks to finish. I won’t be finishing it in March, but I hope to make good progress with it.

The two other books I’m in the middle of are non-fiction. The first is The Second Sex, Part II by Simone de Beauvoir. I finished the first part of this feminist classic in January, and I will finish the slightly longer second part in March. The final book I’m currently reading is another scholarly non-fiction book about the ancient Greek novels, The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel edited by Tim Whitmarsh.

Besides those four books, I’m planning to tackle four other books that I will either finish in March or later in the spring. I’m going to finish the Caraval trilogy and read the final book, Finale. I’m also starting my read-through of the ancient Greek novels and read the first three of the two novels from Collected Ancient Greek Novels volume edited by B.P. Reardon. I want to read another scholarly non-fiction book about the ancient Greek novels, Koen de Temmerman’s Crafting Characters: Heroes and Heroines in the Ancient Greek Novel. And finally, I’m going to start a non-fiction book in Finnish about dog breeds, Suomen koirarodut.

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