February & March Wrap-Up
I didn’t write a wrap-up post for February because I was in hospital and once I came out I simply forgot that that was a thing I was supposed to be doing. So I’m doing both February and March in one post.
My aim in February was to read as much ‘dark academia’ as possible in preparation for writing Blood In The Margins (which is still on Backerkit for another few days at the time of writing this, and is going very well). I didn’t read quite as much as I would have liked, and that exploration of the genre ended when I never really managed to start reading Micah Nemerever’s These Violent Delights, but I blame stalling on that book on the aforementioned hospital admission rather than the book itself, which I was really enjoying for a chapter or two before I put it down and never picked it up again.
I didn’t really love many of the books I read in February, which was a shame. The only one that stands out is Sarah Gailey’s Magic For Liars, which was a breath of fresh air in a month of DNFs and disappointments. It’s obviously far too early to say for sure, but this might go down as one of my favourite books of the year. I’d read a whole series with these characters in this world quite happily.
I also read a lot of short fiction in February, not least of which was the dark academia anthology In These Hallowed Halls. This was much, much better than The Darkling Halls of Ivy, which I read in January and mostly loathed. Highlights from In These Hallowed Halls include Kelly Andrew’s ‘The Hare and the Hound’ and Helen Grant’s ‘The Professor of Ontography’, both of which are going to enter my regular re-read rotation.
The best thing to come out of reading so much dark academia and so much short fiction was that I’ve finally started writing short fiction again, which is really nice. I’ve published two dark academia short stories this month: ‘The Interview’ is a reverse murder mystery and can be read for free on my itch page; ‘Beneath The Weight of Meaning’ is a little weirder, and is a free read for people who support Blood In The Margins on BackerKit. I also wrote a little bit of grimdark fantasy for a game jam, and ‘The Knight of Rot’ is available on my itch for free.
March was a much slower month for me. Part of that was that I had a ton of work to do, which ate into my reading time, but I also spent two weeks reading Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, which I liked but didn’t love. Very little to report on the rest of March other than that The Lies of Locke Lamora is still great (though I didn’t manage to find time to write a review of it). I also tried to read an ARC of Katy Hays’ The Vipers, which I was really looking forward to, but unfortunately the file was a complete mess and so I wasn’t able to read it.
My wider reading goals aren’t going brilliantly yet. I’m aiming for 50% of the fiction I read to be in translation and so far I’m hovering at just below 10%, but I’m going to make a start on the International Booker longlist soon, so that will help. I also haven’t made any meaningful attempt at reading any non-fiction (aside from a couple of creative writing books, which I’m not counting for some reason, even though Donald Maass’ The Emotional Craft of Fiction has been incredibly helpful as I get back into writing stories again).
Hopefully April will be a better month for reading. I have a bunch of ARCs I need to get through, plus the International Booker list, and there’s a lot that I’m looking forward to, so we’ll see how it goes.