February 2013 Wrap-Up

Here's a summary of my book-related activity for February. The Children's Hospital Book Market was back this month, so that's why my numbers are a bit crazy! (Not as bad as last time, though!)

Books I read (linked to the reviews)

Uglies: Cutters by Scott Westerfeld (library book)
Getting the Most Out of RootsMagic 5 by Bruce Buzbee (TBR pile)
Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (library book)
The ABACUS Protocol: Sanity Vacuum by Thea Isis Gregory (NetGalley)
Water Harvest by Eric Diehl (review copy) (in progress)

Books I bought

Tales Before Tolkien:
The Roots of Modern Fantasy

A Swiftly Tilting Planet
by Madeleine L'Engle

Sister Light, Sister Dark
by Jane Yolen

Memoirs of a Teenage
Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin

Twice Upon a Time
edited by Denise Little

My Friends Call Me Monster
by R.L. Stine

The Mirror Prince
by Violette Malan

The Dancer From Atlantis
by Poul Anderson

The Witches
by Roald Dahl

Robots
edited by Isaac Asimov

Blood Music
by Greg Bear

A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Friendships Don't Just Happen!
by Shasta Nelson

Hero by Perry Moore

The Monster's Corner
edited by Christopher Golden

The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda

Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke

Books I've been approved for on NetGalley

Wanted! by
Caroline B. Cooney

The Eternity Cure (Blood of
Eden #2) by Julie Kagawa

Deadly Offer (The Vampire's
Promise #1) by
Caroline B. Cooney

Other e-books I received for review

Bones (The Dark
Victorian #2) by
Elizabeth Watasin

The Show by John A. Heldt

Progress on challenges

Daughters of the Moon, Sisters of the Sun: Young Women and Mentors on the Transition to Womanhood by K. Wind Hughes was my February Random Read. However, I flipped through it and suddenly questioned why I bought it. So it went into the donation pile instead.

I discovered Safe Haven by going out of my comfort zone this month.

I completed the following letters for the A-Z Book Challenge: W (apparently I got all the easy ones last month!)

I read 1 book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

I read 0 books for the Anne Rice Challenge. You can still sign up!

I read 0 books for the Debut Author Challenge.

I completed the following squares for the Book Bingo Challenge: read 4 books that are part of a series

I read 1 book for the Nerdy Non-Fiction Challenge.

I read 1 book for the Dystopia Challenge.

I read 1 book written by women.

I read 1 book for the Seriously Series Challenge.

Progress on my TBR pile: I added 22 books to my to read list and removed 4, so my pile increased by 18 this month!

The Uninvited by Liz Jensen

Title: The Uninvited
Author: Liz Jensen
Publication Date: July 5, 2012
Length: about 416 pages (ebook)

Who doesn't love a good story about kids going crazy and killing people? It's a concept that never fails to terrify. In this case, kids start killing adults, while developing the same weird behaviours as the adults who are sabotaging their businesses and then killing themselves.

The story took a while to really get moving. I thought that a bit too much of the book was taken up by investigations of the people who were sabotaging their businesses and then committing suicide. It was interesting, but a bit slow moving. I enjoyed the story a lot more once it became more about the kids. When the kids start forming packs and developing their own society, the story was both fascinating and scary.

The story is narrated by a character with Asperger's, which was an interesting (in a good way) choice. Faced with a terrifying pattern of attacks, Hesketh has the perfect analytical mind to find the patterns.

The final explanation for what was actually going on was really cool, though a little vague for my liking. I loved the angle it took. I just would have liked a little more about how things actually turned out after the fact. But at least it wasn't an open ending. There's enough to extrapolate how things would go.

4 stars.

Full disclosure: Free ebook copy received from the publisher through NetGalley.

February Random Reads selection

It's time to select my Random Read for February! Last month, my Random Read was Geomancer by Ian Irvine. It was a big one, but I got it done, and while it was a bit disappointing, at least I got a big book off my shelf!

So it's off to the random number generator. I have 751 books on my TBR shelf at the moment, so I enter 1 as the min and 751 as the max, and hit Generate.

Drum roll, please!

For February’s Random Read I'll be reading Daughters of the Moon, Sisters of the Sun: Young Women and Mentors on the Transition to Womanhood by K. Wind Hughes. It's been on my TBR shelf since July 12, 2012. I picked this one up at a community rummage sale last summer.