This month I read eight books and two articles, bringing my total to ten. This means I can buy two books without issue! Yay!
The Articles
I'm only going to talk about these briefly.
- Mocking the (Disabled) Dead: Seneca's Claudius in the Apocolocyntosis, by AN Michalopoulos in Illionois Classical Studies, Vol 43 No 2
- The vox and verba of an emperor: Claudius, Seneca and le prince ideal, by J Osgood in The Classical Journal
The Books
There's quite a few. Let's start with the finished ones first.
- The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
- Death and Disease in the Ancient City edited by Valorie Hope and Eireann Marshall
- The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
- The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan
- The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan
- The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare
The Percy Jackson series was an interesting one. When I read the first three books, I was unsure of it. I could see why the series got the love it deserves, but I had reservations, especially with the use of ableist slurs. The fourth and fifth books really cemented my love for the series; it massively stepped up in terms of quality, and I enjoyed reading them much more.
I first read Animal Farm when I was a child, and I feel like that explains a lot about who I am as a person. It has always stuck with me, but this was my first time reading it as an adult. I read it the day before the inauguration to close out the last four years. If you've not read Animal Farm I thoroughly recommend it. It's short, less than 150 pages, but every aspect is powerful.
Once I realised I'd finished my January TBR (or at least I thought I had, I'm sorry The Final Empire), I scrolled through my TBR and noticed I still had some Cassandra Clare books I'd not read. Back in 2019 I read so many of her books, I thought I'd finished out the series, and then I realised some more have come out since. Yes I will be reading those too at some point. Lady Midnight is the first in a trilogy set in the LA Institute, but some characters from the previous series do make a return. I am absolute trash for Cassandra Clare's books. They are easy to read, predictable in a good way, and I'll be continuing the series.
My points total for January is 1,090 which lets me take one self care day when I need it. You can see how the points are worked out on my reading log here, but ultimately I get points per pages read, with bonus points for books longer than 400 pages. I also get bonus points for books in a series, and books I already own. I then get triple points if I read a book in one day, or double if it takes me less than a week. The biggest score was 279 from Lady Midnight but if I had read it all in one day it would have been a lot more than that. Either way, I'm very happy with both the quality and quantity of books I read this month.
February TBR
Ooh this is a fun one. I will be continuing The Dark Artifices trilogy by Cassandra Clare, and making progress on my Story Graph reading challenge to read books that blend genres. Onwards to the TBR...
- Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare
- Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare
- A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
- The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan
- The Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan
- From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review by Marie Brennan
- In the Labyrinth of Drakes by Marie Brennan
- Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan
What will you be reading in February? What did you read in January?
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