February 2025 Wrap-Up and March TBR

Three finishes, three DNFS and my Long- and -Short-term TBR

I read a decent amount in February, but with only three books finished because a lot of the books I’m reading are longer-term reads. More on that below.

I had a bit of travelling to do around Argyll and the islands, as I will also have in March. That generally means more audiobook listening time while driving. It has to be something that I’m already invested in, so not a first-time read, unless it’s a book in a series that I’m already part-way through.

I experimented with vlogging in February. I enjoy watching bookish vlogs myself, so decided to that as part of a buddy read of Fool’s Fate I was doing with a friend and fellow BookTube creator, Rae. It was a lot of fun and I’ve already started doing more of it for longer-term reads in order to get the most out of what I’m reading.

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Loved

• Fool’s Fate, Robin Hobb, 2014 🎧📖: Book three of the Tawny Man Trilogy. This closes out the third trilogy in Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series and it’s one of my all-time favourite fantasy series. I read the first two trilogies way back in the early noughties but, for some reason, didn’t continue when the Tawny Man started coming out. It continues the story of Fitz, the main character in the first trilogy, The Farseer Trilogy. If anything, Hobb’s writing has got even better. At times it’s cosy, at others it’s dramatic, scary, intriguing, surprising. Above all though, it’s emotional. Bring tissues.

Liked a lot

• The Glutton, A.K. Blakemore, 2023 📖🎧: Recommended by fellow BookTuber The Mild Rumpus for my one-year BookTube anniversary video. This was a dark novel set during the French revolution. It follows Tarare, the titular glutton. He’s in hospital because of having eaten a golden fork and he’s not doing so well. It’s a dual narrative, with Tarare’s telling his story to a nurse in the hospital—and what a story it is! An incident near the start leaves him with a voracious and insatiable appetite. It’s not a book for the squeamish and contains some clever use of profanity, including perhaps the most creative use of the C word I’ve seen in print. The prose is very well written and adds a lot to the book. I think it shows that the author is also a poet.

Liked

• The Eye of the Tiger, Wilbur Smith, 1975🎧: An adventure story set in the Indian ocean. A former special forces operative pulls a heist and uses the proceeds to go legit and set up a business as a big game fisherman on the island of St Mary’s. His criminal past catches up with him and leads to all kinds of danger and drama. This was the first ever audiobook I listened to, back when I was a teenager delivering the papers before school. I fancied relistening to it on my long drives as I remembered its being a thrilling adventure. And it was, only it hasn’t aged well. Women in particular are treated quite poorly in the writing.

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  February Wrap-up Video

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  BOOKSHOP.ORG FEBRUARY 2025 LIST

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DNFs

I’m not typically a quitter, but on the last day of the month I found myself drawing a thick black line through three books. I’ve since gone back and finished one of them and will probably do the same with the other two.

It’s almost certainly down to having taken on too many books in one quarter. I’ve joined quite a few reading groups and buddy reads, as well as running my own, and it’s just becoming too much. So the frustration came out at the end of the month when I was holding my marker pen and I scored off three.

• The Lost History of Liberalism, Helena Rosenblatt, 2018. 🎧

  • This is the one I went back and finished.

• Dominion, Tom Holland, 2019. 🎧📖

• Catherine the Great and Potemkin, Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2010. 🎧📖

Long-term Projects

• The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1880, translated by Ignat Avsey.

  • Reading with

    Dana • Dostoevsky Bookclub

• Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy, 1878, translated by Rosamund Bartlett.

  • Reading with

    Henry Eliot

• The Iliad, Homer, translated by Emily Wilson.

  • Reading with

    Matthew Long

• Stephen R. Donaldson and the Modern Epic Vision, Christine Barkley, 2009.

• Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1866, translated by Roger Cockrell.

  • For my Substack project.

• Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova, edited by Roberta Reeder and translated by Judith Hemschemeyer.

  • For my BookTube Playlist, where I read the poems in Russian and English

March TBR

• Bleak House Charles Dickens. 1853. 📖

• The Disposessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. 1974. 📖

  • Reading with

    Jared Henderson

• The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon, 2019. 📖

  • My daughter bought this for my Christmas last year. It’s not blowing me away, but I shall persevere.

• ADHD 2.0, Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey, 2021.📱

• Red Star Over Russia, David King, 2009. 📖

• Roadside Picnic, Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, 1972. Translated by Olena Bormashenko. 📖

  • Group read with Rebecca Nicole. I’m super excited for this one as Stalker is one of my favourite films and I have the Folio Edition of the book.

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Whether I go back to the two history books remains to be seen, but I have a feeling that I will.

I’d also like to get back to the stalled Humanities Project I have going, based on Ted Gioia’s list. The next book is The Epic of Gilgamesh, and given that I have Emily H. Wilson’s Gilgamesh on my TBR for this year, it would be a nice pairing. I loved the first book in the series, Inanna. The third one, Ninshubar, comes out in summer.

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Thanks for reading this first wrap-up entry. I’m planning to write more of this kind of thing, inspired by some of the Substacks I follow and, of course, my pals in the BookTube space. I’m looking forward to writing more about the books I’m reading!

Finally, if you enjoy my bookish content and feel like sharing, I’d be ever so grateful!

Until next time,

— Cams