February has been a good reading month, with a variety of great books (which I took my time over!). I got one from the shelves, but the rest were all review copies. Let's see how the stats went during the shortest month of the year...*****
Total Books Read: 7
Year-to-Date: 14
New: 6
Rereads: 1
From the Shelves: 2
Review Copies: 5
From the Shelves: 2
Review Copies: 5
From the Library: 0
On the Kindle: 0
Novels: 3
Novellas: 1
Novels: 3
Novellas: 1
Short Stories: 3 (1 with poetry)
Non-English Language: 6 (2 Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Czech, Catalan)
In Original Language: 0
Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (0/3)
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Books reviewed in February were:
1) Das Muschelessen (The Mussel Feast) by Birgit Vanderbeke
2) Shi Cheng - Short Stories from Urban China by Comma Press
3) The Investigation by Phillipe Claudel
4) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
5) Rustic Baroque by Jiří Hájíček
6) Phantom Lights by Teru Miyamoto
7) Radetzkymarsch (The Radetzky March) by Joseph Roth
8) Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin
9) The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin
Books reviewed in February were:
1) Das Muschelessen (The Mussel Feast) by Birgit Vanderbeke
2) Shi Cheng - Short Stories from Urban China by Comma Press
3) The Investigation by Phillipe Claudel
4) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
5) Rustic Baroque by Jiří Hájíček
6) Phantom Lights by Teru Miyamoto
7) Radetzkymarsch (The Radetzky March) by Joseph Roth
8) Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin
9) The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin
Tony's Turkey for February is:
Jiří Hájíček's Rustic Baroque
Jiří Hájíček's Rustic Baroque
Apologies to the writer, but I'm reviewing the English-language version, and (unfortunately) an interesting story was marred by a sub-par translation. The first turkey for 2013...
Tony's Recommendation for February is:
Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace
This month it was a four-way race between some great books: a slender German novella, an excellent old Austrian novel and two big Russian books, one classic and one modern. In the end, I had to give it to Tolstoy's classic epic, but it was a very close race - The Mussel Feast, Maidenhair and Radetzkymarsch are all very good books :)
*****
On we go to March then, and it is a month I have been looking forward to for a long time. The longlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is released later today (UK time), and as I'm planning to read the whole list, I'm going to be very busy - wish me luck ;)
