Looking Back: The Best of February

This month was actually a bit of a slump for me. I read some great March releases in advance of their publication dates, but I totally slacked off on my own Clean Your Reader and Read My Own Damn Books efforts.

For new books out in February, I was excited to be over at Shelf Awareness talking about Youngblood, an incredible new war novel that tackles questions of leadership in the chaotic setting of Iraq, and The Black Presidency, a detailed analysis of the intersection of race and politics in the Obama presidency (from campaign through second term) from political analyst and correspondent Michael Eric Dyson. My review of Why They Run the Way They Do hasn't run yet, but people: this collection of short stories is damn near perfect.

In non-assigned reading, I struggled through Defending Jacob on audio (review to come; spoiler: I did not like this book), and was excited to start Attica Locke's The Cutting Season after that dud. So far, the latter has been everything I want from a novel of mystery and suspense. I'm re-reading American Gods as a buddy read with a friend, and still (forever) struggling through Alexander Hamilton.

So it was a bit of a slow book-reading month, but there were lots of other highlights. I finished training to become a literacy student and am just starting to work with my student. I wrote about running a mile a day and what it's taught me about habit-forming. I had a blast participating in BBAW and reconnecting with the rest of the blogging community. And I read lots of great stuff around the interwebs...

Elsewhere on the internet, the best things I read in February:

• Your Life is Busier and Harder than It Needs to Be (while this won't apply to everyone, I think it's important to regularly re-assess and determine how much of our busyness is self-inflicted)

• Katie at Cakes, Tea and Dreams reflected on kindness -- an important reminder of how meaningful small (and large) acts of kindness can be.

• Andi of Estella's Revenge is launching a new internet "hub", Noncompliance Network, for her writing that goes beyond books. I love her explanations of the role of dreams and writing in her life to date--and her hopes for the future. 

• Credit also to Andi in this post on indispensable apps, who in turns credits Shannon, for introducing me to the Note to Self podcast. I've seen several bloggers talking about their own Infomagic challenges; color me intrigued.