February’s Reads
Running total books/audiobooks/short stories read in 2026 by month end: 24.
With all my January worries and preparation for change, I expected February to be a dry month on the reading front, but I appear to have phenomenally overachieved against my own expectations for the second month running, with a total of 11 stories absorbed, despite this being a short, and busy, part of the year.
I have noticed that I both miss the reading if I am not engaged actively with it, and that my reading activity is happening now in fits and starts over the course of the week, and therefore month. I can go days together at the moment without picking up a book, but I then discover something and read the whole thing in fairly quick succession. The actual reading habit itself though does seem to have become ingrained, just with less internal pressure to remain at a certain level. This may be for the best, as I did have months where reading in general became strained for me last year, and this should be a pleasure, not a chore.
The first five-star offering I wandered across this month was The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado, which is a retelling of the classic story “The Girl With the Green Ribbon”. This is a superbly nasty, malevolent little offering that is almost a written version of a play that you read to yourself. It is a fantastical, fascinating, feminist exposition of life that many women are already brutally familiar with. Definitely give this one a read if you like this kind of story.
While I had a surfeit of five star offerings for February, the next mention is going to be The Changeling by Victor Lavalle, which I suspect may have gone so far as to change my outlook on life. I am certainly seeing monsters everywhere since reading it, and cannot help but have it uncomfortably in the back of my mind. Underneath the fairy tale tropes woven into modern American life, there is a solid horror story that is neatly delivered with beautiful and lyrical language. I will be searching for more by this author. This was a book club read for me, and the discussions we held around it really brought the text to life.
My last listing is an honourable mention for Thigh Gap by Amy M. Vaughn, an incredibly original and fun novella with a very unusual POV. It instantly made me want to buy the author’s non-fiction book on yoga, I can assure you. It seems to be a little known novella that I happened to wander across during a visit to Reddit, where unusual books remembered years later by readers are occasionally mentioned and listed. It sounded so unusual that I decided to try it, and I’m glad I bought it. I think I will re-read it.
These books were all reviewed by me on the My Bookshelf 2026 page, and wherever possible, on my GoodReads and Storygraph accounts; you can follow me and comment on these sites. I sometimes wander across rare, old, or unusual stories that are not listed on these forums, which will appear only on My Bookshelves. Please note that I include audiobooks in my reading record, and absolutely do consider oral forms of storytelling to be a legitimate and inclusive form of reading. The summary of my reading challenge for 2025 can be found in My Bookshelf 2025 page.
Thanks for reading along!
