February wrap-up

A new month begins, so here’s a look back at what appeared on this blog during the last one.

Book of the Month

I should read non-fiction more often, and I’d love it to all be as good as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot’s wide-ranging account of how one woman’s cancer cells became, unbeknownst to her family, a key tool in modern medical science. It was the best book I read in February.

Reviews

Full-length reviews:

• The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
• Two titles from Penguin Mini Modern Classics, by Saki and Frank O’Connor

Shorter write-ups:

• Blacklands by Belinda Bauer
• The Meeting Point by Lucy Caldwell
• Portrait of the Mother as a Y0ung Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius
• Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer
• The Ice Monkey by M. John Harrison
• Earthdoom! by David Langford and John Grant
• Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki
• Krabat by Otfried Preussler

… and my blogging of Volume I of The Oxford Library of Classic English Short Stories continued.

Features

• My list of notable books for February.
• The Firetstation Book Swap goes to the London Review Bookshop.
• The importance of libraries.
• Bookish television: Faulks on Fiction and Birth of the British Novel.
• Behind the scenes at The TV Book Club.
• Clarke Award submissions and shortlist prediction.
• Diversity and the Culture Show’s twelve new novelists.