February 2013 Reading Update

Hi again!

It's the end of February. And for such a short month, it felt incredibly long.
I found myself increasingly busy this month, and as such, my reading update will be shorter as a result. However, I do still have fun books to talk about. I feel like all of February was about exploring fun new books. I started 3 different series, and continued two from last month.


Like I did for the January Reading Update (which if you haven't seen and are curious about you can find here), I will do a brief summary of my reaction to each book. I won't provide an actual plot summary for each one. If you want that, just utilize the links I provide. 

So, in the spirit of keeping introductions light, let's go into the reading update!
Here are the list of books I read in February in the order finished.

The Magicians: A Book Review

This book review contains NO SPOILERS. Enjoy! (:

Book review #7 of 2013!

I'm racking my brain to find away to start off this book review without being "I'm SO EXCITED," but I am. No use trying to hide it. I'm very excited to talk about today's book review on Lev Grossman's The Magicians, because like Catherynne Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making, I found this novel entirely at random.

Whenever I walk past a bookstore, it is nearly impossible for me to not go in. I went into my local independent bookstore one day and came across this title. Actually, technically, I found The Magician's King (sequel to The Magicians). I was very intrigued, and being the horrible local, cheap citizen that I am, I took a photo of the cover to do an Amazon search to find it at a cheaper price. Once I searched it, I found out that it was the sequel, and decided that since the bookstore didn't have the first installment anyway, I would just go ahead and order it off of Amazon. Though I love reading recommendations from others, there's a magical feeling that surrounds buying books at random that you don't experience when there's so much hype.

But without further ado, let's get into my review for The Magicians.

Title: The Magicians
Author: Lev Grossman
Series: The Magicians Series
Followed by: The Magician King
Genre: YA/adult Fantasy
Pages: 402
Release date: August 11, 2009
Links: Amazon | B&N | Goodreads









And as usual, here's the back cover description:

"Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A high school math genius, he's secretly fascinated with a series of children's fantasy novels set in a magical land called Fillory, and real life is disappointing by comparison. When Quentin is unexpectedly admitted to an elite, secret college of magic, it looks like his wildest dreams may have come true. But his newfound powers lead him down a rabbit hole of hedonism and disillusionment, and ultimately to the dark secret behind the story of Fillory. The land of his childhood fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he ever could have imagined..."

2013 Reading List

I read 50 books in 2012, a goal set in early March of that year. Knowing that many New Year Resolutions don't make it past January/February, that makes me feel very accomplished. In my New Year Resolutions, I set the new goal of reading 60 books in 2013.

Sometimes I feel as if reading goals such as this are necessary for someone like me who feels like their reading list is never ending. It's overwhelming to think you may possibly never get to all the books you want to. Hopefully, by the end of 2013, 60 will get me through a lot of them.

Though I have listed only 22 books, many of these books were either series (The Maze Runner Series, Lauren Oliver's series) or general suggestions to read more works by a particular author (Austen, Murakami) so the reading list actually totals ~33. Though this is only about half of my reading goal for 2013 of 60, I am a very spontaneous reader (meaning I want to immediately read whatever I'm in the mood for regardless of how long books have been on any list- hence my love for browsing bookstores AND why it seems like I can never get to certain books) and loading up this list with books I really don't care for just for the sake of reaching 60 is senseless. There's a very good chance that ~25% of these books won't even get read by the end of 2013, but are instead replaced with books that I find completely at random.

That leads me to my next topic. I'm considering doing an updated reading list every quarter of the year to update on my progress through this list as well as new additions. So expect an updated reading list/progress by the end of March!

So, without further ado, here is my introductory reading list!