A selection of quotes and pictures to represent February’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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And I was alone, but I wasn’t really alone. Can a bookworm ever really call herself alone when she’s surrounded by books?

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn (2026)

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Mrs Oliver cast a glance over the Penguin display.

‘The Affair of the Second Goldfish,’ she mused, ‘that’s quite a good one. The Cat it was Who Died – that’s where I made a blowpipe a foot long and it’s really six feet. Ridiculous that a blowpipe should be that size, but someone wrote from a museum to tell me so. Sometimes I think there are people who only read books in the hope of finding mistakes in them…’

Mrs McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie (1952)

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‘I want to find out her story. Not just the story about a king who ruled well even though the play said he didn’t, but the true story of a woman who’s never been named. Who was portrayed as a hag, but who was sweet and lovely and treated really badly.’ She felt the injustice sweep through her. ‘It’s important.’

The Three Witches by Elena Collins (2026)

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“Misfortune never comes alone. Sometimes, coincidence creates the impossible,” I said slowly. I truly believed it.

The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji (1988)

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“One of the problems with real life,” I responded, “is that it seldom allows one to learn the complete outcome of a story. Novels have the advantage, as do movies, of being able to explain everything in the final chapter.”

The Final Problem by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (2023)

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She preferred the field to the archives, to inhabit bodily the places people had been before. That way she felt she could learn far more than studying an isolated specimen in a museum.

The Night Hag by Hester Musson (2026)

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People like us, on the lower rungs of the ladder, we are always standing on the edge of a precipice. Disaster is far easier to come by than fortune, but it is so much easier to ignore that truth. How can any of us live if we acknowledge the cheapness of our lives?

The House of Fallen Sisters by Louise Hare (2026)

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‘Old stories,’ he said. ‘People tell stories about places, and when those people are gone, the stories are all you have left.’

Murder Like Clockwork by Nicola Whyte (2026)

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She had allowed herself to be carried by feeling, to live and love more freely than she had dared to in a decade. It had been easier to take each step while she was not looking at the path ahead.

The Wandering Queen by Claire Heywood (2026)

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One’s life, viewed as a whole, is always the answer to the most important questions. Along the way, does it matter what one says, what words and principles one chooses to justify oneself? At the very end, one’s answers to the questions the world has posed with such relentlessness are to be found in the facts of one’s life.

Embers by Sándor Márai (1942)

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Favourite books read in February:

The Wandering Queen and Murder Like Clockwork

Authors read for the first time in February:

Claire Heywood, Louise Hare, Sándor Márai, Elena Collins, Nicola Whyte

Places visited in my February reading:

Japan, England, US, Scotland, Greece, Austria, Ancient Tyre and Carthage

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Reading notes: February was a good month of reading for me. I was pleased to be able to contribute three reviews for Read Indies Month and one for Hungarian Lit Month, as well as taking part in the Read Christie challenge. As you can see, I haven’t reviewed everything I read in February yet, but I’m hoping to catch up soon.

March is another month with plenty of events taking place in the book blogging world: there’s Reading Wales and Reading Ireland, both of which I’m hoping to join in with. Chris of Calmgrove Books is also hosting March Magics, celebrating the work of Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett. And with an end of March target for finishing our Classics Club Spin books, I have The Trouble with Lichen by John Wyndham lined up to start soon.

How was your February? Do you have any plans for your March reading?