What I Read: February Wrap-Up

I have been busy this month, so I haven't written any many post or any reviews, sorry. February was a better reading month than January, as far as the number of books I read goes. February was also quite an eclectic month - there was romance, fantasy, satire, plays and poetry. The majority of the books I read this month were for university and luckily I enjoyed all of them, which is a first, as I usually struggle through required reading. For my own reading this month I read three novels and one non-fiction, that alone is better than last month.

So, for university I read:

                           

Macbeth is the first Shakespeare I have read since school and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I did read it while I was watching a production of it online, in order to help me understand it better, which it did.

I might be cheating a bit by including Swift's A Modest Proposal, but oh well, I am counting it anyway.

Sexing the Cherry is weird but wonderful and Being There is strange but sweet.





The novels that I read just for me:
I loved each of these novels and I will have reviews for Steelheart and Fangirl soon. I may do a series review for The Vampire Academy series in the future, if anyone would be interested. I will say though, that I absolutely loved this series and I am sad I have finished it because I miss the characters already. I am looking forward to reading the Bloodlines series and I hope all of the characters I love make an appearence.

The non-fiction book I read this month is Mini Habits by Stephen Guise.

I read this because I have tried and failed many times to start new positive habits such as working-out and writing more. What drew me to this book was reading a blog post by the author where he talked about the basic premise of this book - start small. If you want to include exercise into your life, start with one push-up a day. You want to write everyday, aim for 50 words a day. Intrigued, I purchased the book on my kindle and devoured it in one sitting.

 After reading this book I chose three mini habits - one push-up and one squat a day and to write 50 words a day. Now, you may be thinking "what is the point? you're not gonna get any stronger or get much writing done with those tiny goals". Which is what I thought at first, but the beauty of it is that, 9 times out of 10, I am going to do more than one push-up and I am going to write more that 50 words. The goals are so ridiculously small that I would be an idiot to not even attempt them and if I only manage one squat, one push-up and 50 words, I have still achieved my goal. I have a win and I am more likely to stick to the habits. Whereas, if I was to aim for 20 squats and push-ups and 500 words a day, and only managed 12 squats, 3 push-ups and 200 words, I would feel like a failure. Add consective days of not reacing my goals, I woud become disheartened and give up altogether.

I love the idea of aiming for small victories but achieving bigger ones, because a little bit is better than none at all.

Well, that was my reading for the month of February. Hopefully, I can do just as well or even better in March, although I think my posts will continue to be few and far between. Wishing everyone a happy March.