Here’s the pile o’ books at the end of February:

The little pile on the left? That’s what I read — 13 books in that one.

The little pile on the right? Those are the books that snuck into my house when I wasn’t looking. [No, really!] But there’s only seven of them, so that’s a good thing, right?

This month’s reads — again, the ones in bold will be find a permanent spot on my shelves:

• Peony In Love by Lisa See
• Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
• Zoe Lucky and the Green Gables Mystery by M. Carol Coffey
• Dream When You’re Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
• Finding Happiness by Abbot Christopher Jamison
• The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn
• What Does Your Doctor Look Like Naked?: Your Guide to Optimum Health by Dr. J. Warren Willey, II
• The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther
• The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult
  [Not to say this wasn't a great book -- I'd gladly collect all of her work if my shelves would allow me to do so.]
• Walking in Circles Before Lying Down by Merrill Markoe
• The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

I’m hoping to get a flurry of reviews posted by Monday — I’m about three and a half books behind at the moment. Thank you, work.

So, here’s the book pile:

Even with all of those books that I read — the ones on the smaller pile in the front — it doesn’t look like the main stack is any smaller.

That’s because it isn’t.

That’s because books are my weakness, and sites like BookMooch and PaperBack Swap are nothing but dirty enablers. I may have read thirteen books this month, but fourteen came into my house. One [Strangers In the Land of Egypt] came from LibraryThing and their Early Reviewers program, four from BookMooch, and nine from PaperBack Swap. [Though I've already read three-and-a-half of the PaperBack Swap books, so that has to count for something.] But more coming in than getting read / going out isn’t exactly the point, so I’m still going to have to work on my restraint a bit. Oh, and two of the books that I read [Child 44 and Dead Until Dark] weren’t even mine.

So. Thirteen books this month, and seven worth keeping [the bold ones]. The rest are being given to friends or released on BookMooch:

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
• An Assembly Such as This: A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman by Pamela Aidan
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
• Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton
• Strangers in the Land of Egypt by Stephen March
• Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
• Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki
• Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
• If I Am Missing Or Dead: A Sister’s Story of Love, Murder and Liberation by Janine Latus
• Remainder by Tom McCarthy
• Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
• Promise Not to Tell by Jennifer McMahon

So, here’s to a more productive February!