Reading Roundup: February 2026

February feels like a lost month! My anxiety went a bit nuts, so I’ve not been in a good headspace for reading much, especially reading before bed at night, and White Noise isn’t really an easy breezy read either. Add to that that a couple of the audiobooks I tried were duds too, so overall it doesn’t feel like a super successful month for reading! I did get through a lot of X-Men comics, though!

I have also been working my way through Mike Schur’s book on philosophy, How To Be Perfect, which I am really enjoying and finding interesting, but I’m taking it slowly to read a chapter at a time when I feel like I can absorb it and learn from it.

4 books – 3 audio and 1 eBook.

This was aprox. 751 pages read and 27.25 hours listened (of finished books).

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty ⭐⭐

An Australian author for reading bingo, and one I have read before and had an OK time with, but this one is a major dud.

White Noise by Don DeLillo ⭐⭐⭐

I had a lot of fun with a close reading of this; it’s a clever and cutting satire of modern society and a classic for good reason, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to and found it a slog at times, hence only 3 stars.

The Wee Free Men (Discworld #30; Tiffany Aching #1) by Terry Pratchett 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

This was great! Discworld for a younger audience that doesn’t talk down, with a wonderful, intelligent protagonist. I love Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegle. I look forward to reading more!

A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville ⭐

My second Australian author this year and another dud. This pissed me off, though. I honestly think it’s disrespectful to use the lives and names of real historical people to write a story this unimaginative and weak. I did enjoy reading the Wikipedia pages, though!

Marvel Unlimited: 60 more issues of X-Men

I read all the way through X-Treme X-Men (issues 2-46) and X-Treme Legacy (issues 220-234).

So X-Treme X-Men from 2004, with Chris Claremont as writer, started well. I like the team – Storm, Bishop, Sage, Cannonball, Rogue, and Gambit as the main crew – with some others coming and going. I didn’t like Rogue wearing a red outfit; that was weird. Sage was a new character to me, and I liked her a lot, even if her “human computer” powers are a bit nebulous and apparently limitless. She apparently can ‘evolve’ mutant powers, including activating a latent mutant gene. I liked Lifeguard (Heather Cameron) and her brother Sliptream, though, from looking them up, it seems they don’t really appear again.

It is thanks to Sage that Rogue, during this time, can recall and mix and match powers she has previously absorbed, at will. So we get to see her with Colossus armoured skin, Wolverine claws and Cyclops eye blasts all at once. It is very cool but also very OP, so I can see why the story led to Rogue and Gambit both being depowered. This storyline was the reason I picked up this run, as it gives the two of them time to go and try to live normal lives. It is at this point that Rogue also starts going by Anna Raven. This is really cute. I loved seeing them be a happy couple!

In the latter half of the 40-odd issue run, it does go off the boil a bit. There is a multi-issue arc where Storm takes part in a mutant combat arena. Claremont seems to enjoy exploring Storm’s dark side (it retreads some familiar ground from his time on Uncanny X-Men), but I didn’t find this very interesting, and it seemed to be a good excuse to put her in a lot of skimpy outfits. Also, Callisto has squid arms now. And I don’t know why Masque turned into an attractive blonde woman. I thought their whole thing was being bitter that their powers didn’t work on themselves.

After that, I jumped onto X-Treme Legacy from issue 221 (written by Mike Carey), which is from 2009. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t understand, but I jumped here because it picks up Rogue-focused storylines. In this issue, Prof X and Gamit go to look for Rogue in Australia, and this leads to Prof X and the Danger Room in a cyborg form (yeah, I don’t know) “fixing” Rogue so she can control her powers. She and Gambit don’t get together, though; she says she needs time to work out how she feels. There are some good Rogue-centred storylines (this run ties into Dark Reign and Necrosha), but there is also some pushing of a thing with Magneto, which just gives me the ick. He is an old man, they have no chemstry and writers need to stop trying to force it just because they’re Magneto fanboys, and they think Rogue is the hottest female X-Men.

I’m now reading the limited run of Rouge & Gambit from 2018, which I am loving. This is written by Kelly Thompson, who has written a lot of my all-time favourite so I am hyped!

Currently Reading

Currently, I am reading (and enjoying) Leviathan Falls, which is the 9th and final book in The Expanse series. On audio, I started A Hat Full of Sky, which is the second Tiffany Aching book in Discworld.

I’m also (finally) reading How To Be Perfect by Michael Schur, and I’m really enjoying learning a little about philosophy!

Adding to TBR

Making up for a no-book-buying month in January, I made the most of it in February to stock up on some of what I plan to read this year, and I scored a few 99p deals on eBooks I’d had on my wish list for ages!

1. Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang
2. The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
3. We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
4. The Names by Florence Knapp
5. The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose (£2.99 for the eBook, but I’ve been wanting to check this out for ages, and she’s an Australian author for my challenge)
6. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron E (print)

Plus 5 books by Octavia E. Butler (two series) in print, and all 5 of the Discworld Tiffany Aching books from Audible.