Another great month by the numbers, but in context, there were a lot of short books again this month.  I'm trying to get my TBR pile down quickly by going for the low-hanging fruit.

So 27 books read in February, and I've been good about updating my book editions with the correct page numbers, so I know I've read 5,024 pages this month.  Usually that's not a stat I care much about, but knowing it's accurate makes it more interesting (to me).

My stats are skewed this month for a variety of reasons: more 4.5 and 5 star ratings because of a few pop-up books that are sheer artistry:

Leonardo da Vinci's Remarkable Machines

Encyclopedia Prehistorica Dinosaurs

Encyclopedia Prehistorica Megabeasts 

A gift book of quotes from a friend who personalised it with notes and cards, making it a personal treasure:

No Two Persons Ever Read the Same Book: Quotes on Books, Reading and Writing

And then the great reads this month from a more objective (yet still subjective) point of view:

Fiction:

The Persian Pickle Club

The Big Over Easy 

The White Cottage Mystery

Wild Strawberries

Non-Fiction: 

From the Ground Up: The Story of A First Garden

Speaking American: How Y'all, Youse , and You Guys Talk: A Visual Guide

Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores

A Is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie

The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms

The Genius of Birds

Another month heavy with non-fiction, and looking at my TBR pile(s) it's a trend that's going to continue; there's a lot more fact waiting on me than there is fiction.

The book I liked the least was Double Love, which sort of isn't fair: it's the poster-book for all that is silly teenage angst from a female POV.  It's a silly book, but it is written for a traditionally silly market.  And I loved it when I was a kid.

My least favourite this month that was written for my demographic is Better Late Than Never which is what a reader gets when good writers go bad.  At least I got my happy ending.

Generally a very happy reading month; hope everyone else had one too!

There are not many authors out there about whom I can say I enjoy everything they write.  Amy Stewart is one of them.  She first came to my attention via Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities.  It was pretty interesting; enough so that I bought Wicked Bugs which left me with a few mental images I'm never going to be able to un-see, but it was worth it.  Then came The Drunken Botanist which I recommend to both gardeners and drinkers.

By this time I qualified as a fan, but when she came out with her first work of fiction: Girl Waits with Gun, I was hesitant.  I like to box my authors in - fiction or non-fiction - and tend to assume (wrongly, I know) that I'll enjoy one or the other, but not both.  But I loved Girl Waits with Gun and at this point, I figured she could write no wrong, so I searched out pretty much everything she wrote and ordered it.

From the Ground Up is one of her earlier works, (2001) and it's a pleasant little tome; a memoir of her first garden.  New to gardening and with a small back yard of bare, packed, clay, she decides to jump in with both feet and build a garden.  From the Ground Up is a chronicle of that first year.

This is truly a memoir for gardeners; nothing more or less.  She isn't trying to entertain her reader, or search out a greater meaning, or instruct fellow garden newbies (although each chapter ends with a small 1-2 page section of suggestions pertaining to that chapter's subject).  It's a pleasant read and the joy of it is in relating to her experiences with starting a garden from scratch; the impatience that bypasses rational thought and planning, and the angst over first experiences with garden pests.  Later chapters turn a shade more philosophical, which is perfectly fitting as a garden winds down for the winter.

If you'd call yourself a gardener - let's say a laid back gardener (competitive gardeners would find this book tedious) - and you see this book, it's worth taking a look.  Stewart is a wonderful writer and she captures that first year garden perfectly.