February, oh February! This frigid month was christened Read Month in my Plans & Projects for the new year mainly because my husband gifted me a trip to London for Christmas and I knew I would be on a plane with nothing to do for many hours in February.

The rules for Read Month are simple. All I have to do is make it a priority to read every day this month — no page numbers to hit, no time limits, just simply make time to read. 

To set myself up for success, I spent January, formally known as Plan Month, talking with friends and family about the books they loved and cultivating a reading list based on their suggestions and far too many Pinterest lists. The following collection of books will absolutely not get finished in February alone, but my hope is that narrowing my focus this month will kickstart a long-lost priority on reading beyond this short month. 

In addition to providing the stats and synopsis for each book on the list, the images are linked to Amazon if you want to join me in reading anything below.

The Immortalists — Chloe Benjamin

Stats:
352 pages
Coming-of-Age Fiction

Synopsis:
From Amazon: It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes. The prophecies inform their next five decades. A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next.

Why it made the list:
It's on almost every must-read list for 2018 and look how beautiful the cover is. I'm aware of the old proverb, but as a graphic designer I can't help it.

Stargirl — Jerry Spinelli

Stats:
210 pages
YA Fiction

Synopsis:
From Amazon: From the day she arrives at quiet Mica High in a burst of color and sound, the hallways hum with the murmur of “Stargirl, Stargirl.” She captures Leo Borlock’ s heart with just one smile. She sparks a school-spirit revolution with just one cheer. The students of Mica High are enchanted. At first. Then they turn on her. Stargirl is suddenly shunned for everything that makes her different, and Leo, panicked and desperate with love, urges her to become the very thing that can destroy her: normal. 

Why it made the list:
A multitude of positive reviews and it was recommended for Judy Blume lovers. Sometimes when you're overwhelmed, returning to the basics does wonders for your mental health.

Wild — Cheryl Strayed

Stats:
338 pages
Autobiography

Synopsis:
From Amazon: A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe “and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State “and to do it alone. 

Why it made the list:
This one has been on my radar for awhile and the PCT is so daunting yet intriguing. 

The Handmaid's Tale — Margaret Atwood

Stats:
325 pages
Dystopian Fiction

Synopsis:
From Amazon: Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men in its population.

Why it made the list:
Started reading it when I was 17, got swept up with high school life and forgot about it — until now when I scroll past it on Hulu every night.

One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories — B.J. Novak

Stats:
290 pages
Humorous Fiction

Synopsis:
From Amazon: Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, One More Thing has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element just that might make a person complete.

Why it made the list:
To break up some of the emotional heaviness of the rest of the list. Plus, he took one of my co-workers to a voting booth during an interview, and it piqued my interest to check out his work.

The Beautiful and Damned — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Stats:
407 pages
Classical Fiction

Synopsis:
From Amazon: Anthony Patch is the idle heir to a vast fortune. His wife, Gloria, dazzles society with her good looks. Satisfied by privilege and beauty alone, they are beholden only to the “magnificent attitude of not giving a damn.” When Anthony’s inheritance is withheld, it causes an irreparable rift in their marriage, threatening their fragile paradise. Oblivious to their future, he and Gloria have little left to define themselves but their ever-receding pasts.

Why it made the list:
It's a personal goal to read more classic literature in my post-graduate life and Great Gatsby was magnificent. Also, the Amazon Kindle version is FREE!

The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory — John Seabrook

Stats:
362 pages
Non-fiction

Synopsis:
Seabrook takes us through the mechanics behind turning a song into a global superhit, introduces the masterminds behind hit after-hit, and draws the family tree between Motown, Biggie and N'Sync. 

Why it made the list:
It's pretty impossible to work in radio and not love music, plus I was thirsty for more popular music history after the HBO docuseries The Defiant Ones. 

Player Piano — Kurt Vonnegut

Stats:
354 pages
Dystopian sci-fi

Synopsis:
The machines got America through the war, streamlining production and reducing human error. The war ended and the machines stayed, relegating everyone with a low IQ into the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps (Reeks & Wrecks) or the Army. Those blessed with a high IQ, like protagonist Dr. Paul Proteus, enjoyed cushy manager and engineer jobs. Despite his outwardly perfect life, Paul finds himself rebelling against the system and the disparity between classes.

Why it made the list:
My brother and I share a love of Vonnegut and he said I absolutely needed to read the author's first novel.

The Girl on the Train — Paula Hawkins

Stats:
326 pages
Thriller

Synopsis:
From Amazon: Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She's even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life--as she sees it--is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost. And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough.

Why it made the list:
Because it's been on every book list since 2015 and I'm a late adopter. 

Firefly Lane — Kristin Hannah

Stats:
497 pages
Fiction

Synopsis:
From Amazon: In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives.

Why it made the list:
It accompanied A Clockwork Orange and Perks of Being a Wallflower (one of my all time favs) on a list of 10 books to read in your 20s. 

Dark Matter — Blake Crouch

Stats:
354 pages
Psychological Fiction

Synopsis:
From Amazon: “Are you happy with your life?” Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Why it made the list:
Psychological thrillers are my jam. 

Tips for Living — Renee Shafransky

Stats:
328 pages
Murder Mystery

Synopsis:
Nora was married to Hugh, a successful artist, until he got another woman pregnant. They get divorced and she tries to restart her life in a quaint small town only to see Hugh and his new wife, Helen, move in down the street three years later.  They coexist semi-peacefully until one night, Hugh and Helen are murdered. All fingers point to the "bitter ex," until investigations revel the couple had quite a few skeletons in their closet and even more enemies.

Why it made the list:
It was one of the free downloads for December on Amazon Prime. 

Middlesex — Jeffrey Eugenides

Stats:
539 pages
Family Saga

Synopsis:
From Amazon: In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond clasmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all. The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.

Why it made the list:
Recommended by Amazon for buying The Immortalists and it won a Pulitzer Prize.

Sharp Objects — Gillian Flynn

Stats:
272 pages
Mystery

Synopsis:
From Amazon: Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. 

Why it made the list:
Because I flew through Gone Girl and needed more Flynn.

The Postmortal — Drew Magary

Stats:
402 pages
Science Fiction

Synopsis:
From Amazon: Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and-after much political and moral debate-made available to people worldwide. Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems-including evil green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new religious cult, and other horrors. 

Why it made the list:
It reminded my of S.G. Browne's Fated which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman

Stats:
528 pages
Non-Fiction

Synopsis:
From Amazon: Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.

Why it made the list:
Recommended by my brother following a lively discussion on The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

So there you have it — my reading list for the year. If there's something you think I would love, or I absolutely need on my list, please drop a comment below; I'm always on the hunt for the next great read!