Capsule Thoughts: February 2026

I didn’t read as much in February as I usually do, and I wasn’t able to finish any of the posts I was working on. This is because my energy got redirected into a sudden professional opportunity. I’m not sure if that opportunity over, but I hope to at least read more in the coming month! 

Cop-Hater (1956), Ed McBain
I initially had written a separate post about this book complaining in detail about its virulent misogyny. But I’m not sure it’s putting on my blog:  it’s not like I need to explain or justify to myself that this is something I don’t like in books I read for entertainment. Suffice to say I wasn’t prepared for the sheer amount of page time devoted to objectifying women’s bodies when I picked up this book after reading many glowing recommendations of the 87th Precinct series. It was seriously distracting and made me uncomfortable, especially in audio format. Almost every single point of view detective is introduced with a chapter at home as he beholds his sex object, and these women run a gamut of misogynist tropes that is frankly disturbing:  a literal deaf-mute, submissive sex kitten; a withholding minx; a sleeping Madonna. Maybe I’m just not very familiar with pulps, but after reading so many contemporaneous books written by women, this was a disaster. Anything enjoyable was overshadowed. I’d like to read more McBain because the recommendations I’ve received are so earnest and glowing, but I’m not sure I can keep going chronologically. Maybe I’ll skip a few years or even a decade??? 

Cinder House (2025), Freya Marske
Not a mystery and not a novel, this novella is a retelling of Cinderella with a fun premise:  what if Cinderella were a ghost, murdered by her step family? This murder is explicit, but there is another that haunts the edges of the book that wasn’t ever explicitly excavated. So it was a little mystery adjacent in that sense. Marske writes romantasy, I guess, and this little novella was very focused on the relationships which is a little of a disappointment because it actually has rather interesting fantasy worldbuilding. I enjoyed it, but with most novellas if I enjoy them, wished it were longer. 

The Hollow (1946), Agatha Christie
What a book, what a book! I’m working on a stand alone post dedicated to it but I feel like all my thoughts were blown away by high altitude of all my work travel. I hope it doesn’t go the way of Five Little Pigs and turn into a draft that I feel like I can’t finish without a reread! Not that rereading this would be bad:  I think it is the sort of Christie that could, actually, stand for a fairly immediate revisiting, it is that complex with characters. 

I have a few books halfway finished that I’m trying to get back to after my pause. I even wondered if I was experiencing a reading slump, something that can happen to me after I read a truly excellent book like The Hollow. Maybe I was, but then my free time evaporated. Hopefully a forced break will reinvigorate me with the books and series I was reading.