February is cold here in Chicago. Stay-at-home-or-you’ll-die cold. A good time to gather inside with friends and family, put hot cocoa on the stove, slip a movie in the Blu-ray player, and then forget all of that because there’s something fascinating on the Internet.

We had plenty of fascinating things to offer here at the Black Gate blog in February. Scott Taylor took at serious look at the downside of collecting in “The Weight of Print,” Matthew David Surridge examined Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Mark Rigney revealed the surprising results of the John Piece Experiement as applied to fantasy, author Violette Malan explained How to Put the Sword in Sword & Sorcery, and Sarah Avery offered up another installment in her popular Teaching and Fantasy Literature series with “Weird Things My Students Have Been Told About Writers.”

And that’s only the Top Five. The complete list of the Top 50 posts in February follows. Enjoy — but not so much that you neglect your houseguests, please. Or let hot chocolate overboil on the stove.

1. Art of the Genre: The Weight of Print
2. Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
3. Genre 2013: The John Pierce Experiment
4. How to put the sword in Sword and Sorcery
5. Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Weird Things My Students Have Been Told…
6. Howard and Sandra Tayler discuss being mercenary…
7. New Treasures: Wilderlands of High Fantasy
8. Dungeon Board Game from Wizards of the Coast
9. Echoes of the Goddess: Schweitzer’s Newest Classic
10. Self-published books: Review of Noggle Stones the Goblin’s Apprentice

     

11. New Treasures: Introducing Garrett, P.I.
12. Win a copy of The Complete John Thunstone by Manly Wade Wellman
13. The Weird of Oz gabs about Groundhog Day
14. Modern Space Opera With a Classic Feel
15. Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Babe the Barbarian
16. Make this true or Harvey Smash: Planet Hulk to come after Avengers 2
17. Childhood resurfaced: The Bermuda Depths on DVD
18. New Treasures: Children of the Night by Dan Simmons
19. The Last Dinosaur on Warner Archive DVD
20. The Pop Culture class of 1960-1969: Marvel Firsts the 1960s 

     

21. Vintage Treasures: The Fuzzy Papers by H Beam Piper
22. New Treasures: The Unearthed Arcana 1st edition Premiun Reprint
23. Invocation of the Muses
24. Jay Lake’s the Hour and Manner of my Death
25. Tanith Lee’s Secret Books of Paradys
26. Red Sonja 9
27. The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs
28. The Weird of Oz talks to a troll
29. Exploring the defenses of Tangier
30. Steampunk Spotlight: Society of Steam Trilogy

     

31. Nebula Award Nominations Announced
32. Did Entertainment Weekly Reveal that Benedict Cumberbatch is Playing Khan?
33. Teaching and Fantasy Literature: The Strange and Mysterious Unit
34. Goth Chick News: Crawling out of the Underground Bunker and into a little Fantasy
35. Adventure on Film: Mirror Mirror
36. Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery only $6.40 at Amazon.com
37. The Real Argo: The Lord of Light film and the lost Jack Kirby Sketches
38. Rue Morgue Magazine’s 200 Alternative Horror Films you Need to See
39. Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation
40. The Weird of Oz Recalls his first visit to Barsoom

     

41. Heroic Fiction Quarterly 15
42. New Treasures: Dream Castles: The Early Jack Vance, Volume 2
43. A Touch of Evil: Colonial Gothic Horror Board Gaming At Its Finest
44. Star Soldiers and other free kindle books at Amazon
45. Richard Matheson turns 87 Today
46. Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu, Part One
47. Dion Fortune and The Demon Lover
48. Renovating Tegel Manor
49. Blogging Austin Brigg’s Flash Gordon: The Storm Queen…
50. Red Sonja 10

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in January are here.