January Wrap-Up | a cold and wet start to the year

Hey, everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. Sorry for missing Friday; I didn’t have any posts completed and I had an evening event for school that I had to attend, so I didn’t get to finish anything.

Today I have my wrap-up for January. It was a very cold and rainy month, made more unpleasant because my house doesn’t have heat at the moment. We haven’t had heat or AC since May 2022. It was a very cold winter. But, we should finally be getting our heat back sometime next week. Fingers crossed it actually happens.

Also, we reached 200 followers!! Thank you to everyone who supports and has supported me. I wouldn’t still be here if it weren’t for you.

BOOKS READ

Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves by Meg Long|★★★★|📖|my review
This was a great book to start off the year! The worldbuilding brought me into the story and I loved the relationships that Sena forms with the team, as well as Iska.

The Ones We Burn by Rebecca Mix|★★★★|📖|review to come
This book has a lot of controversy on some delicate topics, so I’m not going to say much expect that I really enjoyed the book. It was a bit slow in some spots, but the storyline was interesting. My review will explain more about the controversy.

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke|★★★★|📖
I loved the Venice setting of the story. It was fun to read and I loved the family that the kids were able to from. My only slight dislike was that the magic element kind of sprang out of nowhere.

Dear Martin (Dear Martin #1) by Nic Stone|★★★★|📖
I started this on MLK Day, which seemed appropriate. This was a super powerful read dealing with racism, police brutality, privilege, and more. It was written in such a raw and real way.

CURRENTLY READING

I don’t normally have three books going at once, but two of them are audiobooks, which I listen to when I can, so they take longer than physical books.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

I have mixed feelings about this book. I’m close to being done, only around 100 pages left, which I’m really glad for. The storyline is interesting and I like how a bunch of elements are connected. But the pace is so slow. The sentences are intricate and long, with so much description. I normally don’t have a problem with description in stories, but these are really long. Also, the author is throwing around colons and semicolons everywhere, where they’re not really necessary. I’m getting into the grammatical side of things, but it was something I noticed that kind of bugged me.

An Arrow to the Moon by Emily X.R. Pan

I’ve been listening to this on audiobook with my mom since October. It’s been four months. We normally don’t take this long with audiobooks, but all our holiday plans were cancelled, so we didn’t go anywhere and listen. It has an enjoyable plot and I love the relationship between Hunter and Cody. (Hunter and Luna are nice too, but the sibling relationship is so sweet to read.)

King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender

I also started an audiobook last Saturday when I had a migraine and was trying to rest my eyes. I’m not very far into it, but I like the narrator. I hope I find time to listen to the book; I don’t want to wait too long.

MY POSTS

• 2023 Reading Challenges
• My Favorite Reads of 2022
• Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Releases for the First Half of 2023
• 2022 Wrap-Up|recaps, goals, and graphs galore
• Review: Glitter Gets Everywhere by Yvette Clark
• Review: Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves by Meg Long
• Chinese New Year Book Tag

AROUND THE BLOGOSPHERE

Did I bloghop this month? Yes. Did I mark down the posts I want for this wrap-up? No.

BLOGS I DISCOVERED

Bee More Bookish – This blog is run by Jade Anna, and I love the play-on-words for the blog name. I was looking through her older posts and really liked the character studies she did. They were super interesting!

I don’t think I’ve touched my writing since winter break. School started back up and I just haven’t had the time to work on my WIP. The writing I have been doing is applying for some summer programs. I need to do something over the summer, so I’m applying to three summer programs, one focused on writing, one on journalism, and the other on women in STEM. All the applications are due at different times, so I’ve been having to prioritize some over the others.

🎬 TV Shows and Movies: My mom and I binge-watched Wednesday in only two days, when it was raining. The show is so good, I love it! I didn’t expect that ending, but it makes sense once you go back over the details. We also watched Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which was funny and weird, obviously. I didn’t get a lot of the jokes, but I still enjoyed it. Addams Family Values was our most recent watch, the sequel to The Addams Family. I loved the humor in it.

🧧 We celebrated Chinese New Year with some friends who we hadn’t seen in a long time. We went over to their house and made dumplings. They turned out delicious. We also had some food that our friends ordered from a Chinese restaurant they knew about. The amount of chow mein they gave us was literally enough to feed an army. I think the restaurant overestimated our question of “how much will we need to feed eight people?” I got to take a bag of it home, which was very nice.

📚 I found out that my favorite bookstore is closing next month, which is really sad. I love the bookstore because it’s geared toward young readers, so it’s many a bookstore for kids and teens. I went there last weekend and got Seasparrow by Kristin Cashore, the fifth book in the Graceling Realm series; Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman, which I’ve been wanting to read for months; and Morning Sun in Wuhan by Ying Chang Compestine, which is about life during the pandemic where COVID first emerged. I’m hoping I can get to all of the books soon. Seasparrow is a bit intimidating with its size, but I have a feeling I’ll like it, based off the other books in the series.

January Goals:

• Read 6 books ❌
• Post 7 times ✅
• Work on WIP ❌

February Goals:

• Read 6 books
• Post 7 times
• Work on WIP

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How was your January? Did you read any good books?
Do you have any fun plans for February?