#January reading

[yourfavouritebookseller]

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

3rd book read in 2025

[andreai04]

It was bewildering how quickly the day went, when you had had the morning taken away from you.

“we were children—playing with the reflections of stars in a pool of water... thinking it was space."

[doctorcolubra]

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine

Since this book is so often one of the first recommendations that come up for the subject of Palestine, I was expecting this to be an entry-level book, but it's quite substantial! It has a personal element, as Khalidi's large and influential family have been Forrest Gumping it throughout the period covered, participating in peace talks and interacting with historical figures like the king of Jordan, Yasser 'Arafat, Edward Said, and many others. I really appreciated these flashes of memoir-like writing to enliven the sometimes dry historical accounts, and in fact I wish there was more, but Khalidi had a lot of territory to cover here in describing a century of colonialism and betrayal.

Despite the personal connections, it's not exactly a passionate or emotional exploration, and thus I found it a little hard to finish—terrible, infuriating things keep happening, but there's little catharsis here and as a reader I had to just be mad about it on my own time. The early chapters, covering the period prior to the Nakba, and the later chapters on the Oslo negotiations were the strongest parts for me.

[aspirations-of-beauty]

[books-coffee-and-the-woods]

January Wrap-Up!

A good start to the year! 6 books read, 2 in progress, and just 1 DNF. I knocked a couple oldies off my TBR, and that's always a good feeling!

Read:

The Unspoken Name - A. K. Larkwood

The Tensorate Series - Neon Yang

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - J. R. R. Tolkien

The Thousand Eyes - A. K. Larkwood

Biting the Sun - Tanith Lee

The Bedlam Stacks - Natasha Pulley

Currently Reading:

Foundryside - Robert Jackson Bennett (page 56)

Woodsqueer - Gretchen Legler (page 116)

DNF:

The Apollo Murders - Chris Hadfield (just not sure if it interests me as much as I expected, might return to it later.)

[bookishfarmer]

10.02.2023

My January reads! A bit belated but here we are.

The Rosewood Chronicles are rereads, I needed something gentle to read. I haven't read the fourth and fifth ones before so l'll probably do that this month :)

I LOVED Little Thieves. Can't believe it took me a year after getting it to actually read it! But then maybe I had to be in the right mindset to enjoy it.

Are you a mood or tbr reader? I'm definitely a mood reader and I reread a lot of the time

[brightbeautifulthings]

January

reviews Begin Again by Emma Lord (4/5) Burn the Negative by Josh Winning (4/5) Shades of Rust and Ruin by A.G. Howard (4/5) Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider, Vol. 2: Impossible Year by Seanan McGuire (4/5) Such Pretty Flowers by K.L. Cerra (3/5) The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix (3/5) Little Eve by Catriona Ward (2/5) Five Survive by Holly Jackson (2/5)

rereads The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater (5/5) The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black (4/5)

etcetera Readalikes: The VVitch (2015) & In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt TMST: Reading & Blogging Goals Aesthetics: The Goblins of Bellwater by Molly Ringle

[historyofshipping]

January reading redux. 24 books. Mostly fantasy (urban fantasy is my favorite). Most were audio books.

Favorite book: Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Favorite series: The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Special mention: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna if you need a cozy read

[kuro-kitsune]

I’ll admit that I’ve been watching Ginny & Georgia before going to bed 😅 I’ve finished the first season within the span of a week. BUT I have put in my book time for sure which can be seen on my StoryGraph chart!!

[ink-at-heart]

Finished reading The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay today and had a little cry at the ending bc I’m a big old sap. Not as bad as after A Head Full of Ghosts, but still. This one definitely hit harder than I’d expected it to going in. Slowly but surely making my way further into the horror genre.

What would you do if four strangers showed up at your family’s remote vacation cabin and demanded that the three of you had to make a life or death decision to stop the literal end of the world? Andrew, Eric, and their daughter, Wen, are unwilling pawns in events that will change their lives forever.

(Definitely look up trigger warnings for this one before diving in bc there’s a couple parts that were rough to read (for a non-splatterpunk fan like me, anyway).)

[boywithskull]

what's everyone reading this month? I'm currently reading Babylonia by Costanza Casati - which I'm really enjoying so far - and I hope to also read Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, which I received for Christmas. After that I need to continue with the Death Note manga, since I took a break after volume 5 and need to get back into it

[candlelight-reading]

Books Read in January

[andreai04]

For if dreams had no import whatsoever why, then, would the Gods, in creating us, give us the ability to dream?

'Time is like the ancient Ouroboros. Time is fleeting moments, grains of sand passing through an hourglass. Time is the moments and events we so readily try to measure. But the ancient Ouroboros reminds us that in every moment, in every instant, in every event, is hidden the past, the present and the future. Eternity is hidden in every moment. Every departure is at once a return, every farewell is a greeting, every return is a parting. Everything is simultaneously a beginning and an end.’

‘I’ll never leave you both,’ Ciri said softly. ‘Never.’

‘And I want to see is the sky, Yen and you.’

'What to do?' she said slowly. 'Everything has its price. War demands casualties. Peace, it turns out, does too.’

‘They prostituted everything.' The elf broke the silence. 'Everything was for sale. Honour, loyalty, our bonds, vows, everyday decency... They were simply chattels, having a value as long as there was a trade in them and a demand. And once there wasn't, they weren't worth a straw and were discarded. Onto the dust heap.'

'Onto the dust heap of history,' the pilgrim nodded. 'You're right, master elf. That's how it was back then in Cintra. Everything had its price. And was worth as much as it could be traded for.

The market opened every morning. And like a real market, now and again there'd be unexpected booms and crashes. And just like a real market, one couldn't help but get the impression somebody was pulling the strings.'

She won that war. By not allowing the war to destroy her.

‘Destiny isn't the judgements of providence, isn't scrolls written by the hand of a demiurge, isn't fatalism. Destiny is hope. Being full of hope, believing that what is meant to happen will happen, I cast my vote. I vote for Ciri. The Child of Destiny. The Child of Hope.'

For whoever doesn't overcome the cowardice inside themselves will die of fear to the end of their days.

[doctorcolubra]

Wharton, The Reckoning and Other Stories

“As soon as I look at a subject from the novel-angle I see it in its relation to a larger whole, in all its remotest connotations; & I can’t help trying to take them in, at the cost of the smaller realism that I arrive at, I think, better in my short stories. This is the reason why I have always obscurely felt that I didn’t know how to write a novel. I feel it more clearly after each attempt, because it is in such sharp contrast to the sense of authority with which I take hold of a short story.” – Edith Wharton, 1907, quoted in the introduction by Janet Beer

I haven’t read any of Edith Wharton’s full-length novels but these short stories were great, all bangers no filler. The (relatively!) weaker offerings were the two ghost stories, “Bewitched” and “All Souls’”, which nevertheless featured some evocative descriptions and atmospheres. Their endings lacked the punch that the more realistic stories had, but they were still enjoyable as a change of pace.

The good ones had plenty of sting in their tails, though, and there were enough of these that I don’t know if I can pick a favourite: “Souls Belated” lays out in a compelling way the marriage themes that dominate the collection; “The Other Two” builds layers of tension and then breaks them up like pastry crumbs; the emotional reversals of the titular “The Reckoning” continue to tease at the marriage/divorce themes; “The Mission of Jane” satirises the idea that a baby can bring a couple together; “Xingu”’s pretentious book club feels au courant with Booktok; “The Long Run” might be my favourite, with long, limpid descriptions of emotional states—all telling, no showing, somehow still very affecting.

[readerwithalotofplans]

First books I want to read in 2025

[shisasan]

10 January, 1924 Letters to Véra by Vladimir Nabokov