Hey all, Dani here.
January is over, and it actually went by pretty quickly, which is a bit unusual because for me it often feels like January is the longest month of the entire year. But hey, I’m not going to complain too much, because it was a good month for reading and for blogging, so I’m pretty happy with it overall.
A lot happened in the first month of the year. It’s been a whirlwind of activity, honestly. I stepped in to help Flavia in running/hosting the monthly book event Calendar Girls, until hosts Katie and Adrienne are ready to jump back in action. Damian and I started our year off helping Colorworld Books at Ohayocon, an anime convention in Columbus, OH, and it was a wonderful weekend of geekery and a lot of work. I’ve also been adjusting to being on second shift again, a job move that is in place until I think around May. It’s thrown us for a little bit of a loop, as we try to plan our wedding and also our vacations. I’ve also reignited my Weekend Writer posts, as well as my Recommendation and Discussion posts. I love these blog series and I’m glad you all seem to like them as well. It takes a lot more work for them than it does to write up reviews, but it’s worth it.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield — DNF
Ruthless Gods by Emily A Duncan — 5 stars (review coming February 4)
The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski — 4.5 stars
Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger — 4 stars (review coming February 13)
Don’t Read the Comments by Eric Smith — 5 stars
Black Clover Vol 19 by Yuki Tabata — 5 stars (review coming April 13)
The Never-Tilting World by Rin Chupeco — 5 stars
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde — 4 stars (review coming February 11)
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Vol 1 by Kuneida, Fujino Omori, and Suzuhio Yasuda — 4 stars (review coming February 10)
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Vol 2 by Kuneida, Fujino Omori, and Suzuhio Yasuda — 4.5 stars (review coming February 24)
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Vol 3 by Kuneida, Fujino Omori, and Suzuhio Yasuda — 4.5 stars (review coming March 9)
Would Like to Meet by Rachel Winters — 5 stars (review coming February 15)
Ashlords by Scott Reintgen — 4 stars (review to come February 8)
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo — 4 stars (review to come February 18)
A Heart So Fierce and Broken by Brigid Kemmerer — 5 stars (review coming February 20)
Fruits Basket Collector’s Edition Vol 1 by Natsuki Takaya — 4 stars (review to come March 30)
Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire — 5 stars (review coming February 22)
Reverie by Ryan La Sala — DNF
On Being Stuck by Laraine Herring — 4.5 stars
Crown of Coral and Pearl by Mara Rutherford — 4 stars
The Toll by Neal Shusterman — 5 stars
Fruits Basket Collector’s Edition Vol 2 by Natsuki Takaya — 4.5 stars
Next up is book haul/unhaul and OwlCrate unboxing, so let’s see what books joined my library and left my library in January. So yeah, I had another pretty good unhaul this month because it was all the books shown below plus some that had been sitting at my mom’s house for the past couple years. Most of these books are ones that I’m not likely to read again, and a few are because I picked up a different edition of the book, so I don’t always need to have multiple copies of books.
When it comes to the book haul portion of today’s post, I’m actually doing pretty good overall with keeping to my book buying restriction. I keep lengthy lists of books that I kind of want to pick up each month, but I’ve been going over those lists and marking off the 5-ish books that I *really* want and those are the ones I can buy. I’ve also been prioritizing buying books that I’m not being approved for on NetGalley, though there are many NetGalley books I do plan on picking up in the future. It’s just that I don’t need to pick them up immediately upon release if there’s another book I also want. There have been a few NetGalley reads that I’ve loved so much that I buy them on release day anyway. It happens. But I also had a few book purchase options from the last couple months thanks to a couple pretty big unhauls.
Oh, and fun fact about my book hauls: I don’t count manga in my 5 book limit, because Damian and I share the cost of buying all of our manga, and most of the time we wait for deals like buy 2 get the 3rd free to pick up a bunch.
I also feel like I need to admit this to all of you: I don’t think I’ve ever read Little Women. It’s possible I read it when I was a kid and just don’t remember it, but I’m just going to go with saying that I don’t think I’ve read it. Naturally I had to pick up a copy so I can finally read it. Also, wow, I’ve already read 8 of the books that I bought in January.
The OwlCrate box for January had the next mug in the series of Harry Potter mugs they’ve been doing, which I have loved all of them so far. It makes sense that Umbridge is on this mug, but I still don’t like her and will endeavor to just not look at all of her pink glory. I also find it funny that they started the mug collection with Chamber of Secrets, then Prisoner of Azkaban, then Goblet of Fire, and now Order of the Phoenix. Why did they skip Philosopher’s Stone? Or are they releasing that one last? They’ve said that it will be a 7 mug series, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. And they gave us that Middle Earth map banner as a place to hang the OwlCrate pins, but I’m just going to have it as an art piece; I still have plenty of space on my other pin banner to hold this year’s pins. Why would I cover up Middle Earth with shiny pins?
As for what I’m hoping to read in February…well, some of my reading is going to be mood based, I think. However, it is also Fantastic February (a reading challenge created by Kathy @ Books and Munches), so…I think my fantasy plans are a little bit ambitious. Honestly when aren’t fantasy reading plans ambitious? I love reading fantasy, but so many of my faves write these immensely lengthy tomes. Don’t get me wrong: I LOVE long lush descriptive fantasy reads. But, when I’m trying to devour a whole lot of books, big tomes somewhat slow the process a bit. Oh well, it’s fine. There’s a lot of big fantasy reads I would love to read, so I have high hopes for February.
Also, if I’m being wholly honest, I’ve pretty much already picked out most of my TBR for March as well, because in March I host Middle Grade March, where I focus on reading and reviewing Middle Grade reads, because there are so many great ones out there.
All right, here’s my hopeful February TBR.
That huge Sam Sykes book is like 1300 pages, but it is an omnibus and contains three books, so I’m only planning on reading the first one for this month…unless I really get consumed by the story. But I have a lot of reading planned. Okay, now I’m curious; I need to figure out how many pages are on my February TBR. Whew, that took a few minutes, but if I include the entire omnibus since I don’t have it on hand to look at the table of contents, together these 17 (19?) books are 8,801 pages. That’s a lot of reading.
That is all from me for today, but I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.
Free State of Geek 