January Monthly Recap

Time for our first monthly recap of 2017! Find out which books were favorites and which were duds. We’ll end our wrap up with a a list of books due out this month and a glimpse of our upcoming content. We also want to hear from you so let us know what you read this month and what you look forward to reading in February and the rest of 2017.

Jen: Despite the fact that I’ve been wallowing in despair at the state of my country and have not read any books in the last 2 weeks, I still managed to read 8 books in January. Over the course of this year (and the next 4 years) I will be making a concerted effort to read books about different cultures, by authors of color, and LGBTQ+ authors and books. This month, 5/8 of the books I read were by written by women, 5/8 were set in other countries (India, South Africa, U.K., China/Nepal, and Russia), and 2/8 were written by authors of color.

Favorite book read in January: My favorite book of the month was The Association of Small Bombs (you can read that review here). Honorable Mention goes to the Brothers Karamazov (review to follow soon).

Least favorite book read in January:The Invisible library by Genevieve Cogman. Cool concept but the dialogue was so cheesy and over the top, and the plot so silly, that I could only give it 2 stars.

Future Goals: As always, I hope to cut down on my TBR shelf. I’ll be attending BookExpo in May so need to cull my shelves to make room for new books. It feels like a futile endeavor since I have a tendency to move new books into the spaces left by completed books. I will also be reading Infinite Jest with a group over at Litsy. I am hosting the buddy read over there and it starts Feb 1st. Come join us. You can find me over at Litsy under the handle JenP or by searching the hashtag #infinitejestbuddy read.

Book Worm:  I have spent the last week suffering with a virus which you would think would give me more time for reading but wrong. It gave me more time to sleep. Boy did I sleep, apparently my snoring stopped hubbie sleeping, but hey I was asleep who cares? Despite all the sleep, I actually managed to read 12 books this month although 2 were childrens books and 1 was a childrens poem.

I had thought that I had read more female writers than male and this month would have proved that however my binge reading of Lewis Carroll skewed the results. So it turns out I read 6 books by male writers and 6 books by female writers. I also read 7 books from outside of my own country and these countries included the USA, Nederlands, Australia and France.

Favorite book read in January: My favourite book this month was Heartless by Marrisa Meyer (review to come soon). Unfortunately this lead to me breaking my no re-read rule by binge reading Lewis Carroll. Honourable mention goes to Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris.

Least favorite book read in January: This dubious honour will go to The Lion of Flanders by Hendrik Conscience. It wasn’t a bad book, it just wasn’t as good as the others.

Future Goals: To keep clearing the TBR pile here is how I managed in January:
-DTB books bought: 0 DTB books read from the TBR 1 net count -1 Yay
-Kindle books bought: 3 (Lewis Carroll and I read them all!!) Kindle books read from the TBR 2 net count -2 Double Yay.

What can you look forward to on our blog in February? We’ll be continuing our winter reading challenge this month. We also have plans for our featured posts including Love it or Hate it, Read Around the World, and Terrible Reviews of Great Books.

February 2017 book releases. It’s a new year and loads of new books coming out at the beginning of the year. Here are a few that are coming out in February:

Universal Harvester by John Danielle

Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

All our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama (English translation)

A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Be My Wolff by Emma Richler

Schooldays of Jesus by Coetzee (we reviewed this for the Man Booker last year)

Autumn by Ali Smith

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

We want to hear from you. So what are your plans for February? Which books were your favorites and least favorites in January? What reading challenges are you participating this year?