January 2025 Reading Wrap Up
Hey hi hello friends, and welcome back to my blog!
Can you believe it's already February? It seems like just yesterday when I was wishing for the new year, and now a full month has gone and passed me by! Despite this feeling, I actually got a lot done this month. I bought a new car (my first "big girl" purchase) which I love, I got back into daily journaling, and I've taken some real steps towards my overall goals for the year.
Because of this, or maybe even in spite of this (I was very busy this month) I managed to read 7 books in January: 6 novels, and 1 novella. It's not quite the diverse spread of books that I usually check off, but I'm glad I really took my time with reading and focused on things outside of it. 3 of these books were book club reads, and 2 were translated, including from a country I hadn't read from before! I also started keeping track of my reading in a new and more creative way (check it out in my latest reading update) as well as keeping notes on my phone as I read, so I'm able to have a full view of the story for my end-of-month wrap ups.
Okay, let's get into what I read this January!
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Novels
Translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap
Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Adult
Means of reading: Physical
Star rating/CAWPILE: 3.5 stars/6.69 CAWPILE
Page count: 683 pages
Day(s) read: 1.01 - 1.26
Final thoughts: This took me forever to finish, but I'm glad that I stuck to my guns and didn't DNF because it was very good. The reason it took me so long to read was because the writing was incredibly dense and full of so much information. It definitely felt more like a history book than a fictional novel, but I'm pretty sure that was Pamuk's intention. I found myself wanting to look up the events that happened in the story, and had to remind myself more than once that this was a fictional novel about a fictional island. It all felt so real! Years ago I had tried to read another of Orhan Pamuk's novels (I'm pretty sure it was Snow) and didn't get very far into it. But I might just try again, because I did enjoy my time with this book.
Genre: Horror, Historical Fiction, Classic, Adult
Means of reading: Physical
Star rating/CAWPILE: 4.5 stars/8.11 CAWPILE
Page count: 164 pages
Day(s) read: 1.06 - 1.10
Final thoughts: I was not expecting to like this book as much as I did! Of course I go into every book hoping I'll enjoy it, but it's been so long since I've read a good horror novel (especially a haunted house horror) that I just wasn't expecting this to do anything special. But I actually really liked it! I picked it up because I want to eventually watch the movie, and I don't love watching movie or TV adaptations of a book without having read it first. This was peak haunted house horror to me, I'm not sure anything else I've read tops it. Is this my new blueprint? Quite possibly. Some parts were so cleverly written that I was genuinely scared, I got chills and everything. The rocking chair scene? Terrifying. That's one of the worst (or best, depending on your point of view) tropes in horror for me, it never fails to scare the wits out of me. I'm very excited to watch the movie now!
Genre: Historical Fiction, Poetry, YA
Means of reading: E-book
Star rating/CAWPILE: 3.5 stars/6.36 CAWPILE
Page count: 304 pages
Day(s) read: 1.14 - 1.17
Final thoughts: Compared to Joy McCullough's other books (Blood Water Paint and We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire), this one was just okay. The subject matter was super intriguing to me - I love learning about badass women in history and La Tofana is no exception - but I felt the execution of it fell rather flat. I didn't care for Carmela as the protagonist and found the side characters much more interesting. The best parts were undoubtedly the poems sprinkled it. Joy McCullough is a poet, first and foremost, and I think she excels in that medium rather than the novel format.
Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adult
Means of reading: Mixed Media
Star rating/CAWPILE: 4.5 stars/8.87 CAWPILE
Page count: 1329 pages (62 hrs 45 mins audio)
Day(s) read: 1.17 - 1.31
Final thoughts: I am unwell. I can't believe the first half of the Stormlight Archive is over, and we have to wait like 10 years for the next book to come out! So many of my favorite characters were put through the wringer in this final installment (of this arc, at least) and there were some that I genuinely wasn't expecting to make it through, and some that I thought were safe that turned out not to be. The last 200 pages of this tome had me in tears multiple times. And I felt some serious anxiety reading those last chapters! I don't know what Branderson has in store for the Stormlight Archive after this, but I am seated and waiting for book six, even if I'll be almost 40 by the time it comes out...(Jesus).
Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Adult
Means of reading: Audiobook
Star rating/CAWPILE: 4 stars/7.02 CAWPILE
Page count: 372 pages (12 hrs 43 mins audio)
Day(s) read: 1.19 - 1.20
Final thoughts: Read for Carolyn's book club over on Fable. I suppose I have to thank Carolyn for that, because I didn't have any plans to ever read this book otherwise. And what a mistake that would have been, because this was incredible. My only problem was the writing style. There were too many descriptions, tangents, and run-on sentences for my taste. I thought it was overly descriptive and frustratingly so. It got to the point that at times I didn't know where I was, when I was, and who I was following. But I thought the story was phenomenal (when I knew what was happening, at least). The entire second part of the book, I was just sitting there, silently crying. The grief felt by the characters was almost palpable. That is a true marker of skill, in my opinion.
Genre: Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Literary Fiction, Adult
Means of reading: Physical
Star rating/CAWPILE: 5 stars/9.00 CAWPILE (this is a reflection of the last time I read this book)
Page count: 448 pages
Day(s) read: 1.21 - 1.23
Final thoughts: I reread this book because it was chosen as my IRL book club's pick, and since it had been over 4 years since I first read it, I was a little fuzzy on the details. I could remember the overall plot of the story, but all of the smaller things had disappeared with time. This time around, I annotated my copy and so ended up thinking about the book with a much more critical eye. It has it's faults, for sure, but I still stand by my rating of 5 stars. Whether that's due to nostalgia, or just my love of the author, I don't know. What I do know is that I loved my time with this book, and I'm excited to read it again in a few years and look back on my annotations.
Novellas
Translated from the Spanish by Ruth L.C. Simms
Genre: Classic, Science Fiction, Adult
Means of reading: Physical
Star rating/CAWPILE: 3 stars/5.57 CAWPILE
Page count: 104 pages
Day(s) read: 1.28 - 1.31
Final thoughts: Read for Emma's book club over on Fable. I thought this was a weird little book, but I'm pretty sure I liked it. If I was more emotionally invested, I could easily see myself getting sucked into the story and becoming obsessed. It's that kind of story. Unfortunately I felt disconnected from both the characters and the story as a whole (I think that's actually my own fault, because I looked up the plot earlier in the month in order to decide if I wanted to buy a copy or not, since I couldn't get it anywhere else). Objectively, this was a brilliant piece of science fiction. Subjectively, however, it didn't do anything particularly moving. I was more interested in the narrator's psyche than anything else.
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Total page count: 3,403 pages
Favorite book of January: Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson
No unfinished books this month
No DNFs this month
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And that's all for January 2025, the first month over and done with! I'd love to know how your first month of 2025 went, if you had a strong start to the year and if you managed to work on any of your goals. Leave a comment below, or DM me on Instagram (link in sidebar under the heading "More Media").
Until next time, friends!
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