I am actually on top of things this month. I am trying harder to keep track of things that I need to do for the year with reading. I fell behind last year and ended up not logging as much as I had meant to. (I also kind of realized that not very many people actually read the blog, so it's more just for me to look back and see my own thoughts!)
In January, I read 10 books.
1. American Witches by Susan Fair - I....yeah. The tagline of this is that it's a broomstick tour through four centuries. It is not. It is through ~2 centuries with a smattering of 1999 thrown in. Susan Fair talks almost exclusively about the 1600s and 1800s. I was expecting there to be something about modern witchcraft, or the witchcraft revival of the 1950s. No. She literally just babbles for a while about the Salem witches and then talks about her interview with a mayor about a movie? It was not what I thought I was going to get nor was it what I wanted. The tone was way too sarcastic. Clearly Ms. Fair is just making fun of what was perceived as witchcraft in colonial America.
2. Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve - I buddy read this with a friend from Discord. It was definitely not what I was expecting, but in a good way. I didn’t trust Crome from the beginning and just felt bad the whole time for Valentine. All he wanted was to make life better for the people of London. The characters read either way younger than they were possibly meant to be, or way older. I am working on the idea this is a middle grade, so it stands to reason the younger characters would be mid teens. Hester and Katherine acted like they were in their late teens, possibly early twenties, where Thomas behaved as if he were closer to 12. It was weird. I am interested in reading the next books in the series to see just what happens to the people left behind and how they deal with traction cities.
3. When Harry Met Minnie by Martha Teichman - I received this ARC from Celadon books in exchange for review (which it will have it's own individual review~). I liked this one. We are given a memoir of a pup, but in a most unusual fashion. The entire memoir is the tale of how two Bull Terrier owners (something I can stand behind as a Staffordshire Terrier owner myself), get to know each other and wade the waters of their two dogs living together. I liked the way it was told and how the flashbacks would add to the actual story itself. They gave strong reasons for why the people were doing the things they were doing in the current time. Be sure to check for my proper review!
4. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab - I have been seeing this book all over the booktube, and really just all over the internet and bookstores. It's everywhere. There is no escaping V.E. Schwab. So I grabbed it from Book of the Month because why not? Y'all, I did not believe the hype but I do not know why. I really enjoyed the book. It's one of those ones where you simultaneously want to kiss and punch the main male character. I couldn't decide if I hated Luc for the way he worked the deal or loved him for always giving Addie an out and bending the rules as much as he could for her. He even went so far as to do something for her that he had never done for anyone else and gave her back the token as a means to call him. Since when is Death that friendly? I don't understand. This earned its stars and I am looking forward to reading more by Schwab.
5. Asylum by Madeleine Roux - This one was rather interesting and not quite what I had been expecting. I thought the book would be a little more...juvenile? It reminded me a lot of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs in the formatting. However, that's where the similarities ended. This boy was reliving the life of a mad doctor who had died long before he was even born. His great grandfather or some nonsense like that. I was intrigued by the various instances that were almost too unbelievable, but I've seen it happen in the real world. I am looking forward to possibly getting my hands on the next volume and continuing the story.
6. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo - What on earth did I just read? It was definitely something. I didn't understand half of what was going on, but I did peg what happened with Darlington right away. And why did we all call him that instead of his name? Did he not like his name? I don't understand. We follow Galaxy "Alex" Stern as she is sent to Yale to basically police the "secret" societies that are all around the campus doing magic. Each society (there are 7, were 8, but not any more) that all perform different types of magic that are unique to that particular society. It's Alex's job through Lethe House to make sure they stay in line. If only it were that simple. The things one person learns is just far too much. There is so much more going on that even Lethe House wants to admit or even knows about. I will definitely get the next one in the series just to see what happens and how it wraps up. Magic isn't what it seems and the dead do not stay in their graves.
7. Bungo Stray Dogs v2 by Kafka Asagiri - I can't sometimes with mangaka, I really can't. The whole premise of this is that people have these "skills" (not all people, just some) and they can use them to fight one another? But this agency calling itself the ADA uses people with skills like these to help the public for a price while the mafia also employs similar people to work for them. I like it, but I do not understand it at all. I was also told that at some point dead authors are involved and I am wholly looking forward to that. It is easy to read and I am glad I picked it up anyway. This particular volume is just more character introductions and setting the connections Atsushi will need to use in the future. Dazai is still strange, and I love him for it.
8. The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman - This one was a buddy read with a fellow reader from one of my discord servers (and yes, I am usually down to buddy read things as long as I have a copy of the book someone wants to read). I liked it. It was very odd, and like you could tell that Justin was used to his name and possibly his looks getting him whatever he wanted. Until he realized that it wasn't adoration so much as it was fear of his mother. The whole thing is based on the fact that something was trapped about a hundred and fifty or so years earlier by residents of Four Paths, NY. Now we follow the lives of their descendants as the thing gets stronger and tries to escape. Some of it was just beyond believable, but it wasn't that bad. I'm already ordered the next volume and I'm gonna read it. I can't wait to see what happens now that the Founder kids are not as scared of Augusta Hawthorne as they used to be.
9. Lovely War by Julie Barry - Let me premise this by saying I don't normally read this kind of thing. I very rarely read romance novels, but this was the group read for by the discord group Moonlight Readers. We read it in bits and talked about it. I liked that the whole story was being told by outside forces as memories of theirs. It certainly didn't hurt that the outside forces that were telling the story were Greek deities. That made my day. We follow the lives of four people who are living through WWI in England and France, just trying to survive. It was really good and I suggest everyone read it. The whole story lead up to something heartfelt and adorable (that I'm not going to spoil, but trust me, you all need to read it!!)
10. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones - Howl's Moving Castle is one of my favorite Miyazaki films, and when I learned it was based on an actual book, I had to get my hands on it. I absolutely had to. It was so different from the movie. Howl is not as dumb or vain as the book makes him out to be, and there is nothing of going to the past. It was so good, I loved every second of it and I had to put the next two volumes (yeah, there are more, apparently the Ghibli movie Castle in the Sky is also based on a Diana Wynne Jones book, the companion novel to HMC, Castle in the Air). Calcifer is still my favorite. If I were to get a literary/animation themed tattoo, it would definitely be Calcifer's "May all your bacon burn!!" I was surprised to know that Michael was in fact, not a ten year old white kid, but from what I gather he was actually a fifteen year old dark skinned teen. I am looking very forward to reading the next two volumes of the series.
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