The start of another year has come and gone. January was a bit of wild month, with deep freezes that lasted for days and rainstorms that seemed to never end. Seriously, it rained every day for a week straight. I thought I’d never see sunshine again. lol. We survived the weather without any damage, though, and I’m grateful to have avoided burst pipes, which so many in my area experienced. In general, it was a pretty good month despite the weather, and I managed to get quite a bit of reading done, mostly because I never wanted to go outside. 🙂

What I’ve Read

Books, Audiobooks, & Manga

I read a great mix of stuff to start off the year. There was fantasy, of course, but also romance, murder mystery, manga, and middle grade. I read the conclusion to several series and started a couple of new ones. I read a little over 7,000 pages, which equaled 17 books. Overall, it has been a really good month. The seventeen books I finished in January are listed below (ratings link to my review, if available):

• Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas (4⭐)
• The Slain Divine by David Dalglish (3.75⭐)
• Song of Silver, Flame Like Night by Amélie Wen Zhao (4⭐)
• The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers (3.5⭐)
• Dark Star Burning, Ash Falls White by Amélie Wen Zhao (4⭐)
• A Door in the Dark by Scott Reintgen (3.25⭐)
• The Assassin’s Blade by Sarah J. Maas (3.75⭐)
• Breeze Spells and Bridegrooms by Sarah Wallace & S.O. Callahan (4⭐)
• The Atlas Complex by Olivie Blake (5⭐)
• The School for Invisible Boys by Shaun David Hutchinson (4.5⭐)
• Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend by Emma R. Alban (3.75⭐)
• Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (3.75⭐)
• The White and Blue Between Us by Kiyuhiko (2.5⭐)
• My Ultramarine Sky by Nagisa Furuya (4⭐)
• The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (5⭐)
• My Fair Brady by Brian D. Kennedy (4.75⭐)
• The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher (4.5⭐)

Comic Books

One of my goals for the year is to read more comic books. I set the arbitrary number at 100 floppies, but I’d love to read way more than that this year because I am years behind on issues at this point. I managed to read 10 issues in January, the entire run of the latest Yoda comic from Marvel. I really enjoyed these books, and all three arcs were great and represented the different eras of Star Wars well.

Progress On My 2024 Reading Goals

This year I am keeping things much simpler. I don’t have as many specific goals to track and am just trying to go with the flow. I do want to keep some sort of record of the trackable ones, though. So, here’s a quick peek at how my year is going so far.

• Goodreads Challenge: 17/100 books
• Storygraph Pages Challenge: COMPLETED!!
• Read from My Shelves: 6 books (5 physical, 1 audio)
• Books Unhauled: 3 sold on Pango
• Read Comic Books: 10/100 floppies
• Read Pre-2024 ARCs: 0/14 ARCs

I’ve still been enjoying and keeping up with my book journal, and I feel like I have made a concerted effort to request fewer ARCs in January. I even went in and withdrew some requests on NetGalley to keep myself from getting overwhelmed. So, progress has been made. lol. If you want to check out all of my goals for the year in more detail, check out this Top Ten Tuesday post.

Final Thoughts

I did manage to do a few blog posts along with my reviews in January. You can find those in my blog archives if you are interested in checking them out.

Overall, this has been another good month of reading. My average rating was 4.00 in January. My favorite book in January was The Tainted Cup. What was your favorite book from January? Let me know down in the comments!

Thank you to everyone who has visited the blog and engaged with comments and/or likes! I appreciate all of you and always enjoy reading your input in the comments. I hope everyone has a great February!