January 2014 Recap

In case you missed it, I got back on track with Workout Wednesday AND Culture Corner this month and I cannot wait to talk about next month’s Culture Corner or even March’s (since I already know what’s coming)! If you follow me on Instagram you’ll get hints ahead of time because I Instagram most of the pictures for the square quality 🙂 Now on to recapping January!

As I’m writing this I’ve realized that without challenges to recap these posts are going to be much less structured and more random, but that could be a good thing. So to start with some NON book fun:

The last weekend of the month, my friend Caroline, her fiance, Nick, and I had a crafternoon while we watched the film adaptation of Amistad for our book group. (Caroline and I crocheted while Nick hilariously made a hemp anklet/bracelet.)

Now don’t get your expectations up too much, I haven’t crocheted anything since I finished my big scarf back in November or the scarf I made for my friend Peter, and I’m just doing the same stitch again, but I’m excited. This scarf will be Carolina blue and white and will have long vertical stripes rather than short horizontal stripes. Don’t worry there will be an after picture and maybe after this scarf I will get more adventurous, but no promises 🙂

Now on to the books: this month I read five books and started a sixth, of those three were library books, five were physical and three were on my shelf prior to 01/01/2014 (and are found on my non-challenge Mount TBR list here).

I did go a little over-the-top with library books this month checking out 11, but considering I read three of them and am enjoying a no-challenge year I don’t care! A couple are ones I’ve read about on other blogs, two are from series I wanted to read and the rest are an attempt to identify (and perhaps help) with some of my mental clarity this year after working so hard on getting healthy last year, continuing into this.

• Inferno – Dan Brown
• The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg
• Who Murdered Chaucer? – Terry Jones, et al.
• Openly Straight – Bill Konigsberg
• Significant Others – Armistead Maupin
• The Willpower Instinct – Kelly McGonigal
• Overcoming Passive-Aggression – Tim Murphy and Loriann Hoff Oberlin
• Crucial Conversations – Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler
• Amistad: A Novel – David Pesci
• Seeing – José Saramago
• Zazen – Vanessa Veselka

Recent Acquisitions
So after doing really well at the end of last year with minimal book purchases I went a little crazy this month! I bought four physical books and three digital books, add in that I got three books I ordered in late December and a friend gave us (me and the roommates) five books and well my list has increased exponentially already!

Top to Bottom, Left to Right:

• From Alex
  • The Hydrogen Sonata – Iain M. Banks
  • The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
  • Revelation Space – Alastair Reynolds
  • Hyperion – Dan Simmons
  • The Fall of Hyperion – Dan Simmons
• I LOVE JANE! (Books from December and a trip to the Used Book Superstore)
  • The Man Who Loved Pride & Prejudice – Abigail Reynolds
  • All Roads Lead to Austen – Amy Smith
  • James Fairfax – Jane Austen and Adam Campan
  • Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
  • The Edge of Reason – Helen Fielding
  • The Jane Austen Book Club – Karen Joy Fowler
• Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë (I couldn’t resist, I honestly tried but I couldn’t! It was just so gorgeous and reminded me of this one and this one…I might need an intervention.)
• NOT shown but digital books (aka Kindle Daily Deals) I bought:
  • The Bloodletter’s Daughter – Linda Lafferty
  • Remember How I Told You I Loved You? – Gillian Linden
  • Reading Like a Writer – Francine Prose
• Plus a last minute galley request: The Hunger Gays – Nathan Alexander

What’s Next
I clearly have a LOT of books to read based on the books I’ve already checked out of the library. I’ve already checked out almost half as many books this year as I did last year and it’s only January! I guess that’s part of the danger of not having any challenges and having the freedom to do what I want.

I think my biggest goal for the year is to read books that I’ve won in blog contests like The French Lieutenant’s Woman (I’m most of the way finished and will probably finish it by the end of January) and Gone Girl and books people have given me like The Marriage Plot, Becoming a Man, William Shakespeare’s Star Wars and In the Lake of the Woods. And then on top of that I just want to read books off my shelf which we’ll see how we do with that. I may do a purge of books at the end of this year, but hopefully I can make a dent in them and find some gems that I picked up a while ago.