Monthly Archives: February 2021

January Recap – Reading, Goals and Randomness

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At the end of 2020, I spent a good amount of time examining my priorities and hopes, and setting goals for 2021. A few of the YouTube planners I follow have been talking about the Cultivate What Matters PowerSheets for goal setting for a good while now, and it seemed like a good system, but I really wasn’t up for buying a goal setting workbook on top of all the unfinished notebooks I’ve got lurking about. So, after watching their goal setting prep work, I took pointers from what they did – and after a lot of self-reflection and realistic planning, I emerged with a word of the year and a small set of goals that feel much more relevant and achievable than previous years’ wish lists.

Strangely, my goals for the year have almost nothing to do with reading. I’ll be working through the official Linzthebookworm/Logophile 2021 Reading Challenge, of course, hoping to finish at least 4 levels like I did for 2020, and my official Goodreads goal is 48 books… but the important thing to me about reading this year is my goal of thinking more about the things I’m reading (and watching, and listening to) and trying to identify the things that resonate with me. I want to understand why I like the things I like, and what I don’t like about the things that fall flat for me. Less mindless consumption of media, more thoughtful analysis. It’s a worthy goal. To that end, I started a Google doc as a “media journal” to write notes about the stuff I’m watching and reading, and it’s been very interesting indeed. You may or may not have noticed *wink* that I tend to get wordy from time to time. As of January 31st, this document is now 83 pages, so apparently I have a lot to say.

Another of my goals is to do more writing, and yet another is to do a better job at staying in touch with the people that matter to me. After my 2020 year end recap, I decided that this is something I should try to do more often – ideally, I’d like to do something like it monthly, in combination with a monthly reading challenge recap like I started to do in 2019 and 2020 (and didn’t do a particularly good job at keeping up with). Here we go killing two birds with one stone – welcome to my January 2021!

First up, the reading.

I started the year with a quick read – technically it’s a novella, but at 208 pages, it’s not that much shorter than some full novels (and the length of the next book I read MORE than made up for it). Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson is part of his Stormlight Archive series, and fits in the timeline between Books 3 and 4. I received an ebook copy as a Kickstarter backer for Sanderson’s leatherbound edition of the first book, The Way of Kings (which is BEAUTIFUL, by the way). I wanted to read it in November when it was released, but I didn’t have a spot for it on the 2020 challenge, but for 2021, we had the perfect category at #34 – Read a book with a time of day in the title.

This novella gave us the point of view of two relatively minor characters on a quest that doesn’t have a lot of impact on the plot of the main novels, but gives us a glimpse of answers to some of the mysteries built into Sanderson’s world, and includes some surprisingly heartwarming moments. One of the characters clearly struggles with impostor syndrome, so it’s an interesting read for the character work in addition to the Cosmere lore.

After Dawnshard, I finally got to dig in to the fourth Stormlight Archive novel, released in November. Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive novels are massive, mostly because each tome contains what amounts to a trilogy of smaller novels, a novella’s worth of chapters focused on the backstory of a character (or in this case, two characters), a collection of short stories, and several pages of in-world art, interwoven with snippets of in-world books, letters and poetry. They are in themselves works of art, which is why I decided to collect them in hardcover even though I’ve tried to convert most of my collection to ebooks for the sake of space (and convenience) if I ever move again. I mean, look at this beauty:

The insides are even more gorgeous!

Clocking in at 1270 pages in the Kindle edition, Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson was still a surprisingly quick read. Sanderson’s writing style is very straightforward and easily digestible. While most of his books start out at a slow burn for the first 2/3 or so, building toward the patented “Sanderson Avalanche” (or “sanderlanche”), this one started out with a bang. Two of the major characters in this series are written with mental illnesses as significant parts of their storylines, so it was an excellent choice for challenge prompt #58 – Read a book (Fiction or Nonfiction) involving Mental Illness.

As the fourth book in a planned 5 book arc (in a 10 book series), this volume is well into the development of the world and the characters – yet there is still so much to explore. Our major characters are all in perilous situations (albeit the stakes are a bit lower for a couple of them). There are failures and triumphs and at least one heartbreaking loss. A couple of new villains were introduced, one of which was entirely hate-able, and one extremely interesting in her motivations and interactions with one of the main characters. Some of the major events of the novel were ones I’d been expecting, and at least one plot twist was a huge surprise to me. I feel we’re well set up for the final book of this arc, and I honestly have no idea how it’s going to end. The good thing as a fan of Sanderson’s, he is very open with his writing plans and progress, and he’s very disciplined in his approach. When he says the next book will be out in 3 years, you can pretty much bank on it. I’d say this with a pointed glare at a couple of other popular fantasy authors, but to be fair, Sanderson’s approach is very different, and having never finished a single writing project longer than a short story, I can’t exactly say I’d be doing any better.

From past experience, I know I tend to start out the new year on a reading binge for the first few months, then lose steam around April or May – so I decided to use my momentum to power through some of the longer books on my TBR while I was on a roll, and save the shorter and quicker reads for the doldrums of summer. This is the idea, anyway. My next pick was for prompt #25 – Read a book by a self-published author. I’d been following Elliot Brooks on YouTube since shortly before her first novel was published, and was intrigued by her videos about the process and the characters – so as my third book of the month, I finished Peace and Turmoil.

This was a very ambitious book for a first time author – even if I hadn’t watched her YouTube channel, I would been able to tell she was a Brandon Sanderson fan, as her in-world art and snippets of letters, journal entries, and whatnot between the chapters seemed to be very much inspired by the Stormlight Archive. Overall the story was pretty well crafted, although there were some character choices that didn’t feel like they made a lot of sense. There were political plots upon political plots, which had consequences, and several of the characters were very interesting. Some of the directions the plots went were unexpected (although in my media journal I did end up using the phrase “Chekov’s hair dye”, so there’s that). Unfortunately the focus was split between so many characters, so many kingdoms and plot lines that it felt like we didn’t get enough of some of the best ones. The world building was ambitious – I appreciated the inclusion of not only a large map at the beginning, but a small section of map in each chapter header to show where the chapter was taking place. However, there wasn’t enough description of the settings and the people to get a good mental image, and the differences between the cultures seemed to be fairly arbitrary and mostly down to skin color and eye color. This is the first in a planned series, so hopefully the world will be built in more depth with more exploration of the cultures in future novels. I gave it a 3 star rating, but the main thing that kept me from even thinking about going higher was the need for a better editor. I could see what Elliot was going for in her writing style, but unfortunately there were so many grammatical errors and incorrect word choices that it was a bit jarring. The use (or lack of use) of real world titles and the lack of any coherent naming conventions was also somewhat disconcerting. At one point I was discussing my thoughts with Linzthebookworm, and we concluded one of the character names felt like it was a mashup of Outlander and Wheel of Time, dropped into the middle of Lord of the Rings.

In general I was pretty happy with it, and it showed enough promise that I’m definitely looking forward to reading the next in the series (although hoping there’s better editing, or at least better feedback from beta readers).

For my final January read, I decided to grab the thickest paperback on my TBR pile, which I’d acquired specifically for last year’s challenge prompt of a book that starts with the letter “J”. And as such, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke was absolutely perfect for this year’s challenge #20 – Read a book you meant to read on last year’s challenge.

I wasn’t sure how much I was gong to like this one, especially since the writing style took a hot minute to get used to – it’s an alternative history of England in the 1800’s, and presented as a scholarly work, complete with extensive footnotes.

The beginning of the story was a bit on the slow side, setting up the circumstances and the characters, but my goodness, did it grab my interest once the plot really got rolling. I enjoyed the interplay of the two titular magicians, the ups and downs of their relationship – mentor and student to bitter enemies, and then some. Once I got my groove with the writing style, the language was lovely – evocative and atmospheric, and the descriptions of the world of faerie bleeding into the real world at times was just creepy. I’m guessing this book isn’t for everyone, but with a little patience for the slow start and adjustment to the writing, it’s quite the yarn.

In other areas, January was a pretty great month for me. I made some significant progress toward my home organization/decluttering project goals, and stayed on top of most of the others I’d set for myself. The only area where I really felt like I fell short was my attempt to get back into the Writing Excuses Podcast Season 10 master class – I had done the first handful of lessons a couple of years ago, and then dropped the ball. Going back to the beginning, I was trying to generate new ideas to work with but it’s been a slow start.

Work-wise, we had mandatory overtime in effect and while Martin Luther King Jr. Day was ostensibly a holiday, we were expected to work it anyway (plus the 4 hours of overtime). I much prefer to have the time off, but at least the paychecks were fatter than usual, and that helped with my savings goals, so it’s kind of a wash there. Plus, complaining about having a steady job with good benefits and decent pay is poor form. *blushes*

I’ve been known to resist trends (including social media and popular apps) for far longer than is often warranted (although I still think avoiding TikTok is warranted)… So I finally caved in early January and downloaded Spotify. (Yeah, I know, Cherry, it’s about time.) I started poring over my CD racks and adding the bands and artists to my favorites in order to get better recommendations, and in this process I ran across a bit of nostalgia that hit me like a ton of bricks.

You see, back in the stone age when I was in college, one of my dearest friends and I used to exchange mix tapes (yes, you young whippersnappers, actual cassette tapes) of our favorite songs. We got creative with our presentation, adding in between the songs little snippets of comedy routines or even bits of hilarity from our late night hang out sessions, recorded for posterity. And we named the cassettes with our inside jokes, making up band names and album names for each. The tapes I gave him, five in total over our college years, were all ostensibly from one fictional band that we invented, named Simply Totally Inane. Each side of the 90 minute cassettes I gave him was packed with songs and random sound bite bumpers, and titled with one of the inside jokes that make almost no sense 20-some-odd years later. I’m sure “Forget the Cactus, Call 9-1-1” was hilarious at the time.

In any event, several years later he gifted me with a meticulously mocked up “Best of” CD (Am I the Air Conditioning? The Best of Simply Totally Inane) complete with liner notes and photoshopped pictures from our college adventures as cover art. There were 18 songs, an interesting mixture of late 80’s/early 90’s Christian Rock and a few random alternative/pop songs that I’d been obsessed with. Amazingly, Spotify had 15 of those songs – one of them I was actually surprised wasn’t available (I Don’t Mind at All by Bourgeois Tagg). And voila! The Best of Simply Totally Inane Spotify playlist (and a shiny new obsession) was born.

Other than the nostalgia playlists and finding some albums that I’d forgotten how much I loved, I’ve been checking out some of the suggested music on Spotify, and found a Narnia-lover’s treasure in Sarah Sparks’ Into the Lantern Waste.

Other random favorites of the month – Clean Skin perfume, frosted cinnamon bun flavored hot chocolate K-cups, and Canva.com. I used Canva to design a cover page for my 2021 bullet journal with my word of the year (“create”)… since it’s also going to be my big 5-0 (yeah um how did this happen, I am mentally 25 years old) I added a definition for the Biblical year of jubilee for grins. I started with a nice but fairly generic rock concert poster template, and tweaked it to my satisfaction (see it here).

I also treated myself to a candle subscription box when I was buying one for my mom’s Christmas present – we’re both really enjoying the monthly surprise, and so far the two we’ve gotten have smelled wonderful.

Vellabox December 2020 and January 2021 Lucerna subscription boxes

So talk to me in the comments! What were your favorite things from January? Read any good books you’d recommend? Have you read any of the ones I finished? And have you ever signed up for any interesting subscription boxes? I found some fascinating options when coming up with ideas for Mom’s.