December 2022 Recap: Home Alone for the Holidays

And with that, 2022 comes to a close – I’m rather impressed with my lack of procrastination when it comes to the blog (although there was plenty in other areas of my life). This monthly recap will also serve as the year end challenge wrap-up, since after my big mid-year catch up post I managed to stay on top of the monthly posts.

Shall we start with the reading? In the month of December I finished 4 books, ending the year with a total of 53 – which definitely exceeded my annual goal of 48. I didn’t manage to complete the entire challenge – yet again – but I finished the first 3 levels, came mighty close to finishing the 4th, and took a big bite out of Level 5, so I’d consider it a pretty big win, all told.

First up in December, I read the second in Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga, Jade War. This Asian-inspired fantasy series is heavy on the politics and family drama, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. The premise of the magic system is that the mineral jade unlocks certain physical, mental and mystical powers in most humans – although only those with the right genetic makeup and intensive training can use it safely long term. Real jade is only available on the island of Kekon, whose natives have developed the right combination of genetic tolerance and sensitivity to make use of it, and have developed their culture around it.

The culture is so interesting – it’s a refreshing change to find a fantasy world that isn’t a variation of medieval Europe – and the writing is engaging. And since the main setting is the capital city of Kekon, this book was the perfect choice for challenge prompt #32, Read a book that takes place on an island. I plan to finish the trilogy this coming year – however I have to squeeze it into the challenge. [5 stars]

My second read was The Wisdom of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton. The Father Brown stories were recommended by my sister-in-law a good while back, and I’ve read one collection already. They are fun little mystery short stories, solved by an observant priest with a healthy dose of common sense. A couple of the individual stories are a bit problematic to modern sensibilities, but overall I had a great time with this collection, and it was a perfect choice for challenge #41, Read a book with the word Wisdom in the title. [3.5 stars]

Next, I burned through this touching romance in two evenings – Five Winters by Kitty Johnson is the story of a woman with an unrequited crush on her best friend’s older brother, and her journey over the course of five consecutive Christmas seasons to find the life she wants. There were scenes that brought me to tears, and scenes that made me laugh, and throughout it all was a strong thread of friendships so close that they are family. Definitely a heartwarming choice for prompt #39, Read a book that takes place around your favorite holiday. [3.75 stars]

I finished 2022 with Daniel O’Malley’s The Rook, which at 512 pages made a great option for prompt #37, Read a book over 500 pages. I don’t remember how I came across this book – I had to have seen a recommendation in a YouTube video or a book blog or something, but I didn’t make a note of it when I added it to my TBR. I had such a great time reading this book – I recommended it to my sister-in-law, since it definitely has vibes of Charles Stross’ The Laundry Files that she’d recommended to me, with a dash of Dollhouse for good measure. And it’s funny.

The opening page hooked me – it begins with a letter addressed to “Dear You,” which continues with “The body you’re wearing used to be mine.” What follows is a wild and quirky ride of spy fiction, conspiracy, supernatural powers, crazy paranormal happenings, and the main character with amnesia learning about who they are – or were – and developing an identity of their own. [4.5 stars]

Other than reading, I watched a few movies – mostly during my 11-day Christmas Staycation. My trip to visit my mom for the holiday had to be cancelled on account of snowpocalypse, seeing as how the impending high winds and dangerous wind chill would have made travel iffy if not outright impossible. Since Mom and I usually marathon Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies, I unironically enjoyed some sappy holiday offerings on Netflix starring 2000’s icons (Lindsay Lohan’s Falling For Christmas and Freddie Prinze, Jr.’s Christmas With You), as well as The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special which was hilarious and heartwarming in equal measure. My favorite film offering of the month, however, was Glass Onion (Knives Out 2), which was a highly entertaining, well crafted mystery, and Janelle Monae just slayed her every scene. I also started watching Fringe, but haven’t gotten very far into it yet. I was a huge X-Files fan in the 90’s so this show has nostalgic vibes for me.

After a couple of months off, I returned to doing nail art again for the holidays…

Otherwise, I was amused by my eclectic Spotify Wrapped playlist, made a delicious batch of Pumpkin Oatmeal cookies, picked up a second MoviePalette representation of another of my favorite Buffy episodes (currently contemplating which episode I want to finish the set of 3), and visited the Desert Botanical Gardens Las Luminarias again with my friend Judy, per our yearly tradition. Best photos of December below.

So that was my December, and with that we are wrapped up with the 2022 reading challenge – full State of the Challenge report is below. Come talk to me in the comments! Did you play along with me this year? What was your favorite prompt on this year’s challenge list? How about the most unexpected book you read this year? Any tasty holiday treats? What are you looking forward to most in 2023? I’m looking forward to hearing from you! (Yes, you. You know who you are. Stop pretending I’m talking to someone else.)

The Linzthebookworm/Logophile 2022 Reading Challenge

Level 1: Book of the Month Club [12/12 complete]
1. Read a book that cost less than $5 – The Paid Bridesmaid – Sariah Wilson
2. Read a book that is under 350 pages – Sign of the Unicorn – Roger Zelazny
3. Read a book that was recommended to you – On the Fence – Kasie West
4. Read a newly published book (within the past year) – Cytonic – Brandon Sanderson
5. Read a book that has a type of plant or flower in the title – These Tangled Vines – Julianne Maclean
6. Read a book because of the cover – Shatter Me – Tahereh Mafi
7. Read a book about a mythical creature – Blood Trade – Faith Hunter
8. Read a book that takes place in the future – Leviathan Falls – James S.A. Corey
9. Read a book by an author that’s new to you – Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire
10. Read a book from NPR’s top 50 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the past decade – The Martian – Andy Weir
11. A book by an author whose first or last name has 5 letters – Mystic Dragon – Jason Denzel
12. Free Space – Pick any book! – The Hating Game – Sally Thorne

Level 2: Casual Reader Club [12/12 complete]
13. Read a book published 5 years ago – Turtles All the Way Down – John Green
14. Read a Speculative Fiction – Scythe – Neal Shusterman
15. Read the first book in a duology – King of Scars – Leigh Bardugo
16. Read the second book in a duology – Rule of Wolves – Leigh Bardugo
17. A book that was published when you were 5 years old – The Hand of Oberon – Roger Zelazny
18. Read a book by an author named Alex, Alexander, Alexandra (or variant) – The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith
19. Read a book about Zombies – The Year of Eating Dangerously – K. Bennett
20. Read a book with a black cover – I’ve Got Your Number – Sophie Kinsella
21. Read a book from AbeBooks.com’s list of 100 (fiction) books to read in a lifetime – The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
22. Read a book with the word City in the title – City of Girls – Elizabeth Gilbert
23. Read a book about a musician (non-fiction or fiction) – Perfect Harmony – Nora Roberts
24. Free Space – Pick any book! – Tricky Twenty-Two – Janet Evanovich

Level 3: Dedicated Reader Club [12/12 complete]
25. A book with a title that has 5 letters – Haven – A.R. Ivanovich
26. Read a book published by Macmillan (or subsidiary) – The Ruin of Kings – Jenn Lyons
27. Read a book with a title that doesn’t start with an article (A, An, The) – Raven Cursed – Faith Hunter
28. Read a book you recently acquired – Black Arts – Faith Hunter
29. Read a book that’s been on your TBR for over a year– The Dragon’s Path – Daniel Abraham
30. Read a Revenge Story – The Rage of Dragons – Evan Winter
31. Read a book by Philippa Gregory – The Lady of the Rivers – Philippa Gregory
32. Read a book that takes place on an island – Jade War – Fonda Lee
33. Read a book that does not have a person (or people) on the cover – Dark Matter – Blake Crouch
34. A book that you intended to read on last year’s challenge – A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
35. Read a Psychological Thriller – The Shadow Box – Luanne Rice
36. Free Space – Pick any book! – Turbo Twenty-Three – Janet Evanovich

Level 4: Speed Reader Club [10/12 complete]
37. Read a book over 500 pages – The Rook – Daniel O’Malley
38. Read a book that starts with the letter Z (or has Z in the title) – Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating – Christina Lauren
39. Read a book that takes place around your favorite holiday – Five Winters – Kitty Johnson
40. A book with 5 objects on the cover – Pawn’s Gambit – Rob J. Hayes
41. Read a book with the word Wisdom in the title – The Wisdom of Father Brown – G.K. Chesterton
42. Read a Dystopian Fiction – The Circle – Dave Eggers
43. Read a book by an author with the same name as one of your parents (Biological, Step, Adopted) – The Light of Eidon – Karen Hancock
44. Read a book that a movie/show you’ve watched is based on but have yet to read (example: Watched The Hobbit, but never read the Hobbit) – Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
45. Read a book about a Saint (non-Fiction or Fiction)
46. Read any book from the Men’s Health most popular book list – The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins
47. Read a book published in a year that was important to you
48. Free Space – Pick any book! – Hardcore Twenty-Four – Janet Evanovich

Level 5: Overachiever Club [7/12 complete]
49. Read the 5th book in a series or an author’s 5th novel – Death’s Rival – Faith Hunter
50. Read a True Crime book – If You Tell – Gregg Olsen
51. Read a book by Georges Simenon (or one of his Pen Names)
52. A book with the number 5 in the title – Look Alive Twenty-Five – Janet Evanovich
53. Read a book that takes place in Russia – A Train to Moscow – Elena Gorokhova
54. Read a book by an author using initials as part of their name – A Dream So Dark – L.L. McKinney
55. Read a book that has a title in the form of a question
56. Read a banned book from this banned book list – Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher
57. A book with at least 5 prominent characters
58. Read a book that Linz read previously (see book review archive here) – Deadheading – Paul Cristo
59. Read a book that Tress read previously (see reading category archive here)
60. Free Space – Pick any book!

February Recap – Reading, Favorites and Whatnot

Happy March, internet friends and family! The first week of the month kind of got away from me, but “better late than never” is a thing, so… voila!

The month of February was a good one overall, even though I only finished three books – but I was working on some chunkers, and there was a fair amount of time spent doing other stuff while I was at it. If you’re just looking for the State of the Challenge report, you’ll find it here.

My first read of February was a re-read – for prompt #3, Reread a book that makes you happy, I thought long and hard about what actually makes me happy. I could have gone for a Dresden Files novel, or yet another Wheel of Time reread, but instead I grabbed a contemporary romance that I remembered having a lot of fun with. I was going for light and fluffy – but I’d forgotten that underneath the “best friends to lovers” story, Crazy for You by Jennifer Crusie has some pretty disturbing moments where the main character is being stalked by an ex who just can’t take “no” for an answer.

I am a sucker for the friends to lovers trope though – my favorite fictional couple from a TV show has an amazing best friends to husband and wife story that spans several seasons (you got me, Agents of SHIELD fans, right?).

Next up in February was a book I’d been intrigued by for a while. Michael J. Sullivan’s Riyria Revelations series was very enjoyable and doesn’t get nearly enough attention (and BookTuber Jashana is a major fan of his Legends of the First Empire series) so I figured Age of Myth was a great choice for #9, Read a book by an author named Michael/Mike/Michelle or variant. This series is set thousands of years before the original Riyria books, in the same world, and it’s interesting to get some of the history that’s shaped it. If you haven’t checked out Riyria, it’s not actually necessary to read the other series before these prequels, but I’d recommend them anyway!

The story featured a prophecy of sorts that played out pretty much exactly how I predicted it, and several events that while I didn’t actually expect them were overall pretty predictable if I’d slowed down enough to think about what I expected to happen…. however there were some really interesting twists, and the book ended with some events that set up future conflict in the series that I’m really interested to see where it goes.

I was kind of all over the map in picking what category I was going to cover next – one of the things I love about this challenge is that it gives me a lot of flexibility to mood read, or I can fill in the challenge list with what I intend to read for each prompt and go down the list in order if I want. Usually, I don’t want to go in order, and this month was no exception. After I finished Age of Myth, I jumped down to Level 4 and read my selection for #41, Read a book where the main character is elderly: A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle.

We’ve met the main character of this novel in The Small Rain, which I read for last year’s challenge. In the first book, we see the childhood and adolescence of Katherine Forrester, who is the daughter of a concert pianist and a composer, and well on her way to becoming a pianist of note in her own right. In A Severed Wasp, we see her at the end of an illustrious career as a famous concert pianist, a widow in her seventies who has returned to her childhood home in New York City to try to come to terms with her past grief and traumas. I had mixed feelings about this book, especially about the resolution to the mystery that had been set up early on in the story… but the writing was lovely, and the exploration of the themes of grief, faith, and unconventional lifestyles was thought provoking.

While I was reading A Severed Wasp, my challenge buddy Linz was working her way through the 6th Outlander novel, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, which I’d read before, so she was sending me comments every now and then. Of course, it had been six years since I read it, and I’ve definitely read a lot of other things since, so my memory of the details was fuzzy… so of course I had to follow suit and re-read it for myself. This one was just shy of 1,000 pages, though, so I didn’t manage to finish before the month was done.

In non-reading news, I took a quick road trip up to my best friend’s house for a weekend and got to play some games, do crafts with one of her kiddos, and binge watch most of WandaVision in one evening. We also watched a few movies – an old favorite, Roxanne… a new favorite, Knives Out… and one I hadn’t actually seen before, but I’d read the book – Timeline, based on the novel by Michael Crichton.

Other favorite things of the month included a new Hamilton-related t-shirt that I purchased from Etsy on the recommendation of YouTuber Jessica Braun (this shirt is so soft and comfortable, I adore it)… My first cast iron skillet, which was my selection for my 10 year company anniversary gift (the box said it was lightweight… trying to lift it with one hand determined this was a lie – but it’ll make a great weapon in case of intruders)… And a ’90’s alternative Spotify playlist posted by one of my #TwitterOfTime friends, Rob Christianson. Rob and his wife make a couple of similar t-shirts with Wheel of Time characters, check them out!

The State of the Challenge Report is on Page 2… so aside from that, my friends, talk to me in the comments! What are you currently reading? Did you watch WandaVision? Do you dig ’90’s alternative music, and who’s your favorite band from that genre? And what’s your favorite t-shirt to wear right now?

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January Recap – Reading, Goals and Randomness

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.

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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.