January 2025 Reading Wrap-Up

As I am blogging less (burnout? Laziness? The slow death of the blog?), I thought I would chat to you guys about my reading last month (maybe touch on my December 2024 reads as I am taking my time on reading lately, but seeing as I mentioned my reads that month in an earlier post, maybe not as there was a LOT of quitting reads that didn’t bring me joy!).

But as you can see the pic, I included the December reads of How to Catch A Boss by Ana Ashley and the Audible Drama of The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (mainly because I only touched on them previous so wanted to show them one more time before I speak January reads).  

Now, I did finish this in January (and both Goodreads and StoryGraph class this as January Reads), but seeing as I audio the majority of this in December, I do class this as a December read, and that was Rescuing the Writer by Nora Phoenix. This is a short story in the Forestville Silver Foxes MM romance series and, yes, I know this is a short story so things have to move much quicker, but I felt so underwhelmed and, the more I think about it, the more icky I feel. Maybe if this was a novella or a full length novel, this could have been explored and lessen, but I just felt very underwhelmed and it’s put my off trying out this series. 

Now, the big mamas: The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan & The Magician’s Guild by Trudi Canavan. These are still my Currently Reading. I knew these would be my “Take Your Time” reads as these are longer than my normal reads, but I didn’t realise these would take me this long. At the time of writing, I am currently 59% into Eye of the World audiobook, read by Rosamund Pike (19 hours 18 minutes into a 32 hours 56 minutes, for those of you curious!) and 68% into my ebook of The Magician’s Guild. Now, both are longer fantasy than I normally go towards, and both are so much slower paced than my normal reads in general (you guys know me, I love my books to move at a nippy speed), but I am weirdly enjoying myself. 

Now, I can’t tell if I am enjoying self with these because I am allowing myself to sink into these worlds, or for another reason but I know I will need to talk to you guys about these when I am finished to keep eyes peeled on the blog as these will be long posts (and, hopefully, I will figure out if I will read the next book in both these series…)

Now, the book I am classing my January read is Designing Terry Prachett’s Discworld by Paul Kidby. Now, he took over as cover artist for Pratchett’s books when the original artist, Josh Kirby, died in 2001 and most of his artwork is cemented as fan folklore for Discworld. I loved reading Kidby ideas on how he designed the characters and Terry’s world and the poking fun over his parodies (there’s one I knew vaguely which was his parody of the Mona Lisa, The Mona Ogg because of that smile/teeth. It’s only when I read his write-up, I found myself cackling and going “I get it now”), as well as loving the little details (as Granny Weatherwax is in the background, disapprovingly glaring, in several Nanny Ogg’s parody, the loving nod towards Josh Kirby in the original cover design for Night Watch and the chess pieces in Check Mort where Pratchett was playing chess with Death [and winning] as this was released while Pratchett was battling Alzheimer’s.)

I’m going to put some of my favourite art below, but I am going to try and read more arty books and going to more museums (I am going to try and be a cultured b***h, even though I will be pretending most of the time!). Or maybe I am just going to read more things and not feel guilty about it! Either way, let’s continue the weird reading into February, shall we?