books i read in january
i am genuinely amazed that i was able to read anything considering january was such a rancid fucking month filled with unimaginable horrors taking place every day. nevertheless, i persisted. i only read five books and if i’m being honest, one of them took like three weeks to finish even though i liked it so…anyway, jumping into them.
There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom’s Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids.
i got this from the brighton memorial library :)
This was very different than the things i typically read but I found it very informational in the fact that I realized the US is one of the worst places to raise a child? Because in Norway, they’re putting their kids in prams outside during cold weather to strengthen their immune systems and the parents get like months parental paid leave and their kids are able to exist in nature authentically and then I look at the US and I’m like…oh. CPS would likely be called on me if my kid was left on my backstep in a crib. It genuinely fills me with a palpable sadness that the US is so hostile towards children and families.
The book goes on to talk about the fact that the food is real in the schools, that every child gets a free lunch that is willingly subsidized by paying taxes, that they all ride their bikes to school, and have things called Forest School, where they learn how to survive in the woods and feed themselves on berries and plants. This book was one part hopeful, one part incredibly frustrating because I found myself trying to find something similar to compare it to here in the US and found nothing but immense paywalls and barriers to access the spaces. It was an eye opening look on the price one might pay (both literally and figuratively) f they have a child in the US.
2. How to Break Up With Your Phone
Ugh I’m sorry, I’m one of those people who make grand plans to be different TM in the new year. If anything, I’ve been on my phone more than usual so this book didn’t do shit because I’m in a toxic ass relationship with the thing. But I feel like it was a good primer for people who are interested in disconnecting and don’t have their job involved with being online. Because for me, it’s hard to maintain the work I do and not be online and so while I HATE being on my phone, it’s currently the lifeline to a lot of my projects. I think this book made me think about how I can slowly transition these projects to a more offline platform but it’s been a little difficult. I guess a newsletter is fine but my brain feels so rotted that I feel much more capable of short form narratives than long form. Which is saying something because I used to sit down and be able to write 300 pages worth of fanfic. Oh well, you can only hit your peak once in life, I guess.
3. The Wives of Herrick Hall
This was an arc that comes out in March or May, I honestly can’t remember
Okay so the cover art is leaving something to be desired but I was pulled in by the premise. A woman is discovered to be a lesbian so she’s sent away to some gothic isolated manor where she is to be the lady to another woman who surprisingly turns out to be a lesbian too? And she’s bitchy and older and there’s ghosts involved and it’s very anti-men? It felt like if Jane Eyre stood up for herself more and Rochester was a woman. So honestly 10/10 for the premise overall.
I feel like I raced through this book very quickly because it was so good! There was some spice but it was overall more plot driven which made the pacing feel engaging and moving forward quickly. There’s some murder too which I absolutely loved and this whole enemies to friends to lovers bit that was even better. And the ending made me smile, it was heartwarming and wholesome and while likely impossible for this time period, it made me have hope that someone somewhere was able to live out their life authentically.
4. Hemlock
I got an arc of this but it’s out now in stores!
This is billed as a butch Black Swan and I was like that sounds good as fuck and then was surprised by how mental health/psychosis heavy it seemed which was goofy on my part. It tackled some pretty intense issues like substance abuse and while I am not triggered by that, I think it’s worth mentioning. Our main character Sam is kind of a mess but like in a way that you cringe a little bit at. You’re rooting for them but they are consistently doing things that make you want to scream at them to stop. And the worse part is that they know they should stop, they try to stop, but it never sticks. It’s a frustrating narrative but feels so incredibly real and raw. I loved this book, I thought it was moody, dark, unnerving, complicated. I feel like it explored a lot of about ancestral ties, inherited trauma, generational cycles, etc. All while keeping a queer bent to the narrative. There’s one sex scene that isn’t explicit at all so if you like 99.9% plot in your contemporay fiction, then you will like this.
5. An Island Princess Starts a Scandal
I’ll be honest. I avoided reading this book for the longest time because the cover is just diabolical. And they must’ve realized this because they re-released a new cover version that is not this so good on them for reading the room. But I’m glad I stopped avoiding it because this was GOOD. I genuinely found myself laughing out loud at multiple points in the story. It features a sultry vixen princess who basically wants to spend Paris fucking women before she has to go back home to South America and marry her horrible fiance. So she finds this older lesbian and forces her to show her the lesbian Paris ropes in exchange for selling her her land. It’s insane and when she makes this deal I’m like, not you selling out your ancestral home so you can get fucked in front of the Champs Elysees but it all works out in the end!!! The sex scenes are spicy and plentiful. I physically cringed however when I read phrases like, “hot heat, dipped into her combination, her slick channel,” and told my wife I would say those things to her next time we were in bed and she said she would never talk to me again. So, don’t take notes.
Next month I’ll read more. probably. xx-taylor