Farewell, January! I will miss you! Seriously, I will. I like January. It’s a calm month after the madness of the holidays. Sure it’s cold and snowy, but I don’t mind that. It just gives me a good reason to stay inside and read or bake. Or get some good sleep with my cat snuggled up next to me.

It feels like I did nothing but read this month, but I actually some other things, like visit the used bookstore downtown, spend time with friends, see a couple of movies some live theater.

What I watched:

• Mary, Queen of Scots directed by Josie Rourke, starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie
• The Favourite directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone
• Hamlet written by William Shakespeare, local college production
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 1, starring Avery Brooks, Nana Visitor, Terry Farrell, Colm Meaney, Armin Shimerman, Alexander Siddig, et al. (Netflix)
• Star Trek: Discovery season 2, episodes 1-3, starring Sonequa Martin-Green, Anson Mount, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, Shazad Latif, Wilson Cruz, Mary Chieffo, et al. (CBS All Access)
• Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, season 1, starring Marie Kondo and Marie Iida (Netflix)

What I Read in January:

I read 19 books last month. What. Even? Granted, several of them were fairly short (250 pages or less), but still. That is a lot of books! I even ran out of lines on my bullet journal page for January reads.

• The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye ****
• The Darkness by Ragnar Jonasson translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb ***
• Madame Victoria by Catherine Leroux translated from the French by Lazer Lederhendler ****
• The Beginning Place by Ursula K. Le Guin ****
• Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas *
• Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa ****
• Arrows of the Queen (Heralds of Valdemar #1) by Mercedes Lackey ***
• Sabriel (Abhorsen #1) by Garth Nix ***
• Snow Country Yasunari Kawabata ****
• Arrow’s Flight (Heralds of Valdemar #2) by Mercedes Lackey ***
• Rocannon’s World (Hainish Cycle #1) by Ursula K. Le Guin ***
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated from the Greek by Gregory Hays ****
• The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad #6) by Tana French ****
• Flying at Night, Poems 1965-1985 by Ted Kooser ****
• Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon ***
• The Half-Drowned King by Linnea Hartsuyker ****
• The Saga of the Greenlanders and Erik the Red by Anonymous, translated from the Icelandic by Arthur Middleton Reeves and John Sephton ***
• Exiles’s Honor by Mercedes Lackey ****
• Arrow’s Fall (Heralds of Valdemar #3) by Mercedes Lackey ***

Whew! I mostly enjoyed them; there were only a few books I was so-so about, namely The Darkness and Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen. They were fine, but there were some issues that put me off a bit, namely the number of POVs in The Darkness, and the side stories in Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen. There was only one book I disliked: Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas. No surprises there. It would be difficult to name a favorite of the month, but The Trespasser, Exile’s Honor, Meditations, and The Half-Drowned King would be at the top of the list.

Statistics-wise, 68.4% of the books I read in January were by women, with the remaining ones written by men. This stat was helped by the #ReadingValdemar project I’m taking part in, as four of these titles were by Mercedes Lackey. 52% of my January books were by American authors, while the remaining 42% were by authors from Canada, Iceland, Japan, Australia, Ireland, and one from the Roman Empire. 58% of January’s books were from the library, 31.5% were from my own shelves, and 1 book came from NetGalley. I completed two audiobooks, five eBooks, and the remaining twelve were physical books. I read six adult fantasies, four YA fantasies, and the rest were mystery, historical fiction, literary fiction, poetry, philosophy, and one Icelandic saga.

Just look what happens when I find the charting capability in my spreadsheet program! You get all sorts of fun statistics!

Anyway. I successfully completed the first part of my 2019 reading plan by completing the month’s goals: two unread books from my own shelves, two works in translation, one book of poetry, and one book from Clifton Fadiman’s Lifetime Reading Plan. I don’t anticipate having a problem completing this in February, either.

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So much for January.

What’s on the docket for February?

A lot!

I intend to read (or reread) some of the books I got for Christmas:

• Jade City (The Green Bone Saga #1) by Fonda Lee
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner

For my 2019 Reading Plan:

• Unread From My Shelves (1): Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner
• Unread From My Shelves (2): Jade City by Fonda Lee
• Works in Translation (1): The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima
• Works in Translation (2): I’m not sure yet…
• Poetry: Also not sure yet, but I didn’t read Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus last month so I might try again in February
• Clifton Fadiman’s Lifetime Reading Plan: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima

Other books I intend to read (or finish) in February:

• The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton
• Exile’s Valor by Mercedes Lackey
• Magic’s Price (Last Herald-Mage #3) by Mercedes Lackey
• Take a Thief by Mercedes Lackey
• Ice by Anna Kavan
• For the Sake of the Game: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger
• The Eye of the World (Wheel of Time #1) by Robert Jordan

That sounds like a lot, but Lackey’s books are such quick reads that I’ll get through them pretty quickly, and I don’t think the Sherlock Holmes short stories will take long, either. It’s the longer books like The Queens of Innish Lear, The Eye of the World, and Jade City that will take the most time either because they’re long, dense, or long and dense.

What I Plan to Watch (or continue watching) in February:

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 1, starring Avery Brooks, Nana Visitor, Terry Farrell, Colm Meaney, Armin Shimerman, Alexander Siddig, et al. (Netflix)
• Star Trek: Discovery season 2, episodes 1-3, starring Sonequa Martin-Green, Anson Mount, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, Shazad Latif, Wilson Cruz, Mary Chieffo, Michelle Yeoh, et al. (CBS All Access)
• Medici: The Magnificent season 2 starring Daniel Sharman, Bradley James, Sarah Parish, Sean Bean, Alessandra Mastronardi, Aurora Ruffino, et al. (Netflix)

I’d also like to get through a few of the titles that have been on my Netflix queue and unwatched for ages, like Bokeh, Mountain, The Tigers of Scotland, Cezanne et Moi, Miss Hokusai, and others. I can’t think of any movies I want to see in the theater this month.

So those are my bookish and watching plans for February. A lot of things I’m looking forward to diving into!