The first round up of 2024 already. January seems to have simultaneously dragged and rushed by!

What I have read

I read quite a bit this month, and finished on 12/100. When I wasn’t well I did some comfort listening by going back to Jodi Taylor yet again, this is my fifth time reading the early St Mary’s books.

What I have read:

• The Nightingale Daughters (Nightingales #12) – Donna Douglas
• The Ghost Woods – C J Cooke
• The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History – Oliver Tearle
• Five on a Hike Together
• The Bookshop of Second Chances – Jackie Fraser
• Why Mummy Drinks at Christmas (Why Mummy #5) – Gill Sims
• Five Have a Wonderful Time
• The Something Girl (Frogmorton Farm #2) – Jodi Taylor
• Just One Damned Thing After Another (Chronicles of St Mary’s #1) – Jodi Taylor
• The Little Bookshop by the Sea – Eliza J Scott
• A Symphony of Echoes (Chronicles of St Mary’s #2) – Jodi Taylor
• The Actress Unscripted (Heather Bay Romance #5) – Amber Eve

And I’m still working on:

• Five Go Down to the Sea
• We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown Up Readers – Marisa Crawford
• Tilly and the Map of Stories (Pages & Co #3) – Anna James
• A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch (Glimmer Falls #2) – Sarah Hawley
• The Secret Book Club – Shauna Robinson
• A Second Chance (Chronicles of St Mary’s #3) – Jodi Taylor

What I have watched

• A few Christmas things crept into early January. Brodie and I watched The Muppets Christmas Carol before he went back to school, as we hadn’t managed to fit it in in December, and I caught up on Call the Midwife’s Christmas special. There was also the Taskmaster New Year Special.
• I’ve been watching Call the Midwife Series 13 since, as well as ER season 3 and 4, and some of the TV show of Time Traveller’s Wife. Disappointingly this was cancelled after one season so it hasn’t really encouraged me to finish it, yet.
• Tuesday night we have been watching season two of And Just Like That (the Sex and the City sequel) and it’s just as bad as the first season.
• We’ve managed a few family movies this month – Jurassic World Dominion which none of us had seen before, then we went right back to the original Jurassic Park which I’ve seen dozens of times but Brodie hadn’t. He also begged for the next Harry Potter, which was Order of the Phoenix. Which he then asked questions all the way through as it’s a bit more complicated than the earlier ones. I also watched The Railway Children Return which wasn’t as good as either of the earlier films, despite still having Jenny Agutter in it.
• We also decided to put Gladiators on one weekend, and after Brodie being adamant that he didn’t want to watch it he was transfixed by it. We’ve now gone back to catch up on the first episode and had many Gladiator-style reenactments in the house.

What I have done

• It has been rather a quiet month with a lot of staying at home, partly due to all the storms and partly because of not being well.
• We made it out for walks twice, once was foggy and once was bitterly cold.
• I managed to complete two jigsaws both combining other interests I have – one a tricky Lego jigsaw and the other a very tricky Jaws one (all that blue!)
• I also had two Lego builds, both Harry Potter ones. The Gryffindor common room I got for my Christmas, then I treated myself to the Charms Classroom as it has been discontinued. (The common room build was accompanied by a bowl of trifle and Call the Midwife). Brodie then helped me create a giant Hogwarts with all my sets on my new jigsawing table.

What I bought

I saw the newish Hodder collection of Five Minute Stories on Kindle for 99p and thought I’d get it. I had sort of assumed that this might be a new version of Five Minute Tales, and I suppose it is, but it’s not the same stories. But I’m sure I can review it or compare it to at least some of the original stories anyway.

How was your January?