The first round up of 2025 couldn’t come too soon as January has felt like it had at least 12 weeks in it.
What I read
I have to conclude that there were only 4ish weeks in January, or I certainly would have read more than 14 books.
That puts me nicely on track for 150 in total.
How am I doing on my other goals? So far I’ve read a mix of books with plenty of new ones. I haven’t borrowed any physical books from the library.
But I have read six books about bookshops and libraries. Oops. I just can’t resist them!
What I read:
- Christmas is Murder – Val McDermid
- The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society – CM Waggoner
- The Mermaids Singing (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #1) – Val McDermid
- Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3) – Molly Harper
- A Christmas Gift for the East End Library Girls (Library Girls #3) – Patricia McBride
- The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps – Edward Brooke-Hitching
- Nurses on Call (Nightingales, #13) – Donna Douglas
- Bookshop at the Back of Beyond (House at the Edge of Magic, #3) – Amy Sparkes
- The Winter Cottage – Rachael Lucas
- Memoirs of a Garroter (Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries #4) – Steffanie Holmes
- The Secret Mountain
- A New Chapter at the Borrow a Bookshop (Borrow a Bookshop #
- Five Go Adventuring Again (Famous Five graphic novel, #2) – review coming later this week
- The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street (Vanderbeekers, #1) – Karina Yan Glaser
I ended the month still working through:
- The Secret of Killimooin
- A Better Tomorrow for the East End Library Girls (Library Girls #4) – Patricia McBride
- The Harry Potter Wizarding Almanac – JK Rowling
- What You Are Looking For Is in the Library – Michiko Aoyama
What I watched
- Our regulars of Only Connect, House of Games plus the Taskmaster New Year Special. We finished Lego Masters New Zealand and decided to try Ghosts (the original UK version of course) and are loving it so far.
- I also watched some Charmed, Call the Midwife and all of Harry Potter Baking Wizards.
- I feel like we must have watched more movies with Brodie than just one but I only wrote one down, and that was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He liked it better than Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- My sister and I finally finished Is it Cake Holiday, and have gone back to Ten Years Younger.
What I did
- We made it out for a couple of walks, one along the riverfront and one in the woods.
- I finished my Harry Potter jigsaw (this one I built from the inside and did out outer edge last as it was so difficult!) and then a floral scene jigsaw which was even harder as so many of the pieces fitted together even though they were in the wrong place.
- It turned out to be a month of mini books. I got some sets of Mini Brand books for Christmas and then bought myself some more as there are 40 to collect. No Blytons though.
- I then started making mini books as I had a set from a year or two ago which I’d barely started. Most were pre-printed and just had to be cut out, folded and stuck together, but there were some blanks too, which Brodie helped me with.
- Then there were over 80 even smaller ones to make for my miniature bookshop scene. Again, no Blytons but I have had thoughts of printing the book covers in various sizes and making my own!
- And lastly – I was on TV! Very briefly, it’s true, but I was on the local news as they covered the launch of an arts and crafts space in the library.
How was your January?
Fiona
pippastef
worldofblyton
World of Blyton 
In January I’ve read 14 German children’s books (Pucki series and two others) and sorted them out, donated them to our public library which builds up a German and a Spanish book section.
Now I’m in the middle of another German book series for girls (Putzi) (followed by Hummelchen) which I will also sort out which provides some of my adult literature books like Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks series with shelf space. So far they were piled up on top of other books.
I promised myself to read 150 children’s books this year (and already miss reading regular novels tremendously!!!) in order to sort out maybe 100 of them. No Blytons though this year, I have lots of other children’s books collected, but need to reduce my collection.
We watched lots of “Law & Order Special Victims Unit” episodes, are almost done with season 17. Moreover, we watched “A Kind of Murder” (Patricia Highsmith adaptation with Patrick Wilson) and 8 movies with Liam Neeson (we are both Neeson fans), for tomorrow and Saturday “The Marksman” and “Schindler’s List” are left. I watched an incredibly thrilling older movie for the 4th or 5th time which I can highly recommend (but not for Brodie), it’s called “Narrow Margin” with Gene Hackman and Anne Archer in her best role.
And we booked our vacations this year, André will play golf in Florida with his two old golf buddies in late March for a week like he does every year, plus we’ll meet the “Fugitive” group (there was a very popular TV series in the mid 1960’s called “The Fugitive” with David Janssen) from 16th until 19th of October in Boston and booked our Popham Beach cottage for 20th of October until 4th of November.
Due to the very expensive Germany trip in December (when André ended up in a Nuremberg hospital) we can’t afford the usual May trip, so I’m very much looking forward to October.
I almost forgot. At the end of December we watched the first two Indiana Jones movies and will watch the next three from this weekend on. We just received “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” on DVD from amazon. We watched it at the movie theater at the Blackstone Mall, but the sound was way too loud. So I stuffed Kleenex tissues into my ears and still was forced to protect my ears with my fingers. Of course, I hardly got any of the dialogues that way. 😦
Oh, and my long-awaited first of two boxes with 18 DVD’s and 12 books arrived from Germany. Once a year I order 51 used books and new DVD’s at amazon dot de and a friend from Hamburg unpacks them all and puts them into two sturdy boxes and after ca. 3 weeks the box arrives in Massachusetts. Yesterday she sent the second box. It always feels like Christmas and birthday in one day for me when the box arrives at our house. 🙂
It’s way too cold to go outside, but I hope the biting ice cold wind will be over by early March and I can start walking every morning again. Right now my only exercise is the recumbent bike in our living room while watching movies (well, parts of movies).
LikeLike