January Wrap Up

How am I writing my first wrap up of 2023 already?! While January has been quite a month, I’m still incredibly surprised at how quickly it has gone by. It also means that A Page Full is a year old (well, it turned 1 on the 27th January and I completely forgot!) I might do a little AMA to celebrate or something, so keep an eye out!

Books read:

January has been a fairly quiet month in terms of reading – I could barely concentrate the first couple of weeks (I managed to get Covid), so all I did was play Hades for the first week or so. However, I did manage a few books:

• Emily Wilding’s Encyclopaedia of Fairies – Heather Fawcett
• Wilding – Isabella Tree
• Godkiller – Hannah Kaner
• The Assassin of Grins and Secrets – K.E Andrews
• Notorious Sorcerer – Davinia Evans

I have to say, my standout for January has to be Wilding. It was so nice to read something that aligned with my academic interests and dive back into that world for a spell. I think that, combined with reading some non-fiction for a change, really helped and I really enjoyed reading about how former farmland had been completely transformed. If you’re interested in the concept of re-wilding, then I definitely recommend this – it’s a wonderful insight into how nature can reclaim the land.

Moving onto something new for 2023! Instead of logging my Goodreads challenge this year, I’ve decided to dedicate this section of my wrap ups to clearing my backlog. If you follow me on Twitter, you might already know about Project Backlist, hosted by Kal over at Reader Voracious. When I found out about this, I immediately signed up for it – my Kindle backlog was getting a bit out of hand, as was my physical book backlog.

I spend a couple of days at the beginning of the month collating the books I wanted to add to this list and I ended up with 96 books (please don’t ask me how). I have neatly colour co-ordinated everything and put them all in a rather pretty looking jar I got from my local supermarket 😀 As you can see, it is rather full…

However! I did manage to read 2 books from Project Backlist (Wilding and Notorious Sorcerer) and I’m hoping I can start whittling that backlist down over the next few months. I’m looking forward to it to be honest – there are so many books in there that I have purchased and just never got round to reading at the time, so I’m excited to see what new gems I can discover (albeit, very late!)

Other things:

I think it’s safe to say I’m rather looking forward to February. I had plans for January, but what with not being well and trying to recover, I’ve pushed everything to February instead. I’m sort of starting the new year again I guess!

February also means I’ll hosting a buddy read with Aster Marie (over at Happy Bookish After) and Queenie (over at The Erudite Labyrinth) of The Unbroken by C.L Clark. While this will be a re-read for me (as part of my Sapphic Trifecta re-read), I’m looking forward to seeing their reactions to one of my favourite books of 2021. If you would like to join us, please let me know – the more the merrier!

Not only that, but I’m also doing the Flirty February Bingo reading challenge over on Instagram. It’s hosted by some folks from the Fantasy Fellowship Discord and other bookstagrammers. There are 9 prompts and the best thing is that I’ve managed to fill each of the prompts with Project Backlist books! (I was very happy with that, so February’s wrap up should hopefully see a decent dent in the backlog!)

I’ll finish this month’s wrap up there I think – this one has already been a bit longer than anticipated! I hope your January hasn’t been too bad and that February treats you well 🙂