 Hello friends! How are we all doing? I'm acting as if I'm happy, but I'm not. I'm actually really not happy because today it is time for our January Wrap Up, which was undoubtedly my worst reading month ever in my entire life. It is an experience for me to go through how I want to. That might seem dramatic, but it's not. I had a terrible, terrible start to my reading year. I don't even want to talk about it. I don't want to do a wrap up. It's probably going to be quite quick because I don't like dwelling in the negativity, but we're going to talk about it today and then we're going to expunge it from a memory because this just makes me sad. Generally, I want, like, I want to love everything I read. As we know, that's like my whole goal of this year and it started off an absolutely diabolical, crazy, inhumane start. I shouldn't have to go through this! As we're getting to, I barely read this month in terms of, for me, how much I usually read. I barely read. I actually didn't read anything for the first 11 days of the year, I don't think, because I was so ill at the start of the year. So I barely read anything and my average rating was the worst on record. It was the worst since records began. How humiliating and degrading. It's so bad, guys. Why has, why? I'm a nice person. I shouldn't have to go through this. Anyways, if you've watched my raps before, you'll know we go through this reading stats first, then we go through all the books and I tell you what their individual ratings were and then we go through just disappointment, surprises and hits. This month, there are no hits. As we'll get into, I will tell you now, I did have two 4.5s this month, but one was a reread that I'm on my third reread of and usually I give it a five star and I gave it a 4.5 this time, which, you know, it's still a five star overall but this reread was a 4.5. And then the last book I read in January was a 4.5 but it's coming up for this weekend's vlog and I don't want to tell you. You guys, I've spoken to you about this on Instagram before. Like, do you want me to tell you these books where I've read to them in the previous month but the reading vlog isn't out yet? You said no. Keep the suspense and I think that's the right decision. I don't think we should talk about it. So I think it's quite a momentous occasion that happens in the vlog and I don't want to ruin its moment that it has. So I did have two 4.5s so I technically do have one hit because I wouldn't class a rereader as a hit. So I do have one hit but we can't talk about it. So there's no hits. Overwhelmingly negative. Shall we get into it and start with the reading stats? Okay, so in terms of number of books read, I read eight books in January which for me, it's very low. I'm so sad. It's very low. For me, I usually average I'd say between 12, let's say 11 and 15 books a month. I can't remember the last time I read eight books in a month. Yeah, let's wrap up here for me. I have not felt really because my reading has been so bad. I have not really felt a motivation to read. Even now, right now, speaking now, like eight days in February, I'm still not feeling that. I'm hoping that will come later into the month but like I'm behind on my reading because I'm not feeling it and I don't know what's wrong. I need to like, I haven't really read properly since like the Goodreads video. Maybe that Goodreads video just burns me out. No, it's my favorite version of it. I'm never stopping doing that. But yeah, since like the end of like mid, mid kind of mid December, I haven't really been in my reading game. So I'm just craving, I was thinking about this last night as I was falling asleep, like I was picturing the type of book I wish I could read and it's like a feel like I'd love a mystery that I'd love or I'd love like some kind of gothic like really atmospheric book that I'd like. I just want something that really ignites me. I need to be like given a bit of a restart, you know what I mean? I need a book that comes along and jolts me awake and I haven't had that yet this year. In terms of pages read, I read 2297 pages which is low for me that averages out to a 74 pages per day, which we like to be over 100 at the very least. 74 pages per day and an average pages per book of 287. Now let's talk about the average rating. My average rating this month is a three on the dot three, three stars, three stars. No. What? No. I want us to remember my average rating forever is a 3.7. The average rating I'm aiming to get above this year is a 3.8. We are off to a diabolical start. My worst ever reading month I've had before this I think was like May last year and that was a 3.11. Three. Average rating of three. Doesn't that sound to shiver down your spine? Like what? Horrible, horrible, horrible. And then the average time a book has spent on my TBR was six months. That is like completely skewed at either end of the spectrum. I had one book that had been on my TBR 10 months. I had a one book that had been on my TBR for 41 months, which was one of the, which was the book I read for Wrapped Up this month because they're all the oldest books my TBR and everything else had only been on my TBR for like a day and been on my TBR for a month. Oh and I have started tracking my spending, which I told you guys I was going to do. In January I spent, this isn't great, I spent 86 pounds on books, which is a lot higher than average for me because most of the books I had to read in January and I'm reading at the start of February I had to buy for those vlogs, whereas I don't have to for a lot of my videos coming up. So yeah 86 pounds is kind of diabolical. That's how much I spent on books in January. Okay let's get into the charts quickly because this is the only fun thing we've got to talk about let's be honest. In terms of genre, I read five fantasy, one mystery, one romance and one sci-fi. In terms of the formatting of the books I read six novels and two novellas. In terms of writings I had one one star, one two star, one 2.5 star, two three stars, one 3.5 and two 4.5 for the average rating three, dear god. In terms of all the status I read two debuts, five authors that were new to me and one author that I'd read from before. So that might be part of the issue. Maybe in the next few months I need to prioritize reading from authors that I've read from before and know I enjoy because usually that's 50-50 for me between authors I read from before and authors that are debut and new to me. So that being like an obvious statistic that is different from the usual might be might give us a pointer. In terms of the source type, the way I read the book, one was an audiobook and seven were mixtures meaning I had the audiobook and the physical book. I need the audiobooks at the moment. Usually that is not the case. Usually I have quite a few books I read a month where I just read the physical. I'm in need of audiobooks right now to get to get through life. We need this. This is essential. This is a crisis. In terms of how I acquired the books, five of the books I bought for myself, one was from Everand and two were gifted to me. In terms of audience, seven were adult and one was YA. Sorry I'm just not reading YA anymore. It's a problem I know. And then in terms of series stats, three were first in a series but I'm not continuing any of those series so I have not started any series this year. One was a series that I'm part way through, one was a companion and six were stand-alones. Okay I think that is all of our stats. Let's get into the books that I read this month and their ratings. So the first book I read this month was Emily Wilds and Cyclopedia of Ferries by Heather Fawcett which I gave three stars. Then I read Godkiller by Hannah Canair which I gave two stars. Uprooted by Naomi Novick which I gave one star. Then me and Tom listened together to Every Heart of Dora by Sean McGuire. This was my reread which I gave 4.5 stars on this reread. We're going to be listening to the way we're trying to do together in the car. We've decided because our audio book choices. And I read River Woman, River Demon by Jennifer Given which I gave 2.5 stars. The Team Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard which I gave three stars. The Book Eaters by Sunny Dean which I gave 3.5 stars. And then a secret book that I gave 4.5 but I can't tell you about. Okay let's get into the disappointments which is the bulk of the rest of this Okay my number one disappointment was uprooted by Naomi Novick. I won't spend too long on this because there is an entire reading vlog just for this book but I gave this one star. Oh my god this was so diabolically boring. I keep saying diabolical for everything but genuinely feels how it is how it feels. I feel like there's a scooby-doo villain like plaguing my life at the moment and like controlling me in my reading. That is so mean. This is about a girl who lives in this village where there's this magician they all call the dragon. He's not a dragon. This is me off. Don't call him a dragon if he's not a dragon. Who takes a girl every 10 years from the village to work for him and she gets chosen and she maybe can do magic. That's it. This was so boring. This was so wrong and nothing happened. Nothing happened. For a stand-in fantasy I don't understand the point of this. I don't understand the point of it. So many people told me I was going to love this. This is like one of I looked back on it. I got this in September 2020. September 2020. That's been on my TBR for a long time. So many people told me I didn't join this because I loved Bare the Nightingale series by Katherine Arden. They're kind of similar in terms of their this like slow enchanting supposedly fantasy with kind of Russian. I think this is more like other European like other Eastern European country inspired but like that kind of you know part of the world inspired fantasy. Oh I didn't vibe with the writing and here's the thing. I've heard from so many people that this isn't as good as Spinning Silver but I wanted to read this before I was Spinning Silver because this came out first and also it used to be on Goodreads marked as a series but it's not. But I remember getting this because I went and looked on Goodreads and they were marked as a series but they're not. It's a conspiracy theory that I'm actually interested in. And yet I really thought me and Naomi Novick would get along but the writing cut the cameras. I just was so bored. I was so bored. I did not think it was pace well. I did not think any of the characters had any kind of characterization. I thought the romance was godawful. I thought it's all terrible. I don't have a single nice thing to say about this book. And my mom always said... I don't think my mom ever did say to me if you have nothing I say don't say at all because I growing up I wasn't... I don't like being mean. I avoid confrontation. I'm actually very bad at confrontation. In my personal life I like I would do anything to keep everyone happy. I do not like confrontation but at last Naomi Novick you have pushed me to the brink because I hated this. I hated it. I hated it. I think it's really bad. Moving on. Let's talk about a big disappointment because the first 100 pages of this had the potential to be five-star with a woman with a demon. We have a woman whose husband is accused of murdering their close friend and she is photographic if he's innocent. I was gonna say she's trying to like help defend him but she's not. Girl I loved the first 100 pages of this. I thought the mischievous set up in a really interesting way. Our girly practices like magic informs and I thought that was really interesting. She was very interesting in the first 100 pages. Very interesting characters from the perspective of dear god did it go downhill. She... well they're speechless. The last 100 pages of this is probably a one-star. We've averaged out to a 2.5 because I got whiplash reading this book. I don't know how to deal with that. She makes the worst decisions and she has these kids right. She's a kind of an age layer. I think they're like seven and ten or something. They're young. She... can I spoil it? No I don't want to spoil it because this is like a new book. I usually only spoil like older books or like books I don't think anyone's gonna read. I just need to talk to someone who's read this about how awful the decision she makes half everything this book is and what it puts her kids through. It's actually psychotic. Let's just say she does something really bad like she should not be doing in this situation. Yes she's a complex character I understand why she's doing it but her daughter walks in on this and is visibly so upset. Remember her dad has just been arrested for murder. Her dad has just been arrested for murder and she this woman is like she just goes and runs up to her daughter and holds her face in her hands and says like darling or something. That's it. No explanation and when the kids are not happy with this current situation and what their mother is doing she's like they're just avoiding me. I don't know what's going on. Her son has stopped speaking. It's absolutely crazy and it's not written in a way where I really feel like the author is really condemning what she's doing. It's just supposed to be a fun time. This isn't a fun time in my opinion. Not a fun time and let me just say this is a mild spoiler but there are no repercussions for actions. This terrible thing that I view it as it's not so much what the action necessarily is. It's her role as a mother and what it is doing to her kids and how selfless she's being that I object to most. Yet there's no repercussions for it at the end. It was so disappointing because I really thought there was going to be a success here and there wasn't. Then I read Godkiller by Hannah Kinnear for my Patreon book club. This is a fantasy about... That's quite dramatic. I give it to self because God knows what's going on in this book. There's like gods but I think they're like human made and we're following three characters. One's a young girl who has a little god that like is attached to her. One is a god killer and the other guy is like a baker who was best friends with the king who they had a war with the gods like a couple years ago. We're following these characters and they end up like merging together on a journey. Nothing happens in this. Nothing happens. The writing felt very debuied. The pacing was bad. I think this is going to be a trilogy. I think it could have been a geology because they failed spoiler alert. Mild spoilers. Nothing is achieved in this book. The quests they go on, nothing is achieved right? Nothing. You don't come out of this book feeling any kind of satisfaction and it really just felt like to me a book that really thought it was clever and really thought it was doing something and it wasn't. You're so clever. Oh my god, you're so clever. You know this fantasy where it's like oh this is so like intelligent you know and it's not. The world building feels so incomplete because it kind of like keeps having inside jokes for itself. Like it keeps referring to that war or things that happened but the world building at the same time this happens a lot. I think in fantasy felt overwhelming like we're just being bombarded with these gods and shit but also I have no clue what's going on. I can't understand the dynamics between people and gods. We love them but we want to kill them. I don't get it. No get it, don't get it. And then our last disappointment. I won't spend too long on them again because there is a whole reading vlog and I know it's traumatic. I don't want to speak about it but it's not as big a disappointment because it was a three star but Emilia Wiles and Psychopathia for Fairies is a disappointment because I thought it was going to be a five star. I picked it as my first book of the year. Everything is maybe all leads back to Emilia Wiles. It's all it's for. Maybe. My superstition is coming true. I don't get a five star as my first book of the year. Everything is ruined. We're following Emilia Wiles who is making an Encyclopedia of Fairies. She's studying the fairies and it's like a romance also between her and this guy. I did not like this guy. I did not like his guy. I didn't like the romance. Everything else, the footnotes in it, I really enjoyed the setting. It felt like Norway inspired. I love having visited Norway. It felt so vivid and I could really imagine the fairies and that setting. I thought it was so cool but the romance, uh-uh-uh, and when it really is a romanticy, I think this could be class as a romanticy. We're in trouble. I'm not fiving with the romance. Am I yet to read a book that could be class as a romanticy that I have enjoyed? If anyone can think of one, please let me know. Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, is that her name? It's probably the closest. I think I gave that like a 3.5. That's probably the best we've had and I am going to continue on that series. So that's where my hope is because Regency, that's like another plus point for me, but every other romanticy I've read, I think they're cringe. Yeah, I'm going to say it. I've never read a romanticy that isn't cringe. Listen, let me tell you the truth in it, because everyone's so scared to fucking tell the truth. Oh, and so I just, you know, we need some positivity here. Let's have, let's talk about one surprise that I've got and it's not even really a surprise but I just, you know, I can't speak to you about my 4.5, which I did really enjoy. This one is the next best we've had. And it was The Book Eaters by Sun Yudin. I gave this a 3.5. There were a lot of elements of this I really enjoyed. It just didn't quite do it for me. We're following Devin, who is a book eater. So she like eats books, right? And she's trying to defend and help her son who is like a, like an offshoot they have. Sometimes children are born that want to eat brains and he's one of them and she's trying to defend him and get him the like drugs that he needs to like survive. It was fine. See what I mean? We've gone too into the negativity. I can't, I know I can't break myself out of it. No, there was a lot I knew about this. I thought the writing was very interesting. I thought the book was paced very well. I thought I had a lot of very interesting and unique ideas. I liked how unique it was. You know, I haven't read something with this idea and the kind of world building felt very unique. It was a dual timeline, which I didn't hate. Yes, it was a timeline I preferred. You know, this is like Taylor Soda's time, but I guess we could say the dual timelines surprised me because I didn't hate it. That's all I've got. I've been so negative for the whole video. I can't break out. I can't say nice things. Just know I did quite enjoy this. That's enough. Hopefully February's will be more positive. So there we have everyone. That was my January wrap up. Absolutely horrible, horrible. I can't believe I've got put through this. But let me know how your January went. Was your January reading any better? Please say it was because I need some positive vibes for my life. Thank you guys so much for watching. I'll see you soon in another video. Bye!