What I Read In January

I feel like I didn’t read as much in January, but that is really only in comparison to December, because from September to November I either didn’t read at all or I only read 1 book (and I did that out of duty because I felt like I needed to read so that I would have content). But I am really trying to avoid doing things just for content this year, while also better planning and delivering better content this year. Planned joy mostly this year (with lots of spontaneous joy too!).

This was the December Bad on Paper Podcast book club pick, I didn’t read it in time for their book club episode, I didn’t get it in time. Only because I put off ordering it because I was really hoping to find the US cover somewhere in Canada, the US cover is so pretty. This is so good, it is a really accurate portrayal of modern dating and navigating friendships when some of your friends are married, married with kids, engaged, buying houses, and you’re still single, still renting, still figuring out your career.

I’ve actually been seeing a lot of talk about this on TikTok, that the single friends become second tier friends, which is something that the protagonist, Nina Dean is dealing with, along with aging parents, work demands, a sketchy downstairs neighbor, and getting ghosted right after he says “I love you”.

But then as Tinx says, he comes back, just to disappear again. How’s a 32 year old to cope? 5/5

This is by the same author as Song of Achilles, it is about the life of the fabled goddess and witch Circe. A woman who used her powers for love, revenge, survival, family and finally for herself. Circe is a minor goddess, the forgotten, then exiled daughter of the Sun Titan Helios, lover of Hermes and then Odysseus, and enemy of Athena. She is one of the most famous, and infamous, witches of mythology.

I did find it a bit hard to get into, but there were so many profound moments in it that really made me stop to think. 4.5/5

This was amazing. It’s based off the true story of Catherine Dior, aka Miss Dior, Christiane Dior’s sister, who ran a faction of the resistance in Paris during World War 2. It follows two sisters, Yvette and Gaby Foucher, who become separately involved in the resistance. It moves between 1947, when Yvette returns to Paris after escaping a round up of Catherine’s group by the Nazis to the United States, to testify in the trial of a woman accused of being a collaborator. In 1944, she had worked as a delivery girl for the House of LeLond, where Dior was a designer before opening his own house, in 1947, she had been working as a model in New York and sneaks in to Dior’s first show, and ends up walking in it. Her sister, Gaby, has been invited to see the show, and sees her sister walking, it’s the first time she has seen her sister since the night she fled Paris. After the show, Gaby has to return back to work and isn’t able to see her sister. Gaby, is working the same job she was during the war, managing a building of apartments, which lead to her keeping many people safe from the Nazis, and finding love.

We follow the sisters as they reunite with each other and learn that nothing that happened during the war, including their own actions, had the effect they thought it did.

I read this in one weekend and accidentally stayed up until 1am reading. 5/5, superb.

What are you reading?

Laura