January 2023 Monthly Wrap Up!

Happy February everyone! Time continues to pass by, which means it’s time for my January wrap up. I did a few of these monthly wrap ups a few years ago when I first started blogging. It’s been a minute though haha. My friend Kelsea just posted her wrap up, and I really enjoyed reading it so it inspired me to start them up again! I’ll talk about the books I read, but I’ll also talk about other media and other things I got up to during the month.

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Books I Read

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• Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire (read my review here!)
• The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten
• Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri
• Heartstopper Vol. 2 by Alice Oseman
• Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
• Heroine Worship by Sarah Kuhn
• The Iron Queen by Julie Kagawa
• The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa

Reading wise it was a pretty good month for me. I read the above eight books, and all of them were 4 or 5 stars! The two standouts/favorites were Lost in the Moment and Found, and Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Why are both of those titles so long?? Hahah. You all know I love Seanan McGuire, and this latest installment of her Wayward Children series was heartbreaking and beautiful. I linked my full review up above. I’m a sucker for fae and romance, especially when the fae are dangerous and almost alien beings. Thank you, October Daye series, for that. But anyway that’s exactly what Emily Wilde was! The way it was marketed, I expected more romance, but it was definitely more of just a touch. But the vibes and story were great!

I won’t discuss all of the books in detail, but I did want to highlight Empire of Sand. It is an extremely underrated fantasy that more people need to read!! Tasha Suri is now very well known for her more recent book, The Jasmine Throne. I hope people go back and discover her older books because this was great!

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Movies and TV I Watched

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• The Witcher: Blood Origin (Netflix original series)
• Wednesday (Netflix original series)
• Coraline (directed by Henry Selick; watched on Disney+)
• Wendell & Wild (directed by Henry Selick; Netflix original movie)

Luckily for myself and writing this post, I’ve decided to keep track of what media I watch this year! I started the year by finishing off the limited Blood Origin series. Funnily enough I haven’t watched the original Witcher series. But I did end up enjoying this limited series!

I then watched Wednesday – in the span of two days haha. It was wonderful!! I loved it so much. Honestly I’m really sad that it was so short, I absolutely want more. It’s great that they’ve confirmed a second season. But I wish we could go back to the days of 24 episode seasons haha. I suppose I’ll just have to rewatch it soon!!

Next up are two movies. My partner likes to listen to a podcast called Blank Check. The idea is that the hosts pick a particular director, and then watch all of that directors films in chronological order. These were the last two films of Henry Selick. He has also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. Which surprised me a lot, because Nightmare is always marketed as “Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas.” So I had assumed he was the director!! But no. It was Henry Selick. Both of these (Coraline and Wendell & Wild) were first time watches for me. I enjoyed them both!! Coraline reminded me a lot of Spirited Away, both in story and how the story is told. Wendell & Wild was so fun, and I think it’s super underrated. I definitely recommend both films!

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Games I Played

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• Tunic (made by Finji; available on Steam, Xbox, PS4&5, Nintendo Switch)
• Monster Train (made by Shiny Shoe and Good Shepherd Entertainment; available on Steam, Xbox, Nintendo Switch)
• Teamfight Tactics (made by Riot Games; available through the League of Legends client and on mobile)

My partner started playing Tunic while he was home visiting his family. When he came back, he told me I had to play it and then get to a puzzle that he couldn’t solve. And then solve it. Luckily for him, it was on my “to be played” list anyway hahaha. I didn’t actually get around to playing that much of it, but I did start. It’s very cute and pretty difficult. I ended up turning the combat difficulty down because I was getting too frustrated . And games are supposed to be fun!! If you know anything about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Tunic is a lot like that game. But with more mystery and puzzles, and a LOT less explanation about things. I’m excited to discover more of it.

The other two games I play are sort of “continuous” games, in the sense that they don’t have an ending. Monster Train is a rogue-like deck-building strategy game. Basically you use different cards to summon monsters and cast spells, and try to escape hell. It’s similar to the game Hades in overall structure, but Hades is combat based and Monster Train is strategy based. It’s really fun, and you can keep doing different runs since things are randomized, and you can up the difficulty.

Teamfight Tactics is another strategy game, but this one is an online competitive game. You play against 7 other real people, and try to place as high as you can. It involves purchasing units to place on a board, and those units fighting the units of another person’s team. I find it to be both super fun and super frustrating. I guess that’s what I get for playing a game that involves a decent amount of randomness haha.

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Things I Did!

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Other than reading, watching, and playing the things I already listed, most of my month consisted of work. I’ve been working part-time as a data analyst for an esports team. My team has world championship tournament coming up next week, so my team and I have been working to help them prepare for that. It involves a lot of watching previous matches and crunching numbers.

However, I did get to spend a whole weekend with two of my best friends!! The three of us were all grad students at the same institution, and lived together in New Jersey for two years. We have remained close friends since then. It had been over a year and a half since we all three had been in the same place. So the two of them came to visit me for a long weekend!! It was SO wonderful. We ate lots of good food, went hiking, watched movies, and just spend quality time together. That weekend made me so so happy, and I’m so grateful we got to be together.

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How was your January? What things did you do, and what kind of media did you consume? If you have a blog and wrote a January wrap up, please feel free to link it in the comments so I can check it out!