For once, I’m pretty happy to see a month go. The march of time is what it is, but this January has been so bitterly cold where I’m living that moving forward just feels good. Maybe the cold is the reason, but this year I am so fed up with winter already, and I’m normally fairly patient. Here’s hoping we get some more reasonable weather soon.

Enough waffling about climate, on to the books!

New Books

The Crossroads at Midnight by Abby Howard is a horror graphic novel anthology that I picked up thanks to a gift card I got for Christmas. A few of this author’s books have caught my eye recently, but this is the first one I’ve gotten my hands on. I will probably save it for Halloween this year, but I’m mighty tempted to check it out sooner.

The High Republic: The Fallen Star by Claudia Gray is the latest novel in the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia series. It’s actually several books ahead of where I’m at, but I decided to just go ahead and pick this up since it was on sale and I had accumulated enough points for $20 off. There’s so much to read in general, I’m afraid I won’t be getting to this for a while.

These next two were acquired thanks to the same Christmas gift card. The first, Springfield Confidential by Mike Reiss with Mathew Klickstein, is a nonfiction book I’ve had my eyes on for a while. I’m a big fan of the early seasons of The Simpsons, so I’m hoping this will make for a really fun read.

The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett is the next Discworld book that I needed, so I made sure to pick it up as well. I actually meant to read this one last year, so I’ll be getting to it sooner rather than later.

The Book of Unusual Knowledge was one of my more impulsive purchases lately. Goodness knows I didn’t need this book, but I liked the idea of having it for posterity, if nothing else, as it’s the sort of title that would have grabbed my attention as a child. So far its contents haven’t seemed all the riveting, though, and it’s clear that this “hardcover” was inexpensive for a reason; it feels really cheaply made, the cover actually being really soft and foamy and the paper stock really poor. Still, it’ll hopefully be good for a lark. Maybe don’t be in a hurry to get one for yourself, though, if you find it eye-catching.

Novel Discoveries

The Nice House on the Lake by James Tynion IV et al is a new comic books series that I believe I heard about in an online video. It sounds like a really interesting horror story, being about a group of people taking a trip to a lake house, only to find that some sort of apocalypse is being unleashed on the rest of the world, and their longtime friend and host is something more than he seems.

The Hay Bale by Priscilla Bettis is a book I learned about from another blog’s WWW post. I don’t remember much of what I learned about it, and I think that’s for the best, as it’s apparently weird horror, which is right up my alley and best left as obscure as possible.

A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman is another book from a WWW post, and this horror novel also grabbed me thanks to its evocative title and weird premise. It doesn’t take much to grab my attention sometimes, I suppose. Weirdly enough, that’s two horror books involving a house and a lake this month. How about that?

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman is a book that I believe is yet to be published, but I decided to keep it in mind since I enjoyed Eating the Dinosaur so much a few years ago. I’m also a child of the 90s myself, so I’m curious to see what the book has to say about the decade.

Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman is another book I learned about from an online video, which was recommending books based on whether or not you liked certain video games. In the last year, I played through the game Blasphemous and loved it, and the video recommended this book if you enjoyed that game, so here we are. Goodness knows when I’ll ever get to it, but I’d have certainly forgotten about it if I didn’t add it to my to-read shelf as soon as I learned about it.

Closing Thoughts

January has been an exhausting month to say the least, and I hope everybody has been keeping warm and safe. I’m feeling a little over-taxed by work at the moment, as I write this, and I’ve got a growing anxiety that my reading goals for this year are a pipe dream. Let me know if you can relate and what you do to help mitigate it. For myself, I’m just going to keep pushing forward and hope for the best…and maybe try to use some more of my spare time for reading than other hobbies. We’ll see how that goes.

Until next time, thank you for reading!