For the last three years, January has been an exceptionally good month for me reading-wise. This is always welcome, as I admit the January Blues usually do get me down, so it’s nice to have a fistful of five-star reads in my January wrap up to cheer me up.
January 2020 was no different! I read a total of 20 books (an auspicious start to 2020) with five five-star reads. If you’ve already been following me on Instagram for a while, you’ll know I can be quite stingy with my five stars! As all of my book reviews can already be found on my feed for this lot, I just wanted to sing the praises of the five-star reads, as well as do a round up of which countries are represented in the books I read and which languages for my monthly wrap up on the blog.
I will include a link to Blackwell’s beneath each book, an independent bookseller for whom I am an affiliate. If you’d like to buy a book I recommend from them, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Let’s start with the five stars from my January wrap up!
January Wrap Up Highlights
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
I’m writing this post retrospectively, in June, and to date this book is still my favourite book of 2020. It is a rich, moving tapestry of what it means to be a Black woman or non-binary person in contemporary Britain. I struggle to choose a favourite narrative from the 12, but of course my Northern soul was singing with Morgan/Megan’s chapters, who hails from Newcastle and undergoes a journey from not even realising a person could identify as something other than male or female to becoming their true self. A masterpiece.
Buy Girl, Woman, Other at Blackwell’s
A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Another multilayered piece of fiction offering tonnes of food for thought. Through an impeccable dual timeline, Ozeki tackles a multitude of topics including bullying, suicide, prostitution, Alzheimer’s, environmentalism, and even quantum physics. My mind was literally boggling by the end of it. I read a library copy and felt rather emotional handing it back.
Buy A Tale for the Time Being at Blackwell’s
Saltwater by Jessica Andrews
Another library book I wanted to steal, and yet another that made my Geordie heart sing. This choppy, introspective narrative resonated with me on an extraordinarily personal level, and I’ve seen glowing reviews from other people with zero connection to the North East who felt similarly – Andrews just GETS being a confused young woman trying to make sense of life and home and roots. I also got to speak with Andrews for an interview (which you can read here) and she was insanely lovely. Always a bonus.
Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste
This was a recommendation from Bezi @beingabookwyrm on Instagram, which I read as part of her #ReadEthiopian challenge. I’d never read anything by an Ethiopian author before, and was ashamedly ignorant about the part of history it recounts. I love it when historical fiction teaches me about something through a personal lens; living the events through the eyes of a family never fails to captivate me, and as a result it encourages me to research the time period or event on my own.
Buy Beneath The Lion’s Gaze at Blackwell’s
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
This is one that caused a bit of a divide on Bookstagram, with some people loving it and some feeling a bit lost at sea. I fell into the former category, and while I did find the worldbuilding challenging at times, I absolutely did not mind being lost in Morgenstern’s beautifully crafted, bookish fantasy.
Buy The Starless Sea at Blackwell’s
January Reading Stats
And now for the stats! We all love a good statistic, right?
In total, I read a total of 6097 pages across 20 books in January. The countries I armchair-travelled to for the first time this month included:
- Argentina (The Wind That Lays Waste* by Selva Almada)
- Ethiopia (Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste)
- Brazil (Blue Flowers* by Carola Saavedra)
- Norway (Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting)
Meanwhile I returned to:
- Canada
- Chile
- Lithuania
- UK
- South Korea
- Japan
- Germany
As I’m aiming to read 50% translations in 2020 (and likely just all the time now too, as I’m enjoying this project so much!), 10 of the books were translated. I participated in #JanuaryinJapan on Instagram hosted by @end.notes so three of those translations were from Japanese.
- 3 Japanese (Stephen Synder, Nathan Collins, Alison Watts)
- 2 Spanish (duo of Amanda Hopkinson & Nick Caistor and Megan McDowell)
- Brazilian Portuguese (Daniel Hahn)
- Korean (Deborah Smith)
- German (Katy Derbyshire)
- Norwegian (Paul Russell Garrett)
- Lithuanian (Romas Kinka)
That’s it for my January wrap up! You can keep up with my reading the world efforts on Instagram by looking under my hashtag #AbReadsAroundTheWorld, while I post reviews for most books I read over there, on The StoryGraph, and Goodreads.
Don’t forget, I’ll be posting a monthly wrap up every month going forward, so you can find out here which books I’m loving the most!
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