Words of January || A Lot of Media

I wasn't excited about January 2026, but it surprisingly shaped up to be fairly nice.

I still had my ups and downs—a few more downs than I'd like—but I intentionally did a few things that made it a good month. It took me a while to realise that shitty things happen and my response to them is what determines my happiness.

There's a bunch that I want to talk to you about so grab your favourite drink (I have chai!) and settle down, let's talk about January days ☕️ I'm also trying a new writing style for the wrap-up where I just ramble instead of keeping things short and concise and in bullet points. Bear with me if it is messy 😂

books

I read a lot in January and managed to make some headway into my reading goals. I read 12 books—10 ebooks, 1 paperback, 1 audiobook. 10 were romance, 2 were fantasy.

StoryGraph's January Pages challenge is one of my favourite things to do and I completed it the last 2 years. I tried again this time and failed within the first week or so. I read a lot but I don't read every day. I withdrew from the challenge and forgot about it, focusing on just having fun and following my moods.

My first read was Glimmers of You by Catherine Cowles. It is the third book in The Lost & Found series. Since I've read books 2, 4 & 5 before, I'm familiar with the characters. I didn't know their story though.

The romance was good enough. It was what I expected from Catherine Cowles. I was more interested in the murder plot. And boy, did it deliver. I'm familiar enough with the author's books to know that there's a good chance I'll be blown away by the twist and the murder's identity. That happened here too. I was SHOCKED. I am so used to the twists by now that I was actually suspecting half the supporting characters. The one person I disregarded turned out to be the villain. *slams the desk* Dammit, the author got me again.

In an effort to try again, I picked up All The Missing Pieces by Catherine Cowles. It was my first standalone book by the author. I'm used to reading series with many characters so this was a bit different. And you know what else was different? The main character's job. Ridley is a travelling podcaster who covers cold murder cases. Unlike most books where the person investigating usually has some kind of authority to do it, this story was about investigating outside the box. Ridley was refreshing to read about and I loved how she did not give a damn about the Sheriff who didn't want her rustling things up.

I did not care about the romance between Ridley and Colt (the Sheriff) much. They were quite bland compared to the murder plot. Except for maybe the "Who. Hurt. You." scene (a micro trope I support). I had my eyes and brain open this time. I considered everything to figure out the murderer. Unfortunately, the book is written from the POVs of two investigators too so they explored everything that came to my mind and I had nothing. And guess what. The murderer was SO FAR AWAY from anything I thought about. From everything that the main characters thought about too. How does the author come up with this stuff?? As someone who is used to figuring out twists beforehand, my ego is kinda dented. I will emerge victorious the next time 😠

I wanted to read a specific chronic illness rep so I picked up Love in the Lesson Plan by Roxie Ray. This was so good! The female main character has Graves' disease (hyperthyroidism). Do you know how hard it was to find a book with this?? At least the one I found is on KU so I could read it without thinking about the price. The representation was really nice too. We see how the main character struggles with it, how it is on her mind during so much of her day, how it limits or changes the way she does things and sees herself, and how she has a great life anyway. I don't know if the author has the disease or how well researched it is—it felt pretty well represented to me. Apparently "Roxie Ray" is a group of authors so it's possible that it is written from personal experience.

The male main character is a wolf shifter alpha whose pack was massacred by his second and is lost in grief while trying to raise his kids who survived as best as he can. His PTSD gets a lot of focus as well and I love how he learnt to become okay slowly. There isn't any fighting action on-page which I liked—it was not what I was looking for. The romance was lovely. The way the characters grew on their own with support from one another, the way they bonded, and the found family they eventually made with their closest people was heartwarming. I loved their happy ending.

A friend gifted me Katabasis by RF Kuang and she has the paperback as well so we decided to buddy read it. I have read every book by the author so far and expected some variation of the same thing—a deeply research subject, a plot that is set well in the beginning and loses its thread halfway, ending badly. My friend and I are reading the book slowly together so I haven't finished it yet to give overall thoughts. I can say that the author surprised me with the first half though. This book is bad from the beginning itself. I had hopes for enjoying it at least a bit. No luck so far. I hope we finish it soon and I can forget about it.

I slowly read The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence and managed to finish it at the end of the month. It was hard to read. The plot is good enough but the writing is so drab and not engaging at all. I got the hang of it only 50% through. Since it has time travel, I hoped for a good time travel twist and it delivered! I really do like the plot so I think I'll give the sequel a shot. the trilogy is complete as well so I wouldn't have to wait for the 3rd book if I want to read it too. We'll see after a while.

After about 10 days of slowly reading Katabasis and The Book That Wouldn't Burn, I got tired of drudging through fantasy books so I went back to romance. Since I read books 2-5 of The Lost and Found series, I might as well read book 1 so I picked up Whispers of You by Catherine Cowles. It was weird to read the first book of the series at the end because I realized how much more I might have liked the rest of the books if I had read them in order. I loved how the author introduced the characters by having the male main character return to the small town in the beginning of the book. He lowkey relearns about everyone, including his family, which gives us a natural way of learning about the whole cast too. I really appreciate the author's writing for this. I was suspicious of every character in this book and, again, the one character I wrote off turned out to be the villain!

I then reread Echoes of You by Catherine Cowles, book 2 in the series. It was my first book by the author and I hadn't liked it then, mainly because of the male main character. Now that I read all the other books and grew an appreciation for the character through everyone else's eyes, I gave his book another shot and enjoyed it much more. I understood his growth because while he said it, I didn't get it until I saw him from other points of view. I really like how the author shows supporting characters through the main characters' eyes and then gives their books. The author gives each pair full focus too so the difference between an external POV and self POV is very evident and realistic.

Since the next book will take a while to release, I decided to pick up an older book. The Tattered & Torn series precedes The Lost & Found (in release date) and I've already read book 2 so I picked up Tattered Stars by Catherine Cowles. I wasn't fond of book 2 but Echoes of You showed that I can warm up to characters and change my mind. Unfortunately, I didn't like Tattered Stars either. I'm not fond of the setting for some reason. I think this series is not for me 🙁

I picked up a knitting project and decided to listen to an audiobook alongside it. I enjoyed a couple of books by the author before so I picked Blackthorn by J.T. Geissinger. This is a gothic paranormal mystery + romance. The eerie vibes were nice and I liked the mystery plot. It was going good until around 75% when things started breaking apart along with the main character's mind. I quite like the questioning of reality with one's mind going haywire but some parts of the plot were hard to read. I was having breakfast at work and listening to this and it took so much control to not show disgust on my face. The ending was underwhelming considering everything.

Bittersweet Memories by Catharina Maura was so different from what I expected based on the cover and blurb. It's about a couple falling in love during their hard teenage years, losing touch, and reuniting years later but one of them doesn't remember anything. The female main character has amnesia. In most books, we'd have seen only her POV and would've been in the dark about his POV, leading us to think he's an annoying dude and later realize that he had his reasons and is actually good. This book did it differently. We got to see them falling in love from both POVs. After the time jump, we saw both POVS—her being confused and hating him, him loving her and doing his best to not shake her life apart. This is a story without mystery. You know they're going to end up together and the story is just the journey of it. I loved that his POV took up a lot of page-time towards the end. It was a lovely book. My best book of January, actually.

I've seen Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey recommended quite a bit so I gave it a shot. The FMC here also has Type A Diabetes which does factor into the plot quite a bit. This was a light-hearted and fun story about a down-on-his-luck golf player and his fangirl who is an amazing golf player. I liked their banter and relationship development. At one point, I expected a turn in the plot based on some clues but apparently I was wrong and it disappointed me. My idea was better 😂 Overall, a nice enough book. Not that great though.

There's a new public library near by house that was started as a CSR initiative by an IT company and I finally visited it in January. It's so cool! The catalogue isn't that great and the shelves aren't full yet but I love the progress so far. I love that there's a library near me after a long time of not having one. I loved that so many people were using it too. There was maybe one empty table throughout the 2 hours that I was there. I wanted to try a fantasy book and the only one that I knew of and was remotely appealing was House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Maas. I gave it a shot and ended up reading it for 1.5 hours so I borrowed it for home. It's been over a year since I read such a huge book. I have to return it in 2 weeks so it's time to get my big reading socks on. I'm about 50% through so far and I have under a week left. I'll let you know my thoughts on the book in the next wrap-up.

I saw these book covers somewhere and they reminded of Archer's Voice by Mia Sheridan so much and I was surprised because I didn't think it was a series. I looked it up and it's not, these two books are another duology. The similar cover style intrigued me so I gave them a shot. I did the mistake of starting them at midnight and ended up reading until 5 am to finish the duology 🫠 "I'll read a bit before bed" doesn't work for me and I don't seem to learn my lesson lol.

Becoming Calder and Finding Eden by Mia Sheridan is a two-part story about Calder and Eden. The first book narrates their childhood until they turn adults. They grew up in a cult so this book really explores the life of the cult and how they experienced different sides of it. Eden has a few memories from before she arrived and she was brought as a child to eventually become the leader's wife and was raised that way. She has always hated the life. Calder had a fairly good childhood as a labourer's son and he grew to resent the cult's way of life due to discrimination and classism. The end of book 1 is absolutely terrible, ending their life in the cult.

Although it was ~2:30 am, I had to read the next book. Book 2 explores their life in the regular society of the world and how they acclimatise back. They have very different journeys and my heart wrenched for both. There was a family reunion scene which I loved. It was interesting to see how they navigated their time outside and what they did to learn about how they ended up in the cult in order to get closure.

Overall, a really emotional duology with a lot of pain. I couldn't tear my eyes away. I read constantly for 5 hours in the middle of the night. It was hard to work the next day but it was worth it. It reminded me of how I devoured books when I was younger and I loved that there are still books that can make me read that way.

movies & tv shows

I binge-watched Manifest seasons 3 & 4. I started the show at the end of December and was done with the first 2 seasons when January rolled around. I really enjoyed the show in the first 2 seasons but it was losing its train of thought in the last 2. There were quite a few filler episodes that didn't further the overall plot. The characters got annoying. There was a death at the end of season 3 that I really questioned and the plot in season 4 was something I did not like. I was ready for the show to end and was disappointed that I'd end it unhappy.

Fortunately, the ending was REALLY good. Yeah, it's not believable but then the entire plot from season 1 episode 1 is not believable. But the emotions it evoked and the way it ended and how it ended for each character—I loved it. I watched the ending maybe 5 times. I want to watch it again now. I loved how full-circle it was and made me remember how it all started. There was one thing I was sad about but that's a necessary sacrifice for the rest of it. I loved it. I'm glad that the show had an actual ending instead of being discontinued with a cliffhanger.

Manifest was the first English show I watched in a long time. I've been mostly watching Asian dramas and forgot how gritty and fast-paced English shows can be. I loved the pace and the "big picture" plot in Manifest. The character growth was slow and really nice too. I liked how character-driven it was other than a few plot settings. I recommend the show.

High School Musical was on my mind (I think because of a post about its 20th anniversary? Can you believe it's been TWENTY YEARS?!) so I watched that. I loved the rewatch. People don't make movies like this anymore. It felt surreal to watch a movie with actors close to the characters' ages, slightly awkward acting to make it feel really teenage life, and good music. I abandoned knitting when Stick to the Status Quo came on and started singing along 😂

The joy from watching HSM was so much that I wanted more. I watched Another Cinderella Story (starring Selena Gomez) and it was so fun too. I forgot how much I loved New Classic! Again, people don't make such music nowadays. Simple catchy songs that make you want to dance and take on the world while looking fabulous. It's usually either one nowadays. It felt surreal to look at young Selena Gomez too—she looks so different now. I'd love to watch Wizards of Waverly Place all over again sometime.

My favourite movie starring Selena Gomez is Monte Carlo so I rewatched that next. I forgot how fun the movie was. I love the characters' individual arcs and the growth of their friendship. It's fun to watch them pretend and do it successfully. The end of the movie when everything comes to a head is especially entertaining. It's such a nice movie.

I paid for a month's subscription of Apple TV to watch Another Cinderella Story only to find out that it's not available in the Indian region. So, I used it to finally watch Lessons in Chemistry. I absolutely loved the book so I had high hopes. The TV show was pretty good! Of course, there were many differences (I don't remember seeing the neighbourhood teardown side plot in the book?) but the show captured the essence and charm of the story. The casting for Elizabeth, Calvin, and Maddie was on point! The romance was on point. I loved how the cooking show came to life. I loved the kid being a smart investigator on her own. My only complaint is that Six-Thirty's POV was half-baked. I understand that they couldn't do it the way it was in the books but then maybe they shouldn't have done it at all. Giving one episode from his POV without the main emotional aspect of it was disappointing. Overall, a solid adaptation.

Every Kdrama that I tried recently has not been worth the time. In January alone, I gave up on Cashero on episode 2 and on Idol I on episode 3. I watched Can This Love Be Translated? and got tired of it pretty quickly. I speed-watched through the second half while knitting just to finish it. I gave more focus to knitting than the drama. I was annoyed by the female lead (childish and annoying), didn't get the point of the main character (felt like the writer was enamoured by the idea of a translator and built the story around him), and hated the dissociative identity disorder representation.

Hence, it was time to try movies. I watched People We Meet on Vacation since it came up on my Netflix recommendations. I hated the book when I read it in 2022 so I didn't have a lot of hopes. The movie was better than I expected. It wasn't great but it wasn't bad. A lot was cut out, understandably, and it worked in the movie's favour this time. The length was just right. The book should've been only this long without all the extra annoyance.

While browsing Netflix's movies tab (which doesn't know my movie likes yet so it takes me a while to find something I like), I gave The Deep End of the Ocean a shot. It's a simple movie about a family who lose a son and find him by chance 9 years later. There isn't really a point to the movie. It's about how losing a child changes each person and the family's relationship with each other. It's also about the child who went missing. I'm a sucker for reunion stories, especially family ones. I liked it. I then rewatched A Man Called Otto. The book is amazing and while the movie doesn't have the same depth, it is amazing too.

I watched Bridgerton season 4 part 1. I liked Cinderella stories as a kid so it has a place in my heart and I had a few hopes for this season. I am not sold on it so far. I absolutely hated Benedict's rakish behaviour. I understand that it's staying true to the book but I've read SO MANY romance books with a rake dude who sees a girl who is "different" and is a changed man that I'm tired of it. There are too many side plots about other characters that I don't care about too. I will still binge-watch part 2 when it comes out but I don't have hopes of enjoying it as of now. The only thing I like about this season so far is the focus on the maids' and maidservants' lives. The bell system is intriguing.

I saw photos of Alex Honnold's Taipei 101 climb from the Google Taipei office on the office internal newsletter so I watched the recorded version of the live documentary. Skyscraper Live was interesting because of the climb and terrible due to everything else. I was so impressed by Honnold's climbing skills and concentration. It's a 1600ft tower! He did it in 1.5 hours! The shots from the top were great too. I hated the commentators though. Especially the main lady and the wrestler. Why were they there? They did not do the job well at all. I hated the random YouTuber's presence too. I hated how this seemed like a cash grab because they put clips of the YouTuber's videos to promote him. They spoke over Alex so many times! We didn't get an exit interview after the climb—we heard from random bystanders for no reason. They should've just let us watch him climb in silence, except the occasional comment from Alex and not anyone who doesn't know the sport. Only the 3rd commentator who's also a climber was useful. Interesting how they broadcasted it live. I didn't know what free soloing was and even I hated it. Climbers would've hated it even more.

I went straight to Reddit to see people's reactions to it and saw a lot of similar comments. Many mentioned how the movie Free Solo was much better. So, of course, I watched it the same day. Funny how it's apparently available on many streaming services but none stream it for India! I watched on a pirate site.

Free Solo was amazing. It's an Oscar-winning documentary of Alex Honnold's climb of a huge mountain called El Capitan. I didn't know anything about Free Soloing and this documentary managed to teach me while also making me very invested in it. I admire the hell out of the climber, his girlfriend at the time (now wife), and the camera crew. I loved that it showed us his history and how he prepared for the climb. He did it so meticulously! He had every step mapped out, noted down, and memorised. The camera crew were brave too because they were friends with Alex and could potentially witness his death, could be recording it. The documentary didn't pull punches about how dangerous it is. I really appreciated it when Alex actually called off the climb the first time because of a "feeling". That was brave and the right thing to do. I could see how the crew respected him more for it.

The actual climb on screen was shorter than I expected but it was incredibly intense. Although I knew that he survived it and went on to climb a skyscraper years later, I sat with my hand on my heart, afraid to blink. I was so focused and so fraught about it that when my mom interrupted me, I lost the train of thought and couldn't place where he was 5 seconds later. I had to wind back and watch it again. The shots were amazing, the crew did an incredible job. They explicitly planned all the cameras and angles beforehand so that they could record without being in his line of sight because anything they do to distract him could cause his death. I'm so impressed by the shots they got because how the hell did they manage to capture those without being in his line of sight?! The close up shots and wide shots with the scenery were marvellous. I highly recommend watching Free Solo. Now that I saw Free Solo, I realize that the Taipei 101 climb, while dangerous and hard, was easier compared to El Capitan. The dude has already Free Soloed El Cap, of course he could do Taipei 101 in 1.5 hours.

blog

Not much to update here other than commenting on how, after I explicitly said that I want to blog less without a schedule, I ended up blogging the same amount 😂 To be fair, I didn't follow a schedule and didn't do it in a specific regular fashion. But I still posted 4 times in January! And this wrap-up is coming to you fairly early.

I think the only thing I managed to do in January is writing posts quickly. All of them were written in one day. Maybe I spent a little longer on one of them. But that's it. No writing for 3 days just to get everything down. Of course, I promptly broke that streak in this post.

I wanted to try something new so I initially tried to write this post without categories. I wanted to keep it like a free conversation where I just between related topics and weave things together without carefully segregating them into categories. About 3 hours of struggle and 2k+ words later, I scrapped it. Just because I want to try something different, I kept the rambles within each category and didn't limit myself to keeping things short and concise. That worked against me because this post has taken an entire Sunday to write, after the scrapping. I loved writing about everything at length but it's probably best that I write very short individual posts about books/tv shows/movies instead of putting everything in one. I'm tired of writing this wrap up.

In other blogging news, shoutout to Hayley @ On This I Ponder for letting me know about an issue with my comment box. I wouldn't have figured it out without her help. It was the elusive "Nonce verification error" in WordPress comment boxes, only it was happening for a few specific scenarios alone. I deactivated plugins till I figured out the culprit and asked Hayley to re-check multiple times to confirm. I am software engineer and pinging people to verify my bug fixes is the core of my profession 🤪 Again, thank you for the help, Hayley!

After debating the change for a long time, I finally updated the featured slider on the blog's homepage to static links instead of the latest posts. Will it make a difference? I don't know! Hopefully it will. It's borne out of a feedback my college friend gave years ago saying why don't I put the Kdrama section prominent so that it's easy to find 😂 This is the problem with having a multi-niche blog.

Another change borne out of a long deliberation: I removed all the "buy me a coffee" links from the site. I used the sitemap and a grep command to iterate on all the blog posts to figure out everywhere I added links. Used my fancy software engineer skills to do it in 15 minutes hehe. Now this is back to being a total hobby blog 🙂

Keeping the links wouldn't hurt except they were the only hurdle to unlock all the Jetpack stats. Jetpack paywalled many stats a year ago and while it's fine not to know, actually healthy to not obsess over it, I like looking at stats and figuring out patterns. With the blog getting less and less traffic, there's a minuscule chance that my buymeacoffee will see action so might as well see the stats to my heart's content. So I removed the links and reverified my blog to get it back.

Interestingly, it only took 10 minutes. I have access to all my Jetpack stats again! Even for the period during which I couldn't see it. They collected the stats the entire time and just didn't show it. Maybe I should work on a 2025 stats post now? 👀 Unless I have anything interesting to show, I may not. We'll see.

Since I'm being more chill about writing posts, I want to respond to comments quickly. I don't want to let them pile up for a month and then be disappointed that it only took 20 minutes. I want to bask in comments when they come and not keep people waiting. I spent an evening catching up on comments from over a month and am now doing my best to respond quickly. Let's hope I don't procrastinate again. I used the day off to catch up on my Feedly inbox too and loved so many blog posts!

Posts from the blogosphere that I enjoyed:

• Yesha is on a blogging roll with amazing blog posts. My favourite from Jan are Fantasy as Literature- Why I Will Always Take Fantasy Seriously, Romantasy vs Fantasy, and Individualism Over Group Belonging – A quiet reflection.
• Caitlyn shared her cool reading journal for 2026.
• Krysta shared book blog trends she thinks we'll see in 2026.
• Lila discussed if "book overconsumption" is a real phenomenon.
• Michelle shared her amazing pink library setup.
• Lisa discussed whether book bloggers should do research before writing book reviews.
• Hannah shared her journalling + planning methods in 2025 and 2025 stats transparency post.
• I discovered a really cool "BookBound" challenge hosted by Emma.

social life & hobbies

My social life perked up a bit in January. I met a friend in the first weekend itself. I tried a new outfit and hairstyle and felt really pretty. We went for lunch and he showed me a few places in the city, including a ridiculous house that doesn't look like a house. We ended with a visit to my favourite café. I really hope this is a sign about how the year will go because I'm in desperate need of a social life in this city.

Of course, the social life isn't going to happen on its own. I made the effort to improve it too. The following weekend, I made plans with the only 2 other friends that I have here. I essentially used up my entire social life in the first 2 weekends of the year. Hopefully, it doesn't mean I used up the year's quota 🤪

The weekend with friends was really nice. With one friend, I visited a new bookstore that opened here, a café that I've been meaning to check out, and a park. I visited her place to borrow a couple books from her shelf too (working on the goal to read more paperbacks 😂). With the other friend, I visited an art café that I'd been meaning to check out and we painted trinket trays! I made a simple one with 2 of my favourite colours. Working towards my hobby projects goal too haha. She also took me to a café that she likes. All-in-all, a lovely 2 day weekend with friends that I really needed to feel better.

Speaking of hobby projects, I checked off an item in my list in the first week with the help of my best friend. He gifted me a DIY Book Nook kit for my birthday and I spend a few hours (over a week) working on it. I made a few mistakes due to my clumsiness but I love how it turned out! It's a green bookstore named "owl bookstore". It's got an antiques vibe with paintings on the walls and a candle and an ink pot + quill on a shelf. I love it. I love the design too—that it can be turned on with a touch. It came with the touch sensor panel. My bookshelf isn't pretty enough to display it well but hopefully I'll have a good open bookshelf for it in the future.

For my next hobby project, I'm knitting a scarf! I'm pretty sure I tried knitting at one point when I was younger but I don't remember it. I wanted a kit to play around with and try making something with help so I bought a kit with colour changing yarn. The yarn's quality is not that great and the scarf is turning out to be thinner than expected even with 3 extra stitches per row.. so we'll see how it turns out 😅

chat with me!

I'm tired of talking about my January 😂 I lowkey want to read and watch lesser in February so that I have lesser to write about. I'll probably go back to the concise format where I write only 3-4 lines about each. Unlessss you write an essay in the comments too and give me company in being wordy 👀

How was your January? What did you read and watch? Did you go anywhere cool or try something new?