Around January
Movies, books, recipes and more from around January
Hi! Hello!
January was a million days long and I can’t believe that it is finally February. In this one I am rounding up all the books I read, the things I watched, some of the recipes I made and some shopping I did in January. Let’s get into it!
📚 Reading Around
The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
An overworked book publicist quickly falls for her temporary roommate only to realize that he is living seven years in the past. This was the perfect amount of magical realism and the seven year time slip really points out that sometimes love is really just a matter of time.
I read Ashley Poston’s other book The Dead Romantics a couple of years ago and really loved it.
A Little Less Broken by Marian Schembari
I immediately saved A Little Less Broken after Marian Schembari went on one of my favorite podcasts for a debut author episode. Her book is about her decades long journey to being diagnosed with autism and learning to understand her brain a little better. She wasn’t weird or sensitive or broken, she is just on the spectrum and her brain works differently than everyone else. Testing improvements have made it possible for more people than ever to get diagnosed, especially women and girls who are often dismissed by everyone from their doctors to their parents.
This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens
Two babies born on the same day - New Years! For Minnie Copper, New Years is her unluckiest day of the year and it is all because of Quinn Hamilton - born seconds before her. Thirty years of missed connections and finally the two meet. This story weaves through time and at the center of it all is fate which leads us to the people we lest expect to fall in love with.
I am so so excited to watch This Time Next Year streaming on the Roku Channel on February 10th!
The Madman’s Hotel by Niall Breslin
Niall Breslin grew up in the Irish countryside close to St Loman’s Hospital, a psychiatric asylum near Dublin. In the 20th century, Ireland had the largest number of institutionalized people per capita, more than any other country in the world. In The Madman’s Hotel, Breslin joins one family searching for answers about a family member admitted many years ago who wrote that she “wasn’t crazy nor are most of the people in here.” Breslin reflects on his own mental health struggles, making this investigation a personal one.
The Stone Witch of Florence by Anna Rasche
Set in Italy during the black plague, Ginevra di Gasparo is summoned back to Florence, a city she was exiled from many years ago for practicing witchcraft. The city’s religious relics are being stolen and many fear if all of Florence’s relics are taken, God himself will abandon Florence. The Stone Witch of Florence is a historical fiction exploration of the very thin line between religion and the magical.
This was a Book of the Month pick - if you are interested in joining Book of the Month, you can use my link to get your first book for only $5!
The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center
I had a library hold on The Rom-Commers for several months and it was worth the wait! Emma wants to be a screenwriter and she’s spent her life studying romantic comedies. She is given the chance to work with her favorite screenwriter of all time and re-write his terrible romantic comedy. But it turns out he doesn’t even want her help and also that he believes love is a hoax.
If you like reading about writers, Romantic Comedy is another one of my favorites about a female writer on a late night comedy sketch show.
Uncultured: A Memoir by Daniella Mestyanek Young
Daniella Mestyanek Young actually came up on my TikTok promoting her book and I immediately bought the audiobook. She was raised in the The Children of God, an evangelical sex cult. A daughter of a high-ranking member, she was exposed to so many horrors in the name of religion. At 15, she escaped to Texas to build a better life for herself. After college, she joined the military and reflects on her service where so much is eerily similar to the childhood she tried so hard to run from. Young is able to speak so freely about her traumatic life and I really respect the way she critically addresses the systems of power she lived under.
If you are a fan of Educated or The Glass Castle, you would definitely enjoy Uncultured. She is working on another book and I cannot wait to read that one as well.
Andromeda by Therese Bohman
Originally published in Sweden in 2022, Andromeda has recently been translated into English and was a Book of the Month pick. I chose to read this as my Sweden book for my reading around the world challenge.
I am still thinking about how I feel about this one. The story felt a little anticlimactic - both characters spend most of the book being pretentious about literature and defending their superiority to everyone around them as the thing that bonds them. I kept hoping that there was something lost in translation - but I can’t get over the gray relationship that plays off unwanted advances as “just being nice.”
🗽 Adventuring Around
We visited the Solid Gold exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum which explores how gold has impacted civilizations as well as art throughout history across the world. With current fashions to ancient paintings and jewelry on view, this exhibit captures the significance of gold throughout society and its impact on culture. It was also really cool to see the 14th century altar pieces from Italy that were created during the time the book I was reading was set.
One Sunday afternoon, my friend and I ventured to the Church of Sweden. They have a cafe that serves the most delicious cardamon buns and cinnamon rolls. This is a quiet and cozy place to hide out from the chaos of midtown. They also sell Swedish candies so I stocked up and made a candy salad with all the sour candies I bought.
The corpse flower which came to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for the first time in 2018 as a seedling from Malaysia bloomed for the first time in January! Affectionally named “Smelliot,” we waited for nearly an hour and half to smell the smelly smell. It can take corpse flowers up to ten years to bloom the first time and after that they will bloom every three to five years. Their stench lasts only 24-48 hours once they bloom and the scent is strong to attract the flies that pollinate them. Such a pleasure to stand in line with fellow New Yorkers to smell something funny!
📺 Watching Around
We’ve been watching movies! New Years day we watched Ramen Girl starring the late Brittany Murphy. This is one of my all time favorite movies and I originally picked it up in a discount bin at a Blockbuster many years ago. In this romantic comedy, an American girl is abandoned by her boyfriend in Japan. In her despair, she finds comfort in a ramen shop and is inspired to make people happy the way a bowl of ramen can.
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is a road-trip buddy comedy where three friends rediscover their friendship and what they all want out of life. This is Sayak’s comfort movie and we watch it at least twice a year.
We watched Sarfarosh, a Bollywood thriller starring Aamir Khan. When his brother is killed and his father is severely injured by terrorists, a young medical student joins the police force to find justice.
Netflix is back with a new real estate reality show and Selling the City is a good mix of drama and actual real-estate deals.
The Oscars nominations came out and the only one of the bunch I had seen was Wicked. I can’t believe they made this into two parts and they really built a whole rich world on screen.
I watched Saturday Night on the plane about the first ever episode of Saturday Night Live. This movie captured all the excitement leading up to show time and it’s crazy how such a powerhouse show started with just a group of kids trying to figure it out.
Little Miss Sunshine may be one of the films that made me want to study film in college. I saw it for the first time again in many years and it really has a ton of great actors in it!
I started working on the list of Oscar nominated films and saw September 5. To be honest, I didn’t know anything about the 1972 Munich Olympics. This was the first time a terrorist attack was broadcast on tv and now we all carry around devices that show us terrible things all the time.
🥣 Cooking Around
We made the Hainanese chicken rice from Sohla El-Wally’s cookbook Start Here. I skipped the dry brine of the chicken to save time and the dish was still so, so good.
For whatever reason in January I fixate on cinnamon rolls. I decided to make my own from scratch and made this easy recipe. They were worlds better than what you’d make with the Pillsbury can but they weren’t as fluffy as I was hoping so next time I will try this recipe with an overnight rise.
For my breakfast meal prep I made these jalapeño cheddar breakfast biscuits - they were so so good.
I also made crispy rice in the Airfryer! Hold me back because now I can make salmon crispy rice whenever I want. Because we already had basmati rice, I used that instead of sushi rice and it turned out just fine.
🛒 Shopping Around
I treated myself to some new workout clothes as my leggings had been falling down all the time. I went to the Athleta store in SOHO and they helped me try on the different styles and fits. A really good shopping experience, especially as I only really shop online these days. I bought one pair of their Interval leggings for higher impact workouts and one pair of Elation leggings for lighter impact workouts like yoga and barre. I’m usually a Fabletics girl, but I am really happy I invested in these new pieces.
Something was breaking me out and I realized that it was a concealer that I had had for too many years. I replaced it and my sponges. Don’t be like me, replace your cosmetics regularly and wash your makeup brushes frequently.
I restocked on my Nespresso pods - something I do about once every three months. The coffee is really good and has saved me from wanting to buy coffee out all the time.
Thanks for joining me for this January re-cap. It’s been a long month so take care!
Xoxo,
Savannah
📚 Currently Reading: The Favorites by Layne Fargo
🎧 Currently Listening: On the Hippie Trail by Rick Steves
You can shop my 2025 reads so far here.
If you would like to learn more about my Reading Around the World Challenge, you can read more about it in my previous post.
You can see my reading list for my Reading Around the World challenge here.
You can submit reading suggestions for my challenge here - I am always looking for more ideas!
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I miss sour cream and onion biscuits with hot honey and butter. Best biscuits ever