Despite my general apathy toward professional sports, I LOVE this time of year. The fact that football is now spread out over multiple weekdays is my new heaven. And while golfers aren’t out enforce in Minnesota, televised tournaments are plentiful. Add basketball to the mix and my household clocks a fair number of hours on sports viewing.
All of which means I have ample time to read. As a seasonal reader, I fall into autumn books each year and imbibe on Christmas Cozies as winter sets in. In the summer, I am an audiobook fanatic, reading while I walk. But Janaury-March? That’s my anything goes reading time.
In the winter, I am indiscriminate. I read multiple books simultaneously. Listening to one, reading another on my kindle and another as a dead tree book while snuggled up in front of the fireplace. If a cover looks compelling, I’ll read it. If someone merely mentions a book–good or bad–I am all in. If reading in Janauary were an Olympic sport, I could be a contender.
Since January 1, I’m 20 books in and counting. For starters, someone in our Early Bird Book Club recommended The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. “It’s about midwives.”
My great aunt Toody was a midwife back in the early 1900’s. She’d told harrowing stories of birth in an infant state with little or no medically trained care anywhere in sight. She’d traveled far and wide to help mothers bring their babies into the world. And, she helped bury them as well. I was definitely intrigued.
This fictionalized retelling of an intelligent, compassionate woman in 1789 who gets caught up in a murder trial is so vividly and beautifully told that I literally listened to it every chance I got. It perfectly marries fact with fiction in way that midwife Martha Ballard comes to life as easily as any main character in a contemporary novel. Further, the book takes place just a few years after the Revolutionary War.
As 2026 is the semiquincentennial of our independence from the British, it is fascinating to read how life has changed in the past 250 years–and to see what has stayed the same. If you’d like to read and discuss this book with us, it is our first No Strings Book Club pick of the the year.
Of the books I’ve read so far this year, I can unequivocally put The Frozen River in my top three faves, along with another inspired-by-true-events book, The Second Life of Mirielle West by Amanda Skenandore which takes us to Louisiana’s Leprosarium in the 1920’s. Rounding out the best books so far is Once Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods. This Little Mermaid/Cinderella fractured fairy tale had me sobbing at book’s end.
Other books I’ve read in January: in no particular order.
- The Unraveling of Julia by Lisa Scottoline: gothic mystery, foreign setting, a little bit of love
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London: short story, gold rush survival adventure
- The Haunting of Paynes Hollow by Kelly Armstrong: another gothic mystery with a bit of death and a handsome side kick
- Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon: fun, cozy, murder mystery with a little heart and no small amount of family drama
- The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer: short nonfiction that taps into the lessons nature offers us
- Shady Hollow by Juneau Black: Richard Scarry meets Micky Spillane
- Good Spirits by B.K. Borison: spicy afterlife vibes, takes the ghost of Christmas past to a new level
- Well, Actually by Mazey Eddings: past frenemies to current love, spicier than my chili and the books I usually read (quite frankly, it’s a blusher)
- Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy: Scottish Highlanders, wolves, ecology, assault, murder, and our inherent connection to nature
- A Killing Cold by Kate Alice Marshall: life of luxury meets a reckoning in this locked room thriller
- The Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gilmore: heat up a cup of java and settle in for a slight mystery and a big romance
- The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick: futuristic, alternative healing, and a look at how we deal with grief and loss
- The Cellar by Natasha Preston: kidnapping, abuse, murder, trauma–all the aspects of a James Patterson mystery but that digs in a little deeper to address the aftermath from the victim’s perspectve
- Murder by Memory by Olicia Waite: a fun space romp with lovable characters and a few dead bodies
- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman: a dystopian dive into a world colonized by 40 women and the humanity that grows from that forcible segregation
- Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoku: a cozy crime with a spunky main character and a side of pie
- What Boys Learn by Andromeda Romano-Lax: a disturbing, psychological thriller that questions nature versus nurture in the world of mental health
What are you currently reading? And what book(s) would you recommend?
~jody
