I don’t want to pine away the time by always looking ahead, but January is one month I am glad to see come to an end.

In some ways, it has been a quiet month. We had one excursion with Jason, Mittu, and Timothy to a pizza place, and they dropped by one day. There have been a lot of activities and meetings at church involving one or more of them, plus snow and colds. Hopefully we’ll see them more next month!

We spent the first few days of January putting away Christmas decorations and presents and recuperating from the much-enjoyed but busy holidays.

My dear husband has spent much of the month painting the interior of our house. We’ve lived here fourteen years and only painted a couple of bedrooms and bathrooms, so the rest of the rooms were in need of refreshing. He wanted to put painting off til he retired so he didn’t have to maneuver around his work schedule. I mentioned on a previous Friday’s Fave Five that he has been wiping down wall plaques and such before putting them back up, which has been much appreciated! He also cleaned the blinds of one room while I washed and ironed the curtains. We’ll do the same as we come to the last couple of rooms with windows. It’s a nice feeling to have a paced spring cleaning.

I didn’t made any cards this month.

Watching

We’re enjoying the return of Masterpiece Theatre’s production of All Creatures Great and Small.

We also watched Blitz Spirit with Lucy Worsley, a documentary in which she tries to prove that the brave camaraderie of WWII was a myth. From what little I have seen of her productions, she’s somewhat iconoclastic in her approach generally. She tried to prove her point with six different stories drawn from governmental archives of personal stories. I’ve read so much from this era, I can’t help but think she’s wrong to a degree. Yes, people were afraid, sometimes desperate, and experienced horrible things. But overall, I think society in general was more brave and more apt to pull together than any time in history.

Reading

Since last time I finished:

• Winter Fire: Christmas with G. K. Chesterton by Ryan Whitaker Smith, nonfiction. This was a good introduction to Chesterton and sparked three or four blog posts.
• Set the Stars Alight by Amanda Dykes, audiobook. A watchmaker’s daughter and her childhood friend reunite to discover what happened to the Jubilee, a fictional English ship supposedly taken over by a traitor named Frederick Handford. The dual timeline shows us the real story of Frederick. Amanda writes books that touch the heart, and this was no exception.
• Miramar Bay by Davis Bunn, fiction, audiobook. A secular but clean story about a Hollywood star determining what he really wants in life, a restaurant owner striving to keep her business despite troubles, and a mother seeking courage to reunite with the daughter she abandoned. This is the first in the Miramar Bay series; The Christmas Hummingbird was the eighth.
• Firefly Cove by Davis Bunn. fiction, audiobook. The second in the Miramar Bay series. It’s kind of an odd story about a man who dies in the 1960s and wakes up in someone else’s body in modern time. Not the kind of story I usually go for, but it was touching and interesting.

Everyday Gospel for Christmas by Paul David Tripp and The Christmas Hummingbird by Davis Bunn were both finished right at the end of December, but not reviewed until this month together here.

I’m currently reading:

• Ezekiel: The God of Glory by Tim Chester
• Hebrews for You by Michael Kruger with the ladies’ Bible study group.
• What’s a Disorganized Person to Do? by Stacey Platt
• The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 – 1963, compiled by Walter Hooper
• The Librarian of Saint-Malo by Mario Escobar, fiction
• Between the Sound and the Sea by Amanda Cox, fiction

I started Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge as one of Audible’s free books for subscribers, but it was pulled out of rotation before I could finish it. I will probably look for it, maybe from the library, just to complete it, though it wasn’t really grabbing me. But I think the best of it might be nearer the end.

I’m also dipping into parts of one of my favorite books on writing, Write Better: A Lifelong Editor on Craft, Art, and Spirituality by Andrew T. Le Peau.

Blogging

Besides the weekly Friday Fave Fives, Saturday Laudable Linkage, and book reviews, I’ve posted these since last time:

• Books Read in 2024
• Favorite Books of 2024
• Does God Have a Specific Will for Your Life?
• Cultivating Awe of God’s Word
• Lesser Lights
• When Habits Hinder Rather than Help

Writing

Our critique group started back up this month. Though I appreciated and needed the time off during the last couple of months of the year, I am happy we’re meeting again. I learn so much from the discussions even when the focus is on the other writers’ pieces.

I had hoped to delve into my own manuscript since January is usually less busy. But it hasn’t worked out for various reasons. My turn to present to the group is coming up in March–there’s nothing like a deadline to spark motivation. 🙂

How was your January?