January 2026 Reading Update

[penwalla]

A slow start to the year! Pretty romance heavy. Next month I really need to lock in on speculative fiction so I can try and knock some squares from my r/fantasy bingo card. I also would love to finish any of the books that have been sitting on my currently-reading shelf for literal months...

PROGRESS

[12/200] books read

[0/10] nonfiction books read

[1/3] series completed

[1/50] backlist books read

NEW READS

Solo Leveling Vol. 14 by Chugong

5/5. Finally, my beloved post-canon Igris extras...I do love that the worldbuilding in Solo Leveling is both good and bad. Like there's so much interesting stuff that never gets dug into, in favor of the protag doing badass shit. I am obsessed with this eternal world of shadow where all Jinwoo's soldiers live, and have been awaiting this extra since I read the fan translation of this webcomic last year. 

A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo

5/5. I love the way Vo plays with unreliability narrators in these novellas. This tension between what the truth of a matter is and what story gets told about it afterward is the heart of this series.

Game Changer by Rachel Reid

2/5. The writing just isn't great, and the romance is really boring. 

Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid

4/5. To be honest, this would be getting a lower rating if I had stumbled on it organically--it's better written than the first installment, and it's a more compelling romance, but I think it's really carried by my enjoyment of the show.

Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang

5/5. Reminded me of Babel, in a good way. One of the things I enjoyed about this story is that we, the reader, can immediately recognize the horrors of this society. We can guess what the the Blight is from the very beginning, so the tension isn't in the reveal but in the knowledge that sooner or later our protagonists will have to wrestle with that truth. I like too that the two protagonists are experiencing different kinds of oppression in the same society and the book digs into the way you can be a member of one marginalized group and still exercise power over another.

Audrey Lane Stirs the Pot by Alexis Hall

4/5. I really came around on the central romance of this story by the end--our foul mouthed love interest I frankly found kind of off-putting, but the book convinced me Audrey was into her--but Doris and her WWII era gay tragedy is the best thing about this book. 

The Other World's Books Depend On the Bean Counter Vol. 6 by Kazuki Irodori

5/5. A short installment, but it was fun and the romance is moving!

Tough Guy by Rachel Reid

4/5. Perfectly fine, except that the author really need to do some more research. Frankly I think it's disappointing that Ryan's flight anxiety and his orgasm issues (which are drug induced!) are just like, cured by falling in love. And also, I could not take the book seriously after it started fearmongering about Ryan getting fucking Toradol injections. Guys, Toradol is just a parenteral NSAID. It's the same class of drug as ibuprofen. It's not a narcotic! It's not addictive! 

The Alpha of Grave Hills by Kathryn Moon

3/5. This is a book that is fine but I just couldn't get into it. I appreciate that this is het omegaverse that actually gets into the gender roles, but I will be honest...I'm still rolling my fucking eyes. If all the omegas are women and all the men are betas or alphas, what is the point of the omegeverse? You are recreating misogyny and for what? And having the omegas get their powers as dragons from bonding with the right guy just sucks as a concept. The implications are...not great. 

It's also a really boring romance. This book desperately needs some melodrama.

Enchanting the Fae Queen by Stephanie Burgis

3/5. Another romance where I wanted to like it so much more than I did! I was so into it at the start, I really like the antagonistic dynamic they were setting up, but the book really leans heavily on this past history the leads have and 1. we hardly get to see any of it and 2. they fall in love so fast and immediately abandon it. It feels like it becomes a generic romance so quickly. 

REREADS

The Invasion by K. A. Applegate

5/5. Man, Animorphs is really good. This first volume sets up the group dynamic and the characters really well. In particular i think it sets up the dynamic of Jake as leader, Cassie as the moral authority, and Marcus as the pragmatist.

The Visitor by K. A. Applegate

5/5. To me Rachel is the character who most directly embodies Applegate's thesis about war: that it's ultimately terrible even when it's for a good reason and that no one comes out of it unscathed. Okay, spoilers for Animorphs, stop reading here if you haven't read the series. But in this first volume in her POV Rachel has a softness to her that she will spend the rest of the series stripped away. You can see in this volume how she will become the person who will (maybe) kill David, how she will become the one member of the group who will die in battle rather than live to see the war end.