January wrap-up!

Happy last day of January, y’all! I can’t believe the first month of 2023 is done! I hope your year was off to a good start. I had a fairly good reading month, so let’s get into it!

Books Read

• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion: 4 stars
• Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkin: 4.5 stars
• Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney: 4.5 stars

This was a really great month! I really enjoyed these three books, and it was a great start to the year.

Currently reading

• My book club book for this month is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, which has been on my TBR for the better part of a decade, so I’m so excited to read it!

Things watched

• Survivor 43: we finished this season I think late December, and I found the ending kind of meh? The winner was the person I wanted to win the least out of the final three, so that was sad. Overall, I found this season not terrible, but definitely not my favourite.
• Emma: I finally watched Emma (2020), and I loved it! I gave it five stars; I just found it so charming and fun. I don’t always get on with period pieces, so I was pleasantly surprised. I just really enjoyed this.
• A Taxi Driver: my friend Rachel started a movie club, and it was one of my goals this year to read more movies, so I joined and this was our January pick! It follows a taxi driver in Korea who drives a reporter to a remote area and discovers an uprising happening. I really enjoyed it. Song Kang-ho was fantastic and this was overall just a really good movie. Highly recommend.
• I started watching season 7 of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, which is the all winners season. It has a lot of my favourite queens (and one I can’t stand), so I’ve been enjoying it!
• I forgot to mention in my December wrap-up, but I binged all of Euphoria at the beginning of December and never gave y’all my thoughts. Honestly, I found it very okay, bordering on good. Season 1 was really great — the characters were super interesting and felt real, the drama, while over-the-top, was still believable and entertaining, the storylines and character developments were really promising. And then season 2 shit on all of that and ruined every character. The acting is great, and everyone is a standout in my opinion. But I found it left almost no impact on my, unfortunately.
• I also rewatched a bunch of old favourites: Princess Diaries, 1 and 2, Made of Honor, the Hunger Games, and 27 Dresses. All still bangers.

Blog posts

• 2022 reading wrap-up
• Favourites and disappointments of 2022
• TBR Round-up 2
• Mini review: Gutter Child

I’m really trying to blog more consistently in 2023, and we’re off to a promising start! I have a couple posts scheduled over the next couple of weeks, and I have a few ideas of things I want to talk about, so here’s hoping the upward trajectory continues!

Other news and highlights

• January was an okay month lol
• It started out great, like always. My family had our classic fondue party, and it was, as always, the best time ever. My best friend and her boyfriend came, my boyfriend’s family came, we played lots of games and ate and drank a lot. The next day, we had brunch and took my dad’s dogs to the dog park. One of my favourite nights of the year.
• I had dinner with some of my law friends, my “sisters-in-law”, which was so good. I hadn’t seen some of them in over a year, so it was so great to see them. Also, one of them is pregnant!!!!!!!!!! And I’m so excited for her.
• The weather in Calgary was so good for most of January, so I was able to go on a lot of walks and enjoy myself. I even bought iced coffee on one of my walks last weekend!
• Work also picked up a bit more this month, which was honestly kind of nice! It was good having a chill period, but we have some exciting projects coming up and made good headway on other projects, so I’m excited!
• And that was pretty much my month! Lots of walks, reading, working, hanging out with our families, but nothing too exciting.

Anyhow, how was your January? What have you been up to? Do you have any plans for February? Let me know!

Thanks for reading! xx

Ally xx

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