January 2025 Wrap Up

I'm running a little late, but I am finally wrapping up the rest of my January reading. As a reminder, the first three books I read were: Colton Gentry's Third Act by Jeff Zentner, Cat + Gamer, Vol. 6 by Wataru Nadatani, and Eternity Street by John Mack Faragher.

After that, I read 4 more books.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan - One of the Read Harder Challenge prompts from Book Riot is to read a book with no words. This is a Tween graphic novel with no words. It's about immigration, but not in our world. The man on the cover leaves his family behind in a scary country to make a life in a nicer place. It was hard at first, because he didn't speak the language, but he was assigned an animal companion (also pictured) to guide him to where he needed to be. He found other immigrants and formed community with them until he could bring his family to join him. It was beautifully drawn with all sorts of fantastical beings.

UnOrdinary by Uru-Chan - I cannot remember why I picked this up. I saw it on a website somewhere, probably. About halfway through I read a panel that I though was familiar, but since nothing else about the book gave me deja vu, I ignored it. After I finished, I went to mark it in Goodreads and found out I had read this first installment, like, 10 years ago. Oh well. It was like reading it for the first time, so I'm not mad. It's about a boy who goes to a school where every student has some magical powers, but he has none. He gets beaten up every day because the other students (and teachers) see powerlessness as weakness. The queen of the school befriends him and keeps him out of some of the worst scrapes, but she gets expelled for reading a book written by his dad: UnOrdinary. It makes the argument that people with any power, even none, are equal. This is radical stuff in this world. And now he is without his protector. The king of the school notices that the boy doesn't really act like someone with no power. He doesn't kiss up to the others or try to stay out of their way. He just goes along and gets beat up daily for not making himself invisible. This king guy gets curious and starts to watch him. Then he finds out who the boy really is. And the volume ends there. Sigh. Cliffhangers.

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson - This was a lot of fun. Stevenson writes his books in the first person as a guy who writes mysteries because he has solved several in his regular life. He has studied classic mysteries, a la Agatha Christie, and has made lists of what are required in a classic mystery. As the story proceeds he breaks the fourth wall to point out how each event keeps to the requirements. In this one, he also has a list of requirements for a holiday novel, and he is pointing those out as he goes also. The secondary characters are fantastic. There is a smarmy journalist who loves to report on his investigations with terrible titles that make him sound more like Clouseau than Poirot. Ernest's (our narrator) ex-wife has been arrested for the murder of her boyfriend, but she has no memory of the event. The boyfriend owned a non-profit organization that had a theater as a fund-raising effort. Ernest goes to the theater to try to figure out who did what, when there is another murder. The theater and non-profit org staff are amazing characters. This was a good ride.

Hell's Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier by Susan Jonusas - I originally put this on my TBR because it took place just a few hours from me, and it frequently mentions towns that several of my friends lived in in Kansas. The Benders were a family of four who moved to Kansas from who-knows-where, but the older generation pretty much only spoke German. They moved into a cabin on the prairie where they sold groceries to travelers on the Osage Mountain Trail. The cabin was decrepit and dirty, so people didn't tend to stop there twice. Also, 11 people who stopped there, disappeared. It took about 18 months for the neighbors to realize that they might be the reason for the disappearances, but the Benders had already taken off. They were followed as far as Denton, TX, but after that, they disappeared into New Mexico and parts unknown. The investigators found 11 bodies buried in the orchard. I don't recommend reading this while eating, which is what I did. Ew.

Ok. That makes a total of 7 books for January. Yay!