Spell the Month in Books ~ January 2026

Reviews from the Stacks

I found this on one of the blogs I follow, Books are the New Black who found it at One Book More. It was originally created by Reviews from the Stacks, and the idea is to spell the month using the first letter of book titles.

January:  New - interpret as you will (new releases, new to you, etc)

New. That's not normally a hard challenge but I couldn't find enough books for the letters. Still, I managed. I added some books that were new to me last year.

JANUARY

J
Worsley, Lucy "Jane Austen at Home" - 2017

Same as last year, my January book starts with Jane. No wonder, 2025 was the Jane Austen year.

This was a fabulous biography. Lucy Worsley really "visited" Jane Austen at home and accompanied her on all her visits to friends and family. It was so nice to read what she and her family, especially her sister Cassandra had been up to. 

Find more about Jane Austen here in the #Reading Jane Austen project.

A
Hammond, Richard "As You Do: Adventures With Evil, Oliver And The Vice President Of Botswana" - 2008

I have always loved Top Gear and especially Richard Hammond. The adventures the guys had in their show, they were always hilarious albeit very scary.

Here, Richard Hammond has written about his race to the North Pole with a dog-driven sled against his friends in a car - with a lot of preparation beforehand (Polar Special, also known as the Polar Challenge). And about his trip through Africa in a car that he bought right there and kept later on because he had named it (Ollie) and you cannot sell a car with a name. LOL.

N
Mason, Daniel - "North Woods" - 2023

Stories about a house that go over centuries and we get to know the inhabitants of the house. Here, we see all kinds of different people (or, in one case, even an animal) live in the house in the woods. For a long time, they grow the best apples that ever exist. How would I have loved to taste one of those Wonder apples. 

U
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Urfaust. Faust Fragment. Faust I. Faust II" (Faust) - 1772-1808 

The story is said to be the greatest work of German literature and I can well believe that. 250 years have passed in the meantime but I don't believe that there has been a single book that is as well-known around the world than this.

A
Köhlmeier, Michael "Occident" (GE: Abendland) - 2007

This book is simply amazing. A man born in 1900. He was almost as old as my maternal grandfather (born in 1899, my grandmother in 1901), so I found it fascinating for that reason alone. 

The book covers so many topics, from music at the beginning of the last century to the two world wars that raged in Europe, to the history of Portugal and Brazil. It's about the lives of just a few people, and not all of them lived through the entire century. But that's precisely what makes it so interesting. You can imagine what a person born at the beginning of the last century, like my eldest children, experienced. (Goodreads)

R
Andrew, Sally "Recipes for Love & Murder. A Tannie Maria Mystery" - 2015

The story about a newspaper columnist in South Africa who loves to cook and shares all her recipes in order to help people. Her recipes sound so great and there is even a cookbook. Unfortunately, it's only availabe in South Africa and they don't ship abroad. If one of my readers lives there or has connections, please, let me know. I'd love that book.

Anyway, Tannie Maria is a very active woman who can stand up for herself. And she has to prove that as her town is chased by an evil killer. Together with her two (female) colleagues, she hunts the hunter.

Y
Brooks, Geraldine "Year of Wonders" - 2001

This was a book about a village that struggled during the plague, that had the idea to shut themselves off from the rest of the world in order not to bring this horrible disease to others. The village existed, the people in the book were based on real people from that time. But it was still a novel.
I think the Covid-19 pandemic brought the story even closer to us.

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Happy Reading!

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