January 2026 Reading Wrap-Up
Hello! Welcome to my January 2026 reading wrap-up. I completed 10 books in January, but I also read half of another and had 4 DNFs (did not finish) and a soft DNF (didn’t finish for now, but will return to it). I thought I’d do something a little different this month and talk briefly about my DNFs, since one of those was a book from my 26 Books in 2026 list.
Just to let you know, each book’s title links to its Goodreads page, and I’ve also added links to each book’s Bookshop.org page at the end of my reviews. Those are affiliate links, so any purchase made through them will earn me a small commission at no extra expense to you.
Let’s start with the DNFs
Unfortunately, some of the books from my “most anticipated books” lists don’t quite live up to my expectations. This happened with Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig, Why Did God Make the Tree by Tammy Gregg (though I got far enough through it that I did review it on Goodreads), and What Boys Learn by Andromeda Romano-Lax. That’s not to say that they aren’t good books that have a lot of positive reviews. I just have so many books I’m excited to read that I’ve become a lot quicker to DNF when I’m not enjoying one.
I’m afraid I also DNF’d Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. It was on my 26 Books in 2026 list because it had been on my physical TBR for quite a long time. I think I’d been avoiding it for good reason. Historical fiction involving real people is always uncomfortable for me, and I didn’t like where I could see Hamnet was going, plus the over-written-yet-vague writing style was really off-putting for me. I didn’t get very far in before I DNF’d it.
And I soft-DNF’d Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. My hold on it came in at the library, but I had so many other books to read, and I wasn’t really in the mood to read humour. I’ll get around to it again at some point.
My half-way read
As for the book I only read half of in January, that was The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I’m enjoying it, but it’s… a lot. I started to speed-read it to finish it in January, but I don’t want to do that. I need a little break from it for now, but I still hope to finish it in February.
Now for the 10 books I completed in January, ranked from least favourite to favourite.
Least favourite
A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
I didn’t rate this one. This isn’t a book I ever would have picked up if not for Canada Reads, but I really enjoyed a lot of it. There are a lot of great conversations in here about Indigenous, queer, and societal issues, as well as really interesting thoughts about literature. It’s almost more of a series of essays than a novel or a memoir, but it’s kind of a blend of all three, which makes it a very unique read. It’s also beautifully written, so any choppiness seems like less of a problem than it otherwise might.
I would have preferred less explicit detail in his Grindr anecdotes, but I understood their inclusion when Belcourt wrote in Chapter 9, “if you’re queer you’re predisposed to the condition of overwriting because when you come into your identity after a time of closetedness excess becomes a way of plotting yourself in a different story than the one you inherited.” So okay, sure, I get it. But it was uncomfortably TMI for me.
This is the first of the five Canada Reads 2026 finalists that I’ve read so far, and I’m already willing to bet it’ll be a top contender.
An uncomfortable 4-star
American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate by Eric Lichtblau
The scariest, most depressing book I’ve ever read. Very well-researched and well-written… but terrifying and bleak as heck. When all this hate and backwards thinking is laid out in front of you like this, it’s hard to feel any hope for the world. It’s so hard to understand how anyone can hate other people this much, but it’s important for us to know that it’s happening and even getting worse. I just wish this book had focused more on how to turn this kind of thinking around, rather than throwing hate crime after hate crime at us with barely a chance to catch our breath.
Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the ARC.
Some more 4-stars
Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls
This was my first read of the year, and it was a little bit out of my comfort zone. I don’t read a lot of historical fiction, but I enjoyed Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle, and this novel sounded interesting. It’s loosely based on real people, but Walls masterfully combined Prohibition-era America with Tudor family drama, and the result is pretty compelling.
I reviewed this book on my blog here. I really enjoyed my time with it. If you’re interested in Japanese culture or spirituality in general, I recommend checking it out. It might also offer comfort to anyone experiencing grief.
I love Joe Hill’s writing. His prose is so pretty, even when he’s describing horrific things. His characters and their motivations are so believable, even when they’re raging douchebags. And from what I’ve seen of his writing so far, his premises are varied, wildly imaginative, and well researched. I want to read a lot more from him.
That said, I wanted a lot less of this particular book. 😅 I love a good chunker, but there were times when the story really dragged and I wanted things to move along already. I feel like 877 pages could have been 600 quite comfortably. But that’s really my only problem with this novel. I enjoyed it a lot.
Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones
I don’t usually vibe with werewolf stories. But I pretty much always vibe with SGJ, so, to no one’s surprise, I really enjoyed this. I love his take on werewolf lore and seeing their day-to-day lives through the eyes of a young “pup” who’s starting to wonder when or if he’ll ever wolf out. Instead of the werewolves being the villains, they’re the heroes of this story. Really cool.
Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography by Lemony Snicket
Reading Lemony Snicket’s writing is always a fun, word-nerdy time, and his “unauthorized” autobiography is no exception. It’s very closely tied to the Series of Unfortunate Events books, though, in which Daniel Handler’s persona of Lemony Snicket is a key character rather than just a penname. This book both does and absolutely does not answer all those burning questions we’ve always had about Lemony Snicket’s life.
The almost-perfect 4.5-star reads
This was one of my top anticipated books of 2025, but it took me this long to get my hands on it. Wow, what a debut novel! Word to the wise: This seems to be marketed as a thriller, but it’s 98% introspective literary fiction, and as such it’s spectacular.
Heavily-pregnant Annie is at IKEA buying a crib when The Big One hits and her city turns into a massive pile of rubble. From here, we follow Annie as she walks through the streets looking for her husband and/or somewhere safe to rest, all while talking in her mind to her unborn baby about what she sees, hears, and feels, and what led her to this moment in her life. I was riveted from start to finish.
I almost gave it 5 stars, but I did have a couple of nitpicks that are barely even worth mentioning. That’s almost always true of debut novels, in my experience. But I’ll be watching out for Emma Pattee’s future work, for sure.
I included a few spoilery comments about the ending in my Goodreads review here.
Ain’t Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton by Martha Ackmann
Dolly’s so cool, and such an inspiration. This is a really well-researched biography with a heavy focus on her younger years and her rise to fame. I wish there’d been a little more about her later life, but I guess she’s kept most of it private. Still, there are a lot of good insights and interviews with her family and friends, and Ackmann never gets gossipy or insinuates anything without evidence. If you enjoy celebrity biographies, definitely pick this one up.
My only 5-star read of the year so far
I reviewed this one here, and I can’t be expected to form coherent thoughts about it again. I just loved it, plain and simple.