January 2019 Recap

January started slow. We didn’t do anything exciting for New Year after our action-packed December holiday. Snubnose went to a party with her friends. Piglet and I cozied up together to watch his new favorite movie – Finding Nemo. And all of us sedately wished each other Happy New Year before heading to bed.

I didn’t even have any alcohol on New Year’s Eve. Ha! I can’t remember the last time I had such a sober start to a new year.

That evening marked the start of a really disciplined month for me. Like I do every year, I had made my usual resolutions of eating healthy and so on. But surprisingly this month I have really stuck to it, surprising everyone I know with my self-discipline.

I’ve also been doing a lot of reading, started redesigning the blog (still in the works, and still quite broken), blogged quite a lot. I’ve also signed up for a couple of self-development classes to uplevel my work skills.

Things are really happening! Lot of late nights, but also I am so happy with the new productive, multi-tasking me, and I hope to be able to carry this energy through the year.

So, what did I read this month? Quite a lot. Rafina was a short n easy read over the space of a couple of days. So was Secret Diary of an Incurable Romantic and The Sane Psychopath.

However, this month hasn’t just been about short n easy reads. I started and finished The Great Alone by Sophie Hannah (a bit meh honestly), and The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, which I loved (review upcoming).

Both these books have one thing in common – a love for the great natural spaces in our world even if they aren’t conducive to human beings. I fell in love with Alaska as the writer described it. A week later, I again fell headlong in love with the majestic Sunderbans being described in The Hungry Tide.

I also started with a long-cherished goal of mine – to read books by Diana Wynne Jones. Jenny from Reading the End has for long been urging me to try one of her books. And this month I embarked on Time City – a bizarre time travel novel, and I am really charmed by it so far. Thanks, Jenny for the recco!

All in all, a great reading month.

I’ve been watching a lot of good quality shows too! Mostly British shows, which I think are the best! I started off the year with Broadchurch on Netflix- watching just the first season. Somehow couldn’t get into the second season much. Instead, I turned my attention to The Night Manager – watching one episode a day and finishing it up in the space of a week. The Night Manager is based on John LeCarre’s novel (that I have not read), and I loved it. The acting, locations, cinematography all was excellent. I loved how they combined a James Bond vibe with LeCarre’s idealism.

I also caught Wolf Hall on Hotstar. I’ve been wanting to watch it ever since I read Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, and it was a satisfying watch as well. The icing on the cake was getting to watch The English Patient, and I liked the movie a lot more than the book. Maybe it was the Italian countryside and the African locations, maybe it was Ralph Fiennes’ and Kristen Scott Thomas’ cheekbones, or Juliette Binoche’s charisma – whatever it was I loved the movie, even though it was based on a book I rather disliked.

I did a lot of book reviews this month – well not a lot as most book bloggers do, but lot compared to my usual output. I also managed to squeeze in a long-ish post about all the beautiful beaches we visited in Sri Lanka in December. Our annual holiday was so good, that we have already started planning to go there again this year. So much beauty, and just an hour’s flight away – it’s just too good a combination.

I had a fabulous lunch with friends at a blogger’s table at Nevermind where I broke my diet rules. The funny thing is that I didn’t just cut loose like I was expecting to do. I stuck to a single drink and single portions of everything there. Still, I am in the process of cutting down the food events I attend and extend this healthy eating kick I’ve been on.

The fam was good this month. The kids have a tendency to get viral fevers at the start of the year when the weather changes. This time though, they were fine even though as winters go, it was a particularly chilly one.

Snubnose and Piglet have been quietly going about their daily routines. He juggling tennis and athletics and school. She with her swimming and ballet and school.

One nice thing that happened this month was Snubnose finally getting to finish her copy of Vincent Van Gogh’s famous cornfield painting.

Here is a pic of the original painting.

Here is Snubnose’s version of it.

The colors are a little duller, and she hasn’t been quite able to get the bluish green sky of the original. But this work represents almost five months of toil (off and on, of course), and I am so proud that she stuck through the difficult parts (Oh! how many times she redid that sky), and finally completed it. I can’t wait to frame and hang it up on my wall now.

Piglet gave us an alarm at school when he got into a tiff with a fellow classmate. We were called in by the teachers, and though we were quite upset, the school seems to have taken it in their stride. No parent blaming or shaming. Instead, they have added more supervision in the school grounds during playtime.

Overall

Overall, it’s been a decent month. We started off slow and solid. I had a good work-life balance. Life is good. I hope the rest of 2019 continues in this steady mode. I highly doubt it though!

What was your January 2019 like? Did you have a good month?