Goals check-in, and the last two books of January

I mentioned a while back that I was trying something different with various long-term and short-term (non-fannish) goals, and as I've come to the end of the first month of this new approach, I thought I'd write a check-in about how it's been going so far. I'm approaching things with the aim of a minimum of one big admin task, one big garden task, and one big house-related task per month, with the option to add other things. So, how did it go?

( January goals )

The last two books of the month were great — and very different! They were The Haçienda by Isabel Cañas (a retelling of du Maurier's Rebecca set in Mexico after its War of Independence) and Last Exit by Max Gladstone (a typically hard-to-categorise book, part road novel, part campus novel, part multiverse novel, the story of five university friends who discover the ability to move between worlds and find themselves locked in a cosmic battle; it reminded me of American Gods in its focus on the minutiae of weird Americana, but it's also very much an exploration of the original and ongoing sins of the United States, and very, very specifically about people of my age at this current moment, in terms of the cultural touchstones and big political events the characters remember).

So, January's reading ended on a high note, and it's onward to February, I guess?