January 2011 Recap

Here is the list of books I read in January: (The links will take you to my reviews)

1. Rules of Attraction - Simone Elkeles (Read in Dec, reviewed in Jan)
2. Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman (Read in Dec, reviewed in Jan)
3. An Eye For An Eye - Malorie Blackman (Novella) (Read in Dec, reviewed in Jan)
4. Secret Lives - Gabriella Poole (Read in Dec, reviewed in Jan)
5. Half Brother - Kenneth Oppel (Read in Dec, reviewed in Jan)
6. Lover Revealed - JR Ward
7. Entangled - Cat Clarke
8. Paranormalcy - Kiersten White
9. Dark Needs at Night's Edge - Kresley Cole
10. The Iron Witch - Karen Mahoney
11. Long Reach - Peter Cocks
12. Personal Demons - Lisa Desrochers
13. Another One Bites the Dust - Jennifer Rardin
14. Love Immortal - Felicity Heaton
15. Warm Bodies - Isaac Marion
16. Friday Night Bites - Chloe Neill
17. Finding Sky - Joss Stirling
18. Wereworld: Rise of the Wolf - Curtis Jobling (review coming soon)
19. Unknown - Rachel Caine (review coming soon)
20. If I Stay - Gayle Forman (review coming soon)
21. Witchfinder: Gallows at Twilight - William Hussey (review coming soon)

January Books of the Month:

I just couldn't narrow it down to less than 2 YA books for January:

Entangled by Cat Clarke (read my review here)

The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney (read my review here)

My pick for favorite adult read of the month was much easier:

Love Immortal by Felicity Heaton (read my review here)

Event Reports:

I was lucky to attend some fantastic bookish events in January.  First was a UK YA blogger meet up organised by Jo from Once Upon A Bookcase, it's always great fun getting to meet up with people who love books as much as I do & we had a lovely lunch followed by book shopping in Foyles.  You can read my event write up here. 

Next was the launch party for Entangled by Cat Clarke organised by Quercus.  I'm a massive fan of Entangled and have known Cat since I met her at another event last year so it was really exciting to be able to attend the launch party.  A fab day with lots of great bloggers, lots of coffee drinking and of course Entangled cupcakes!  My write up was posted here.  Thanks to Quercus for a great party!

Finally there was the RHCB Blogger Brunch which was an amazing day and we got to find out about some of the exciting new titles they will be publishing this year.  I think there were about 16 bloggers attending so it was nice to get to meet some more of the people I chat to on Twitter.  Guest of honor was Karen Mahoney and we all had a glass of champers to celebrate the release of her debut novel The Iron Witch.  We were all very excited when RHCB let us raid the bookshelves in their offices again (I tried to be restrained but I don't think it worked very well!).  I haven't had a chance to write up my event report for this one yet (I've not really had the brain power to do much blogging while I've had this rotten cold) but I promise I'll get it posted sometime this weekend.  I'd like to say a massive thank you to all at RHCB for giving up their Saturday morning to come into work & meet us all, I love how enthusiastic each and every one of them is about the books they publish!

Author's Animal Antics:

We had a couple of great posts for the Author's Animal Antics so this feature this month (you can find out more about the feature here).  The first was from the lovely Cat Clarke who's debut novel Entangled was published in January, you can read Cat's post by clicking here.  Next was Curtis Jobling another January debut author who wrote Wereworld: Rise of the Wolf (A fab fantasy story that I will be reviewing this book in the next couple of days).  Curtis talks about all the crazy antics his Bengal cats get up to here.  A big thanks to both Cat & Curtis for taking the time to write guest posts for me.

Challenge Updates:

So these are the challenges I've decided to sign up for in 2011 (I may well end up adding others as the year goes on but we'll see what happens)

2011 100+ Reading Challenge - Read 12/100 (I managed over 200 books last year so I'm hoping to read at least 150 this year)
2011 Horror & Urban Fantasy Challenge - Read 6/24 (Urban fantasy is one of my favorite genres so I'm sure I'll easily be able to complete this one)
2011 Support Your Local Library Challenge - Read 2/25 (I took part in this challenge last year & think I read about 80 library books.  I don't think I'll have time to read as many this year because I really want to focus on reading some of the books I've been buying for myself  - I still haven't read the books I got for Christmas in 2009! - but I think it's really important to support the library so I'll make sure I read as many as I can)
2011 Debut Author Challenge - Read 4/12 (This is my first time taking part in this challenge but I'm looking forward to focusing more on debut novels this year.  12 is the official challenge target but I'm aiming a lot higher than that)
2011 British Books Challenge - Read 5/12 (Another new challenge this year.  12 is the official challenge target but I'm planning on focusing on British authors as much as I can this year so I want to read a lot more than that)
2011 New Author Challenge - Read 7/50 (I took part in this challenge last year and tried books by 104 new to me authors, a lot of those have been added to my must buy list and I'm looking forward to discovering lots of new favorites this year)