A selection of quotes and pictures to represent January’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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When freedoms are forbidden, their enjoyment becomes an especially delicious pleasure.

The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor (2025)

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‘It’s a terrible thing you’ve lived through,’ she said. ‘And you won’t forget it easily. Perhaps you won’t forget it ever. But we have a saying in Swedish: you cannot prevent the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can stop them from nesting in your hair.’

The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn (2025)

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It is a quiet painting – no bells ring. It is quiet not just because the young woman is reading, but quiet in its colours. There are no shouting bright orange carpets or loud lemon-yellow bodices or flaming red dresses that scream. Everything is muted.

Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton (2025)

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Biography and good novels were his favourite reading, a discovery of his own as he grew up since he came from a family who only read if they were ill in bed. But for him such books helped to satisfy the acute curiosity about what people did and why they did it that made him a notable detective.

Tea on Sunday by Lettice Cooper (1973)

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Most people just want an easy life. It’s unsettling when someone starts pulling apart the stories we’ve stitched together, the things we tell ourselves for comfort.

The Sirens by Emilia Hart (2025)

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“I’m not saying he was a bad man, but when you withdraw from the world like that, you end up closing in on yourself. Take, for example, the stories that everybody talks about, only then to forget them the very next day. Well, he held on to them, you see, deep inside himself.”

The Little Sparrow Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (1959)

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She wonders when it became so difficult to find answers. Or has the truth always come hard won? People rarely say what they mean, relationships are fraught with misunderstandings, who can really be objective? How can she even hope to pinpoint motives and actions, drives and desires when they are all so muddled and slippery, even in the best of us? Who among us really knows our own heart, let alone someone else’s?

Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd (2025)

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‘No, no,’ says Lou, and her top hat shakes in the moonlight. ‘Tastes can develop, certainly, but at any given time, one’s opinion on art is certainly valid. ‘Tis the point of art to stir us whether we have studied paintings for fifty years or are looking upon our first painting. Be confident in your tastes, Alice. But do be open to the notion that they are wilful and unpredictable and will almost certainly change.’

The Portrait Artist by Dani Heywood-Lonsdale (2025)

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I asked him later if he wanted to know how and when he would die. He laughed and said, ‘Sure, stories don’t die.’ But they do. They die and they are forgotten and new stories take their place, just as kings follow kings.

The Morrigan by Kim Curran (2025)

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To think of anything else except the way things are is just to live in a world of the imagination – fine for some things but not for real life. Don’t you agree?

This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith (1960)

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Favourite books read in January:

This Sweet Sickness, Woman in Blue and The Lost Passenger

Authors read for the first time in January:

Lettice Cooper, Dani Heywood-Lonsdale, Kim Curran

Places visited in my January reading:

Italy, Vatican City, England, Australia, Netherlands, Japan, Ireland, USA

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January reading notes: This was a good start to the year for me, reading-wise. Most of the books I’ve read are NetGalley books being released over the next few months, so I’ll be posting my reviews around the publication dates. I also managed to read a book for the Japanese Literature Challenge and may even have time to fit in another one in February! Another event I’m hoping to join in with in February is #ReadIndies hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy’s Literary Life. I’m also planning to participate in #ReadChristie2025, as next month’s book, The Thirteen Problems, is one I haven’t read yet.

How was your January? Do you have any plans for your February reading?