A cozy week of spooky reads / mushroom hunting, gothic tales, the maidens & mystery

[Music] [Music] [Music] look at the cars [Music] make [Music] left to figure things out deep underneath [Music] breathe out look at the cars [Music] hey welcome back to another reading vlog i'm so excited for this one i have just been craving books and reading so so much i've been reading tons recently um so it's very nice to have you here i hope you are extremely cozy because that's what i want this whole week to be today is currently october 5th i think no 6th something like that but i'm in the middle of so many different books i'm about to start a few spooky pics so i thought it would be a good time to start a reading vlog i have some book mail to show you guys and i just have so many options to pick for read so let me tell you what i'm currently in the middle of i'm reading nicholas nickleby by charles dickens but that's in a whole other vlog currently that um i think there'll be two episodes of for that dickens diary thing so i also started never night um a little like before october began and i'm listening to it on audiobook and i got about halfway through and then my loan expired but it just came back in yesterday so i have been listening to this pretty much non-stop i'm currently 286 pages through this i am loving this i've had this on my shelves for almost a couple years now but i've just put off reading it for some reason but this is a grimdark fantasy it's by jay kristoff this came out a while ago it's a trilogy but i am obsessed i think i'm obsessed with it like i'm loving it i'm listening to it so slowly and savoring it so so much this one we follow mia who is training to be an assassin with this entity called the red church which is like a school for assassins and she's going there because she wants to avenge um the powers that destroyed her family which is kind of the governments and people in government and stuff like that in this world inspired by ancient rome and stuff so i'm loving it the characters are great i really really like jay kristoff's writing style like i really do it's very funny to me i just thoroughly am really enjoying it the world building i know lots of people's complaint with this is that the world building is done through footnotes and stuff like that i actually really like that i like feeling like i'm kind of reading a history book with footnotes that like you can skip over they're optional if you want more information about the stuff because i don't think it's lazy world building like i think he actually describes a lot of what is going on and like the fact that you could potentially skip the footnotes if you didn't want to get an more in-depth look into what he's talking about signals to me that the world building is completely sound by itself but like the footnotes just offer like these little delicious tidbits or like side stories or um a bigger explanation of some of the things in this fantasy world mia also has the power to kind of control shadows and she also has kind of a sidekick or like this parasitic shadow being that is latched onto her being taking the form of a cat that she calls mr kindly and i love it i've heard people scream about this book for years and i just am absolutely like eating this up i'm loving it so much definitely gonna be a new favorite fantasy um there's so many different characters i'm loving the whole assassin school thing like i think it's just done so well it's constantly keeping my attention i think the pacing is great like i said i love the writing so really only gushing things to say about this right now very impressed i'm really liking it and i don't want it to be over um so yeah that is that one this is kind of the priority just because i'm loving it so much it is such a wonderful book to escape into so yeah for the dark academics book club it's currently my pick for october and november so i chose that's where their faces by sylvina ocampo and i'm a little bit of the way through i'm going to be reading this one super slowly by myself i've been mostly picking this one up during the night time because it's been so nice to have kind of mildly spooky kind of scary stories this is a collection of like her fiction and stuff like that um so i'm currently on the one titled the imposter which is about this boy who gets kind of sent into the countryside to stay at this farmhouse with another boy who's been kind of banished there and is already quite gothic and creepy um and they don't really know like what is going on fully in the barn house i think so i don't know we'll see how this goes i really do hope it gets quite creepy and stuff like that this one is translated by danielle balderston um and the preface is by borges last night i started the murder of roger akroyd by agatha christie if you can see these little sticky notes i don't know when this vlog is going up but if you can see this little sticky notes i'm currently working on a video with the murder of roger aykroyd this is book four technically in the poirot series i just started it last night so i'm only about an hour through but i'm really liking it i'm very intrigued because i've heard lots of people have said that it's like her most controversial mystery with one of the craziest endings and like i'm trying to guess it and like figure it out in a video so i'm having a really good time reading this one i'm just happy to be back with agatha christie because it's so cozy those are the three books no i guess four books that i am currently reading i have a lot of books currently in my kindle library because i'm doing or i'm trying a kindle trial and then at the end i'm gonna see if i want to actually buy a kindle or not um but i also have some audiobook holds in as well so i guess let's just discuss our options really quickly so i think i'm gonna start another book on top of these ones because i think i want to i'm just in the mood to read everything so i think i'm going to start the bloody chamber in this vlog by angela carter this has also been on my shelves for a really long time but i'm so excited to finally be picking it up it's perfect it's on my october tbr it's gothic it's scary it's a bunch of fairy tale retellings told and like this grotesque absolutely disgusting like gory way so i'm very very excited for this like i am just i'm ready and it's only 150 pages long so i think this one i'm gonna start today i am in the biggest cozy spooky reading mood is a perfect gloomy day all the trees out there are changing colors so good and then i think after i finish never night i'm gonna pick up the maidens by alex michaelini's but actually a lot of people commented on my last video saying just like do myself a favor and basically don't pick it up just kind of skip this one and go to the next book because lots of people have been absolutely hating this so i think we'll give it a try but like it's just so beautiful and i really did like um the other alex mike ladies book i read this year the silent patient i really liked it so i don't know we're gonna give it a try we're gonna give it a little try and we'll see in this vlog so and then like i said i have a bunch of kindle romances that's basically what is on there there's a bunch of fantasy and contemporary romances i know for sure i have about like three emma handbooks in my library that i might pick up and then i do really want to try punk 57 by penelope douglas um because i tried a penelope douglas is here and i dnf'd it because i was just kind of bored so we're gonna try punk 57 maybe i'll go through my library and i'll get back to you later but i think what i'm going to do right now is make a cup of tea clean up the space a little bit because i feel like i just got this carpet if you can't see right here it's very cozy but i feel like i kind of when i moved in i just focused a lot of my decorating energy in my room which i love i love my room out here didn't get quite as much love and bookshelves the bookshelves just want love they want to be looking a little bit more cozy so that's what i'm going to do i'm going to make a cup of tea clean up out here i might film a video i have a book haul i want to film today it's already quite late in the afternoon though so we shall see but um while i do that i am 100 gonna listen to never night because so many things are happening right now and there is some romance in here as well going down so i have a nice [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh my god i love reading welcome to friday and boy oh boy where do i even begin okay where should i start with these reading updates i guess you last saw me reading the bloody chamber by angela carter wow so the first story in here is the bloody chamber and i started it and i finished it in two sittings it's about i don't know how long it is it's like that long it was fantastic it exceeded expectations everywhere it was just absolutely phenomenal like i am obsessed i was obsessed i think i literally drooled reading the bloody chamber it was everything i wanted everything it promised to be it was so grotesque so gory so violent so sensual so sumptuous it's like reading velvet with your eyes if velvet or satin was like a material to be read this angela carter did it she she translated a material into language it was just gorgeous it is about this young girl who marries the richest man in france and she gets taken away to his castle um that kind of overlooks the sea it's like there's so much beautiful ocean water sea imagery like it was actually just beautiful but she very quickly discovers that he is probably not the best man out there um and she discovers a room in his castle called the bloody chamber fantastic fantastic let me see if i can like read you some of these lines because they were actually gorgeous even just this one sentence she gets like a a necklace made of rubies and that's like a huge thing within the story but it says everyone stared at me and at his wedding gift his wedding gift classed around my throat a choker of rubies two inches wide like an extraordinarily precious slit throat take me out that night at the opera comes back to me even now the white dress the frail child within it and the flashing crimson jewels around her throat bright as arterial blood even the castle as well the fairy solitude of the place with its turrets of misty blue its courtyard its spiked gate his castle that lay on the very bosom of the sea with sea birds mewing about its attics the casements opening on to the green and purple evanescent departures of the ocean cut off by the tide from land for half a day that castle at home neither on the land nor on the water a mysterious amphibious place contravening the materiality of both earth and the waves with the melancholy of a mermaiden who perches on her rock and weights endlessly for a lover who had drowned far away long ago that lovely sad sea siren of a place it's just gorgeous i want to read it again i want never to stop reading it this was fantastic i'm gonna 100 give it five stars like i love it and i promise you the whole short story at least of the bloody chamber reads like that i'm now on the second story um which is called the courtship of mr lyon which is a retelling of the beauty and the beast which is also already so gorgeous so i'm 52 pages into this literally so happy this is definitely i think gonna be a new favorite hopefully so that is that and then ladies and gentlemen this reading vlog is going to destroy me so i got more of the way through never night if you can see okay so i was gonna finish it last night i'm 396 pages through i think i have about like 50 pages left this has happened to me before with jay kristoff's novels where like i start listening to the audiobook and then suddenly three hours have gone by i have not moved from my seat i have just been sitting there wrapped listening this happened to me last year when i read the illuminae files i remember listening to illuminae and like i just sat on my couch for hours and hours and that's exactly what happened to me yesterday like i woke up and from the time i woke up to the time i left for class i did nothing else except listen to never night like it just has me and it's clutches i am so there um the stakes are so high so much is happening like i said i'm loving the assassin school i'm loving all the characters um the relationships the little quirky things i love mr kindly i will die for this shadow demon spawn in the shape of a cat i love him um and like there so much happened last night like we're in the final like climax right now and i just wanted to sit there and finish it but my roommate and i had a plan to start watching the devil all the time the movie um and i was like okay fine i'm gonna put this down and i'm gonna finish it tomorrow because like i don't think i'm ready for it to be over yet so that is my plan i'm gonna finish it today um and i did start watching the devil all the time last night did not finish it definitely gonna need a few sittings for that because that movie is just pure pure horror violence unsettlingness that you can only take in like very small doses so we only watched a little bit of that um but if you read the book the devil all the time as well let me know if you liked it and if i should read the book after watching the movie or if the movie did a good enough job kind of thing but this oh i need the second book i need it right now i am so happy i picked this up i just really loving it and then i read my pages from this collection today already so i'm 50 pages through i'm not getting into this yet like i'm slowly getting a sense of what's going on the first story i don't think is my favorite at all so those are my plans for today i'm gonna finish never night i think right now like i'm gonna sit down and finish this right now oh my god and then after that we're either gonna start the maidens or i got a few other audiobooks in so we'll see okay so i just finished number nine no i liked it too much i liked it so much i don't think i've ever read or listened to such a big audiobook in so short of time like i flew through that and i was just not expecting stuff that happened in the end and now i need more i need more immediately shadow animals and animals are just like my favorite thing and now all i want is a little shadow cat or wolf or something but this was amazing probably like four and a half stars honestly really impressed really enjoyed it like i ate this up and i definitely gonna have to get to the next one as soon as possible i love this so first book of the vlog done i think right now i'm going to just stop reading for a little bit take a break let that digest i think i'm going to edit a video and then we'll see i want to go to the gym tonight and i also have a bunch of school work to do but this was just amazing [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] all right good morning so it's like 11 but i just woke up i was up until like four last night today's actually what is today sunday now um i did not read anything yesterday i had a pretty busy day but i have made some progress on the maidens i am currently like 40 yeah i'm like 40 pages through i don't know i'm definitely not into it yet we're following mariana who is the aunt of the girl at cambridge and so she's just so she's just found out that someone at cambridge has been murdered her niece is like best friend and so she's going to cambridge to check up on her niece and stuff like that but a lot of the writing i'm kind of noticing now especially having like a physical copy of one of his books is that it's just a bit overbearing like it's a bit over much in the references it makes to greek myth and like ancient stories and stuff like that it's just a bit too spot-on and they're all explained they're all like put down and quite obvious trite language a little bit like she sometimes felt she had been cursed as if by some malevolent goddess in a greek myth and like describing different people like she's just always putting them in the context of the ancient greeks and greek myth which i understand to an extent but i don't think it needs to be that like flashy and like upfront about it i think we'll get it like i think we'll get the references like i said definitely not into it yeah i'm going to keep going because i'm only 40 pages in but we shall see hiya it's a little bit later now i'm actually just about to go out for dinner i'm going to get some sushi which i'm really excited about but i do have a few reading updates so for some reason like i am not really enjoying the maidens right now but it's going by really really quickly like i'm already 60 no i'm already 70 pages through and like it's really not a long book by any means but like it's really flying by which i really was not expecting but i kind of think that i have a good idea unfortunately of what's going on so mariana our protagonist she's the aunt of zoe who's the girl who goes to cambridge and she goes down to cambridge but we find out that she has had a pretty traumatic past pretty much everyone in her life that she's loved like her parents her sister her husband they're now dead and i'm thinking that she definitely holds a grudge or has quite dramatic experiences and memories connected to greek mythology because her husband died while they were on vacation in greece he drowned in the ocean this is like right in the beginning so don't worry but um previously she and him had gone to a temple devoted to demeter and persephone and she had you know prayed for their marriage and all of that stuff and then directly after he died so i feel like she has some sort of vengeance against the greek gods and that's definitely going to play into her role of like taking on this greek tragedy professor which i just if that's the case if that ends up being the case i think that's a little bit of a weak motive and just kind of i don't know um 70 pages through it they think they've caught the killer um they definitely haven't and that's about all i can say about that i'm not loving the writing right now i don't know if i would actually like the writing in the silent patient by the same author if i read it myself but just because i'm listening to the audiobook um is something you're paying a little bit less attention to but regardless i'm going to keep going with this um but i think i know where it's headed so anyway i really have not read too much more of the bloody chamber i'm now on the short story called the tiger's bride um and what is this a retelling of i don't know yet i don't know what it's a retelling of i don't even care like this is what i've been waiting for my whole life i feel like this is just amazing so those are my two spooky reads on the go i'm also still reading the murder of roger ackroyd which is really good i'm trying to crack this case in a video i have no leads i really don't have any clue but um i really should be reading nicholas nickleby i've been putting it off for a few days now but i just have not been in the dickens mood at all which is really unfortunate because nothing in me right now oh i'm still reading this too but i need to read some more of this today nothing in me right now wants to pick this up um i'm a little over halfway through am i no i'm like exactly halfway through and i need to be much further but um i just have not been motivated recently to pick this up so maybe i should just film more of my dickens vlog which is coming this time i promise so um then maybe i'll pick it up but that is the stack this is the stack on the go along with agatha christie's book and i might start a kindle unlimited romance tonight because i just want something a little different from the spookiness um and nicholas nickleby has some like cool victorian spooky elements in it too so that is the stack i also wanted to show you guys some things i recently got and we can do a cute little haul i bought i went out with my mom yesterday i got a bunch of stuff while we were out some stuff for the apartment and there was also some stuff in my p.o box so let me show you okay so i was gifted these bookmarks they are beautiful i posted about these on instagram a while ago but these are the really really gorgeous like cloth bookmarks these are actually from greece and they are from book law so i will leave the link to them down below um they also donate like a portion of their earnings to help vulnerable groups in athens and this one is so pretty the cherry blossoms and then i really do like the whale as well they're just the quality is amazing um they're like made on a loom so thank you so much booklot for sending those to me they are lovely they're so soft i also got a message from a fellow booktuber asking if she could send me her poetry book and i was like yes of course please you always can um and so she gave me not a myth that is what this collection is called and this is by molly lykovich maria ring i honestly don't know if that says ring it's really hard to read the font um but this is not a myth in its collection like about fairy tales and different things like that combines fantasy and the real world in such a way to make everyone feel as though they are living in a storybook so that is this one it is just sitting on my shelf right now so i will definitely be reading that it's quite short so hopefully it'll give me some witchy spooky poetry vibes for halloween as well i've been trying to find like a i wasn't sure oh wait have we shown you this rug i also got a rug here as you can see it's very soft and fuzzy i will try to link it down below i did decide that i finally wanted like a nice little rug and i have been debating about getting a coffee table or not but in the end i just decided to get this little table it's black like marble um and it is quite short but it works really nicely because it really doesn't take up too much space but you can still like sit there and put your drink on it and stuff so i am actually really happy that i found this one and then the bottom i just put my annotation stuff as well as some big books because i've been rearranging my shelves today because i ran out of room um on a bunch of places so you'll see like the phantom shelf got revamped to hold more books um and there's been a lot of stacking occurring which my bookshelves definitely don't like they're gonna they're gonna do like the little ark thing it's a little messy in here right now but it is looking and feeling quite cozy the rug just makes everything so cozy and i just want to like sit on it and read all day [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] be [Music] wow [Music] uh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] come here okay okay we all here we're here um so i finished the maidens uh yeah i finished this yesterday and wow not good i really should have listened a lot of you warned me in one of my more recent videos before i picked this up that it was really not good and i am submitting a formal apology now because you were right um and i didn't listen i really don't know what to say about this i think i said that i had a pretty good inkling of what was going on uh like 30 pages in and i was correct there was nothing thrilling about this nothing really surprising um the main okay let's start with the main character mariana the aunt of the girl who's going to cambridge she is just a potato like there is no personality there's absolutely nothing there um i'm not really sure who she is this book was also extremely boring because of our protagonist because she was so boring um the characters were all so flat in here this book just felt like an absolute mess it was so boring because almost every single scene like takes place in like a cafe or a restaurant and they're just sitting down to talk and like speculate an interview like literally there were like eight or nine scenes like that um back to back to back which were really hard to get through on top of that the like believability level of this book was really taken out just in like the simple uh way that mariana just like got herself into the situation and tried to be like a detective even though she's literally just a random group therapist from london she's like doing police work and breaking into crime scenes and yeah like she would just be charged with obstructing the justice pretty early on i would hope so that just kind of seems not believable to me this whole thing just ended up being really stupid i'm not gonna lie very contrived the contrivances were many um and just overall so disappointed i gave it i think a generous two stars one thing i will say is that like this book flew by so quickly like i can't remember the last time i listened to a book and it just felt like it started and it was over which ended up being a blessing in the end but cannot recommend this um at least based on a book that like i really liked i'm sure some people out there and i know a lot of people out there like it but it does seem either like some people give it one star or five stars based on the reviews on goodreads i was reading so really upset about this one this one was not good those are my little thoughts on the maiden so i'll definitely say more about this in my wrap-up but overall so bad the bloody chamber on the other hand is not letting me down i've known 93 pages through i'm currently on puss in boots that's the fairy tale that i'm currently in the middle of and i'm still really really enjoying this i'm really taking my time with it just because absolutely loving this so much like it's just so decadent and luscious and beautiful and grotesque and gothic and you just like delight in it so much like it just feels luxurious um i'm almost on the first short story unless where their faces i'm really not like 100 there yet with the collection and maybe it's just this one short story although it's kind of a little bit long but i'm not loving it so i'm hoping the ocampo book picks up a little bit after the first short story is done which like i'm almost finished but so now that i finished the maidens i can thankfully move on to something else i have three audiobooks in currently right now so i think the last thing i want to do in this vlog is show you show you the ones that i'm going to pick the first one i have in is the ghost bride by yongshi and this one is set in i think the late 1800s and we follow a girl who gets betrothed to a spirit or a ghost i also have in a court of mist and fury by sarah j maas the audiobook just came in for this um it's been a really long time since i read the first book though we shall see i'm not sure if i'm going to start it now although i am kind of in the mood for this honestly at the moment and finally we have in strange practice by vivian shaw this one is about like necromancy or monsters or something like that i think what i'm gonna do is start the ghost ride first and then maybe pick this one up if i'm not loving the ghost bride like i'll just start sampling the ghost bride and then see so then we'll get into this but those are my final reading updates i think i'm going to close this vlog off here and start another one um since today what is even today i don't even know we're well and we're well into spooky season though so let me know what you guys are reading because i really want to know what you are currently picking up for spooky season because like i do have a tbr but i'm always open to like swap things out and try books that you know people are yelling at me i should try so um yeah i hope you're doing so well i really really do ever take care of yourself i hope you're reading fantastic books of your dreams um until the next time i will see you very very soon [Music] you

Channel: * e m m i e *

Views: 37,181

Rating: 4.9790421 out of 5

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Id: tQJ08fKwvKE

Length: 37min 1sec (2221 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021