a rant about a classic and read this if you liked queen's gambit

[Music] [Music] hello everyone welcome back to the channel today we are going to be talking about all the books that i read in the month of january and december which is four books i was taking it a bit slower with the book reading which basically means that i was mostly watching a lot of netflix i guess me not really reading a lot of books this month and instead of that watching more netflix is kind of ironic since uh fahrenheit 451 is one of the books that we're going to be talking about but we'll get to that later i think i just want to start with one of the books that i still read back in december that i want to be short about because i already talked about it at length in my best books of 2020 list and that is the silver serpents by roshani chokchi this is the second book in the the gilded wolves trilogy and it was also one of my top books of the year the guild of wolves was one of my top books of 2019 so i guess you can see this is quickly becoming one of my new favorite series it is a historical like an alternate historical fiction where magic is real it takes place in like 19th century france this one takes place in russia actually and we just follow this group of kind of misfits that go on this heist to find this like mysterious mythological item that's like very powerful what i really like about the series is that it really incorporates mythology because it takes place like in our world the idea of this book is that all the mythologies are real so we get a lot of biblical references indian mythology or like hindu mythology is very prominent in here as well as egyptian mythology and i just really like that because i love a good mishmash of mythology we also have the characters constantly like like solving riddles um that's why we get these like if i can find one here these like pictures of like the riddles that they need to solve and that always makes me really happy this entire second book felt like they were trying to get through the ice temple and legend of zelda that's like the best description that i can give for this book is that the characters were just trying to get through the ice temple if you want to see me talk about like this book more in depth and the guild of wolves more in depth watch my best of videos of the last year and the year before that i have a really hard time recommending this book to people because i know that most people are just not really into it and that most people like either dnf it or just are not don't really like it but then the people who do really like it really like it like me i want more people to read this book but also please don't read it because i don't want you to be disappointed but also please read it because i want more people to love this book if you know that your reading taste usually lines up with mine and if you like just stories with found families and mythology and like riddles and you think that could make you really excited about a story then i do really recommend picking this one up i remember saying last year when i read the gilded wolves that i wasn't really a big fan of the characters yet like out of the six main characters i only liked two and i was harping i really felt like there was a lot of room in the second book for the characters to develop and that i read the second book i can say yes the characters were developed i now like every single character in this book i care about them so much they're so good so i highly recommend this and i really loved it and then another book that i read in december of 2020 is a book that has been on my tbr for about two or three years now i asked it i personally put it on my christmas wish list and i got it for christmas but despite me specifically asking for this book i didn't read it until past christmas when i was like i'm finally just gonna pick this one up and i read the watchmaker of filigree street by natasha pulley this is like speculative historical fiction it's mostly historical fiction but there's some element of magic in there it's not very explained like it's very soft magic but it just it mostly just serves like a narrative purpose and we follow a boy named um did i say this was in the 19th century it's in the 19th century in london and we follow daniel who just like randomly finds a gold watch in his room and he's like who the heck put this gold watch in here it's not mine but then the gold watch accurately predicts a bombing in london and because of that like daniel's life is saved so he's like okay that's kind of a weird watch right there so he goes to visit the person the watchmaker that made this watch there's not a lot of plots it's mostly just like the story of slowly trying to find out what the watch does the story the backstory of the watchmaker the weird things about the watchmaker and like his history in japan and it's mostly just a very vibi atmospheric book again there's not a lot of plots which i think would be kind of boring for a lot of people but if you really like a victorian setting and like clockwork and kind of steampunky vibe i think you would still enjoy that i was i'm kind of neutral on this book i liked it but it wasn't amazing most of the things i didn't like about it is that the like there are just a lot of plot lines that i feel just weren't tied up anywhere like an example of this is that we very quickly learned that grace our female main character wants to build this like scientific machine that she can do like physics experiments with which she's like very passionate about and i was like very excited about it i was like oh that's really cool you know we're gonna see her build this machine it's gonna be important but it's just we it's just never mentioned again that's just one example of many setups that never get resolved me and the second thing i was very confused when i was reading this book and i can't really figure out whether that's just me not understanding what's going on or the book being written kind of in a confusing way so i looked up some reviews and it's very clear that i'm not the only one who was confused so okay it's not just me okay it's not just me but on the other hand a lot of people who really liked this book actually praise it for having so many things happening kind of between the lines in a very subtle way so i think you can kind of decide for yourself where you would fall on that spectrum but in the end i gave this book three stars i had a good time reading it it's a standalone and i'm really glad that after two or like three years i finally picked up this book and that i didn't wait to read such a nice story for any longer then the third book that i read i read in january and where's my phone where did i leave my phone oh here it is i listened to it on an audiobook and that is the very popular story of the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reads this book was on everyone's favor books of 2019 list actually last year in january i read the author's other popular book daisy jones on the six really enjoyed that and now this year just it genuinely just like a coincidence but it's a really nice coincidence that this year in january i read the seven husbands of evelyn hugo and i really really enjoyed this one it's basically like a fictional biography it's the story of evelyn hugo who is an actress and we follow her entire life story and the seven husbands that she had it's more about her life you know outside of her marriages it's not really about those marriages it's more a story of love and fame i'd say and it's really funny because usually i'm not i'm not interested in like biographies at all and i'm not really someone who keeps up with celebrities but this story i was so captivated like taylor jenkins reaches has a way to completely captivate you with the story and also i highly recommend listening to it on audiobook because the setup of the story is that we have this journalist monique who is going to interview evelyn hugo to write a biography about her life so we have evelyn hugo telling her life story to monique the journalist so when you're listening to it on audiobook it really feels as if like you're the interviewer and evelyn hugo is just sitting there telling you her life story and it's just so nice and it took me like an entire month to read this book not because it's a long book it's just because i wasn't really listening to audiobooks very often so it just feels like i just had an entire month in which i got to know evelyn hugo and it's just so nice like it feels like she's like a real a real actress from the 60s that i now know everything about but she's fake and she's not real but she feels so real now i'm gonna make a comparison i don't know if this is a really weird comparison i think you would like this book if you really liked the show the queen's gambit now story-wise these are very different like i think you guys nothing to do with chess the queen's gambit is also just the story of like a famous person and you follow their life story from the moment they were a kid until like the moment she was like at the height of her fame and it's just like this fake celebrity whose story you follow but it's just written in such a good way that it's super interesting same thing with evelyn hugo you follow her from since she's a teenager until like her entire life and because it's just such a nice dramatic and well-written story it's just super captivating so i don't know if you've watched the queen's gambit and read evelyn hugo let me know if you agree with this comparison but yeah i think if you enjoyed the queen's gambit which like everyone did let's be honest you would also really enjoy a story like uh the seven husbands of evelyn hugo and i think i ended up giving it four stars because the only thing i didn't like about it was at the end just like in almost every story there's like a twist at the end and personally i thought i kind of felt forced it felt like the author was like oh we need a twist at the end so here's a twist and i didn't really feel like added a lot to the story i don't know i just wasn't really a big fan of that but other than that very beautiful and i gave it four stars okay and then the last book that i want to have chat about is fahrenheit 451 by ray bradbury this is a very popular classic that is always named in the same breath as brave new world 1984 which are all books that i really enjoyed but this one i kind of have conflicting thoughts so i just want to have a chat about it here okay although this book has like of course a lot of people really love it there definitely are other people that just really don't think it holds up to other well-known dystopian and i think i kind of fall into that camp the premise of the story is that books are burnt in this society because books are kind of like a symbolism for thoughtfulness like interesting thoughts and that is not okay so the books are burnt and instead all that people do is kind of just mindlessly watch tv all day and our main character guy montag is a fireman or firefighter which basically means that he goes to people's houses and burns any books that he can find if people like have illegal books this is the reason that it's um kind of ironic that i spent the last two months not reading as much as usual and instead watching netflix but i personally don't think that's a bad thing i also think it's ironic that this book was banned at some point in history i guess you could say that overall my thoughts of this book is that it kind of gives like interesting ideas on like the consequences of this type of dystopian world but it just completely failed to convince me why this dystopian world would come to be in the first place so first let me just kind of talk about like a common critique of this book which is that it's it's kind of just like books are good and televisions are bad and that that's kind of an outdated idea i personally don't agree with that critique because i don't think this book is just oh books good television bed when i started reading this i was kind of afraid that it was going to be that kind of like a boomer story we're just like oh people nowadays only watch on their phones and i don't read books anymore but you know how dystopians are often kind of exaggerated and the whole books versus television is more kind of like a symbolism for thoughtful ideas and media and consuming only mindless media because it's also said in the book that of course of course you could also use television for like interesting more thoughtful types of media the whole point of this book is that unlike in most other dystopians there's not like some kind of big government doing bad things but it's just the people deciding on their own accord that they no longer want to read anything that could potentially be like hurtful or thought-provoking or controversial etc so they just ban everything i was just constantly asking myself but why why did people get to this point and why would anyone want to do that i like the topic of enjoyment and no longer on anything that could potentially be like thought provoking like brave new world also tackles this concept it's just that in brave new world they actually kind of explore a reason for this and in brave new world they kind of tackle the perspective of oh it's the government doing this to push consumerism because if people don't think and are always happy then they will buy more stuff that's kind of the perspective they take this book kind of takes the perspective that people just stopped wanting to read anything complex or controversial because they just did yeah i completely missed it but i just i was just wondering why like i have notes on my phone on this book and it's all just why but why but why are they doing this but why also i know some people say that this is a critique of like politically correct culture but we know that that was at least not the authori authorial intent authorial intent that was not ray bradbury's intent he said in interviews that this really was about like the dangers of television i just remembered that throughout reading this book there would be some passages that i would be like wow that's like a really beautifully written thing very interesting things very interesting thoughts and then the next page there would be something that i was just like what the excuse me what so i just want to go over some of them let me just start with the things that i did like about this book so first of all i think it's pretty cool that this book basically kind of predicts maybe even or at least talks about the negative side of parasocial relationships you know like the one-sided relationships that we have over the internet or through a television with like celebrities or influencers or streamers because in this book the characters constantly watch tv they seem like the people on the tv as like their family and stuff and it's kind of weird and i thought it was very interesting it also talks about all the consequences of just constantly like consuming media without thinking about it about how for example we basically don't really have any quality leisure time anymore because every free time that you have is spent in this world by just mindlessly watching tv instead of just maybe standing still and just looking at the world around you it's basically just you know when people on twitter are like touch some grass that's this book but then there were some things that i was just like so let me give some examples of that there's a very clear idea in here that if a book has pictures that that is just by definition bad like here's a sentence where they kind of talk about like the bad things in this world they say organize super sports more cartoons in books more pictures the mind drinks less and less oh no pictures in books if picture in book how book can be thoughtful if book have picture how book be good what does this man have against sports and cartoons like i understand you want to critique you know like mindless entertainment only consuming mindless entertainment but do you have to go after sports and cartoons is that really is that really the important thing here because i don't think so or this sentence that's like with schools turning out more runners jumpers racers tinkerers grabbers snatchers flyers and swimmers instead of examiners critics knowers and imaginative creators the word intellectual of course became a swear word i understand we need to value these things that are like examiners critics knowers etc but what's wrong with runners jumpers racers and tinkerers you know it just feels like weirdly condescending i kind of feel like uh ray bradbury just like really hated pe in high school just hates sports and i mean same i agree but do you have to like be so condescending about it just throughout the book there seems to be this very clear message that like intellectual things are more valuable than handworky things like physical things and that just gives me a really really bad vibe i understand that we need to value intellectual stuff in the world but you don't need to be condescending towards hand workers okay you don't need to do that do you really need to make fun of people making small talk like is that really is that really is that really the most important thing here it kind of gave me the feeling of like and maybe i'm like projecting modern world views onto this book but it kind of felt like someone you know like complaining about how nobody wants to have deep conversations with them anymore and then coming to the conclusion that that must mean that everyone just hates thinking and nobody likes intellectualism anymore instead of maybe thinking about the circumstances in the world or personal that might have led to that of course i definitely understand where this book comes from especially given like the time that it was written you know in the 1950s where people were definitely scared all the crazy changes that electronics gave with like you know people were scared that people would stop reading books and i totally get that but just reading it now in 2021 it just didn't really give me much you know i didn't really didn't really do much for me so in the end i would say i would give this like a two and a half star because again there were some things in here it was like interesting interesting interesting but overall i think the story just kind of left some exploration anyway if you've read this book please let me know what you thought about it um i was interesting to see if i'm like the only one who thinks this way and so those were all the books that i read in the past two months here's the mandatory announcement you can like this video or subscribe to the channel if you want to see more of me i really hope you enjoyed this video and i hope to see you soon in another one [Music] goodbye

Channel: The Book Leo

Views: 29,497

Rating: 4.9769893 out of 5

Keywords: book, books, booktube, reading, booktuber, peruseproject, paperbackdreams, review

Id: Q7yWJsyuxBE

Length: 21min 16sec (1276 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021