Hi everyone, it's Friday the 4th of
October as I'm filming this and you will be able to tell by the upload date of
this video how long it took me to make. I have no idea. I want to do a reading vlog
but with a theme. I thought it would be fun to pick some books that are just
about to come out or have just come out that are quite hyped, read them, talk to
you about them as I'm reading them, are they overhype,d are they worth the hype,
all of that, because some of these are on my most anticipated releases and some of
them I'm just really intrigued by so I thought we could discover them together
I have four books but possibly five on my TBR, it depends because they're all
really quite big, it depends how long it's taking , f it's taking far too long
maybe we'll stick to 4, if not we'll do 5, I'm quite chilled about
it. So the books on my TBR: firstly I have The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I
have read this so this is a reread I read it first when I was 17 and then I
reread it I think about 10 years ago. I need to revisit the world of Gilead, hang
out with June a little bit, so that I can then read The Testaments by Margaret
Atwood which is the new release, much hype, much excite. I probably could read
this without rereading The Handmaid's Tale but I don't want to miss any thing;
I want to go in kind of giving this book all that I can because I'm
quite nervous about it. So I am going to reread The Handmaid's Tale in audiobook
form; I found an audio book which is partly narrated by Elizabeth Moss, I
think that's her name, she's in the TV series which I did start watching but
stopped... it wasn't bad, in fact if anything it was too good, it was too
intense, I prefer the reading experience of it to watching it. I think it works
better for me in the written form. So I'm going to listen, re-listen, to the novel and
then move on to this one and I'll tell you my thoughts, I'll talk about it when
I get to it. The next one is this which I've already started this is the
Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky, huge 700 pages, I've read 100 pages so far. He
is the author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower which came out 20 years ago
which makes me feel old, it was a really important book to me as an early teen
and I am not normally into horror which is what
this is but because I loved his first book so much, even though I'm not sure I
would adore it so much if I read it for the first time now, I want to give this
one a shot. As I said I've started reading it and am100 pages in, some bits
I'm finding gripping, some bits I'm finding a bit clumsy; it's falling into
some predictable trope-y things that horror often does, which I'm not a fan of
but we shall see how it goes and I'll talk about it more as I'm reading it.
This is about a young boy called Christopher who disappears for six days
into the woods and when he comes back he's never the same again. The next one,
which is one, that I'm not sure will be in this video, as I said we'll see how we
get on time-wise, but if I have time I'm going to read this which is The
Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, she is the author of the Night Circus which I
actually haven't read, it's one of those books — and this may sound silly — I almost
feel like I've read it because everyone has talked to me about it, so I want to
get to this one before I feel the same about this one too. So this one is out in
November, it's not out yet, it's about a subterranean library, it's about books
with secrets in them, it sounds right up my street, so I will get to this one if I
have time. The last one is one that I haven't got a copy of yet but I'm going
to go buy it today, it is Books Are My Bag tomorrow, it is National Bookshop Day, so
I have this glorious tote bag which at the moment doesn't have any books in it, it actually has some plastic in here
which I am going to take into the new Body Shop that's opened in the centre of town,
they have a I can't remember the name of it but they are accepting plastic
containers from any cosmetics or body lotions etc from any company and they
will recycle it, so I've got some plastic to take to them and I want to go in and
check out their refillable non-plastic shower
gel. They have shower gel in a reusable container so you can take it in
every time and refill it so I'd like to get one of those but I am going to put a book
in my Books are my Bag bag after that. They very kindly also sent me a £10 gift
voucher so I'm going to go into Foyles and I'm going to pick up a copy of the Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman,
this is the second book in the Book of Dust trilogy; I was reflecting on my
thoughts on the Book of Dust the first one and I'm not I don't know... I wasn't in
love with it. I loved visiting the world again but the pacing of it felt a little
strange to me. I'm really excited to read this one because the first Book of Dust
was set before the His Dark Materials trilogy but the next to a set afterwards,
I think ten years afterwards. Lyra is in her twenties and I'm so excited to get
back to Lyra so I'm going to go pick up that book today and I'll start reading
at some point and I'm so excited but also really really nervous, you know when
you really really want to love something, if you're new His Dark Materials are my
favourite books of all time so no pressure Phillip, no pressure.
I'll take you into town with me because I know you want to see Foyles and
then I will share some random clips of my life as we go and when I've got
thoughts to share on the books I'll sit down and talk to you. Does that sound good? I
hope so because that's what this video is! Hi it's Saturday and we have... sorry
that's probably very bouncy... we've come out on a walk, it's nice to get out of
London for the weekend, so I've come to Surrey, one of my favourite
places which is called Thursley and it's very beautiful and very autumnal, and
I feel like I'm looking quite autumnal too, which I'm always aiming for. This is a church in Thursley and it's
from Saxon times and it's really cute to pop in and we found these which are
postcards of some of the kneelers that they have down here, and so I thought I would
pick one up to send to Tracy whose latest book was called A Single Thread and it
was all about the making of kneelers, so these cost a pound, it goes in the
wall safe and Tracey I will put these in the post. Hi folks,
it is the following weekend. I don't think I know is focusing... oh, it is, I just didn't
have my glasses on, there we go. It's the next weekend, it's Sunday
morning, it is the the 12th today? 13th it's the 13th today. Mr. M is still in
bed but we can't see him because he's he's over there and and oh let me
click the focus so it's not jumping around so much, and I haven't checked in,
as you would have noticed, with my reading this week because I had to do
some reading for work so I've been reading Jeanette Winterson's Frankissstein
when I have had time to read but I have managed to pick up The Secret
Commonwealth, the second in the Book of Dust trilogy and
I've started listening to the Handmaid's Tale as well. I am 200 pages into the
Secret Commonwealth and I am enjoying it it's hurting my heart a lot and this
isn't a spoiler because this happens at the very beginning of the book but Lyra
and Pan aren't really... they don't really like each other,
and it's really sad, they're very much disconnected and yeah that's breaking my
heart a little bit but it's nice to see characters from the first Book of Dust
in this book and I feel like they're more fully realized here, maybe because
they're interacting with characters that I already know too so I'm enjoying
reading about Lyra as a 20 or 21 year old woman and yeah I'm intrigued to see
where it goes. I was reminded that in the first Book of Dust book they did use
disfigurement as a marker for villainy and when it came back to that section it
made me tense up a little bit, still not okay with that, but I am enjoying the
book so far a report back once I've read more and I am listening to the audiobook
at The Handmaid's Tale. I was really worried that I wouldn't enjoy it as much reading it again, it's been 10 years since I read it. It's so
measured, it takes such skill to tell a story like this and
tease it out so gently and have the courage and the conviction in the story
you're telling to be as slow as that but to still give enough detail
that it's intriguing, it doesn't feel as though it's dragging or
anything like that, there is a scene where Offred, where June, is talking about
how she likes to take her time over new things because she doesn't get to
experience new things very often, so when she moved into the Commander's house she
gave herself a tiny bit of her bedroom to examine every single day so that she
didn't run out of things to do and that's what this book feels like, as
though she's slowly focusing and talking about different areas of her life and
there are lines that I remembered and I was surprised at the details that I
remembered such as her keeping butter back so that she can moisturize her
hands and her saying that she would stand on a corner pretending she's a
tree. I'm loving it, I'll talk about it more once I've read more. We are
going to go to Columbia Road flower market today and I will show you some
clips from that because it's a nice place to go to. I seem to only update you at the weekend,
it's the following Sunday, Sunday's our 27th of October, I'm not
feeling that well, I've been fighting off a cold all week and I feel like it's
finally getting me. Book tour for Franklin and Luna and the Book of
Fairy Tales has begun and hanging out with hundreds of children, it feels like
getting freshers' flu or something, book tour flu, except it's not flu, it's a cold, I
hope it's just a cold. But I am going to leave the house in a bit
because I've been working all weekend and if I don't leave the house I am
going to lose my mind slightly but anyway I'm here to talk to you briefly
about books. I finished reading The Handmaid's Tale and , as I said at
the beginning of this video, I was listening to the audiobook which was
partly narrated by Elizabeth Moss and the reason I said that is because three
names were listed, but actually she narrates the whole thing, it's just the
epilogue that's narrated by two different people. I love the book, I'm so
glad that it is stood up to another reread and yes there are just sentences
that it stay with me so much like as I said her standing on a
on a corner pretending she's a tree, and then when she says "we are revisionists,
the things we revise are ourselves." It's brilliant, I've started reading The Testaments, I'm only 50 pages
in so I'll speak about that when I when I've read more. I was saying to Jean, I
couldn't remember the epilogue of The Handmaid's Tale and I wondered if the
copy that I had when I was 17 didn't have the epilogue and maybe Margaret
Atwood had added it later but no I'm pretty sure it probably did have the
epilogue and I just thought it was an actual ad on academic bit about the text
itself as opposed to part of the novel, so I guess I just never read it, naughty
me, you shouldn't do that. Anyway I've read it now. I've also finished reading
The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman and I'm afraid I didn't enjoy it,
and saying that makes me want to cry because I wanted to love this book so
very much. The first one the Belle Sauvage, the pacing was
kind of strange and at the end there are loads of magical elements that felt very
odd as they just suddenly appeared and I'd hoped that in this book, given that
we're back with Lyra and Malcolm, in fact all of the characters from the first
Book of Dust pretty much are in this book, too, so Alice is there, Malcolm's
parents, Hannah, everybody is in this book which is lovely and as I said I
think when I updated you the first time it felt really great to feel very
connected to those characters in a way that I didn't feel particularly in the
first Book of Dust book because they were interacting with Lyra and Pan. There
are elements of this book where I thought "okay we're getting back to the
original books" and by that I mean the feeling that I have when I read the
original books, there were glimmers of that that came and went but overall I
just found the book, I think there's no other word for it apart from ...clumsy. I
found it really clumsy. It's a patchwork and maybe he's going to
bring it all together in the final book, it might be that he does that, but it
really does feel like it's setting up the final book, it also feels like it's
trying to do far too many things and there are a lot of convenient things
that happened: people met each other at a time that suited their needs, or they
encountered someone who couldn't see something that they needed them to not
see and quite literally in one case where a character
encounters a blind person who can't see who they're talking to, and that's the
only way that this character could ask someone for information. I'm having to
be really vague to avoid spoilers, but yeah, that was just very frustrating and
I think that two, no three, really frustrating things in this book: one, I
really don't like the way that these books deal with sexual assault. I don't
think that it's handled very well at all and it made me feel so uncomfortable and
not in a way that obviously sexual assault is uncomfortable, it's horrible...
a lot of it felt, I don't know how it felt, I need to think about it some more
but I don't think it worked very well. This book also tries to comment on
our modern world a lot within Lyra's world and that felt really forced. I
enjoy reading books that make political commentary on our world, you know how
much I love Ali Smith's Quartet for instance, but that's specifically what
those books are for and whilst His Dark Materials definitely had an agenda,
and it was definitely commenting on patriarchy, it was commenting on the
church, it was commenting on institutions that try and brainwash people, yes, it had
done that but that always felt secondary to the other things going on in the book
and it didn't feel that way in this particular book, in the Secret
Commonwealth and it's making a different commentary this time. So in this book
there are people who are stealing/ grabbing rose oil from Middle East, so
not oil as in our modern world but rose oil, and there's a refugee crisis, people
are dying in boats as they try and flee, Aleppo is seen as a very unstable place
and there are terrorist attacks happening. There was a very strange scene
which seems to be some kind of reenactment of the Bataclan, for
instance, and all of that felt so jarring to me and what was also jarring is that
it feels as though this world is different to the world that we were
introduced to as Lyra's world the first time around, because there are so many
magical elements that came in at the end of La Belle Sauvage, all of this folklore,
as I said magic, and obviously there was some magic in His Dark Materials but I
felt as if I understood the rules of that world, I knew what its limitations
were and I don't understand what the limitations of this world are anymore,
and when you don't understand the magic systems and you don't understand the
limitations of a world, the world starts to not feel real so yeah, those are my
thoughts and I can't really talk about it more without spoiling it but if
you've read it I would to know what you thought. I did say on
Instagram stories that I hadn't enjoyed it very much and I had so many messages
from people saying that they were really disappointed with this book, too, so I
knows it it's not just me, as I said I really want to love it. I
will read the final book I will and maybe I'll eat my hat
because maybe all of the things that he's introduced in this book and all of
the new characters and all of the new organizations it's all going to be tied
together so very neatly... but that's not how I feel at the moment, and
there were lots of elements that felt similar to other fantasy books, which is
going to happen in fantasy but there was a character who felt very much
like Creedence from Fantastic Beasts — that's my phone, I was like "what is that?"
it was very very loud, it's connected to a speaker, that's why —
also Lyra has found a new way to read the alethiometer, and it's seen as a
dangerous thing to be doing and she is very interested in this new philosophy
that Pan disagrees with and this is at the very, very beginning of the book, and
there is someone else in the book who's also using a new way to read the alethiometer and it's made very clear that he is a bad guy, so Lyra is doing the bad
method to try and do something which she thinks is for the greater good, and I was
very much reminded of Grindelwald and Dumbledore as well; I'm not saying that
Pullman has lifted those things, he doesn't need to lift things from
Fantastic Beasts but I I guess was drawing parallels with other books
because it felt so not of this world and so I was constantly just taken out and
trying to link up things and threading thought patterns. I don't know. So that's how
I felt. There we go. I will get back to you after I have read more of the
Testaments. I'm going to go into town and go to get some lunch and get some juice, I
need vitamins to try and get rid of this cold and I would like to go to
Persephone books and maybe treat myself to a book so I will show you Persephone
books and then I'm probably going to come home
and try and rest so that I'm not sick for the rest of this week, obviously
they're probably I'm going to be, I just don't want to get too sick; I have some
important meetings and I have more events for Franklin and Luna and the
Book of Fairy Tales, as well as other work that I have to do, I've got radio on Wednesday,
I need to be able to speak... so yeah I'm going to stop talking and I will catch
up with you guys in a bit. Hi folks it is the next day and I
thought I would wrap up my thoughts. I am 80 pages from the end of the Testaments
so I'll speak about that now and then if anything drastically changes in those
last 80 pages I will speak about it in my end of month wrap-up once I have
finished reading it. I didn't and I'm not going to get to the Starless Sea by Erin
Morgenstern in this video, I'll talk about that at some other time, I did
think it was probably quite ambitious to try and read that book as well as the
others considering they're all pretty lengthy and before we got to the
Testaments let me briefly flip back to this one this is The Imaginary Friend by
Stephen Chbosky, I'm DNF'ing in it. I'm just... I'm not enjoying it, his writing
style in this is very very different to the Perks of Being a Wallflower and I
feel like he's trying to emulate a lot of horror writing and that falls into
some cookie-cutter-type characters and it just feels a bit it feels like lots
of stories I've read before, unfortunately, plus it feels like it
needs so much editing. I love a slow story. I would prefer
it massively over a fast paced story if it means you get to know the
characters and the world feels really realized around you, but in this book it
just feels a bit mundane and I have looked up reviews from people who I
trust, just to see whether the cocerns I have right now are concerns they had when
they'd finished it and pretty much everybody is saying that that it's just
not really worth the effort of reading an 800-page book, the payoff's just not
worth it and I have lots of books on my shelves that I really want to get to so
I'm just going to leave it, it's not for me,
move on, that's fine, but the Testaments as I said I'm 80 pages from the end and
you may see the smile on my face I am really enjoying it. I'm very very
much enjoying it and I am surprised by that because, I suppose maybe
with the Secret Commonwealth and and let's not even talk about the Cursed
Child.... but the expectations you have to read a book, a sequel to a series or
one standalone book, that you have loved so much and feel like you have invested
part of your soul into. The Testaments is set at various times, actually I thought
it was post-Gilead build actually dips into the history of Gilead as well which
I am really enjoying, it's not a perfect book it is very fast-paced and the way
that I think about the Testaments is that it works when you pair it with The
Handmaid's Tale. The Handmaid's Tale is a masterpiece and it stands on its own two
feet, it is as I've already said in this video and have probably said before, it
is a slow burn, it is meticulous and you really feel as though you're inside Offred's
skin and you're experiencing everything along with her, you are
uncovering aspects of Gilead as she learns about them and she's also not
always the most reliable narrator, either, she picks her timings when she's
revealing secrets from her own past to you so you trust her but you also know that
she's kind of not trusting you, she is guarded, and there are many
reasons for her to be guarded, and I love the way that that story is told and that
as I said it stands on its own two feet. I think the Testaments really only works
and is as good as it is because of its connection with The Handmaid's Tale; it
strongly relies on the emotions that you have built up having read that first
book. This, in pacing, is nearly the opposite of The Handmaid's Tale, so much
happens in it and it is a real page-turner and it's exciting in that
respect, you're flitting between three different women and you're reading about
their different experiences as aunts, as
children of commanders, and as people outside of Gilead, and I'm not going to
say who these characters are, so I think I knew who one of them was before going
in because lots of people had already talked about that but I'm not going to
reveal to any of the characters are in this video here in case you want to go
into it not knowing anything; you learn about the folklore that has been
injected into the Society of Gilead and you may have guessed that that would be
something that I would really enjoy reading about, so there are there's a
fairy tale in here that's mentioned let me find it because I did underline it oh
yeah it's the concubine who was cut into 12 pieces and 12 is often a number
that's used in folklore, like the twelve dancing princesses, and it's about a
woman who disobeys the man that she's betrothed to be married to and she is
punished by being cut into 12 pieces and one of the aunts says "men must make
sacrifices in war and women must make sacrifices in other ways, that is how
things are divided" so that's how things are divided, that the man ends up not
being divided at all and literally the woman is divided into 12 pieces. There
are Nursery Rhymes in here as well that the children of commanders and their wives
sing to each other, and I really like the way that she builds on the world that
she already established and unlike with the Secret Commonwealth I felt as though
these things were very organic, I believed that everything was tied to
that original text, however, it does also feel like it is a sequel to the
television series rather than a sequel to just the book and I said I haven't
seen the TV series, I do know some spoilers for the TV series which is why
I know who some of the characters in this book are but if I didn't know those
you wouldn't have the context for who those characters are. I'm assuming that
their relationship with the characters in the previous book are going to be
revealed before the end of the Testaments, I don't know,
I have 80 pages to go, if their identity is not revealed then I think I
would find that a little bit unsatisfying, so I will talk about that
in my wrap-up once I have got to the end of it but on the whole yes I think it is
very good. I don't think that it is as beautiful or as lyrical as the first
book, I think as I said it relies heavily on the first book in order for its
emotional impact to be felt as much. I think without the first book it would
feel to me the same way I felt about the Power by Naomi Alderman, where it moved
so quickly and so many horrific things were happening that it wasn't as though
I didn't have an emotional connection to those things, because they're terrible
things and I can appreciate that they're terrible things, but if you don't have
that connection established with the characters then everything feels a bit
disjointed and disconnected and the only way that you can relate is by
inserting your own feelings about your own life experiences, so I think I would
feel very distanced from this book if I was reading it having not read The
Handmaid's Tale, in fact it's difficult to work out how much of it you would
understand if you hadn't read the Handmaid's Tale and that's absolutely fine
because it is a sequel but I suppose the reason that I'm mentioning those things
is mainly because, and I'm not going to get into a huge discussion about this
here, it's because it jointly won the Booker Prize this year and whenever I
have judged literary prizes before we have been explicitly told that a book
needs to stand on its own two feet and that's what you're judging it on; you're
not judging it on whether it's, if it's a sequel, you're not judging it on the
cumulative effect of the books that have come before it, and you're
of course not judging it on the career of the writer, either, so is this book
worth the hype? Yes. Is it worth the Booker Prize type hype? No, it's npt
Margaret Atwood's best book, it's a brilliant sequel to The Handmaid's
Tale but it very much feels like an add-on to that. In summary these books
are very much worth the hype especially The Handmaid's Talel; if you haven't read
it yet please do read it, and the Testaments, very much enjoying that. The secret Commonwealth is it worth the hype? No and I still feel reluctant to
say that because I'm hoping I'm going to wake up one morning and think "well
actually these are all the things that I missed and this redeems it etc" obviously
it's just my opinion, it's just my opinion and it it's my disappointment is
measured against my love for the first books so I think my disappointment feels
greater because of the great love that I have for the first series, so no, but I'm
hoping it may redeem itself in the third book, which will come out in a couple of
years, I'm sure. Is The Imaginary Friend worth the hype? No I'm afraid not,
so those are my thoughts, I would like to do more reading vlogs like this where
they are themed and I pull specific books off my shelves and then and then
film and insert clips from life etc if you would like that let me know in a
comment down below, let me know if you have read these books and what you have
thought of them and let me know how you felt about very hyped books in the past
and whether you ended up loving them. Let's have a conversation I hope you
guys are having a great week and I will speak to you very soon. Lots of bookish love.
