Books I Read in April

hello my friends i read a lot of books in the month of april i don't know how many but i think it's it's definitely more than 20. my basket is over filled this time here they are i'll i'll count them i know there's ten in this series two in this series four in this series 25 i read 25 things this month that's a lot and as usual like i start all of my wrap ups i've talked about so many of these in so many different videos so i asked you i think last time how you want me to handle wrap ups and structure them if i've talked about everything already in vlogs and somebody said something about like not every book needs the same amount of attention and i think that's how i need to think of things rather than thinking okay every book gets two minutes discuss the synopsis favorite things about it blah blah blah i'll just focus on the ones that i think are conducive to a bigger conversation oh wait 26 things i read most of this in april but the last like 20 pages on the first of may anyway i'm gonna leave the ones that i haven't talked to you at all about until the very end so you might have just most recently seen my childhood favorites video where i read 15 of my favorite books is it's supposed to be like from eighth grade but i wanted to read the entirety of the jordan nicholson series even though technically in eighth grade i would have only read the first two or three books in the series but i just wanted to get through it i wanted the nostalgia i got it along with some other things a lot of language and representation i didn't love but it was the fun series that i remember we get to see georgia who is a 14 year old from england um and her friend group and her time at school and her relationship with her parents but mostly um these three main boys that she is dating or interested in throughout the series and just like getting to see her first kiss and her first relationship and all that fun stuff was cool to reflect on i'm not reading them individually nor am i reading really any of the things that i read in my childhood favorites video i read a couple things from fear street and this one is like the origin of this fear family and witch trials and upon rereading this i didn't remember a ton of it i know i enjoy the fear street series but i'm having a hard time pinpointing which ones i've read and which ones i loved i picked up two and thought they were safe um but they weren't exactly what i remember and i think it's just because it's not the main series that i thought that i was reading my mistake this one's about like uh killer and valentine's day they were both just okay then i read kissed by an angel by elizabeth chandler which is about a girl who can see angels believes in angels and then her boyfriend dies and he becomes an angel and tries to communicate with her and it was uh very strange and not not quite what i remember this is a whole series but this is the only one that i read um when i was like 14 and definitely worth it for the video but yeah it was just it was a strange read the most successful reread of the video was the undomestic goddess by sophie kinsella which was one of my favorite books in high school it's about a woman named samantha who's a lawyer and she messes up at work and flees like loses millions of dollars for the company um and then ends up on this random family's doorstep they think she's there for a housekeeping position they just like hire her on the spot because she's overqualified and she just decides to go along with it it's a mistaken identity but she definitely takes advantage of the situation because she doesn't know what else to do with her life she falls in love with the gardener it's a really fun time it also tackles some good conversations about like what's expected of women in the workforce and feminism and some really good stuff in a lighthearted environment i also reread chicken soup for the teenage soul volume [Music] four listen roman numerals really got me all up this month i read this in a vlog and i i missed the number in the crown and it was very embarrassing if you don't know chicken soup is a series of books i don't even know how to explain her how many have come out um but these ones were specifically aimed at teenagers they're stories like personal stories written by adults and then a couple written by teens who just like submitted their stories and they're supposed to help you know guide teens or help in some way to feel like you're not alone they are like these relatable stories but also these stories of hardship i think they can be inspirational or they can be a reflection of what you're going through and i thought what did i think it was just okay i'm clearly not the target audience so like you know what i mean um next one is that way madness lies 15 of shakespeare's most notable works reimagined i got it that time this is edited by dahlia adler and it features a bunch of authors who are putting their modern spin on william shakespeare's beloved classics i loved this short story collection it's one of my favorites it'll be one of my most recommended of all time i really respect what i interpret as like a real openness to whatever the author wanted to do in their story every single story is completely different like that's what makes an anthology so good to me when it is this idea of reimaginings because they could have easily all been told in a similar vein like with a similar setting or a similar idea but instead there was poetry there was like more traditional narratives there were stories that were like using the direct characters like with the exact same names in the same relationship and just putting them in modern times but then also stories that just like were clearly inspired by the idea of a shakespeare play and didn't fully reference anything directly and it just made it so fun because i never knew what i was going to be in for the next story i never got bored and i remember to note my reading for every single story so i could tell you my favorites which are taming of the soulmate by kate ankrum king of the fairies by anna marie mclemore we have seen better days by lily anderson all authors i've read before and then also i loved i bleed by dahlia adler his invention by brittany cavallaro partying is such sweet sorrow by kirsten white i gave out so many five out of fives you guys i read this in 24 hours for a vlog and if i remember correctly i reviewed every individual story so check that out for my full thoughts and then also in that vlog i picked up a midsummer night's dream because of the nostalgia i picked up a couple books in this edition collection because they're so beautiful and apparently influenced a lot of you to do the same i've been tagged in so many stories this week and posts of people buying this and i don't know why they don't sell it as a box set probably because there's like 40 of them and i can't even imagine what that price is but like i wish they made it a little easier to buy all of them not that i should but i want to oh in my rating my reading is already a 5 out of 5 for this play but we also got i don't know how many it feels like 30 pages at the very beginning of like an introduction to shakespeare in examination of the text a nice little intro and i thought that definitely added something to this and made me not regret my decision at all to get the pelican edition next up let's talk about the raven boys i'm going to act like i haven't reviewed this 17 times on my channel already the raven boys is a series where we follow a girl named blue and she's from a family of psychics but she's not a psychic but she has this power to like enhance other people's abilities she gets introduced to these boys from like this fancy school who she wants nothing to do with and they are on this mission to find a buried welsh king because if you find this king um you will get like a wish i can't imagine anyone is here who hasn't heard me pitch this but i know there must be someone out there so like if you've never heard of this before if you're brand new here comment me a little bird emoji so i know that you exist this is my favorite series of all time it progresses to get more and more magical but it still has a real world setting which i love so much there are certain developments that are really shocking in here as far as like a why a paranormal kind of romance story goes blue has relationships with some different boys in the series and then some of the boys have different relationships and they're all very lovely and i love all these characters upon reread a shocking development is i bumped my favorite book from the dream thieves to blue lily lily blue i don't know who i am right now but i have a new ranking of my favorite to least favorite in the series and that's all i have to say next up i read a couple books also in a vlog but they were all like five stars so i should of course take the opportunity to pitch them again in case you didn't see that vlog this is mrs death mrs death by selena goddin and it is a really uniquely written story where we're following the personification of death as this woman who's writing her memoirs but she's working with this writer and they basically go through all of the different deaths that mrs death has had to witness and her and wolf um connect on the different things that they have experienced and have their traumas um unpacked it's just such an interesting commentary on death and the way that it's written in a mixture of like direct to reader language and then also poetry and then also just this beautiful language being used to tell stories of death throughout the ages um humanity's perspective on death from people who have a desperation for life to people who have decided to take their own lives famous deaths in history and infamous killers they get an interesting focus in here new kind of stories given to them and it overall just has this really ominous tone that i enjoyed so so much overall i was really really impressed by it the next one is another short story collection this is by suvanne kim tamavaksa and it's called how to pronounce knife and it follows um families and people from laos coming to north america it's all of these small moments of strength and ambition and desperation involved in starting a new life and coming to a new country some are more light-hearted some are fun some are silly they can be really sad and some of them didn't even have a tone they just like they were they were just about the existence of human beings and experiences i think my favorite ones had this theme of um the idea of people having to work twice as hard for half the recognition how there continues to be prejudice and inequality everywhere and how white mediocrity is continuing to prevail my favorites in here well since i rated this a five i don't know if it's really valuable telling you all of my ratings because most of them were fives the title story how to pronounce knife was perfect randy travis is one of my favorites chickachee was fantastic i don't know why you like is it even valuable to share my favorite i guess it is like i'm thinking of it like if i'm giving this as a recommendation it's like nobody's just gonna read one story out of here that i said was my favorite but maybe like when you're reading knowing my favorites not that you'll remember which were my favorites while you're reading but maybe it gives you an extra cool element i don't know what i'm saying edge of the world was a five the school bus driver was a five who eric was a five a far distant thing and the last one picking worms was probably my absolute favorite first and last really really strong and then i also have a history of my brief body by billy ray belcourt which is a memoir another uniquely written thing that i read this month and it was really impressive how in a short thing we got um this like intimate look at just billy's life um in driftpile first nation but then also managed to pan out and look at entire communities and the entire world at the same time it had a really good balance of those things we talked about um colonial violence and gender and sexuality certain shame involved um different access there were like sweet moments from his life there were impossible moments from his life there was a conversation about suicide in first nations communities and also like the government's reaction to suicide in first nation communities huge issues that exist in this country um but also just like threw in lots of just little thoughts little perspectives little stories i heard somebody use the word um meandering for this book and that is like something that really sells me on books i love a meandering plot so that can definitely be a downside for some people but just like the not fully formed thoughts that's what i loved about this it didn't feel like a completed piece of work it was just like one paragraph on gender just like a thought that he was having about gender we had pages like this where it was just like a couple thoughts on a page that kind of went together but didn't really and it was all really really wonderful and i gave it a five star next up is the book club pick every value break by peter swanson i will be doing a live show with elias at some point i haven't announced the date yet so i obviously don't want to get too into it because then i'll have nothing to discuss in the live show but it is about a married couple newly married um they abigail and bruce go on their honeymoon and suddenly there's this man that shows up on this secluded island who abigail recognizes because she had like a one-night stand with him at her bachelorette party she has to decide how to get rid of this guy um but also like the decision if she should tell her husband or not and like is she in danger or not can we even trust her many things to think about my final rating for this i'm sad to say is a three i think anybody who's read this will like already know why it's a three i think this book was really intentional with the choices that it made and the time that it's written and i think that almost took away from my reading experience the fact that it felt like it was really trying to do something and like maybe it succeeded at that thing but it still just took me out of it a little um i will say atmosphere amazing the tension was great the reading experience itself was really fun like i had a good time but it's not so much a mystery when you already get a feel for what the author is doing i will without a doubt continue to pick up peter swanson this just wasn't everything that i hoped and it's hard picking book club books because sometimes the domestic thrillers are the ones that are just like a little too basic but they're also the ones that i have the most fun reading but it's a type of thriller that often leads to a pretty mediocre rating i'm willing to risk it because i want to find some favorites but this one just wasn't it and i left the mirror season for last because i actually want to fully spoil this book for some people i had a really tough time with this book uh i think part of the reason that i read so many things this month is because i was a little triggered by the subject matter and just needed to read 7 000 other things to forget about this experience that's not to say that the book was not good or necessary or anything and i'm actually not going to rate it i just don't really feel comfortable reading this book um but i do want to talk about it full out because i think that the way that certain things happen and get revealed um i feel like sometimes the trigger warning of just like the inclusion of sexual assault may not be thorough enough so i want to be able to talk about some other things um but this story revolves around these two characters ciela and locke who both experience sexual assault at the same party and the book focuses on them like coming together and starting a friendship and relationship but ciela knows more about the event than locke does um locke knows that something happened but he had been drugged and ciela knows more about it than he does and it's like this decision of how much to tell him and when to tell him and also dealing with her own trauma at the same time this is a deeply personal story um from am and the author's note is really important to read so i hope people read that and i think this was really really brave to write i also think it's really important that these stories get told um and that there's like certain representation i don't know how else to wear that it's so important to shed light on rape culture and sexual violence and i feel like a lot of times um boys and men who experience that especially that group um there's a lot of stigma involved it's completely underrepresented and boys who are victims need to feel supported so it's absolutely terrible that these stories need to be told but it is really important um so that's the story if you want to leave that's i'll see you later please comment below anything that you thought about any of my other reviews and i'll see you in my next video um for those of you who are sticking around because you want to know more before you read or you've already read it or you have no plans on reading it i just don't know how to go on talking about this book and not talking about like who the perspective is from and like what really happened at the party because it feels like it's like an intended twist in the book not a twist but like it's a reveal throughout the book we don't know the full details of the party and neither does lock ciela knows everything um because she was forced to i don't want to say commit the act of violence but they were forced to have a sexual encounter she was forced to perform a sexual act on him and the book is from her perspective so i want to be so specific with my language because she is she is a victim they are both victims of this group of people who forced this on them so she is not at fault she is not the perpetrator however it the way that it's written it feels like you're reading from the perspective of the perpetrator it is extremely graphic in its language and i feel like it's one thing to go into a book knowing that it involves sexual violence but not knowing that you are going to read from a specific perspective i think will catch a lot of people off guard but because it's intended to be a reveal and like that kind of is important to the goal of the storyline and because i haven't seen anybody else talk about that aspect in their reviews like i just don't know if that's something that should be talked about in the reviews it's such an important book and it's gonna allow so many people to feel seen and i don't want it to come across like that's a critique of the book which is actually the only reason i don't want to give a rating for this because any rating that i give that isn't perfect because this wasn't a five star but i don't want to come across like i think that the book did something wrong and if i put out a number out there it looks like those things are associated and they're absolutely not and at the same time like i just i don't want to talk about this book ever again i don't love certain things that the book did um in regards to again i feel it's so important that characters and people feel like they have the right to reclaim certain things overcoming trauma is not a linear experience and the book does that super well how she goes in and out of different memories and the process of healing is so different for everybody and there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea that their healing comes from them involving in a sexual romantic relationship so that too is not a critique of the book but it's not something that i loved to see just because when they did have sex he had not yet been made aware that she is the one who was involved in his sexual assault and again i do think that the book probably objectively handled it well because she wanted to tell him and she is dealing with her own trauma at the same time and he like goes out of his way to say like i don't want you to tell me anything about that night like i can't take it so she is in the right but also it's just like a really really difficult thing to read that this boy engaged in a relationship without fully getting to have the knowledge of the experience that they had already had together it's just really tough to talk about this book but i i don't think i've seen anybody fully review it and when i say i i've said this before i haven't seen anybody fully review it doesn't mean that people haven't fully reviewed it it means that i myself haven't gone out and found somebody who has fully reviewed it and if they have like i i'm just not i'm not out here looking to discuss this any further i don't i don't want to continue to have conversations about this book but i really did want to review it and now now i'm done with it i'm sure something came across wrong there like i really do not have i do not have hard feelings with this book i'm not giving like an objective opinion on it so please don't think i'm coming for it because like i said it's a it's a super personal story from this author and that really really needs to be respected i'm gonna go i don't know how i'm gonna hold up all these books for my thumbnail but i will see you later thank you so much for watching if you stay until the very end give me uh give me a little flower emoji that would be great i'll see you later bye

Channel: BooksandLala

Views: 34,153

Keywords: books, booktube, bookish, booksandlala, obbsandlala

Id: 4w2IF1Fy4bE

Length: 24min 25sec (1465 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021