Every single orange book I own · Bookshelf Tour

Hello and welcome back to my channel my name  is Leena Norms. If you haven't been here,   hello! I talk about books and sometimes those  thoughts on books lead me to talk about social   change and climate stuff and gender and class but  but but sometimes I'd just like to give you a tour   of my bookshelves this is one of the most highly  requested videos i've ever had and if you haven't   been following along i've been doing a series  giving you a tour of my bookshelves by color (YES,   I organize my books by colour, NO, it is not  up for negotiation!) If you'd like to catch   up on the series so far you can click up here  but today if you haven't noticed by my get up   and effort the effort made in the makeup  department is frankly unprecedented there's like   five colors on my eyes guys something that 2020  has really done for me is rediscover eye makeup   because masks have kind of rendered lipstick kind  of disappointing not in that i don't still enjoy   wearing it but looking like i've chowed down on a  jammer sandwich every time i arrive somewhere and   take my mask off can only be a fashion statement  for so long so anyway today we're talking orange   books the way these videos work is that i give  you a tour of every single orange book that i own   and then i pick out a few to talk to you about  in detail. They're not really so much 'reviews'   as they are meditations casual chats things in  the books that might spark a conversation that   i'd have with you if you came round my house for  a cuppa or to be honest at this point in 2020   a strong gin actually what am i talking about  it's illegal for you to come in my house right   now so you could have to you'd have to sit on  the [ __ ] front step actually what am i talking   about again i don't have a front step i live in a  block of flats thoughts that i would call down to   you from the window as you stood on the street  below anyway let's get to the bookshelf tour   while i sit here giving off wildly aggressive  70s vibes and we'll be back to talk about the   books i pick up okay so here we are at the  shelves we've done yellow we've done pink   we've done red we've done what else have we done  we know green and today we're coming to the orange   shelf very serious we're only two books deep for  this one you'll see for some of the other ones   i'm definitely three books deep in absolutely  neck deep in wood yeah i'm surprised at how few   orange books i have i guess like orange again has  like a bit of a big meaning to splash onto a book   but added to that is like all of the spines of  penguin books being orange so i guess that's   quite pleasing to put all those together the  first book though is a book mocking penguin   this is a book called beg borrow steel artists  against originality by robert shaw this was not   a penguin book i'm sure his legal team asked  him to put that on afterwards it's quite funny   i'm actually going to go first in with the first  book and be like i'm going to talk about this   one let's put that one aside to be talked about  this is a proof of the future we choose a book   i talked about very recently in a video up here  cherry pie which is holly one of holly minish's   early poetry collections it's really beautiful  it has illustrations by lots of different artists   the whole way through and it's a treat a treat  daily rituals which is a book about the literal   daily rituals of famous artists and thinkers in  history fox fire wolf skin and other stories of   shape-shifting women what title by sharon blackie  a really big book on empire that i've never read   by niall ferguson i ended up reading the horrible  histories edition of this and then now i'm reading   the black and british book exquisite candavers by  mina kandasmi look at that cover it's incredible   utopia for realists and how we get there what  dementia teaches us about love by nicki jarrod   citizen an american lyric by claudia rankine  american sonnets for my past and future assassin   by terence hayes 1919 by eve l ewig electric  arches by eve l ewig a really nice gift edition of   talking to my daughter about the economy by janice  varafakis an unnecessary woman by ravianna medine   against memoir by michelle t oh and i really like  i bought this for the cover but i really want to   read the insides too but i mean that goes for  every single book on this [ __ ] shelf doesn't   it together the rituals pleasures and politics  of cooperation and a proof of invisible women   exposing the data bias in a world designed for men  by caroline credo perez for example did you know   that women are 47 more likely to be injured in  car accidents because they've only designed seat   belts for the male weighted body brilliant beauty  a very short introduction this is one of the great   leftovers from what used to be a university  collection uh probably from the uni library of   a very short introduction one and it was like  medium useful but i keep it for reference the   craftsman by richard kennett another pleasing  cover they've designed it so it's just a line   of pencils that say the title of the book it's a  book about why work shouldn't be a means to an end   my huge and beautiful copy of gone with the wind  that i have definitely never read but look at this   corrugated cover oh my god might be useful if  you're trying to get into publishing the penguin   digital dictionary it's published by penguin and  dk and it's got loads of like publishing terms in   it how to be alone by sarah maitland imagine that  the history of technology rewritten this is a book   about what would happen if certain technological  things hadn't been discovered when they had and   what could have happened instead islam a graphic  guide you'll see from my other videos i have   lots of these graphic guides around comic book  style guides to big ideas anxiety for beginners   a personal investigation by ellen morgan as  somebody who doesn't really suffer from anxiety   this is really really useful to learn about loads  of different people's experiences of it um but if   you are going through anxiety it's quite anxiety  ironically anxiety-inducing to read because it's   really vivid descriptions of how anxiety feels to  different people just just to flag um did you ever   have a family by bill clegg oh my god this is one  of the best books i'm going to talk about this one   the over story which i've talked about before need  i talk about it again oh i'll talk about it for   a little bit why not let's ball myself howard's  end by ian foster which i think is like i'm not   a huge classics person like i've read a few quite  a lot of them but i haven't hand on heart enjoyed   that many of them but howard's end is probably  one of my favorite classics of all time goodbye   things on on minimalist living by familia sasaki  this is actually like a pragmatic version of   the magikarp tidying like if you're somebody  who can't deal with the kind of spiritual   feeling aspects of the magic of tidying then  this would be a really great alternative and   the descent of man by grayson perry so time as you  know is an illusion and i have a confession that i   filmed that in a time before today and in between  that i went to stay at my parents house while they   were on holiday video up here if you want to  see me in my natural midlands habitat obviously   because of covid my boyfriend craig had to drop me  off in his car and since we were going with a car   i decided it'd be a great idea to drop off some  books and secretly hoard them in my parents house   ones that i hadn't read in a while but really did  want to keep because they meant something to me   and i know that when i own a when when speak it  speak it into existence lena manifest it when i   own a place of my own i know that i will want to  have them all displayed in there so anyway the   long and short of it is two of the books that i  picked up to talk about aren't actually physically   here with me i do have beg borrow steel and i also  have the over story i'm gonna cover all four of   them but unfortunately for the first one i want  to talk about goodbye things which is easily and   there was a phase in my life where i read several  books on minimalism easily the simplest easy most   effective and most persuasive of the bunch so if  you are thinking of reading a book on minimalism   i would pick this one genuinely but because i  don't have it with me so i can't see like what   i underlined and like i can't directly quote from  the book i just wanted to respond to it in some   way and chat to you a little bit about my very  mixed feelings about minimalism now you might   have seen on my channel before i've stepped on  several videos on doing no buy challenges chucking   out my clothes declutters and that kind of thing  and as i get older and my views on minimalism   clash with my views on creativity and also my  views on sustainability i have more complicated   feelings about minimalism so while i really  respect this book and if if you're going to read   a book on minimalism i think it should be this one  i just want to talk very quickly about some of my   more complicated feelings about minimalism right  now one of them is that i am kind of envisioning   maybe going back to my old ways a little bit  and doing some da da da fashion videos i used   to make fashion videos on this channel in my  incredibly dirty student kitchen like what is this   and there is a part of me that really enjoys  the creative side of putting outfits together   and mainly because i do want to have a capsule  wardrobe and i want to cut down on what i own   and i really have in the past couple of years  cut down on the amount of clothes that i have   but there are some clothes right that i have  got rid of that i really regret and actually   have had to go on to depop and buy again or even  sometimes have been tempted but haven't given into   it but have been tempted to buy some fast fashion  items to emulate those items because i got rid of   them too fast i was in a phase of my life where  i thought i knew my style and i just didn't and   while it was the right minimalist option to get  rid of some of those items it definitely wasn't   the most sustainable option i also find that  with a lot of the capsule wardrobe videos that i   watch they're people that really enjoy they really  enjoy a beige oh my god they love a gradient grey   and i don't know if you've noticed from my  channel but i love that on other people and i   absolutely [ __ ] hate it on me like i hate  i really do like wearing black sometimes i   hate a white i like passionately hate white as an  owner of clothes not visually but like the idea of   owning white clothes like really stresses me out  and this an unless it would create mental clutter   in my head to own too many white clothes and gray  i'm not i live in britain the sky is grey enough   i think there's probably like a strain of of  stuff to be discussed when it comes to creativity   and minimalism and sustainability and like the  joy of color and and i feel like maybe i could   make some videos on that would you enjoy that i  think i would enjoy making them it would be a bit   of an experiment because it'd be a bit different  from what i've been doing recently but if you   would enjoy that kind of content do let me  know and i might make a few of them pepper them   sprinkle them throughout my video schedule i  also have complicated feelings about some of   the extreme minimalists um on the internet and in  those documentaries that you watch because their   minimalism depends on other people's maximalism  like there was this documentary i watched about   this woman who lived without money but it meant  that everybody else had to shuffle their lives   around her everybody else had to own things to  lend her she hasn't built an ecosystem where   everybody could live without money she was just  living without money and i i don't again the idea   of minimalism and how it relates to capitalism is  very important because i think one of the reasons   that people hoard or people don't get rid of stuff  isn't because they're really greedy and just love   filling their house with [ __ ] although there is  a certain pleasure to that still as as a chronic   chaotic grubby hoarder it's because of this  feeling of scarcity this lack of abundance   in society my thing about getting rid of  stuff is like what if i need to rebuy it   what if i'm not in a financial situation in the  future where i can rebuy it i should hold on to   everything i have right now in case it's useful  because i know society isn't set up to support me   should things turn for the worse and i think that  true minimalism and true sustainability where   people don't buy more than they need or hoard  more or feel comfortable with less items that   society needs to support a mindset where people  feel like they will always at least have enough   maybe not excess but enough i think there's lots  of conversations about classism and money when it   comes to sustainability and clothes and how like  some clothes aren't affordable and other ones are   but then that usually manifests in criticizing  people who charge enough money to pay everybody   fairly rather than criticizing a government that  won't raise the minimum wage to the living wage   at least like i think maybe the energy anyway i'm  getting into a tangent but all this to say life is   great and life is fine and i've got a jumper and  no one likes you if you can't just tell people   to get rid of their stuff you have to create a  shared ideology and a shared plan of how to have   less stuff thing libraries sound really cool i'd  like to try one where you can go and borrow tools   when i was growing up in the midlands there were  lots of like ways that that could happen my church   had a video library so we didn't really own that  many videos but i used to go and borrow videos   from the video library my mom used to take me to a  toy library we didn't have many toys but there was   a shared i think it was around by the council  you could just go and like borrow a toy for a   few weeks and then you'd bring it back and it was  like also an incentive to like not break the toy   and also obviously like i spent most of the time  in libraries like i didn't own very many books   as a kid but i read very widely because we had a  very healthy library nearby that my mum felt safe   to just like leave me in i also think it wouldn't  work without a proper like art system because like   one of the ways that a lot of illustrators and  artists come up and make a name for themselves and   can make some kind of a living is through shops  like etsy where you make things that are kind of   arguably non-essential earrings little tote bags  little stickers mugs like things that maybe if   everybody was minimalist and sustainable and  only bought one those ways of creating micro   incomes that could turn into full-time incomes  for artists go so basically what i'm saying is   redistribute the wealth universal basic income now  but anyway this is the only minimalist book that   i've really kept out of all the ones i've read  because it is the the simplest greatest pep talk   that doesn't involve anything to do with like  spirit or feeling it's just like why do you own   all this [ __ ] you don't really need it i mean  that's a massive paraphrase but it makes you also   just like less anxious about having less stuff  and i don't know it's a really good one to pick   up and it has an orange blind so it made it into  this video next next we're going to talk about the   overstory by richard powers uh it has an orange  spine so it made it in here even though it is   quite clearly a green book and about trees i don't  i do i don't regret making the excuse to talk to   you about this again but on reflection i have  chewed your off about this several times so i'll   leave the videos where i've talked about this book  um below i've decided i'm gonna reread this book   again before the end of the year so i'll probably  have more thoughts on it as as i go on but if you   haven't heard this book before it's massive it  follows nine characters um whose stories kind of   start at completely different points and then kind  of grow together like a tree and the narrative is   kind of really clever it's kind of circular but  also really easy to follow and all the characters   are like he must have this book took him so  long to write he moved to the redwood forest   because he was loving writing about trees so much  wanted to immerse himself in trees and it's about   nine characters whose lives have no relation to  trees at all and then somehow they get pulled into   this winding story about the ancient importance  of trees and it's really hard to explain   but i would really recommend it if you struggle  with climate anxiety and making sense of what   your life's about or maybe if you are struggling  with the idea of having a purpose in your life and   feeling disconnected from the rest of the world  he puts the characters through these incredibly   like painful situations you really feel like this  sense of loneliness with a lot of the characters   and then when they do find connections with people  the payoff is like in your gut like it's i don't   know i haven't known a writer who can explain  loneliness like richard powers can like it's   incredible um and it's also kind of about being  radicalized in the eyes of the world by caring   about the planet while actually de-radicalizing  yourself from a world that doesn't care about its   surroundings or understand that the world is like  a physical context and if we [ __ ] up the planet   we have nothing to exist on and i know that's such  a simple concept but it's really hard to feel when   you've been indoctrinated into a world that's  all about the mind and like here's an idea let's   do it we can control nature if we think about it  hard enough two of my favorite like plot lines is   a man who is completely paralyzed but is  incredibly clever and is a games designer so   there's lots of stuff around uh people wanting to  escape their lives and have freedom in the virtual   world and then his thoughts about human connection  and finding like a real solid base for his life   um despite being so attached to the virtual world  and also a woman who discovers the this this   amazing stuff about trees that you might have like  heard about there's a book on it called the hidden   life of trees all about how they're actually kind  of one organism and the way they share resources   and speak to each other and she's one of the  people that finds out stuff about that a long   time before people realize that's true and nobody  believes her she gets sidelined by the scientific   community and has to go into hiding basically um  mainly through like naivety and misogyny people   just completely reject her ideas and her papers  and she kind of loses her job and then i won't   spoil it but her story kind of goes off in this  unexpected way and she encounters some of the   other characters as the book goes on and it's just  it's just so cleverly done and there's also a lot   around direct action and vividly explaining how  it feels to live in a tree for a while anyway a   it's kind of like escapism but also kind of coming  back to yourself when you read it and if there is   anybody who hasn't yet been convinced to read  it i hope that as i keep mentioning it in every   video one day you'll read it this is beg barro  steele artists against originality this book i'm   actually still halfway through because as i read  it i take notes on it and then write them down   in my big google document of research but it's  but it's a relatively short book and it's color   so it's got loads of like examples of what it's  talking about and ways to think about stuff and   it's kind of like a collection of articles really  um but it's it's discussing this idea that picasso   says that art is theft and how true that is and  how we enact that when it comes to copyright law   especially when it's not usually artists that  own their own copyright um for example penguin   who this the front cover of this book emulates i  don't think there's a lot about it in the book but   it's interesting they chose penguin as an example  because uh i don't work for them anymore so i can   say this penguin have a history of suing smaller  companies and smaller authors in the name of like   somebody else's artistic copyright so because when  you're a author you sign with a publishing house   they own the rights to your or your words so even  if you um don't object to somebody using your work   in another way or remixing it the publisher has  the right to sue and does have a problem with   it usually which can be really loosely done and  doesn't usually like cause much of a fuss because   you know exposure can help so a lot of the time  publishers will be loose with it so anyway this   is a book that discusses the complications  with that um mainly through the lens of like   art history but it does also bring in music and he  also puts like passages from shakespeare next to   passages from stuff around that time and shows you  that a lot of shakespeare was transposed or copied   quite directly from other people's work and how we  romanticize these ages where like lots of amazing   original art happened but actually they were  periods where it was more acceptable to borrow   and re and remix and it is complicated for me  in the way that like the only way really the   artists can get paid nowadays is through  this idea of copyright and owning an idea   um but i also feel very in a very complicated way  that there aren't really any um original ideas   and innovation only happens through remixing  respectful remixing but remixing but again it   comes back to like the idea of something around  universal basic income or something like that   where as people felt more secure and they felt  like they would be looked after in their lives   and in old age they would be less precious about  creative sharing and and parody and collaboration   because again like one of the books that i haven't  mentioned that wasn't on my shelf for some reason   i think i was probably in one of my bags was a  factful nurse which is actually a book written by   three people collaboratively and he makes a point  of how important that is and how the book wouldn't   have been that if it wasn't a collaborative  thing and he talks about the dangers of this   idea of the one genius who makes the book and then  disseminates it and blesses the people with his   individual wit and knowledge and then finally we  come to did you ever have a family i've mentioned   that i've loved this book in the past and i  think i like unboxed it maybe like five years   ago um but i discovered it when i was working  with the man book prize and they sent me like   a massive box of books i'll read you the premise  um on the morning of her daughter's wedding june   reed's house goes up in flames destroying her  entire family her present her past and her future   fleeing from the carnage and stricken and alone  june finds herself in a motel room by the ocean   held captive by memories and the mistakes she has  made with her only child lolly and her partner   luke this is an example of where like i don't  actively go out looking for tragic books and   they're not like something that i think there's  definitely a genre of like literary books that are   just like imagine if the worst thing in the world  ever happened to you now live that through without   any discussions of the wider context of the world  and what's create systems like that and just   imagine that your life is falling apart enjoy some  people can handle reading lots of books like that   a year and i just like can't like i think that  you have to choose them carefully and choose them   wisely and make sure that those stories are being  honored but not exploited i think this is a really   good example of that in that it's about a woman  who house fires are something that particularly   like scares me it's just like something that like  every time i think like it like i'm very paranoid   about things burning down it's just like something  that i don't know just it's just like whenever i   have a bad dream it's always about a house fire  um so facing this book was like a big challenge   for me because it was just like but it's also  incredibly unusual because it follows a cast of   characters like the blurb doesn't really explain  that to you but again it's kind of like the over   story it follows a cast of characters around  this unimaginable tragedy and how lots of people   relate to it and it also kind of i think makes  a comment on second-hand grief and how when a   tragedy happens in your community how it's  a different kind of grieving process if you   didn't know the person specifically but it  does regardless shake your idea of what is   safe and what is true when a tragedy happens like  adjacent to you if that makes sense so there's a   lot of stuff about that in the book and i really  loved a lot of the smaller characters again they   were really well filled out i'm seeing a trend  here because that is also what trumpet does   and they are some of my favorite books where it's  about lots of different characters but they're   really well filled out and this one was also  interesting to me because i often um don't see   agents write books and bill clegg is like a very  prolific literary agent and sometimes like when   somebody's so good at being a literary agent they  kind of like are so in them in their own expertise   that it's hard for them to write well so the fact  that he was a literary agent as well like really   fascinated me and was one of the reasons i picked  up the book in the first place now i'm speaking   about it i kind of want to get it back from my mom  and dad's house and reread it because it was one   of those books that i kind of want to pick apart  and like work out like kind of open the hood get   my tweezers and be like how does this work how  did you make this make sense those were my orange   books i hope you enjoyed them if you'd like to  watch the rest of the series there's a link to the   playlist here um these videos are free to watch  but if you want to be one of the lovely people   that makes them possible you can look into joining  the gumption club i bought this jumper off depop   but it's actually kind of a little bit too small  for me so i'm seriously considering giving this   away on the gumption club we have like a subgroup  called the gumption wardrobe on facebook where   we like do a sustainable swap kind of system where  if somebody has clothes they don't want they put   it on there and then you can just pay postage  and send it to somebody else in the world for   free it's very nice so i might i've done that  with a few of my clothes and i might do it with   this because to be honest while i'm loving the  velma vibes i'm not sure stop talking about your   jumpers lena take a look at your bookshelves and  tell me what your favorite orange book is below   i want to hear thank you so much for your captive  listening uh and until next time frog-snog-out

Channel: leena norms

Views: 17,218

Rating: 4.978868 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Qc0UuZXMIRI

Length: 24min 10sec (1450 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020