Everything I read in January 🌘 classics, modern lit & new favourite books

happy new year happy new year we did it we got through the first month um welcome back to my channel my name is emma if you are new here hi how are you um i'm gonna be talking about all the books that i read in the first month of 2021 i had a really really good reading month actually which feels so nice to say i loved pretty much every single book i stepped into with like a couple exceptions but nothing too drastic i didn't hate anything i read this month i just felt so happy reading all the books that i got through i loved so many of them before i get into talking about all of the books which is quite the hefty pile this time around i just thought i would talk a little bit about kind of what we're looking for this year what are we searching for what kind of books are we trying to read what kind of books am i trying to find um if you followed my channel last year and watched a lot of my videos you know that last year i pretty much i don't know if i really did it consciously or not but last year i was hunting down basically like it was kind of a refresh i hit refresh and reset on finding genres that i like on finding authors that i like on finding um where i find books even i've read 151 books of basically every single genre ever i didn't care where the books were from i didn't care really what too many people were saying about them i just plucked randomly sometimes i grabbed books off of my shelf i listened predominantly to audiobooks last year and that will probably be the trend at least for the first half of this year as well but it just really allowed me to see like what i liked um i feel like i had an okay idea and then of course i joined booktube i started making videos about books and i just really felt like i wanted to rediscover and like basically start from zero start from nothing and just read everything i could possibly read um kind of from a randomized pile of genres authors places you name it just anything and so it really let me see and rediscover like what i loved and so it was i think a very valuable experience even though in 2020 i did have a lot of books i hated but like it is quite valuable to find out what you hate why you hate it what things you love and so that's what kind of my reading year last year let me do this year we now have the data the data has been collected the data data data data is it i have struggled with this since i was so little is it data data or data regardless the numbers are in the votes are in and so now this year in 2021 like using that information and knowing what genres i like knowing what authors i love so much i want to like really create the reading year of my dreams because now i know i know myself so much better i know my reading tastes so much better so okay what are we looking for is basically been the topic of this chat we are looking still for the spooky books the gothic books the dark spooky creepy books of course dark academia we're looking for the classics from all over the world um which kind of ties into my next point just about international literature literature from every single country that is like my goal to read a book from every single country in the world obviously i can't do that in one year that's way too many books but we're gonna try because i just really really love reading literature from everywhere so classics especially from everywhere i think that's so interesting um adding on to kind of the literature list of classics from all over the world we're looking for more magical realism because i love that genre so much and i really want to read more especially from south america south american magical realism more sci-fi is something i would like to read more of this year mostly just literature from all over the world so if you have wrecks from any country any place any person please leave them down below another goal is reading more canadian literature this year because like i really haven't and i feel like a little bit bad about it being canadian but like i would just like to see more what's out there i've never read margaret atwood which feels like a crime um but i'm not super interested in margaret atwood actually i'd like to read her a little bit but just more canadian literature would be interesting and yeah i think that would be really cool as well because then i'd get to to witness my country a little bit more through its literature so without further ado let's get into the books that i used last year's data to um pick out for january and um i love them all pretty much so let's get into it i'm also going to be telling you where i found each of these books because i find it really interesting how people um come about finding a certain book or reading a certain book and i really value when people give me their recommendations from their recommendations like kind of giving me where they found a book from or a certain thing from because um then it kind of creates this web of shared interests and hobbies and likes so that's what i'm gonna do as well i'm gonna shout out a whole bunch of booktubers and people and just the places where i found these books from because i think a lot of people that would probably be really helpful for a lot of people so and of course we learned some new words yes okay let's get into it all right so the very first book i read in this year of 2020 was snow country by yasunari kawabata love it a piece of japanese literature um japan is a country i love to read so much more but snow country four stars really really loved it let's talk about it so basically we have this man and his name is shimamura and he's going to an isolated hot mountain spring up on a mountain in one of the snowiest places on the planet on earth he is a wealthy businessman from tokyo so he's going to this mountain hot spring to get away from work and his family and to basically just have a relaxing time up at this hot mountain spring of course there's also geisha who worked there and stuff like that and so we learned that he is voyaging on a train kind of going into this whimsical world where as he enters kind of an underpass and eventually makes his way up to the mountain it's almost like he enters into this fantasy world or a world with different rules than where he's from in tokyo and it's like a little bit of this fantasy magic world where things bend and collide and the snow serves as such a character in this book which is amazing but back to the main point he is going to this hot mountain spring to visit a woman named komako who has recently become a geisha this is his second time going to the hot mountain spring and so we bounce back and forth from these two timelines his first time at the mountain spring and now the present his second time there on the train to the hot mountain spring he also meets another woman on the train and there's just so much beautiful imagery and so we basically follow the stories and the tragic lives of these three people it was beautiful it was so subtle it was like the most subtle knife slice through your heart because just the way that kawabata is tragic with his language and his words and of course the content and the story because this is a tragic um love affair there's just so much denial and shimamura and komako and everyone in the story just constantly denies their feelings they can't come to terms with love connection human emotion caring for another person the themes of isolation and separation and this like turning away from society and of course they are literally away from society up on a mountain with so much snow that is just smothering them and muffling everything muting everything that is exactly what this book is about is about muting your own human emotions and the truth of what you're feeling muffling and blanketing these feelings smothering yourself this book is so suffocating in the conversations that these characters have with one another because it's just they shut off themselves they shut everything down they don't give way and they don't open up to these feelings they're experiencing within themselves and so ultimately that is the true tragedy in this book and i'm not going to spoil anything of course but i do want to warn you as well that like if you read this edition at least the introduction that comes with it does spoil the book i hate when people do that i hate it so much um i think at least if you're going to have an introduction like that which spoils things that go on in the book and plot events and these huge things in a classic in a book either put the like whatever you want to say whatever your little piece on the classic is at the end of the book or just give us a warning just give us a spoiler warning i don't think that's too much to ask definitely a huge pet peeve because i basically knew how this book ended as soon as i stepped in which was a little disappointing so i do just want to say that if you have whatever edition the introduction will spoil the book for you but even knowing what happened i enjoyed it immensely there's also so much in here one of my favorite things was color the way that kawabata explores color in snow country and you might be thinking well how because obviously up at this mountain spring on the snowiest one of the snowiest places on earth everything is just covered with snow and white and glistening and sparkling and you have these mountain peaks that are always smothered in snow and everything is just white and reflecting and so bright that it hurts your eyes but then um the introduction does explain as well that like how about that does play into the style and tradition of like the haiku um that that poetic form i guess but the way that he will insert these flashes of color peeping out of the snow always against this backdrop of whites and like the starkness and then it will just like blind you even more and will become even brighter than the white snow for a second and then the way that like shimamura will see komako's red face or we'll see a red ribbon in her hair or a red berry outside on a tree that a bird is carrying or the creeping red sunrise against the white mountains and he will like see this flash and it will like illuminate him and he will feel like the color rise up in him as a feeling but then he will just completely turn away from it and go back to just the whiteness of the snow so that was like one of my favorite things to look out for in this book because it happens time and time again it's like incredible um and i really really loved it it's a very quiet like i said very muted and muffled book but um well worth it i think to read so yeah yeah yeah yeah this is probably going to be a very long video because i am so um just so passionate and so happy about so many of the books i read this month so you're probably going to be here for a while if you want to be i'm not holding you hostage talking about books but um i would really recommend this one and definitely definitely looking forward to more kawabada this year and in the future so this was a win from snow country is sundry which means i've got my notebook including many things of different kinds or a variety of synonymous with miscellaneous it comes from middle english which goes back to old english syndrig which is from the old english word as well sundor meaning apart so i thought that was cool all right and now for something completely different i'm just going chronologically this month i think each month i'll arrange the books according to something different but we're just gonna start chronologically oh i forgot to mention that um i first heard of this book i first found this book simply because i went into a thrift store a couple years ago and i just saw it on the shelf and i hadn't heard of it previously since that trip so that is how i heard about this one just simply lying on a thrift store shelf so but for something completely different we have a touch of darkness by scarlet saint claire this is a fantasy romance um i heard about this one first from ashley over at a frolic through fiction i adore her videos right now you should definitely check her out if you are interested in fantasy romance because uh she's doing a lot of stuff with pharaoh feb which is fantasy romance february there's like events and interviews and she's interviewing some authors and i just i love ashley i love her so much and um i've gotten most of my fantasy romance rex from her and becca over at becca and the books so that is where i got a touch of darkness but um not a lot to say about this one honestly how would i describe this two things i think greek myth retelling and smut as far as the eye can see just smut smud everywhere um so basically this is a retelling of hades and persephone were set in like kind of modern day we're in new athens where persephone is still a goddess but she is now in the mortal world because she wants to be a journalist i think she's in like her last year of college and she has an internship at this journalism uh no like a news what the heck is it a news company that media and so one night she goes out with her mortal friends to a club which unfortunately is owned by hades and when she accidentally sits down accidentally sits down and starts playing poker with a strange man whoopsies hades she finds out that she's accidentally kind of made a deal with him because she lost the card game shucks and she's now basically indebted to him and so now her predicament is that hades wants her to create life in the underworld which of course is an impossible task because the underworld is for the dead the deceased there's no life here um but he wants her to create life in the underworld or else she will have to stay in the underworld herself forever i gave this like almost three stars i think i gave it 2.75 like the fantasy romance and the romance part was completely fine i had no problem with it but what i really couldn't stand about this book and kind of made me want to just like skip all the parts that weren't smut is that just like every single person in this book was so annoying to me except for hades every single person in this book was so annoying um persephone was so just like kind of not there and she made a lot of stupid decisions that i just could not understand how someone the way that scarlet saint claire writes dialogue isn't that stellar i don't think um i think it's just a personal taste thing because i found it extremely annoying for example like persephone's friends one of our other main characters is adonis also from greek myth every single person ever demeter i just really couldn't take it to the point where i like i didn't want to keep reading this book so i think that is very just like a personal taste thing because i didn't really have a problem with anything else in this book but if you are looking for a greek myth retelling um fantasy romance uh this is this is one the third book i read in january is gacha gulcher by vivek schonbeg i first heard of this one from tanya over at bookishtopics i love her videos so much i really really do i've gotten so many recommendations like my wish list is basically just every single book tanya's ever talked about i adore her i highly recommend her channel um she talks about books from all over the world so much just literature from everywhere just every single country i love it i always get recommendations from books from so many new authors that i've never heard of and i really really love them we seem to have very similar taste in books as well she has the most lovely calming voice i love listening to her speak um so this is where i got gacha ghoster from because i think she read it recently as well um i believe she read it in january actually yeah i think so so yes tanya if you're watching um we've never spoken before but i love you alright so guess what good shirt i ended up giving this four stars as well and it wasn't a book that i gave four stars to until i got to the ending gesture gulcher has an ending that like i read a lot of books this month with an ending similar that like i don't want to spoil it because like obviously that would spoil it but kind of an ending that just leaves things so ambiguous leaves you to yourself to then turn in on yourself and like use the story to explore yourself and like what ways and what conclusions you come to about the story ends up like letting you explore your own mind which is so fascinating and i love those kinds of endings where they just kind of end and then you're like oh my gosh my world has been shaken apart but gastro gulcher follows a family it is a story about how money affects family dynamics family relationships the way that we relate to one another because we're following a family in india they're very poor they're living in a house all together very cramped and then all of a sudden they start a business our protagonist uncle starts a business and they get rich extremely quickly they move out of their house they move into a fancier neighborhood they all of a sudden have money to splurge on luxury items on clothing on food on parties like you name it they can do it and so we follow our protagonist who is the young man the son in this family and we see that he is a really first of all he's an extremely frustrating character to follow because he has no autonomy he doesn't stand up for himself he doesn't stand up for anyone or anything that he believes in he's just basically floating on the wind of these tides um and these air currents of this family um he lets everything his future his career his job um his relationships basically be decided for him and it's extremely frustrating to follow him because he has the power if he chooses to use it to affect things and to change things maybe for the better maybe to stand up for people because we see that this family becomes so obsessed with hanging on to their wealth that they will not let anyone infiltrate their family will not let any outside risk or outside factor that could negatively change their situation come to pass so basically they just quash and like shut themselves off and in a sense become very isolated themselves and they really start to change as people as money does to people usually i guess it had a very nice writing style very just sit down tell you a story very conversational very easy to read it's extremely readable in my opinion and i was giving it kind of like a 3.5 stars because i liked the story i enjoyed the writing i enjoyed the topics being discussed but then we got to the last two chapters of this book and oh my gosh kind of like chills almost because i didn't really know or i didn't really foresee what the last two chapters would bring up and would start to discuss in this novel and then of course that makes you go back and reevaluate everything you've just read and think like how did i miss this or how did our protagonist miss this because you're kind of as clueless as him throughout the whole book and so i think it's just like a really rewarding experience to get there and then to have that crisis so yeah it was uh really good i would definitely recommend and the word i learned is profligate which means wildly extravagant uh comes from the latin profligatus which comes from the verb profligare which means to strike down and then we have my most disappointing read of the month which was definitely a conjuring of light by v.e schwab this is the last book the third and last book in the shades of magic series i was incredibly disappointed so let down like i can't tell you how just like disappointed i am like i'm not mad i'm just disappointed this book just let me down on basically everywhere let me down everywhere so i don't want to talk about it too much because it's i don't think it's really worth talking about um honestly like it just wasn't it for me the plot structure was incredibly simplistic to the point where i felt like i was reading like a children's fantasy book um and you can do so many incredible things with a simple plot like that's a huge skill and it's incredibly interesting um how intricate people can make things and how beautifully expressive language can make something extremely simple in nature like a plot but in this case it the plot was extremely simple the execution was extremely lackluster of the simple plot and it was just so incredibly long for what it was this book could basically be split into three parts where like bad thing happens must now go on a little adventure to retrieve item to stop bad thing must come back and stop bad thing and it was just so disappointing because i said in a vlog that it felt like i could have skipped eight hours into the 20 hour long audiobook and been fine i don't know why ve schwab just rambled on and on and on with these little plots and these little happenings that were reduced to nothing there was basically no subplot in this book i've no i really don't know why this book was so long because it could have been explained in one sentence like the plot of this book which is so disappointing and it was such an outrageously sad ending to a series a lot of it felt like fan service to me i felt like there were absolutely no consequences for anything the main villain in this last book was completely underwhelming i found myself literally not caring what happened to any character in this book which is so sad and i was just so let down the writing was so lackluster i felt like there was no substance at all and it was just a really disappointing third installment so at least i have finished a series i'm done with the series i now know what happens although honestly like if you are reading the series and you're like kind of not sure if you should continue i would say just don't bother um because i think i would have rather just found out what happened just have it spoiled for me than have to sit down and listen to a 20-hour audio book that really didn't provide me with any entertainment any value um so that is that but i am stubborn and so i listened to the whole thing and we're done next up we got the furies by katie lowe this was the dark academics book pick for january um we actually had to postpone the live show a little bit so we will let you know it will probably be in the description box of when it is so if you didn't see it and if you don't see it on my channel don't worry you didn't miss it we will still be doing it we just had to push it back a little bit so the furies this was also a disappointment um i gave it a really really generous three stars we're following four girls who attend elm hollow academy which is kind of like a prestigious pretentious uh school and violet is the new girl she has just entered the school her father and her sister have just recently died in a car crash of which she was the only survivor and so she's dealing with all of this grief she lives with her mother at home and so she enters into elm hollow even though she really has basically no thought of the future or of her academic anything she doesn't really care she's definitely a loner she feels very self-conscious she feels like she doesn't belong anywhere and so when robin a very cool girl tm starts talking to her in class she basically just becomes so infatuated with getting into this little group that robin is surrounded with namely being two other girls grace and alex and so they all attend this kind of secret society or like secret study group um secret class whatever you'd like to call it headed by their mysterious art teacher annabelle who everyone just completely idolizes um and just thinks the world of from there we just really follow them being completely awful people like this book offered no salvation no hope no light to me it it just went too far in my opinion that it became so not enjoyable to read because like this book is just full of really hideously ugly people like not ugly on the outside just like really ugly people on the inside who are doing these terrible things who don't care about the lives of others who don't care about others feelings who act out and lash out and hurt people like really really badly and so it was just incredibly frustrating to read it made me feel like gross like it made me just feel not good reading at all which obviously but um it just became a little bit too extreme for me because i didn't really see like why people were acting this way eventually when robin gets her hands on this book of kind of rituals summoning the furies um from greek mythology they start to try and like carry out these rights and these rituals and enact revenge and justice this is a book focusing a lot on revenge and specifically female revenge and it just i don't know it didn't do it for me didn't really sit right with me this book dragged a lot it felt very slow i got really bored um yeah i think a good thing i can say about this book and really praise about it is just like the atmosphere of really taut suspense and like you kind of just want to look away and you don't want to see what happens because everything is going catastrophically wrong for these people and like you just don't want to know what's going to happen because there's this whole um this whole drama there are these lines connecting people these strings that are binding um people to people and you just you're so scared like thinking who is going to cut the string who is going to snip it in half cut it in half just tear this string apart tear these relationships apart so that was really well done i think just the atmosphere of suspense and like you just you don't know what's gonna happen it's kind of like a creepy crawly feeling um but i just really not a new favorite dark academia not a fan of the writing or the content or the plot really honestly i did learn a new word and that is recalcitrant recalcitrant which means obstinately defiant of authority or restraint which comes from the latin verb recalcitrare which means to be disobedient coming from calcitrare which means to kick because that comes from calc which comes from calcs which means the heel also like i just feel like i didn't know who anyone was in this book i felt like the characters were not fleshed out at all were extremely flat i felt like i had no idea who grace and um alex were the other two girls in this quartet i was just like who are you i don't even know who you are um the whole book so that was really frustrating as well but um yeah next up i read the three body problems i first heard of this one because it was actually sent to me by a subscriber thank you so much michael um i'd never heard of the three body problem before it was sent my way and popped up in my p.o box so thank you so much um i had the audiobook of this so i decided to give it a go i loved it i adored it this is as the back says a milestone in chinese science fiction won the hugo award actually and i really enjoyed it i think one of the first things i want to say is that i wish the synopsis on the back wasn't what it was because i think if you go into this not knowing a key part that's a synopsis spoils um it would have been so much better for me and as it was it was incredible back does inform you that this is about an alien invasion however that's like really not unveiled in the book until almost you're done the book the three body problem starts off uh during the cultural revolution i believe this book opens in 1967 and we're following a young woman as she watches basically her father be murdered at the university where he teaches physics and so she grows up she has to move far away from the city and she finds herself working um way out cutting trees so when she is eventually found and questioned for actions that she's perpetrated against the cultural revolution um she is taken and given the opportunity to either work at this base um the secret military base or basically go to jail and so she decides to work at the secret base which is sending out signals um to outer space and these transmissions and whatnot and from 1967 then we jump to 2005. i love these like dual timeline things i love them um so in 2005 we're following a different scientist and he has just been inducted himself into a secret mission run by the government to become part of this science organization because a whole bunch of scientists who were members of this organization have just all died a lot of them have committed suicide for no apparent reason leaving very cryptic notes so they're trying to find out why all these members of this one science community have ended their own lives and so we follow this scientist now as he tries to infiltrate and find out what is happening and so basically he's working with this like very mysterious note that one of the scientists left that says physics does not exist it deals with so many problems of physics obviously the three-body problem that is one of our main problems that we're dealing with because in this book the three-body problem is a video game where the player tries to find balance and create peace for the civilization and the civilization either experiences intense cold intense drought sometimes their civilization just explodes in fire and ash the player is just trying to predict basically the movement of these three bodies in space um to create border and a stable environment for the planets eventually though these two timelines collide because when ziad the daughter of the physicist who was killed is now in 2005 and talking to wang mao who is um the scientist that we're following he specializes in like nano materials but he's trying to infiltrate this scientific community and then we find out that earth has received these transmissions from a civilization in outer space and now they're making their way to earth i loved um how much physics and how much math was discussed in here because i think it was really accessible like a lot of times i had to re-listen to a passage because it it goes so in depth one of my favorite things is like the skill and like the writing and using these either physics and math problems or even science fiction elements as metaphors for something else and in this case it was a lot of political metaphors it was a lot of like societal metaphors and just like the concepts of like a physics equation or a problem or something like that and then applying like that idea and using it as a metaphor for something i just absolutely love it i think that's so fascinating um i really really enjoyed this so that is the three body problem the word i learned from this is volable which means easily rolling or turning comes from the middle english which goes back again to the latin volubilis which comes from the verb vulvare which means to roll and that itself comes from the greek next up i read convenience store woman by sayaka morata one of my favorite reads of the month for sure although i honestly had a lot of them i first heard of convenience store woman over from kate from the channel kate feil i believe is how you pronounce that kate if i'm not saying that right yell at me um i love kate's channel so much so many of her recommendations i have just saved in my head she read convenience store woman a fairly long time ago i believe love her videos so much she has so many videos recommending pieces from japanese literature she has so many videos talking about literature from japan she also has so many videos about murakami if you'd like to know where to start with him she also hosts the murakami marathon which i love following and listening to and i just i really really love her videos i'm also just in awe of her because she recently completed her um master's thesis on peter pan and yeah i really really love her videos so i suggest you should check them out as well but back to convenience store woman i adored this i gave it four stars it was brilliant in convenience store woman we are following a 36 year old woman named keiko and she has worked at the same convenience store for 18 years she lives alone in a small apartment she is definitely not following any of the traditional things that her family wants for her which is of course to find a boyfriend get married have children buy a house blah blah blah and she's just extremely happy and feels very fulfilled and feels like she knows exactly what the convenience store wants and needs from her as a worker something i feel very strongly about and what i want to say about this book is that it is not any of the things i don't know whose job it is to write tag lines for books or to compile them and then to put them onto the cover design and of course the little blurbs on the back but whoever did the one for the convenience store woman i don't think did a very good job at all um and i know a lot of people who have read it feel the same way most of these tags call it quirky hilarious um intoxicating exhilaratingly weird and funny witty nutty quirky it made me laugh absurd comical cute um and i don't know that just it really rubs me the wrong way because i did not find anything cute or quirky or funny about this book at all i don't think this book is any of the things that it's marketing has wrapped itself up to make you believe or any of the things that it will think will draw you into this book i think this book is a really serious um beautifully intricately done study of uh society and the way that we treat certain people and the way that we treat certain jobs and the way that we treat certain careers and ways of life um i don't think it's funny at all i don't think it's meant to be funny that's not the tone i derive from this book at all this book is very matter of fact very blunt and in that i think a lot of people have mistaken it to try and make you laugh at these absurd things that this book is about but in my opinion it's really really not keiko is so it's so frustrating um and so heartbreaking to see the way she is treated in this book because that's really what this book is about is everyone in keiko's life reacting to her decisions and her choices because she's not like the people around her and to just brush it off um as quirky and cute and a little bit weird is just really i think undermining the true value and the true message and the true point of this story for all of keiko's life ever since she was born really she's never had an innate concept of how to be like everyone else how to be an average person how to be like her friends at school how to be like the other workers and so so much of her life is observing and just watching and being so precise in the way that she can mimic other people to try and be like everyone around her to try and be what they want her to be so for example she will look at the brands of shoes or the stores that the clothing of the other same aged women that she works with at the store and then she will copy that she copies the speech patterns of everyone around her because she's not sure how to answer certain questions or what vocal patterns she should be using so to watch caico who doesn't really have a grasp of these societal rules that existed before her pre-existed or tried to really hold on and like ask her sister for example like how do i act in this situation what do i say to this question how do i make people stop bugging me about working at a convenience store it's just really heartbreaking because everyone in her life simply thinks that she's weird um and strange and different from them and they relentlessly basically hunt her down try to make her conform throughout this whole book to what they want her to be where they think she should be at 36 years old what job they think she should have what relationships they think she should have experienced by now i think this book raises a lot of important questions and has a lot of important conversations with the reader as we're reading it and i don't think it's any of the things that the tagline says so i think like just um knowing that it was like immediately apparent to me as soon as i stepped into this book that this is not what all the things are saying about this book it just really rubbed me the wrong way and so i just felt like i wanted to say that um and conversations i've had with other people read this book um they all agree and they think it's so strange and me too that like this is how this book is marketed because this is a really important beautifully done book um but it's not funny but it was brilliant so that is convenience store woman next up i listened to a narrative of the life of frederick douglass by frederick douglass this is nonfiction i've had this on my shelf for i think a couple years now so i finally found the audiobook for the first half because this is the version that also comes with harriet jacobs her incidents and the life of a slave girl so i got to listen to the narrative of the life of frederick douglass which as the title suggests is all about frederick douglass so in this piece of writing he basically tells you about his life from the time that he was very young his upbringing where he was living and all the way until he uh escaped all the way until i think he's it's his late 20s or 30s he's either yeah um and escapes from slavery and goes to i think new bedford um where he finds finally freedom um and a safe place and it's just this is an incredibly hard book to read um it took me a while to get through the audiobook because i had to keep like coming back to it and such the writing style is incredible such a talented writer oh my gosh um the way that he will just tell you about his life and the whole stages of it and his adolescence and then his adulthood and like him coming to terms with what is happening and the people that he loves in his life and seeing them suffer and what they're going through and like what really drove him to keep going yeah so telling all the way from his childhood and when he was born he's born in maryland and then all the way until he gets to new bedford um and joins the abolitionist just like telling his story and then also trying to use it as a way to tell others as well is just so it was so well written definitely definitely want to read more from frederick douglass because i know he has a lot of pieces of writing so now i'd definitely love to find an audiobook of harriet jacobs um half in this collection this is the modern library i think edition so i'd love to find an audiobook version of incidents in the life of a slave girl as well because um the back does recommend reading both of them together to illuminate and inform each other so that is that one okay i realized that i got too excited and then i've got to put my glasses on for like an hour i've been filming for an hour and uh anyway let's just keep going we have a few more books to get through so the next one is my first five star read of the year and that is the girl who drank the moon by kelly barnhill oh my gosh oh my gosh um i heard about this one through booktube so many people have been talking about it i don't remember who i first heard talk about it but phenomenal wonderful i don't think it's a middle grade for everyone but like i cried ugly tears when i finished this book i like sobbed with my whole body i was a mess um the girl who drank them in like what do i want to say about this this is such a whimsical magical book that i don't want to properly describe it i just want to say a few things um surrounding it that won't make a lot of sense until you read it i think but like if i heard someone describe it this way i would want to read it so the girl who drank the moon is about volcanoes the girl who drank the moon is about volcanoes that are waiting to erupt in this landscape this environment that we're in we're in a bog and a forest like the bog and the girl who drank the moon is just such a playful interactive wonderful environment and setting for the story because it provides so many opportunities to illustrate what is going on with our characters so from this volcano it produces these vents in the bog and it lets up noxious fumes and it'll kill you very easily and there's all these like vents and um air from the volcano steam hot air a little bit of lava and fire that are coming up through these vents in the bog this book is about what happens when we don't trust people when we don't trust people period but when we don't trust children and our children specifically with their identity and we don't trust them to handle things well when we don't trust them with information because they're too young they're not old enough perhaps they wouldn't deal with it correctly and we make decisions for them until eventually this information is under so much pressure that it becomes a volcano when we finally have the courage to tell someone damn it this book was so good it was so good um i cannot praise it enough uh it's a very character focused book is what i want to say as well it's very slow moving middle grade fantasy we are following the girl who drank the moon her name is luna and we are following a witch named zan and she basically saves luna's life and then adopts her as her own child and accidentally feeds her moonlight which makes luna in magic so she is a very magical little girl this book is about power systems that fail its people this book is about lies about hiding the truth about stories the power of stories the good the bad the ugly um in the way and how powerful stories can be how narrative really can inform your life and paralyze you control you even um this middle grade book wow i just think it was brilliantly done the writing was gorgeous gorgeous writing you know when you just sit there and like you just start drooling at the writing and you're like how where did you learn to write this way is it just like an innate given gift or has your experience of the world changed your language to such beautifulness um yeah i loved it i'm not going to say too much about it really highly recommend so that is the girl who drank the moon next up i read the thief by fuma nori nakamura oh another really good one so dark um really really dark what i loved about this one i read it pretty uh recently after convenience store woman it was just like a really cool little moment because convenience store woman starts with keiko our protagonist and a man comes into the convenience store and he buys coffee and a pack of cigarettes and then the thief opens at a convenience store with our protagonist going into a convenience store and buying coffee and a pack of cigarettes and it was just like a really cool moment where like you can like it was just like i don't know it was just really cool how you like you can see some people's stories connecting and leading into other stories and in this case it was just like a really cool moment where i was like oh my gosh we get to see like where that one random person from that one story may have gone obviously these two books are not related in any way the thief this is about a thief um as you may have imagined it's extremely dark um what do i want to say about this so much about the thief is also about isolation and um what it's like when you are neglected and when you finally decide to turn your back on society because um what is a thief what is a good thief what does it mean to be a good thief it means that you are invisible that you are not seen that you can take things from people um and they won't ever see you they don't notice you're there and you're just basically not a part of society you blend into the background and in this case our protagonist compulsively pick pockets to deal with his trauma and these horrific things that he's had done to him and gone through throughout his life he will just pickpocket without even realizing it he will steal wallets and money and anything that is in someone's pocket and i just really loved like the interpretation that is left to you because i think so much is just so quietly and subtly done especially in regards to like the themes and the symbolism of a thief of a pickpocket of this act of taking something from someone else um and perhaps he's trying to take what um isn't ever given to him and of course he's taking like these people's identity essentially um because he steals their wallet which has all of their personal information and he's taking their money which allows them to exist to live in society and it's just incredibly interesting it was so compelling to me um i almost could not put this down i really really loved it more than that to say a little bit about the plot like the plot is incredibly simple as well which i adored it was so wonderfully done this is exactly what i was trying to talk about with v schwab this was a very simple plot brilliantly executed um so many little intricacies in the thief so our protagonist gets in a little bit deep because his friend named ishikawa takes him on a job with these very powerful people he's not really sure who they are but they are incredibly powerful and the job is to simply rob the house of this old man take his cash and leave unfortunately when the job is done he finds out that it was actually so much more than what he signed up for what he bargained for and he's now embroiled in this plot that he never meant to be this book is also a meditation on crime and criminals and fate because our main i guess villain in here if you'd like to call him that just has these really philosophical deep conversations with our protagonist and it's just so interesting to hear and listen to i think it was so well done this book is incredibly dark once again the ending of this book i love books that end like that um it just ah it really hurted really really good honestly the more and more i think about it because there's just so many wonderful details in this book another thing that is just so worthwhile to keep your eye out i think if you are reading this book is that our thief our pickpocket he constantly imagines that someone is watching him there's this whole thing in this book of like the gays and vision and who is watching who and he's always of course like he is very conscious of eyes on him because he's trying to steal things but more than that it like existed before he became a pickpocket and he always had this image of a tower watching him he will progressively and more and more throughout the book see this tower this reoccurring image and motif of this tower way up in the sky come back and haunt him and there's just so much about like the eyes on him um and it was just brilliant and like i'm still thinking about it and still working through it and still thinking like okay what more is really here that i'm not yet seeing because like there's just so much under this book like under the surface um rather than just what nakamura writes on the page and ah so good so so good loved it really looking forward to reading more from this author i heard about the thief because it was actually recommended to me on audible so yeah thanks audible the thief leads really nicely as well actually into this next short story that i read which is the overcoat by nikolai gogul and this is a piece of russian literature and this is about a man who has something stolen from him so like there was just there was a really interesting path and a lot of interesting connections this month with like books leading into one another and i just love it because that's just like what what stories are about but in the overcoat which is an extremely short story very very short we are following this man named akaki akakevich which i think translates literally to harmless son of the harmless or something like that um akakia kakovich and he works he's very poor he works obviously in russia as a counting clerk and he has a coat he has an overcoat but it is so shabby it is falling apart it is literally like coming off of him in dust and like fabric it's just falling apart um and his colleagues tell him over and over again to just buy a new coat just get a new coat like you need a new overcoat so when he finally gets a raise at work or something like that he gets like this bonus money and it is enough it's enough rupals to go out and buy a nice new overcoat he is so happy with it so proud of this overcoat and he goes out drinking with his friends because they're all celebrating his new coat his uh co-workers and stuff like that and unfortunately that night he is robbed and the thief's the thieves sorry take his new overcoats and he is left freezing out in the winter nights so from there you follow him try his best to talk to the policemen talk to the system of justice because no one is there to serve him or help him gogol is really really good at like shifting the tone of this little short story to really like make you see how sad the situation really is because the overcoat starts out as quite a comedic like kind of spunky little short story about this guy who doesn't really realize that his overcoat is falling apart and it's quite comedic when it starts but then the tone shifts really really to sympathize with a kakayakovich because no one is helping him and this short story just like really really shows um the failings of the system and ultimately the short story ends so tragically um i'm not gonna tell you the ending because once again the ending is so brilliant but i was really impressed would love to read more from google this year as well so really glad i picked this one up i heard about the overcoat because it was recommended to me um on audible as well so they know me they know me now we finally have arrived at the last book i read this month and that is childhood boyhood youth by leo tolstoy yes so this was our book for the dickens vs tolstoy the great debates book club hosted by myself and carolyn from caitlyn mary reads so this is tolstoy's first novel i will leave all the details to the book club up above if you are interested but i'm not going to say too much about this here number one because i've talked for so long and my throat is dying but also because i have a whole vlog that's so long coming out about this book where i talk to you basically in depth about the whole book and of course we will also be having our debate on saturday on carolyn's channel if you would like to join us talking about childhood boyhood youth so yes tolstoy's first novel is all about our protagonist nikolenka as he's growing up from childhood to youth we follow him and his family life his university life his social life and it's a lot about privilege and growing up in a really well-off family in in russia and living and switching back and forth from the countryside his country house to his um place of living in moscow and stuff like that i really enjoyed this um not as much as other tolstoy i read obviously but i wasn't expecting to be like blown away because this is his first novel and he did write it when he was quite young so um i really did like it though i think it's a really really good one so yeah i gave it four stars and i really enjoyed it the word i learned from this one is samovar which i didn't know but it is an urn with a spigot at the base used especially in russia to boil water for tea i'll insert like a picture of it here because i thought it looked cool but um yes okay that is the last book i read this month so we finally got through them all my friends we did it um thank you guys so much for watching definitely let me know what your favorite book of the month was um and yeah thank you so much for watching i hope you're having a really great day um this is really long i hope you're cozy i'm really excited for february because i got some good pics coming up as well but um i hope you guys are doing so well so so well and i'll see you very soon ciao

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Length: 54min 23sec (3263 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021