Friday Reads: Getting Ready to Wrap Up the Reading Year

hello and welcome back to supposedly fun my name is greg and i am here today to do my friday reads video where i recap the week in reading and any kind of bookish thing it's really exciting because we're heading into the christmas week which means we're heading really close into the end of the year and that is kind of surprising i will get to the friday reads updates in a little bit the only update i have from the bookish world is something that if you watched my 26 random questions book tag which i will link in the description box down below you already know this but i watched the power of the dog this week i've been talking about it a fair amount because i really wanted to read the book before i watched the movie i managed to get the book in and now i finally managed to watch the movie now i will tell you i really liked the movie i have a lot of thoughts about how it compares to the book i have already been hard at work creating a blog post going over the similarities and the differences i wanted to try to do that while it was all fresh up in the old noggin so i've got that done i just need to read it through edit you know i don't want to just publish a first draft it's pretty extensive it's funny because it's not that different from the book but a lot of the changes are pretty significant it's like the opposite of passing the reason i haven't done a book versus movie adaptation comparison for passing is that the movie is remarkably similar to the book in such a way that i almost feel like i don't really have anything to talk about i might still do one because i can think of two differences one of them is kind of minor and the other one maybe feels a little significant but not really so i don't know i might still do a passing book versus movie comparison but they are very similar the power of the dog very different story there are some pretty significant changes both in terms of additions in terms of things that don't make it from the book to the movie and in terms of things that are changed and i don't want to go into them i of course i already want to talk about them but i'm not i'm not going to do that i'm not going to do that what i will say is that it's a i have the book right here because i've been referencing it so i'll hold it up it's very difficult to adapt a book like this as a movie because since you have an authorial presence telling you the story you can move between all of the different consciousnesses of the characters and see what they're thinking and feeling and why they're doing things you can get all the backstory without the characters expressing any of that outwardly but for a movie unless you do a voiceover you can't get any of that unless you make a change so that somebody vocalizes something that's going on in their head or something that happened in the past so they were bound to be differences but i find the difference is really interesting and i will be talking more about that i don't know when i'm gonna manage to film the video if there's time today i would love to do it but likely it is just gonna be next week at some point so stay tuned for my book versus movie adaptation comparison of the power of the dog i will say i really liked the movie i did really like it i do hope that jane campion wins best director i think she does a marvelous job adapting the book i think she does really smart things and i hope she wins best director i really do i will say i think my favorite movie of the year so far and i haven't seen west side story i haven't seen a couple of the other really big contenders i think my favorite movie of the year is is tick tick boom which was directed by lin-manuel miranda and is on netflix right now and that is actually also a really interesting adaptation because it is based on a musical that was written by jonathan larson who wrote rant it's the musical he wrote before rent but it's also really about jonathan larson's life and the process of creating the musical that he wrote before tictic boom which was called superbia and it becomes a sort of meta thing so it's an adapt it is an adaptation of tick tick boom but it's also a bio pic about jonathan larson and there are so many little easter eggs for people who are fans of broadway this if you've heard about the sunday sequence uh it is a treat it is a real treat i actually was gasping and shouting by the end of it as i started recognizing broadway people who just showed up for cameos and it it's it's a really good movie i enjoyed it a lot and it's about the creation of art and what how dedicated you have to be as an artist i heard a really fascinating interview with lin-manuel miranda on a podcast that i listened to done by vanity fair called little gold men seek it out if you'd like to they always have an interview at the back end of the each episode and i can't remember what was in the front half of that episode but check it out it's a really interesting thing he talks about how he saw tiktik boom performed in the late 90s and he it really spoke to what he was going to want to do and he had a lot of really interesting things to say about how he thought about it and approach things like even just not i don't want to talk about it too much but the fact that he cast robin dejesus in a role that most people try to cast somebody who looks business because it's somebody who used to be an aspiring actor and is now an advertising executive and he talked about when you cast somebody like robin dejesus you clearly understand that this person used to have artistic aspirations and they're not living that life anymore it's it's a really interesting movie i would recommend it if you have not watched it i still need to see west side story i still need to see king richard so i can really kind of judge best actor i haven't seen the tragedy of mcbeth yet there are a lot that i still need to see but right now i think tick tick boom is my favorite new movie of the year and jane campion is probably my favorite director if i were gonna say best actor i think i would still give an edge to andrew garfield as best actor over benedict cumberbatch as good as he is in the power of the dog if you've seen it i'd love to hear what you think no spoilers in the comment section down below because i think there's a lot to say about that now anyway i don't have a 3k q a question because i finished my last one and i didn't get to my uh booktube advice video this week i'm just going to stop talking about any of these things i got really distracted as soon as i watched the power of the dog i really wanted to work on my book versus movie post so i'm sorry if you're interested in that it's still going to come but i just haven't made any progress on it so i'm going to stop promising to have things done at a specific point because i fail at life when it comes to those things but anyway let's get into the actual friday reads portion of this video i'm going to put the power of the dog over here for now so if you remember in last week's video the print book that i was reading was work like any other by virginia reeves i've been falling into this trend where i will make a lot of progress on a print book on the weekend and then as soon as you get into the work week my progress stalls that happened to me again this week i was on page 80 when we last spoke and i'm on page 163 right now and i think that means i have 100 pages left so i it should be yeah there are 260 pages so i'm about 100 pages from the end i'm really liking this book a lot and i think it's kind of an undiscovered gem which seems like a weird thing to say since it was long-listed for the booker prize in 2016. but it feels like nobody talks about this book i only heard about it because it was recommended to me by the people at montana book company and i'm really enjoying it joel read it this year and he really liked it as well i can't wait to see how things start to come together in the end i mentioned in last week's friday reads which i will link down below as well that for that first section of the book there are alternating chapters in one the main character rosco martin is in prison because he stole electricity from power lines it's set in the early 1900s he stole electricity from power lines in order to get electricity on the farm where his family lives and a man from the power company discovered this and accidentally like electrocuted himself and roscoe was in prison for it so in one chapter rosco was in prison and then it would go back and tell the story of sort of how that ended up happening but when i left off on page 80 he had officially had his trial and gone to prison so i didn't know what the alternating chapters were going to be well we get some additional perspectives and i won't spoil what it is but i think the additional perspectives you start to get really add a lot of interesting texture to this book and i can't wait to see where it goes i'm really enjoying it this is something i'm finishing so i can complete my montana book company reading challenge for 2021 i will link the video where i talk about that down below because i ran through all the things i was reading to meet those criteria and uh finish up the year and be done with it so this is one of them so once i'm done with this i will only have two more books and one of them is the one that i am currently listening to on audio that is the blind assassin by margaret atwood so once i finish these i'll only have one left now i made some progress with this over the weekend and then in the beginning of the week i just went through a couple of days where i didn't listen very much and now i'm coming to the point where it's gonna be due back i only have access for another three days i think so i need to make some progress because i'm only halfway through i feel like this is one of those circumstances where the fact that people talk about this and say things like oh i really hated the ending or oh i love the twist at the end makes you feel like you're trying to figure the book out and i wonder if i've figured it out and i'm not gonna say what my speculation is about this but i'm only halfway through and i feel like i know what the twist is gonna be we'll see i'll tell you if i'm right or wrong i have no vanity about whether or not i was right but i think that's gonna be interesting but and i wouldn't be doing that if i hadn't heard so much about this book in the 20 years since it was published where people would say things like oh i really hated the revelation at the end or something like that similarly i was just talking to joel about this this morning i feel like i saw the sixth sense in a movie theater later in its run so by the time i saw it everybody was talking about the twist ending and i saw the first scene of the movie and figured out the ending so it's just that i i don't know if i'm right or wrong we'll see but i am really enjoying this margaret edward is a great writer it feels like it was very difficult to get into the audio because the book kind of defies narrative in the beginning i got a lot of comments of people telling me that they they don't think i'm going to get a good experience of the book i hear what you're saying i think the audio experience is fine you just really had to orient yourself in the beginning once the whole middle of the book so far like once you get beyond the first hour maybe the first two hours it's almost a straight narrative at that point so i don't feel like i'm missing anything at that point it's just a struggle to orient yourself in the universe of the book given the way that margaret atwood kind of formats it but it's a really interesting story she's a great writer i am looking forward to finishing it and finding out if my guess is right or not so uh work like any other ticks the box for a local author virginia reeves lives in montana this ticks the box for margaret atwood novel you have to read a margaret atwood novel and this is the one i chose i wanted to get something that had been on my tbr for a very long time off the list i did a poll in my instagram stories and this is the one that won so i'm glad that i'm finally getting around to it and that i am experiencing it i'm enjoying it we'll see if i'm right about the end i could be wrong i could very well be wrong all shall be revealed so i am going to definitely work on a print book once i finish work like any other i have to because the only other book i have left is go tell it on the mountain by james baldwin i actually remembered to grab my copy so i could hold it up right now i'm so proud of myself because i've forgotten a lot recently so this will be the last book that i have to do for my montana book company reading challenge for 2021 again if you'd like to hear what the challenge is and how i met all the other prompts you can check out the link in the description box down below this would meet the brief for a book that was published the year a parent was born and i love james baldwin so i'm very excited to be getting back to a book of his and i was thinking today i had talked about trying to cram other books in before the end of the year but christmas is a week from today i'm filming this on friday the 17th christmas eve is exactly a week from today three days after christmas we need to be at a follow-up appointment for a specialist for guinness and then at that point we're really heading into new year's so i'm kind of thinking i might do another audio book once i finish the blind assassin i had said that i was going to do the love songs of w.e.b du bois that's a really long audiobook i might still do that i might pick a different audiobook instead something a little easier to coast into the end of the year and i'm definitely going to get this in but once i finish the audio of the blind assassin once i finish work again together in this i might just call it for the year i haven't really decided yet i'm going to wait and see what my reading mood is like toward the end of next week and a lot will depend on how quickly i finish work like any other and how quickly i finish go tell it on the mountain because here's the thing tomorrow we're going to be running a bunch of errands and then we need to uh bake a cake and sunday we need to go to helena for my father-in-law's birthday his birthday is the 23rd so we're trying to do something separate from christmas so given that there's a lot going to be packed into this weekend i might not make a lot of progress i'm working any other so basically this is a long way of saying my reading year might come to an end with these three books and honestly i would be okay with that this is a really strong set of three books to close out a reading year i mean i haven't even started go tell it on the mountain but based on my past experiences with james baldwin i fully believe that that would be the story so i would be okay with that and one of the things i really want to work on is not feeling pressured to continue to read and or to perform basically because i have a booktube channel it's really easy to get into a mindset where you constantly think you need to have things to talk about because what else am i going to talk about so i might very well stop my reading year once those are done but i might still cram something in so we shall see all shall be revealed i've been thinking about my favorite books of the year so if i stop at those you might get my list in december you might still wait until january but i have a very fun way that i'm going to be presenting them this year and i'll reveal what that is a little later so if i do end my reading year with those books it's bad news for the sentence by louise erdrich because i had gotten this from the library i was on a really really really really long wait list for it and my turn came up so i picked this up on sunday of last week and i was really hoping that i could finish work again together finish go tell it on the mountain and then pick this up but it's a 14 day loan so i only have another week come sunday and i've made slow progress so i think what i'm gonna do is return this and get back on the whole list i know it's gonna take a really long time to get it back because the whole list is insane for this book but you know what it's going to be fine i also just got an email yesterday that another hold is available at the library hell of a book by jason mott and i would like to read that but i don't think now is the time so similar to what's going to happen with this i think i'm going to return this tomorrow because we'll be downtown near the library anyway and i'm just going to let the hold of hell of a book go and i'll get back on the hold list for both of them and see when they come around i think hell of a book will come around a lot faster than the sentence but i don't want to assume anything so that's probably what the rest of my reading year is going to look like i think i'm the more i talk about it the more i think it makes sense to just and not put any pressure after i finish these three books because it's been a tough year for a lot of reasons and depending how the follow-up appointment for guinness goes i might not want to read that last week of the year anyway and it's a good excuse to enjoy time with my husband joel because uh this this is going to be our first holiday in a while as empty i jokingly refer to us as empty nesters now i guess it is true our foster son moved out so we are empty nesters but you know after four years it's our first holiday with ourselves and the dogs in the house so i think finishing up my reading year gives me an excuse to really enjoy some quality time with joel because he will be off and i will be off and i think that would be a nice thing so anyway i would love to hear what you've been up to what's been going on in your bookish world if you've watched the power of the dog and read the book again please let me know in the comment section because i am so happy to talk about that and let me know what you've been reading if you have thoughts on any of the things that i've talked about or read anything let me know in the comment section down below as always i really appreciate your time and i will be back until next time happy reading you

Channel: Supposedly Fun

Views: 508

Keywords: Books, BookTube, Reading

Id: 7OrQzU9gIMY

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021