Friday Reads: Two Book Raves, Holiday Plans, & More

hello and welcome back to supposedly fun my name is greg i am here today for my friday reads this is my weekly check-in on the weekend reading the weekend bookish news all of that stuff and the exciting thing that's going to be coming is that we are going to be doing our christmas decorating a little bit early so the next time well not the next time you see me but by the time we do the next friday reads the tree is going to be right here in this big empty spot we cleared out stuff so the tree will sit there nicely i'm really excited that it's gonna happen this makes me happy it makes me feel zen it's my favorite time of year so i'm looking forward to it but that's how we will be spending this weekend we usually decorate on black friday that's our black friday tradition but we decided this year that it would be nice to have the christmas decorations up on thanksgiving especially since unlike last year we are actually gonna have company this year my in-laws are gonna be coming and spending thanksgiving with us everybody's vaccinated everybody's boosted we're all being careful so it should be nice but for now i am sitting here with my buddy guinness you can't see him but let's see if i can work this out there he is chilling out with me on the couch while we work on this friday now the big book news that happened this week is that the national book awards were announced on wednesday november 17th i did a reaction video to the fiction and i talked a little bit about the nonfiction winner and the young people's literature winner in the description box down below now i had also mentioned in that reaction video that i didn't realize this but in all my slumpiness of the last month two months more like a month i had completely forgotten that i put a hold on last night at the telegraph club by melinda lowe which is the book that won the young people's literature award and i just completely forgot about it and when it won i opened the libby app and somehow i had completely missed that the book was available at the time i had three days left i said two days in the video but it was three days and i wanted to finish an audio book which i did and we're gonna get to the friday reads portion of this video later but i i wanted to finish the audiobook that i was working on and i just finished it about an hour ago and i don't think it's gonna be possible for me to cram in last night at the telegraph club before it's due and there are already other holds on it so i can't extend my hold but because of the book because of melinda lowe because of the speech that she made it really jumped out even further as a book that i want to support and an author that i want to support so i called montana book company and got a copy of it on order and i'm thinking i'm just going to wait until the physical book arrives and that will be how i read last night at the telegraph club i'm not going to try to cram in the book because as i said we are going to be decorating for christmas tomorrow that's an all-day thing in this house so i just finished one audiobook i i don't know how it's i think it's a 12-hour audio book there's no way i would get all the way through it today and with all of the christmas decorating tomorrow it's just not going to happen so i'm planning to wait for the physical book i'm just going to release the hold and let the next person get it and say happy thanksgiving to them that's the plan and i'm really looking forward to that i have heard more good feedback about hell of a book i am on hold for it at the library i managed to get in before a lot of holds built on it after the announcement so what i'm hoping is that sometime in december it will become available and maybe i can read it then at that point i should probably have the bandwidth to get to it i've been making good progress on finishing my montana book company reading challenge for 2021 and that is my guideline for the end-of-year reading that i am doing so once that becomes available i should be in a good place to read it and we'll see how that goes but again if you would like to check out my full reaction video it will be in the description box down below the other thing this week is that we watched the movie adaptation of dune part one i guess and uh it's it's well made the cast is good i didn't understand it at all i feel like i just didn't understand a lot of what was happening and i don't know if that's a flaw of the book that it's if that's the way it is in the book or if it's a flaw of the movie but i just didn't understand what was happening for most of it and i think that impeded my enjoyment of it because even at the end it's just like i don't i don't know what's happening i don't understand these stakes it's a well-made movie it doesn't feel like something that got me interested in reading the book doesn't feel like something that i would be interested in seeing the inevitable sequel not inevitable that they were waiting to see how it did before they announced part two but they did announce part two but i don't feel very interested in it but if you're a dune fan let me know what you think my neighbors are huge dune fans they read the book back in like 1968 or 1969 and they did not like the movie adaptation from the 80s and they said that this is the first true dune adaptation and they are huge fans that recommend the book they recommend the movie i watched the movie and i it's fine it just didn't inspire me to want more if that makes sense so maybe the book makes more sense i don't know i did look a little bit and i found that frank herbert was someone who partook of mushrooms a fair amount in his life and i just remember thinking that checks out i believe that it makes sense so let me know if you've watched the movie let me know what you thought of it i just didn't understand i did it don't know that i really want to go much further but let me know what you think of it in the description box down below and then as i mentioned in the united states thanksgiving is next week thanksgiving is a weird holiday in the united states because it celebrates a weird thing it's sort of in for me it feels a little bit in that sort of limbo space like columbus day a little less so but we love thanksgiving because of the togetherness and the food and all of that stuff so uh we will be celebrating and that will be exciting but because it is a short work week and because the holiday is gonna be right on thursday i'm hoping that my video schedule will not be too interrupted i managed to do something pretty unprecedented yesterday i filmed my national book award reaction video and got it posted and i filmed a video for next week so regardless of what happens i will have at least one video that will be posted next week and you i might schedule it for sunday since it's already filmed and i actually already edited it but i wanted to get this friday reads up and posted first so i might schedule it for sunday but uh i'm also hoping that there will be a friday reads next week because uh we don't do shopping for black friday it's not what we do so odds are we'll be home i believe my foster son will probably be working so i should be able to film a friday reads video if nothing else obviously holidays can get crazy there's a chance i won't be able to film a friday reads video if so i'll try to communicate that but there will be at least one video that i get posted next week so just a heads up again holidays coming and uh that might disrupt video schedule but uh we'll see how that goes i won't really know until next week because i will be working through wednesday and then i'm off thursday and friday but uh there's always a lot going on i am going to skip the 3k q a question for this week because i finished two books and i want to talk to you about them so i want to give myself a little bit of lead time for that the first book that i finished this week is aristotle and dante dive into the waters of the world this was a long time coming for me because i was listening to this on audio and even though i have a physical copy i was liking it but i was in the middle of the reading slump there was a lot of stress going on so i felt detached from the book because there are some real world things that happened in this book some i don't want to say tragedies but there are some sad things that happened in the book and because i was feeling stressed out and sad and all of that stuff you know anxiety i felt detached from the book a little bit so i only had an hour and 42 minutes left and i got through it this week and part of me wishes i had been in the headspace i'm in now because i really ended up loving that last hour and 42 minutes and i felt so much more positive i i liked the book but i didn't love it during everything leading up to it and then that last hour and 42 minutes was like a revelation and part of what i'll say is that in in that first part i felt a little bit disarmed in a slightly negative way by this book because its vision of two teenagers who are in love circa the late 1980s feels almost utopian their parents are very understanding most of their teachers are very understanding with at least one really big exception and most of their friends and other students are also very open and accepting and they feel wise in ways that are well beyond either their years or the capacity of most people being honest most people spend decades developing the sort of hard-won wisdom that these characters just have and many people never get there being completely honest but as i started listening to the last hour and 42 minutes of this book i'm gonna try to hold this so that it doesn't look really shiny as i headed into the final two hours about of the audio something struck me and maybe it was that i was in a better headspace heading into that last hour and 42 minutes but it occurred to me that in many ways this book reflects the world as i prefer to think of it imperfect difficult frustrating but filled with essentially good people trying their hardest that's the way i like to think about the world because people will disappoint you people will hurt you but people will also surprise you by being really good and decent as well so we're all flawed but hopefully we're trying and this book really captures that and it's something that i haven't really seen in a lot of fiction it and it feels nice to see that reflected in a book and it's so nice that this book which really prizes empathy understanding and respect for other people is marketed toward a young adult our audience because those are exactly the people who could use this type of advice and i kind of love that i really love that this is like compassion in book form it's about love even in the face of discrimination and hate it's about friendship and understanding it's about how easy it is to lose hope when you have to keep fighting your way through the world and it's about how important it is to keep fighting anyway it's about the progress we make and it's the steps we still need to take i love it and by the way no shade on fight night by miriam taves but i noticed how i said it's about how easy it is to lose hope or how frustrating it can be that you constantly need to fight or how when you're not the one who's doing anything wrong you need to educate other people you need to constantly watch out for yourself and how important it is to keep fighting anyway you basically have to fight your way through life that's supposed to be the point of fight night and yet this book said so much more about that especially in like one paragraph toward the end than miriam taves got in in the entirety of that book that's not well it is to knock on fight night a little bit but i got more out of this one than i did out of that one so i ended up really loving this and at some point i am going to do a full reread because i'm hoping that i can the way i was feeling in that last hour and 42 minutes is how i wanted to be feeling the rest of the book and i think just my own mental space was blocking that but i'm glad i got to it and i'm glad i took that little break to give myself some breathing room and a little bit of grace to come back to it feeling refreshed and with vigor and a renewed sense of purpose to do it because this is this is a fantastic book i'd recommend it of course i would say start with aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe which is the first book it's it's so difficult to talk about this book and not spoil the first one because the point of the first one is that aristotle and dante are friends and they get to know each other and benjamin alire sends there's a quote i i think i still have it open somewhere there's a quote from benjamin alire sense because i've been like diving into his world and by the way he feels like a hug in human form i would love to get coffee with benjamin alire sans someday because he just seems like such a nice genuine person but anyway about his first book he said some boys just know they're gay i don't know how that happens and i think other boys don't know and then they start discovering that and that's the book so you can't talk about this book without spoiling that because that is the book that's aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe and in this book they are trying to figure out how to live as a couple and what it means to be young and gay in the late 1980s when that is not acceptable and knowing the difficult things that they will face in their life especially with the specter of aids looming and it kind of tangentially comes into the book it's not really about that but it does come in in really beautiful ways there's a part in the end no spoilers in but in paris that's all i'll say if you read the book you know what i mean it made me well up it's a beautiful beautiful book so i'm gonna stop raving about it and just let me know what you thought about it if you have read it as well but i'm glad i got that that's the experience i wanted out of this book and it was the experience that i felt like i wasn't i was getting in my own way at getting so i'm glad it finally came around the other book that i finished was passing by nella larson i listened to that on audio somebody had mentioned that the audio uh read by tessa thompson is fantastic well that was not available i had went with one read by robin miles i actually really enjoyed robin miles's narration of this book i thought she did a fantastic job i'm sure the tessa thompson one is great but if you don't have access to that one and you do have access to the robin miles version do the robin miles you'll be fine because i thought she did a really great job i loved this book as well it i think both both of these are going to be in my top 10 for 2021. it's going to be really hard to figure out how to order my top 10 for this year i i think my top 15 is going to be extremely solid for this year so the difficulty with passing is that i only finished it as i said about an hour ago and i haven't had time to process because that's a big ending it's a very short book the audio is only about four hours long and i i don't know how long the book is but that would probably mean that it's novella size and there's a big ending so i i need to process that a little bit more joel actually has been reading it at the exact same time as me he was a little bit ahead yesterday and i pulled a little bit ahead today so i'm not sure if he has finished yet and uh we will probably be talking about it tonight but i really liked it someone a long time ago had commented on it because i mentioned it i don't even know what video i mentioned it but i brought up passing and that i wanted to read it and someone commented to say that they really hated it because nella larson just kept talking about clothes and i had completely completely forgotten that comment until i was listening to the audio because she does mention clothes a fair amount but to me it's an extension of the premise if you're unfamiliar in passing there are two childhood friends claire and irene claire has been living as a white woman in his passing as the title would imply irene is not passing but is sort of capable of passing and that there's that whole idea of safety in society and how you present yourself and the clothes are an extension of that they are constantly worrying about their appearance and how they look and whether or not people will accept themselves and projecting an image of themselves to the world and nella larson is really smartly tying that into the overall message about race and passing in ways that i thought were really brilliant and actually i would thank that person for that comment because i think the fact that they had left it maybe pay attention to her talking about clothes a little bit more but i loved what she was doing they apparently did not and i think this book is really smart it's very very well written robin miles again does a very good job with the narration and doing different voices and subtle changes in the way she talks about things that were just brilliant when joel and i first checked in with each other about it there's a particular scene with claire's husband we were both just appalled by and i don't know spoilers if you want to read it it's it's a great book and this is something that i'm going to be digesting over the next few days and i i kind of even look forward to talking to joel about it and and digesting it a little more the movie version is out on netflix we have it saved once joel is done and once the christmas decorations are up i think we'll be watching it this weekend i'm really looking forward to it because i think it's a good candidate for a book to movie adaptation comparison there's just so much to talk about in the book but again i need to i need to digest a little bit before i can really properly talk about it so i'm hoping i will have more if i have more to talk about with passing maybe i'll do it in next week's friday reads again assuming i am able to film a friday reads with the holiday and everything that will be going on and uh maybe by then i will have seen the movie as well so stay tuned potentially but for now i i was really deeply impressed by the book i want to look to see if nella larson published other things and i almost kind of want to look into her life and do a little more research but again i only finished the book about an hour ago so i haven't had time to do any of that stuff yet the other book that i have been working on in physical form is the power of the dog by thomas savage i made really good progress on this over the weekend but have completely stalled since then just because work has been really busy everything's been slammed this week because everybody's looking ahead to the short week next week so everybody needs to do things now you know how it works but once monday started i have not been able to pick this book up at all but over the weekend i got 102 pages in so i kind of flew through over the weekend 50 pages saturday 50 pages sunday so i'm hoping that this weekend i'll be able to kind of fly through again maybe finish it because there are i think roughly 200 pages left yeah 293 pages total but that includes the afterward from andy prue so hopefully i can at least make progress on it this weekend i was really enjoying this book and i think the big signifier that i have been enjoying this is that i use bookmarks and i used to use an index card as a bookmark for every single book that i read so i could take notes well i don't take notes on every book that i read anymore who has the time to do that not me and as soon as i got about 20 25 pages in this book i got up went and got an index card and started using that as a bookmark and not only have i i've been using an index card to take notes it's full on one side and i have a couple of little recurring things that i've been tracking on the other side so i might need to get a second index card to take notes because this is only the first 100 pages of this book and that definitely tells you how deep and profound this book is so far for instance one of the passages that i marked is on page 13 in this edition the new sun rising above the eastern hills showed a world so vast and hostile to individual hope that the young cowhands clung to memories of home kitchen stoves mother's voices the cloak room at school and the cries of children let out at recess raising their chins they fixed their eyes now on an abandoned log shack opened to the weather where stray horses in summer sought a little shade where years before a man like them had failed where the road wandered near a barbed wire fence a rusty sign peppered with bullet holes urged them to chew a brand of tobacco that no longer existed a head hunched over the pommel of his saddle wrote the oldest man in the bunk house gray lined a face one who liked them must have once dreamed of a little place a few acres a homestead a few cattle a green meadow a woman to be a wife god knew maybe a child and the next paragraph for to kind of have a little bit of a twist or an outgrowth of that but i don't want to go in too hard but wow this book constantly impresses me and it makes me really curious about other books that thomas savage wrote because he wrote a lot of books power of the dog is probably his most known one but even then he was an author who was completely unknown to me until the movie adaptation of it was announced by jane campion starring benedict cumberbatch and kirsten dunst and it has me even more excited for the movie because it feels like jane campion is a very smart director to pair with this project because she has really explored gender roles and gender dynamics and gender expectations in her movies in very subtle ways and this book at least in the first hundred pages seems to be getting at a sort of toxic masculinity of these characters and that you find in westerns and i think that's really interesting i think that's really interesting so very excited to continue reading this and get a little bit further once i finish that i'm going to be turning to work like any other by virginia reeves because i need this one to tick a box on my montana book company's reading challenge for 2021 i need to read a book by a local author and virginia even though this is not set in montana it's set in alabama she is from montana and she currently i believe lives in montana so this is what i'm going to be turning to once i finish the power of the dog in terms of audio like i said i'm going to let the last night at the telegraph club hold slide and i think what's going to end up happening is i'm going to finish the charm offensive by alison cochran because i started it and it was it was a good book people have commented to say that they enjoyed it and so i think i'm going to do that and then i need to get back to check to see what might be available on audio for margaret atwood so once i'm done with the charm offensive on audio i can cross off another box on my challenge there are only three left because i finished passing and i already put the power of the dog in its spot so that leaves three slots and then i'm done feeling good about that and i would love to hear how your reading week has gone what you've been up to if you've watched dune if you have watched any of these other adaptations that are being released so far in movie form and just generally what's been going on let me know in the comment section down below as always i really appreciate your time if you are in the united states and you celebrate thanksgiving i hope you have a happy thanksgiving and i will be back until next time happy reading

Channel: Supposedly Fun

Views: 922

Keywords: Books, BookTube, Reading

Id: F2jNRfzR0YI

Length: 24min 56sec (1496 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 20 2021