i have once again acquired too many books... || book haul

hello friends welcome back to my channel uh apologies in advance if the lighting is a little off i am filming after work today um so i usually never film at this time i usually film in the mornings so lighting might be a bit weird um but today i have for you a pretty big book haul hear me out hear me out i have a lot of books in my defense though it was my birthday month this month so i do have some birthday gifts here and i also have read most of these books at this point so i don't feel too bad about them i usually try to organize them by genre but honestly today is just a mess so i'm just gonna ramble list them all off i'm gonna try to keep it concise this time i do feel like my halls i usually tend to talk a lot because i don't know what books are actually about but yeah let's jump right into it first things first ebooks i picked up three ebooks in the last couple of months and the first one is thorne this is a why a fantasy in all honesty i know literally nothing about this book it was a bit of a cover buy i saw at the store and i just thought the cover was stunning also i think the sequel either just came out recently or came out at the end of last year so i was a little intrigued by that but the main reason why i was intrigued by this book is actually how it got published because i know this book was self-published previously and then picked up by harper teen um which i feel like that's always such an interesting route for a book to take um i feel like there are some publishers that i know do that quite often for example orbit is the first one that comes to mind in terms of picking up previously self-published books and publishing them traditionally but i feel like it's not kind of a trajectory that i see very often from an imprint like harper teen so i was really intrigued just because of the origin of this book um and in all honesty that's all i know about it um the second e-book i picked up was ship of magic by robin hobb um i have not read any of robin hobb i actually still have to read the farseer trilogy first um i do own the first book in that trilogy i picked this up honestly because i was on a live show with nicole um and she is a huge robin hobb stand and she talked me into it it was like three dollars um and i do plan on reading robin hobb i do plan on giving at least the first book in the first year and the first book in the liveship traders which is ship of magic a try the main reason why i feel like i would like her books is also because a lot of people have compared her to tamara pierce and like an adult tamara pierce and i loved tamara pierce growing up she was probably one of my favorite authors to this day probably is still one of my favorite like um middle grade and y a authors i think in in fantasy in like classic fantasy um her series are some of my favorites and i love her character work and i've heard robin hobb has really great character work so i'm very very intrigued and the last e-book i picked up was blaze rap games which i feel like has been semi-hyped on book twitter and booktube i picked this up as a little birthday gift to myself because i have been wanting to buy it since it came out the hardcover is just really expensive in canada so i just can't i just can't justify like 30 dollars for a why a hardcover like it's just it's a lot i know that this book takes place in kind of like an alternate reality kind of situation in which there are dragons and every single year there is a sporting event called the blaze rock games where you have these like dragon riders kind of situation and they compete in these games and our main character is a i believe she's puerto rican-american and she's trying to uh make it onto the puerto rican team for the blaze rap games if i'm not mistaken i could be totally wrong um but anyway moving on to physical books because i have quite a lot of them um i don't even know where to start like i said usually i try to at least have some semblance of like a plan here but i don't but the first book i picked up was out um if you watched one of my vlogs i went to the secondhand bookstore as soon as they opened up sad times that was very short-lived but i did go to the secondhand bookstore once while they were still open for like a week um and i managed to pick this up this is a japanese translated thriller and it is like very sad masochistic i've read 100 pages of this so i'm about a quarter of the way through it um and i'm really enjoying it so far i've kind of had to put it down a little bit because i'm just not really in the mood for it but it is about these four women in suburban tokyo um and they all work the overnight shift at this bento box factory and basically one of the women murders her husband um and the other women have to help her cover it up and so it just kind of follows their lives it follows um the way they kind of get gotten caught up in in this murder scheme situation um i've heard there is some social commentary about um women in japan at the time this was published i believe in the 90s i want to say and i know actually really interestingly the author got a lot of backlash for writing this um from the public and saying that women should not write fillers women should stick to writing um romances so i'm very interested to see uh what kind of social commentary she made in this book that made the men so angry uh that she wrote it trigger warnings though i have all like i said i've only read the first hundred pages but trigger warnings it is pretty dark there's already been like sexual assault scenes and like i said of course there's murder so keep that in mind it is very very dark the next book i picked up was the atlas 6 by olivie blake um i've talked about this in my tbr already this is one of my shop my stash book so i'm not going to talk too much about this because you will hear all my thoughts about it again i've already started this for my vlog um i'm just over halfway through and this is a dark academia um fantasy novel that takes place in again kind of like an alternate reality situation and we follow these six characters um who have been basically tapped to enter the alexandrian society which is a secret society that uh protects the knowledge of the library of alexandria and they've been chosen to go study with the society and essentially be a part of this initiation process in which only five of them actually get to stay in the society um and so far i'm really enjoying it the characters are really interesting the writing is really good i'm trying to not do the thing where i like basically give you a wrap up in my hall long story short dark academia fantasy um multi-pov it is also self-published so just kind of a note for if anyone like myself is trying to get more into self-published and indie published books um the next book i got was a gift from my friend roo from rurus reading corner and it is vagabonds hao jing fung i've talked about this in a couple of vlogs now again i'm about halfway through the book um and still currently reading it this is a kind of like social commentary literary sci-fi it takes place about 200 years in the future um mars basically like a group of people have like broken off from earth they've gone to mars and started a colony there that society is basically a perfect socialist society essentially earth and mars have found themselves in like a cold war and basically in this book we have a group of people who were sent from mars when they were 13 years old to earth um to spend five years there um to kind of ease political tensions and this book starts actually when this group of people return back to mars after their five years there and um there's some like diplomatic tensions and it's like a lot of political maneuvering a lot of social commentary on the differences between the society so earth is obviously kind of like the western world very very um capitalist um kind of free market free trade kind of situation whereas mars is very much like a a kind of ideal socialist state which obviously doesn't really exist in our world but um yeah the next book i picked up was the epic crush of genie low by fce i have talked a little bit about this in a vlog um and it basically is a why a um urban fantasy that features chinese mythology um in this book we follow our main character jeannie lowe who is a kind of type a student she's very very ambitious very kind of um she's a bit of a control freak okay um can relate um but basically one day there's a new transfer student to her class called quentin he ends up being the monkey king reincarnate um and basically genie gets swept up in these adventures of like demon slaying all that kind of fun stuff so uh i highly recommend this book i really enjoyed this series i've actually read the sequel as well now the next book i picked up which again i have an entire dedicated reading vlog to is the kingdom of back by marie lu um i'm not gonna say too much about this like i said that i have a whole reading vlog um just know that this is a new favorite of mine five out of five stars this is a historical fantasy um in which we are following the lives of the mozart siblings um most people obviously only know the male sibling wolfgang um but in this book our main character that we follow is actually his sister nanil who has largely been forgotten by history she actually used to perform with him um when they traveled as kids um and the kingdom of back is actually a a world that they the real life mozart's created in their heads as like an imaginary world marie lu has kind of like brought that world to life and it is about neural who has this gift for music for composing but because she is a girl in that time period she was not allowed to compose freely um and it is about how the length to which she will go to chase her her dreams and her desires basically that's all i'll say about it the next book i picked up which i've also talked about in a vlog already so i will link what i can in the cards and then i'll link everything down below if you are interested in my thoughts but it is last night at the telegraph club by melinda lowe this is a why a historical fiction romance which i don't read much of at all but basically this book takes place in the 1950s in san francisco um and it takes place around the time of the red scare it was a period of time in history where chinese people in america were persecuted and deported um on the basis that they were affiliated with the communist party and in this story we follow uh lily who is our main character she is chinese american and basically lily finds this ad in a newspaper or magazine or something for a nightclub called the telegraph club which is a lesbian nightclub um very close to chinatown and in this ad they are advertising um a male impersonator which we now call drag kings um but basically she becomes infatuated with the idea of this nightclub and and she wants to go but obviously she's underage uh one of her friends in class kath um has been there before she's like let me take you so they that's kind of like the premise of the story really but it's so much more than that it is about family it is about cultural identity and it is about what it means to be a good chinese daughter um and it's a very interesting look at the intersection um between racial identity privilege um sexual identity all these great things the romance is really cute in this again i will link the vlog where i read this there are quite a lot of trigger warnings for this book because of obviously it takes place in kind of a really rough time in history but anyway i will of course include those all down below so that you can check it out the next book i picked up which i have not read yet shocking is descendant of the crane um i honestly picked this up because i've just heard so many people talk about it i know she has a new book coming out soon so i wanted to check out this book because this one is the one that i am more interested in terms of premise i know that it is like wusha inspired kind of like court entry political intrigue i've heard it's gut wrenching all buzz words that i love um nancy wu narrates the audiobook so i will definitely be doing a hybrid read when i do eventually read this and just a quick note on this action this book actually um in terms of if you are planning on picking this book up now um if you were not on twitter around december time the american publisher for the original um us hardcover and the paperback basically were garbage they did not pay the author on time and all that kind of it was a whole disaster but basically if you are planning on picking this book up make sure you're picking up the uk edition by um published by titan books um that's the copy i have i ordered it on book depository um and i think if you are in the us the book of the month edition if those are still available is also fine like it's completely disassociated with that publisher the next book i picked up which was definitely very very much an impulse purchase um because i actually already own this on audio but i kind of wanted the physical to go along with it and it is upon a burning throne by ashley k banker um this is a the first book in an epic fantasy series it is a retelling of the mahabrata i've heard honestly kind of mixed things about this at this point i don't know too much about this i just know we have we follow two princes yeah we have two princes who are kind of in line to rule but basically they find out that there's actually like a third um potential air kind of situation and it's some sort of like epic fight for the throne kind of situation that's probably not what this book is about i will definitely be reading this soon-ish i've heard it's a kind of like slow political fantasy um so i have been really enjoying those lately so i feel like i'll probably pick this up maybe like in the next couple of months um the next two books were gifted to me for my birthday um by sophia um who is my wifey if you didn't know i will link her channel i will link everyone's channels down below anyone that i've mentioned um but the first book she forgot for me is jade city by fonda lee you might be like don't you already have this book i actually don't own the physical book i have the ebook but this is one of my favorite series of all time um it is pitch just kind of like godfather meets kung fu in this world certain people have the ability to wield bioenergetic jade which gives them enhanced martial arts powers essentially um and if you are familiar with like musha at all it gives you kind of like those powers so like you can do a whole like channeling situation you have like enhanced strength all that kind of fun stuff um again i have a full dedicated review to this if you are interested in my thoughts on this book i'm definitely going to be rereading this soon because the last book in the series comes out later this year so i kind of want to experience the pain again love this book it is literally like one of my all-time favorite series that's all i'll say about it because i've been talking for like way too long and i gotta i gotta keep moving i've still got like quite a few books to go through but the second book that sophia got me was children of ruin by adrian tchaikovsky we both read the first book children of time um last month and we both really really enjoyed it thank you sophia for getting me the sequel i'm so excited to read it i think we're gonna be buddy reading it um but basically if you don't know what the first book is about i have again i have a reading vlog where i read it it is an evolutionary sci-fi in which um earth is dead basically and these humans have gone to this other planet where previously someone had started a terraforming project where they were trying to breed these like sentient monkeys monkeys all died spoiler alert um but the the virus that causes the sentience and the intelligence in the monkeys actually ended up taking on with spiders we have a whole planet full of sentient spiders and it basically follows the spider society and then also the humans that are trying to land on that planet i don't actually know where the second book is gonna go nicole has let me know that apparently there's like octopuses in this book which i actually find terrifying because i'm kind of afraid of spiders actually i'm quite afraid of spiders in real life like i don't like them at all but i don't find them as terrifying as octopuses if you have ever watched the show river monsters first of all what a great show second of all there's an episode about uh the giant octopus and basically i now am very very afraid of octopuses because of that episode um so i'm very intrigued by this book um but i yeah again i don't really know where this is gonna go but we'll see the next book i picked up was a pre-order um i did already read the arcs and it is the unbroken by ciel clark look at terrain in all her glory with those biceps hello also i love this cover it's stunning it is the same artist that does the gideon and harrow covers um and honestly stunning stunning um but this is seal clark's debut fantasy novel um and the first in the series and this is a north african inspired um colonial fantasy basically it's very low magic so do keep that in mind when you go into it we follow two main characters luca who is the princess to the balidarian empire who are like the colonizers um and we also follow terrain who is a soldier who is from the one of the places that the validarian empire has um colonized but terrain was actually conscripted as a child to the balidarian military at the beginning of the book she is returning home for the first time but like she doesn't know what that means because she was taken away at such a young age i really love this book because of its conversations on colonialism um and i think if you like political fantasy if you like colonial fantasy you will like this um and i'm gonna shut up about now because again i've talked for too long the next two books i have are empire of sand and realm of ash by tasha suri which are the books the books of amba i think that's what it's called the duology um and this is i i really like this series um rue actually kindly gifted me her copy of empire sand which she unhauled um so i smashed it up so thank you so much to roo and i liked it so much that i picked up the sequel um but in empire stand again i have a whole reading vlog do i ever not vlog anymore but i have a reading vlog where i talk about this but basically in the story we are following our main character mehr who is half amben half americi in this world the amen are the kind of like ruling class and the american people they have magic in their blood that protects them from the deva which are these kind of spirits kind of situation they also perform these rights which are like these dances if they perform them at the right time during like a storm um they actually have the ability to kind of communicate with gods um and that's kind of the magic system it's really cool i like i really love the magic system i think it's really cool i'm not gonna say too much about this because i feel like there's the plot is very slow moving so if i tell you what the premise is that'll take you to like the halfway point but basically it is a kind of like political fantasy romance so the romance is actually like a huge part of this book um as well as the second one these are both like i would consider them like political 50 50 like political fantasy and fantasy romance um but they're both slow burns so if you like slow burn i highly recommend this series in terms of tropes this is like the arranged marriage trope and then this is kind of like i don't feel like there's like a trope per se for like the coupling but this book actually takes place 10 years 11 years after the end of this one so it is more of like a companion novel um and we actually follow arwa who's my her sister and we follow kind of like a bastard prince that's the love interest kind of situation wow this might as well be an orbit haul because the next two books i picked up which if you watched my last haul you'll know that i actually got three books for christmas which i said i would potentially exchange and i did i got the dream blood duology by n.k jemisin instead um i love this series um i love nk jemisin i'm a big n.k jemisin fan and the dreamworld duology the more time i spend away from it the more i've kind of realized that this is actually probably even though i love the broken earth trilogy and i think the fifth season is still going to be my favorite nk jemisin book that i've read so far um this is probably the series that i will come back to and reread the most the thing the magic system the world the tropes kind of explored it's just right up my alley like this is just this is a desert fantasy it is vaguely kind of like egyptian inspired um and the magic system is actually formed uh or like inspired by the four humors which is really interesting there's kind of dream magic involved and basically it takes place in this city state um that has known nothing but peace so everyone knows peace and the people who keep the peace are actually these um this like almost like a cult dare i call it a cult i don't know um of priests who have these like this like dream magic almost um some of them have like healing magic some of them have are able to kill people in their dreams so they're like assassin priests who like have dream magic it's really it's really cool but basically in this first book our main characters who are um two gatherers who are kind of like those assassin priests that i was talking about um they are kind of forced to question everything they believe in um there is someone out there using a very similar type of magic and going to kill people that are not tapped to be killed so like the assassin priests they only really like kill people that they have been told to kill um but now there's someone out there just like murdering people in cold blood using the same magic it's like political intrigue all that kind of fun stuff dream the shout out is actually very very different from the first book um so as a duology it's very interesting um i'm not going to talk too much about it but i really love both of these i really want to reread the shadow sun especially because i read the shout out sun on audio only whereas like the killing moon i did a hybrid read uh from the library so anyway that's that i probably didn't explain that very well i swear i'm almost done um but the next book i got was the trader brew cormorant by seth dickinson and this was gifted to me for my birthday by katie from brightness katie reads um interestingly katie actually does not like this book at all this is a very very political fantasy and i use the word fantasy very loosely it is it takes place in like a obviously fantastical world like it's not anything like our world it's it's it's like its own world kind of situation but there's little to no magic in this um aside from like hints of it here and there but this is a grimdark colonial fantasy um which if you know me at all is very much up my alley i did end up really enjoying this book i think there are certain things that i didn't like about it um and i will put down below trigger warnings because like i said this is grim dark um and it the main character is a lesbian woman of color um and this place takes place in a world that is homophobic and racist and again it's about colonization and so it is a lot it's a lot i will say that it's a lot um i don't think this book is going to be for everyone a because of the triggers and b because it is very very dense i always say the grace of kings reminds me of a textbook this also reminds me of a textbook in a very similar way but i think grace of kings is better executed so in this book we follow our main character brew cormorant she is taranoki and at the beginning of the book we see the masquerade which is the empire um come in and colonize taranok and the way that they do that is not by force and it's not by war it's actually through trade through money through power and it's actually a very interesting take on colonialism i feel in in books and it's also like done through education um very similarly to i think you can draw parallels for sure to like residential school so that's another huge trigger but basically beru realizes early on that there's like like trying to resist the empire is is futile and it's hopeless and so she decides that she is going to take down the empire from within she becomes the imperial accountant to the masquerade um and basically we are following her journey and a lot of political maneuvering a lot of economic maneuverings um which i found really interesting i don't know much about economics so like i don't know how like accurate and like realistic these economics are i just thought it was so brilliant and like so interesting and such a different take on fantasy but like i said it is very dense so don't know if i would recommend it for everyone in that sense but you will see my full thoughts on this in um a future recent reads video and again i will list the trigger warnings down below but yeah that is it i know i have purchased quite a lot of books but like i said some of these were gifts and also i've like read like most of these um i definitely do feel like i need to calm down on like the physical book buying just because like i am definitely like running low on space on my shelves um i don't really plan on buying more bookshelves for the neared like kind of distant future um and i also like in general just for personal reasons want to shift more over to ebook reading i am planning on maybe doing a kind of like pros and cons and ebooks ebook readings and like a mini review of the e-reader that i have and the e-readers that i have tried in the past um so if you're interested in seeing that video let me know down below um and yeah that's it for today if you're still here at the end thank you so much for watching as usual if you like this video please don't forget to give it a thumbs up comment down below let me know if you've read any of these books um and if you like them or not and if you want to see more from me please don't forget to hit the subscribe button i upload every mondays and fridays at 10 a.m est and that is it for today thank you so much for watching and i will see you guys next time you

Channel: tammie tries to read

Views: 1,735

Rating: 4.974359 out of 5

Keywords: book, booktube, booktuber, asian booktuber, poc booktuber

Id: 9GQcX9U4pZ8

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021