I read the BEST and WORST books I own (according to 150,000 Goodreads ratings)

so i have a problem despite having shelves and shelves of unread books i'm a simple person i see a book that looks good suddenly it's in my hand suddenly i'm paying for it suddenly it's on my shelf i am weak i literally cannot stop myself from buying books and it needs to stop and so today i am staging an intervention i need to start reading books that are already on my shelf yes this is a cry for help and so in order to get through more of the books that are on my tbr i'm going to load every single unread book in my flat onto goodreads which is like a book social media using this scanner but the reason for scanning them is so that i can see every single book that i have on my bookshelf in order of rating and this rating out of five stars will be the average rating from every single reader who has ever reviewed this book on goodreads and so then stay with me here my plan for the week is to read on average the highest rated book and the lowest rated book that i have on my bookshelf because basically firstly i'm curious to see what people hate that i thought looked good but also to see whether my review matches up with the general sort of consensus that these books have so let's get scanning i like it you know that's the way that i feel and i [Applause] [Music] okay we're back everything has been uploaded onto my goodreads account i've got my laptop and it's time to see who's through to judges houses but first predictions these are the books i think might take the top spot firstly two words sally rooney i love this woman she could publish her daily to-do list and i'd read it this is a copy of her new book which comes out in september and i feel like it's gonna be quite critically acclaimed so i feel like this could have quite a high average rating so far next sticking with the pink theme i got where the crawdads sing purely because every time i get on the tube someone is reading this book other pages of this book lined with crack because people are addicted to it i see it absolutely everywhere and i'm very intrigued to read this one so i wouldn't be mad if it was this one in fact i wouldn't be mad if it was any of these i also thought it might be cersei by madeline miller mostly because her other book song of achilles is so highly rated and widely loved honestly i've been really putting off reading this book because i'm so convinced that i will love it that i'm genuinely scared to be disappointed another guess would be richard osmond's the thursday murder club because this has been at the top of the book chart like all year and maybe i'm just a hypebeast i don't know and then my final prediction is the house in the cerulean sea because this has such a cult following i don't know an awful lot about this what i do know is that a subscriber sent this to my p.o box because they said it was their favorite ever book of all time and i had to read it so could be this one and then for lowest rated book i struggled with this because obviously all of the books that i've bought are books that i think look good so my first guess was the circle purely because i don't think i've ever seen a positive review of this book i really love dystopias which is why i bought it but since then i've only really heard bad things and so i think it probably is quite likely going to be this one and then my other guest was shaggy bane which not gonna lie is a bit of a rogue guess this actually won the booker prize last year which obviously gives a book huge exposure and i've heard that this is very gritty and raw so my thought process which i'm now doubting was that although this has been really well received with literary critics this book would have got a huge exposure and maybe even picked up by people who wouldn't normally have chosen something like this that's that's what i'm thinking but it's the moment of truth let's see who has topped my chart i seem to have typed in goof reads instead of goodreads which is not what we're looking for but possibly quite a good description of my channel so let's see what this goof is gonna be reading okay so i have 79 books on my bookshelf i haven't yet read which is shameful but let's see let's rank by highest average rating oh why is that my proudest ever achievement i smashed it the house in the cerulean sea so this has an average rating of 4.5 out of 5. that's huge in second place the girl with the louding voice third place where the crawdads sing fourth is uh shaggy bane let's just pretend that didn't happen okay so the sally rooney one was number 12 and cersei was number 17 with an average rating of 4.26 so not the worst so we have our top rated book and now let's see what's at the bottom here we go [Music] oh burnt sugar by aphnydoshi that book was long listed for the women's prize for the man booker prize i got the wrong book a prize nominee and then that is followed by a lonely man and then at the circle damn i was .5 out however what i will say is that my lowest average rated book on my bookshelf is 3.39 which is not that bad so what does that say about me as a book buyer i'm very good at judging books by their covers apparently so i've just gone to retrieve that book and these are the two books that i'm going to be reading this week house in the cerulean sea and burnt sugar but speaking of things that have raving reviews let's talk about today's sponsor fiverr you may have noticed in recent videos that i have a swanky new animation that tells you to like a video subscribe and turn the notification bell on well that magical thing that just appeared on the screen was made by a creator on fiverr i'm pretty sure it cost me like three or four pounds and the creator got back to me within an hour so i had a great experience and i wanted to tell you about fiverr so fiverr hosts a variety of freelance services all hosted on one hub so whether you need a new logo for your business or whether you want to get an impressionist to send a birthday message to your friend you can on fiverr it's such a trustworthy system and all of the creators that i've worked with have been phenomenal there's also always a range of options so you can get something that fits your budget and so i decided to put this to the test because i'm in the market for a new youtube banner so i gave three different fiverr creators the exact same brief and i paid them to create a new banner and i'm so happy with the results so here we have number one number two and number three so please leave a comment down below letting me know which one you prefer i'll put them all on screen now so you can see them side by side and so to find and use amazing freelance services just like i did you can click the link down below and get started thank you so much to fiverr for sponsoring this video and now your boy's got some reading to do so i will catch up with you when i'm done with the house in the cerulean sea [Music] that sea is not just blue it's not turquoise it's not lapis it's actually cerulean if you thought i was gonna discuss this book without referencing the devil where's prada you were wrong now i am not usually into fantasy books but the house on the cerulean sea is kind of gentle fantasy it had just the right amount for me you know this is a book about a government worker who works with orphanages who look after magical children it's basically ofsted just for magical people so this government worker basically goes and inspects the orphanages to check that the children are being properly cared for and that their particular needs are being met because he is such an obedient worker and has basically sold his soul to the system this guy is a a massive wet wipe and b trusted by the people in charge to basically be assigned a top secret very important case in other words he is assigned to the house in the cerulean sea this is a foster home for particularly dangerous children as in like one of them is quite literally the son of the antichrist and the local people are literally terrified of these children which creates a huge divide between the orphanage and the local town and without giving too much away these children actually turn out to be way less monstrous and scary than you may imagine when you hear the word antichrist and the story kind of progresses from there where the assumptions and views of the local people and the government worker are challenged and questioned when they get to know these outsiders as individuals so this book is a great exploration of empathy of preconceptions of catch all government systems and the way that outsiders are perceived by those who ostracize them and the hostile environments that government sometimes cause it's also a great summer read because it's set on a peninsula on an island and it just feels very summery and warm it's fluffy it's very very sweet and it melted my icy heart genuinely it's such a charming book and it's funny it's so witty there's so many cracking one-liners so i can definitely see why it has such a strong average rating because it's so good very love conquers all kind of vibes now i also have to discuss the controversy that this book has surrounding it because i've done a bit of research into the source material that tj clune was inspired by for this book basically between the 50s and 60s in canada around 20 000 indigenous children were forcibly taken from their home from their parents and forced to live in foster care this was an attempt at cultural assimilation but it's so traumatic for everyone involved and just horrible and the government basically hopes that these indigenous people would be adopted by white families and that as the source material complicates this book because on one hand i think the point of this novel was that in life we're often told that certain you know specific groups are dangerous and actually these are just people who want to live and laugh and love i just i just live loved loved i can't believe i just did that my point is these people just want peace and sometimes governments and communities do create hostile environments towards people who just want to live harmlessly and they just want to co-exist and even before doing all of that research this book really made me think of the attitudes towards refugees here in britain in which innocent well-meaning people who just want to be safe are marginalized as others i think the purpose of this book is to show that often that perception is misguided and wrong and the first person narrator is a government worker so we literally watch someone who embodies these values of these institutional beliefs he's literally the person who enforces these regulations we watch that person change his mind with more information and more understanding comes new ideas and new values we also see that the violence and the scare mongering and the intimidation of the local people is wrong and cruel and horrible and there's this huge juxtaposition with that violence and the fact that these people who they're so mad at are literally children so i kind of feel like i can see the author's intention here however there are also problematic elements of this book that you do need to consider firstly does a privileged white author have the right to package up other people's trauma into a fluffy fantasy novel is it his story to tell i would guess he chose fantasy so that he didn't co-opt a history that isn't his but comparisons are obviously inevitable and likening indigenous people to monsters in this book doesn't sit that well we also have the issue that it's the government worker in the story who kind of saves the day and is able to translate and communicate between the children and the angry mob in the town and the more i thought about this and the more i unpacked it the more they sort of resembled a white savior complex and the government worker seems to be the equivalent of that kind of a figure which i just think is quite questionable now the author tj cloon has addressed all of this but he did it in a way that i just don't think was delicate enough and sensitive enough for such a difficult issue he wasn't very careful with his language when discussing it and i'll leave links down below so you can read for yourself and make your own opinion but i do definitely think it's worth considering this book in context and using this as an opportunity to educate yourself and research the 60s scoop in canada because i had never heard of it before reading this and doing subsequent research but equally having said all of that i don't think it's ever useful to view things as binaries like this doesn't have to be a great book or incredibly controversial and cancelled i actually think it facilitates a really interesting conversation about whose stories we are entitled to tell and how you should tell them and having said all of that on the surface level this book was a very pleasant and cozy read also if you're looking for a queer love story that just blends itself quite naturally into a narrative this is your next read the only other thing i think i would say about my reading experience is that i found this very predictable and so for me this was four stars because i also felt like the ending really dragged like we could all see where it was going it was just a case of getting there but overall i did enjoy reading this book and i'm so glad that i finally got around to it and that this video has encouraged me to read this book i just had sitting on my shelf collecting dust and it's been very thought-provoking you know what else i am i'm thinking about the fact that maybe it was dumb to start with the good book because now i've got to read the bad book or at least the one that other people rate it badly so um i will catch up with you when i have finished burnt sugar [Music] so burnt sugar was not so sweet this book genuinely could not have been any more different to the other book if it tried like this was a shock to the system this book is so slow paced and it's about a woman in india whose mother has dementia throughout her life her mother has always been incredibly distant and uncaring yet now it falls on the daughter to care for her so obviously straight away very weird dynamic to negotiate and because it's about dementia the theme of memory is explored in vivid detail also bodily fluids bodily fluids are discussed on every page and honestly it's disgusting the nature of life and death is depicted as incredibly cyclical but the true focal point of this book is the mother-daughter relationship and bond or lack thereof it's all about how they clash and collide and drift and morph into one another and seeing yourself in your parents whether you like it or not there's also a huge oedipus complex and also i guess the reverse of that let's just say that sigmund freud would have a field day reading this book if he picked this up in a bookstore he would feel like he'd won the lottery and what i would say is that it's one of those books that i can see exactly why it was so critically acclaimed and why it was award nominated but i didn't enjoy reading it you feel weirdly distant from the author but also the characters like none of them are likeable in the slightest and usually i quite enjoy reading books about unlikable characters i don't know what that says about me but i find characters that are deliberately unlikable very fascinating and endearing but just not here um if you want something like that i would recommend exciting times as an alternative to this but there are some beautiful beautiful quotes i made so many notes in this book human degeneration halts and sputters but it does not reverse i nod because he's right but i want to cry for being stupid for giving him the tools to make this incision sometimes i refer to ma in the past tense even though she is still alive i am grieving but it's too early to burn the body and so i did think at times the writing was stunning i just think it's such a fascinating discussion of like mourning someone who hasn't yet passed the book is definitely very rooted in indian culture and so i think that readers who have more of an insight into that culture will enjoy this a lot more when i got to the midway point i was so close to giving up so close but the ending was so worth sticking around for it's so harrowing and haunting and heartbreaking and now that i'm finished i feel like i can appreciate this as a piece of art which i'm like cool great over there but when i was actually reading it i was not having fun it's so intense and sharp but it definitely keeps you at arm's length and so i think three stars is the way that i would review this so i think to conclude um i kind of agreed with the ratings that these were given on average on goodreads oh and i will say i have also signed up to the story graph which is a goodreads alternative and i filmed a second channel video um showing me setting myself up on that website and stuff so if you want to go check that out link is down below you can follow me over there if you like to conclude this book was not bad by any stretch of the imagination it just wasn't necessarily my cup of tea and this book was not quite as perfect as i expected it to be and i think that the intention and the outcome were misaligned but i thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience of this book and thoroughly hated it for this book so there you go those are my reviews i would highly encourage you to take on this challenge and scan your own bookshelf and see what's rated top what's rated bottom and give them a go all my social media links will be down below you can like this video if you liked it and subscribe for more from me and turn the notification bell on thanks animation and of course the link to fiverr will be down below for all of your freelance needs um thank you fiverr for sponsoring the video thank you for watching have a wonderful day and i'll catch you next time bye bye

Channel: Jack Edwards

Views: 692,123

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Id: HS6veBK9K5o

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021