July 2021 Wrap-up

hi i read 12 books this month yay [Music] welcome back for another video if you're new here i'm ivy and this is my july wrap-up i've read 12 books this month variation of books i don't normally read 12 books like i'm normally around eight books a month but saying that seven out of my 12 books were audio books over half were audiobooks which puts me down to six books and that's normal i even had a slow start i was feeling a little bit slumpy in the beginning i was starting book and starting book and starting another book and starting another book and not even finishing anything and then suddenly i just finished everything and then soaked up everything else like sponge and even though my twelve books is only one thousand six hundred and something pages when you take into account of those seven audio books i'm well over 3500 pages and my average say take may for instance may was a good average i read nine books and it was 2800 pages it was a great average so in comparison july to may july is 12 books maze 9 books july's 1 600 something pages may is 2800 pages there's a difference strange i don't know where i'm going with this but let's just continue this is my july wrap-up this is where i tell you all about the books that i read in july and i will give you my opinions about them i won't tell you that much about what the book is about because i probably don't remember anymore but i do remember my opinions let's just dive right in for july i did both a round of my ring of tbr game you can find out there or in the description below is it is it an amazing game i absolutely love playing this game i picked five books ended up with a double so there was six books i finished all of them though i did dnf one i already put in my unhaul by i dnf this how to be both by ali smith i tried i managed 47 pages i think i did like the characters i didn't like the writing i didn't like the constant repetition in the text like constant repetition that her mum was dead and i'm sitting there thinking we are 10 pages in i know this fact thank you and i even though the premise says that it might be cute it might be quiet it might be really interesting i just don't care i don't care 47 pages was all i gave it it was like 360 380 372. no bye unhaul thank you next so the first book i actually finished in the month of july was the wolf and the woodsman don't have a physical copy i had an advanced reader's copy it was an ebook this is essentially following a young woman she is in the mid-20s so this is not why a this is an adult fantasy but it reads like a y a like it is that the feeling of reading something that's why a but the character actually has the age that makes sense for her maturity finally finally finally it follows i don't even remember the eevee iveca her name is she's grew up in the forest there's a magical forest in a pagan village of some kind the woodsman come every now and then to pick a girl to be given to the king this time around it is her that's been given or selected to travel with the woodsman and deliver to the king they name her the wolf because she carries a wolf jacket type thing made of wool fur as she arrived in the capital she realizes more to this world than she thought and there is magic everywhere she has some someone else has some and then it all kind of get mingled up i enjoyed this book though it did take me about six to five days to finish i don't know why i just could not finish it i don't know why it was a quality book it was very interesting i love the fact that all i think is like four major religions in here and they all have different types of magic like the pagan religion had like a sacrificial in terms of food and mental health and stuff like that to give to the nature guards and then you kind of made excuses for why you had a bad winter or you prayed for a good mild winter etc and then you have the other religions and one of them was you sacrified a limb for wisdom or for the power to do whatever it is you wanted to do and then amongst all of that you have the what were they called again yehuli which is clearly based on jews in judaism and having this magic associated with their words and their word of truth etc it was really fascinating how you can kind of tell what type of religion this would be based on what the magic was and i really like that aspect i really really like that i really liked how the author kind of managed to merge all of these religions into her world and how she merged the world building around this religious stories that she had the main character tell or being told so we got this whole world buildings through all these additional stories and i really like that i also liked these so-called romance it's not really a major part it's a little bit of a part but it's not really that big of a deal i like the fact that he's more prudish than she is i like that it was a quality read i did really like it i recommend it if you're interested in a fantasy with religion and etc it is very interesting so yeah i gave it four stars then i read a non-fiction quote surrounded by s idiots wow i'm an idiot by thomas erickson this is a non-fiction about how you can put people into groups depending on how we communicate with others and how we perceive others and the way our brain works basically when it comes to communication and stuff like that i need to pick this up because i thought i might learn something about someone else something else being better communicating with people in the office etc i ended up learning more about myself thank you i started the book and he goes through and he explains the past or yeah the first positive attribute of her color and then the negative i had to prove that color then the next color and then it goes into more detail later on but that's like he starts on red and then goes yellow green and blue right starts starting red and i thought i hate this person i hate reds it's yellow and i'm like well that could be interesting but i kind of hate them too it goes to green and i'm like yeah okay that could be nice but poor poor people for like doing everything because they feel guilty for not doing it and it goes to blue and then he goes he lists everything and he goes did you notice i put everything in in alphabetical order a blue loves me right now and i was like i didn't know but i'm very grateful turns out though that i am a red and i can't start thinking about this book because i i keep seeing things in myself the things that i do that correlates to specific civic color and it annoys me but i'm also like oh that's so interesting that's so fascinating but i'm a red and a blue probably a hint of green that i like save for very very very special people which currently don't exist but i did give it a three star in the end three and a half star thing because i did really enjoy it and i learned a lot about it but i didn't get what i initially set out to learn you know how to communicate with others i just got told what i was like and what i shouldn't do and not what i planned but it was quite good i still learning about myself because it it still pops up in my my head and be like oh yeah you did that because you're this color then i read an anthology called a universe of wishes and this was edited by danielle clayton i went in thinking i know a couple of these authors this is going to be interesting and i started out like i would like to read these authors but i'm going to go start at the beginning obviously because that's what you do in our book yeah start at the first one you read your way through and i was kind of anticipating getting to certain authors and being like i'm really gonna like this one turns out my absolute favorite story was unmore by marguerita i never read anything by marco russo before but he's definitely on my watch list is it them is it he or them anyway i need to figure out more about this author because i'm very curious i love the principle of unmore and even though like all of these stories are diverse in terms of background and religion and in sexual orientation and gender and all these things like the way we view gender and stuff like that like they're very diverse and it is part of the project we need diverse books so it was really really good according to that they're all science fiction and fantasy and nice i don't even know if it's half and half but it felt like nice balance of science fiction and fantasy and probably something that was science fiction fantasy as well so you had all of it and i found some really interesting new authors that i really really want to try that's the whole point of reading anthologies to find new authors that's what i think anyway so i gave this four stars not all of them included wishes but they had universes then i picked up another non-fiction book and i read by jacob tobia i didn't know who jacob twain was i picked this up because fuckathon had a prompt for the gender binary so i wanted to read something that was i think there was a library pick and i went on there and i thought i'd pick anything that seems quite a non-binary picked up because it said a coming of gender story and i love a good discussion about gender it basically follows joker dubai throughout their entire childhood like you start really early and you go through all the the normal stories about how they were deemed just a sensitive boy etc and then you follow them up as they go to university go on to like summer camp summer what summer camp and works at the un etc dresses exactly how they want to dress i mean pantsuits heels and lipstick yeah and it was really interesting how the discussion about gender kind of formed everything about this book i really like the way it was told the way it was narrated the author narrates the audiobook themselves which to me adds a lot more into the story into a memoir specifically and i like the layout of the book i like the fact that there was this discussion about gender throughout the entire thing it wasn't just like oh here in the middle we're going to talk about gender the rest is just like i don't know what i am and i do know what i am you know it was the whole way and the author was kind of like reflecting on their past and their childhood and kind of like coming in every now and then and saying now that i'm older and i look back i know this wasn't true i think this is what happened etc and it was just really really interesting i really enjoyed it i gave it a four star because it was quality then i read while beauty by anna marie mclemore this is my first anna marie mclemore book ever and i want more this is the reason if you watch my august ring of tbr in the cards above this is the reason why i asked for more sff based on gardening while beauty is essentially a gardening fantasy that's that's that's all there is to it there's the main character and her entire family who have the ability to grow things and make this wonderful garden out of their fingertips and they have specific abilities for specific flowers or specific things like rose was really good at growing roses etc it's just how it was right and all of their partners and husbands would disappear if they loved them too hard however there turns out to be a darker story to why these lovers and husbands actually disappears and i really like that dark undertone of the story i really appreciated this big flowery flourish of a story that had like this really dark foundation loved it it was so interesting i loved the ending as well it was glorious i want more i hear four and a half stars it was it was so close so close to perfection i'm gonna have to read more from this author then i picked up sources to the crown which is the sorcerer royale sorcerer royal series number one or duology i think it's duology by sancho this is basically historical fantasy set around round around the napoleon walls we like the start of the 18 zero zero something time i don't know we're following a are we following two characters one is a i think he is a black man who was raised and taken in by a white man into this society and this white man who i don't remember the name of stephen i think made zechariahs the black boy into his apprentice and his successor as the sorcerer royale which is the person in charge of the entire magical society in britain and the entire entire site is a bit like oh wow why do we do that etc and then we follow a indian british i think she would be a woman who is a mate servant and a governess at a school for gifted women turns out she's a little more than just gifted she has she she has a neck for things and they meet and it kind of revolves around them but also the society and sexism more than racism but it's it's still there and i was like a bit more about people in general and the fact that diversity is a good thing essentially that's what i got from it which i knew anyway it kind of surprised me i don't like historical fiction so it was a bit hesitant going in even though i knew it would be fancy i knew there would be magic i knew it would be all sorts of wonderful thing but i ended up really liking it it was a lot of fun it was it was an adventure there was flying there was assassination attempts there was magical flooding there was magical suitcases dragons fey wow it had everything okay it had everything and it was great i really liked it i'm definitely going to read the sequel at some point i did a whole vlog about reading reading century books so you can watch that if you want i give way more details than i just gave now it was really good because i also picked up the order of the pure moon reflected in water by senchu yes i managed to say the whole time so we're actually looking at the book oh i have a book here it is it's really pretty this is about 160 pages it's really short it is a material art based fantasy what's the actual chord musia it was filled with bandits and banter and feminism and the secret war that nobody really talks about and is actually about like how you try to take charge of your own culture and your own history when someone else is a maid that's essentially what this book is about it was fun it was not as fun as her other books um i again talk about in great detail i will link the century blog below but essentially i gave this like a 3.75 stars running down to three and a half i think i prefer my material out to movies i had a little problem like visualizing it all but i like the magic there wasn't enough of it though like i would have liked a little bit more it could have been so much more it could have been so much more but i did like the 160 70 pages that we got and then the third book i read in the century vlog was black what the system which came out in june out of all of them i think this is my favorite this basically follows this character who apparently is a medium she doesn't know that even though it says so on the snaps in the bag a reluctant medium she doesn't know this in the beginning there's at least three chapters before she realizes this voice in her head is an actual dead grandma grandma has a vengeance for a specific person so it goes on this world ride in malaysia where the main character is trying to please her parents find a job after she graduated harvard so she has like high expectations and stuff try the same relationship with a long distance girlfriend not get killed try to please her angry grandma not get killed try not to get obsessed by god obsessed that's not the right word you know what i mean and then not get killed again that that's like the whole thing but it was so fun being in malaysia like there was so many details there were so many bits and pieces like breadcrumbs all over the place that kind of like hey this is malaysia instead of i think this is malaysia oh oh yes it was glorious i really enjoyed this book i had so much fun and i was rooting for them yes i also liked how the end was more surrounded around healing rather than revenge and i loved it i loved it i gave it 4.75 because it wasn't entirely a five-star for me i'm really picky on my five stars i wonder what's wrong with me something something's not right here then i read moonstruck volume one and volume two so that is magic to brew and some enchanted evening i think which was a lot of fun volume one was on my actual tbr volume two is what i just picked up because it was available and i wanted something quick and easy to read and voila that was kind of it moonstruck is a graphic novel written by grace ellis it's it's two stories in one essentially you have the main story centered around the werewolf barista and her dating life and her friendships and her colleague basically in this coffee shop setting that one is illustrated by she beagle and she's a brand new illustrator and i really love that art like it was it was moonstruck diva like it was it was dreamy it had like that dreamy effect it also is is very positive the entire thing of that story is very positive you had some really good body representation both for size and for shape and for colors and you know the the whole shebang you had all the queerness or all yeah it was wonderful most of these characters was some sort of magical being apart from one character who kind of like they don't look down on but they're kind of like oh that's okay you can be just human that was kind of like the attitude towards it and i really really liked it it was kind of funny and then you have this story inside the story which is the art style is very different like we're going for something that's a little bit more dreamy to something that is stark like cartoon this color and that color and straight edges and everything like that and that one is following a story that the main character moonstruck really loves and she's trying to become a community author for that story and in everything in both installments you have those two story kind of like narrating each other like i didn't like the second story i really liked the first story which is why i kind of like i got a little bit restless reading about the second story but i can kind of see the importance specifically in the second volume i can kind of start seeing the importance of it being there because it adds some elements especially when they start me and when the character starts making notes in it it's like a side comment kind of thing so i get it but i didn't particularly like it i preferred volume one in this story and i gave that four star and then i gave the second one three and a half star i think i will continue i think there's a third volume out but it's not on my library app so i don't know i'm gonna get it right now but i will at some point continue because i did really like it then i've read another non-fiction book i can't believe i read three non-fiction in one month maybe that's why i read 12 books i read unashamed musings of a fat black muslim by leah vernon i did not know who leah vernon was i picked this because i got a library pick out of my ring of tbr as one of my prompts for that game and i went out on my library app and there it was and i was doing fuckathon for fat phobia so i wanted someone that was a plus site i had a representation for a plus-sized character so moonstruck did cover that prompt but also i picked up undershane balia vernon turns out that leah vernon is internet famous and i did not know who she was she is a plus size model but she talks a lot about feminism but then she also talks a lot about feminism in the muslim community and fashion in the muslim community and how she's trying to make these body positive situations being a muslim and how she kind of like she talks about it all in her book she does not narrow her own book but the narrative was really really good and i really liked the narration i learned a lot it was really fascinating i learned a lot about her life and her view of the muslim community and her experience in the muslim community being black etc i learned a lot i learned a lot about how men behave around plus-sized women like as if you have to give the compliment but the sexualization of plus-sized women is just oh as an ace person i find it really ugh but my only problem with this book was the way it was laid out she was good at writing individual parts and i really like the way she formulated those parts you're there for the memoir you're there for the whole journey from the childhood all the way to when she's writing the book there was a few places where i've been like whoa well are we going back in time i was getting a little bit confused at certain points especially when she stops talking about her relationships part and she started talking about her modeling career and all of that stuff and there was a little bit overlap in the beginning there because she was talking about how she started modelling career while her husband was around and i'm like wait you did not talk about that while you're talking about your husband so i had some small issues about that but in the end i really enjoyed it and i gave it three and a half stars the last book i read this month was the raven king by magazine this is the last in the raven cycle series and i'm not satisfied i want more please thank you i can't wait for the tv show if there is ever going to be any there is big rumors about it i love the ending i thought the animal was really satisfying as an ending like yes i didn't get all my answers it ended the way i kind of wanted it to end without me actually knowing if that even makes any sense like i'm not going to spoil it for you but yes but i would like to pick up what's called core down the hawk which follows one of the characters in college years because this is all like high school years yes when did i become australian and i enjoyed the whole series it's taken me years to finish the series but i'm really glad i finished it because i finished another series yay me i gave the raven king four and a half stars because it was a very satisfactory ending but i wasn't entirely burned away so that's all my 12 books for this month on top of that i have the goal of reading one physical and one ebook that's a month i had to be both was my tbr that's that's getting unhauled because i don't want it anymore and you might have said oh you hold up another book that's also like a physical copy yeah but this is not there because i bought this specifically for that vlog i have zero regrets and then for my ebooks it was both the sources to the crown and and and and the raven king those are both on my ebook shelf i really enjoyed the month even though most of these books were audiobooks like even though when i had the opportunity to like pick an e-book i picked the audiobook that was my july how was your july i also didn't nanowrimo in july that did not go so well but that's okay i wrote 12 books so we're even i think my average around this month is about four star flat i didn't hate anyone i think my favorite this month is either the raven king because there's so such a satisfactory ending or blackwater sister you know what i'm going to take it back blackwatch assist is my favorite this month i highly recommend you watch the vlog where i'm just like really excited about it and then i'll catch you in the next one so enjoy happy reading [Music]

Channel: Ivy’s Library Card

Views: 245

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: booktube, wrap up, reading wrap up, July wrap up, book reviews, book reviews 2021, July wrap up 2021

Id: GFkczQTzjOc

Length: 26min 19sec (1579 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 16 2021