Let's Vote in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2021 (ft. Alexa Donne)

okay i think we're live um me and alexa were just sitting here chit-chatting and i realized that we were over time about christy about agatha christie adaptation so you know priorities um but welcome everyone sorry the cats are in the process of making mischief but that's just their lot in life um tonight we are back for live i know that i haven't done these as much in the last few months just because i haven't been up to it but i did this last year i did a live voting for my goodreads ballot and i had fun doing that and i thought it would be even more fun if i had somebody to roast them whilst while it's voting because we all know well anyway we'll get into it yay alexa looking so beautiful compared to my slovenly grossness um i spent 100 on pat mcgrath so i had to worth it at an at a soul level it's on sale right now if anyone wants to go ruin their life so what is it the palettes that are i saw like a post about that but i didn't read it is 35 off and usually when she does those sales it's everything except for the most recently released makeup but like i got the utopian dream palette which is the latest mothership i got that on the last sale pre-black friday i got that 30 off is it on sephora or is it just on her website pat mcgrath's website i i only shop there directly now because um sephora never goes deeper than 15 and pat will go up to 30. so actually the black friday is 35 well that tempts me then because i i got one of the mini palettes and i did very much enjoy it and i've had my eye on a brawn the bronze mothership whatever that one was i've heard it i've heard people love that one i only haven't gotten that this is the makeup stream now uh i because it's a little warm for me and thus far because they're so expensive i've only invested in the cooler toned palettes alexa i'm telling you us like pale like i can't tell what color your eyes are they like a green oh they're green but they can go gray you gotta go for the warmth like i think that would be like no no no no no lovely like brown i go orange if you're not careful uh i i wear bronzes don't get me wrong but that specific palette when i looked at it they're real pat can go real orange even in some of her like her other ones like there are a couple of goldy bronzy colors that throw they make me look a little sickly i have to be careful which colors i use in these well because i'm i'm pink under here oh i'm well you can you not see in this lighting i have no makeup on and i literally look like i am sunburned i'm not i'm just all the time this isn't a pat thing because i don't want to let but viewers will know there has been a video or two where i've bought a new palette i've been very excited and then you watch it back and i look like a just a vampire i look like i'm dying i look like i'm jaundiced because i went orange and pink on the eyes it can go real wrong with me well i i'm wondering if you're being harsher on yourself than the reality maybe because i kind of feel like there's no such thing as like a color people can't wear it's just a matter of like i don't know i don't like looking jaundiced that's that's a color can do that so even my favorite color can do that green if you're not careful green is my favorite color well it's one of my favorite colors anyway this is the makeup challenge anyway makeup like whoa um we may come back to this at some point uh we are just a steady in contrast basically though is where i was going is that alexa looks lovely and i look awful because i was working today and i went over one of my friends had surgery so i went over to work at her house in the afternoon to sit with her so i was adult babysitting um and that's just that's just where we are in life today um in the chat pat's too expensive to justify especially with all the eyeshadows i own and don't use yes which is why i wear like i just look like this now because i use the pat shadows because i spent that much money on them also they it is some of the best quality eyeshadow i've ever bought unfortunately it's worth the money so yeah well and also i've realized this horrible thing which is i figured out how to turn my expired eyeshadow into watercolors that's cool so i no longer feel as bad about my collection because if they go bad i'll just turn them into watercolors and so i'll actually give you my old palettes i have many in my graveyard where it's like i can't believe i bought that peer pressure youtube it's a bit you know it's but you know what like we all just survived a plague and i feel like this is uh i bought rare beauty from the sephora sale so i love rare beauty especially those lips i wanted yeah i wanted to try it so i got a little the gift sampler so this i have the lipstick i managed to put the blush on um though it might be the lighting what's that blush everybody complains about the cream blush but i think it's beautiful you just can't use very much of it so careful i still pulled it on lightly because when i tried it last night when i first got it i looked like a baby prostitute so it was a thing but yeah but like blush forward is in yeah you know what i mean so like i don't know i just feel like those blushes are are great and everybody hates on them i really want to try the highlighter the cream highlighter and then the lip is fantastic i love that formula it's nice also speaking of this for sale which i think is now over but or just like holiday gift sets uh usually fenty puts out their little lip gloss set for holiday and if you want a high quality lip gloss and you'd like to try that formula there's like usually four or five of them in the kit and it's like 25 i think so see i'm in too deep i can't buy more lip gloss so i don't know it was ten it's it is currently go check it out ten dollars for select lip products from high-end brands so i re-upped my bare minerals but anastasia beverly hills is also having a sale so i also bought lip gloss from that website several days ago i bought a lot of product i have a problem it's yeah i'm on a no buy well not no no buy but like no more lip gloss because i went a little ham and i've got to use it so that's right like i i will permit myself to buy um select uh i can do blush i actually just bought more blush because i don't own a lot so it's like yeah yeah i i have too much blush now i was in that position and now i have too much um okay anyway so uh makeup like whoa we're here to we may come back to this topic but we're here to talk about goodreads awards which i have not i like clicked in because i wanted to see before i asked you to come on alex i was like i i need to see who else is nominated nya so i looked at that i haven't really looked at the actual ballot yet i've just seen illusions online so i thought it might be fun to do like my live blind react okay and then also you did some light voting so okay well and so actually let me share let me share my screen um also i thought we could talk about the differences in the voting this year because like i don't fully understand that but i think that you have like the actual full understanding well so the nutshell is they've discontinued right in voting entirely and selfishly people are hi i i've been on the channel before i am an author so i have an agenda a personal agenda when it comes to these things i had a book come out this year and i had it in the back of my mind i should finally weaponize my youtube channel to get a write-in vote for the goodreads choice awards and then they got rid of it so i went tonight book shimmy awards go vote for me please i've nev i've literally never been nominated for any of these things before because i'm just not that visible enough um so i was disappointed but also as a reader i have used that option before to write in books that get overlooked because it's all bs it's like what are the most popular books on goodreads the books that were already popular yes i'm always representative of the best books of the year like last year i wrote the best books but really this should say the most popular books yeah that's good right awards are good to measure in my opinion is popularity it's just so frustrating so like last year i wrote in the night swim by megan golden and it made it to the finals and yeah clearly other people did too so i also heard that ray bearer was a write-in last year and it just sucked because that's i thought discourse on twitter about this change and i'm like what other books uh will be overlooked because they got rid of this option that they claim no one used but i'm like that's clearly not true well and i feel like i mean i take their point that they i has a ryden ever actually won i don't know if it's ever actually won no but that's not the point yeah to me as as a woman who will as a writer who will probably never be a bride but might like to be a bridesmaid in in these things because it does help like from an author's perspective maybe you can speak to this but like my understanding is that it is helpful to be able to say that your books made it it's a huge boost or it can be and it's mostly just that we we're in a space where we have so little like it's very one percent and 99 like one percent of the authors have all the wealth and then there's the rest of us and it's like come on goodreads late stage capitalism is just we can't get away from the one percent anywhere we go yeah but no i mean when i so i know someone who knows someone who knows someone um i won't say the name of the author but they can i mean you can make guesses this is any of the top others authors they're like yeah they're royalty statements seven figures there are authors who make seven figure payouts twice a year from their publishers yeah they're making millions of dollars toy that is insane to me and that's 10 of sales yeah just imagine that yeah it's absolutely bonkers well it's like that makes me think did you see on twitter the villain of the day was that author's husband who was complaining about his wife writing that guy writing a book at lunch and getting a hundred thousand dollar buy for it i was like yeah you need to go sit down and shut up little boy that she's using her lunch hour to bring six figures in the advance well let's be real after agent fees and taxes it's it's a mid-five yes that's true but still she says splitting hairs yeah the fact that somebody is getting in what is allegedly or not allegedly but like at least on paper is a six-figure advance i'm like i'm glad someone's getting that kind of money because that doesn't seem to be a thing so much anymore yeah all right um but yes so all that to say this is not actually the best but it is the most popular and i also i guess i enjoy erin joy may not be the right word i am always interested in this because i think it's interesting just to get a pulse check on what goodreads think well two things what what are popular books for the year on goodreads and then also how goodreads categorizes certain genres because one thing that i used to like about the write-in was that it at least could be somewhat of a corrective for categories where it felt like there were not the correct genre books in that category so like romance to me is notorious for this of like there's these books that are nominated and you're like a nobody's heard of this or b like nobody thought of this as a romance but all of a sudden it's in the romance yeah category so i do miss that i'm annoyed that they don't have um write-ins for that reason so yep anyway and also just again selfishly why a is such a massive thing and it's literally science fiction and fantasy and then all other y a and i'm like which is weird i feel like it's it is for me surely someone said that like they would have voted for me if it was the way thriller category i'm like imagine a why a mystery and thriller category they'd i mean i wouldn't win karen would but there'd be so many books i i hate having to choose sometimes because i'll be like oh i really like this fantasy but i love this thriller but that rom-com was good too and that's so hard to pick well and also like i even if i know this is like a weird this would be a weird division but i almost wish they'd had they would have like why a romantic versus non-romantic contemporary because i mean it's like rom-coms versus issues yeah and i i wish that like um maybe like a drama in a comedy category in contemporary like that the stakes are not romance yeah yeah like that even that i think would be an improvement but um yeah i think what we've we've realized is that goodreads ain't taken suggestions from any of us so like yeah i i'm just so mad about like their their ui really sucks s someone gave me a one star before my book had even been turned in and goodreads doesn't care i'm just like you're garbage goodreads you're garbage they don't care i'm fine no they her ui is terrible they don't also they're owned by uh lord voldemort aka amazon so like what else do we expect um let's see here yeah being nominated is exposure that's exactly what it is yeah um and and for many authors that's really valuable but what i saw we could talk about when we we look i mean i'm seeing this more and more that it's like uh um it's like a feedback cycle where the books oh my boss is calling me even though i'm off the clock so can you give me just a minute yes why don't you just uh pause and we'll we'll just yes um okay well alexa will be back but yeah so one of the things that i wanted to talk about was ryden which i think we have talked about the pros and cons of that somewhat um let's see here yeah i like i said i i also just kind of like to check in with it as sort of a pulse check on what people are enjoying in different genres and i think for from like a content creator's perspective it can be good fodder for like reading lists so like i know books and la la has done that i think sam from thoughts on tomes is doing a read of the sff categories um books with emily fox has done goodreads reading challenge like i think a lot of people um a lot of people on youtube we use it as a basis for content ideas so for that reason also i'm always intrigued by it hello hello um like the grammys they don't really matter but they're fine yeah um yeah i'm seeing a lot of people are wishing that the write-ins were still there oh they got rid of the picture book category i did not know that well that's a bummer i feel like i feel like ashley should make a video about why that was a horrible move i yeah i think a lot of us would enjoy that but like i said even just like a drama versus comedy kind of division might be helpful for contemporaries yeah i feel like the categories are just not very well defined um hey hopefully everything's okay it is this the perils of having day job and it's right before thanksgiving and i'm taking tomorrow off just the thing i know i know i felt so bad i had to call one of my co-workers on monday morning and she was like supposed to be off this week and i'm like i'm so sorry but like if i don't call you you're gonna be so mad when you get back and see that this didn't happen so i'm saved to be honest i will probably check my email tomorrow even though i have the table task no it's just it's the q4 crunch i gotta spend all this budget it's a nightmare i know i know um i work in finance so i feel like you know you you know but yeah all my sweet little accounts trying to like close the book and do planning for next year it's like whole what did i miss sorry i had to turn off the volume which i just was doing uh a couple of comment check-ins but i think i think it's time for us to just dive in so that we can react and i'll say the thing i was going to say when we get there because i have a keen observation okay mostly me complaining okay we're here for that and have you looked at these yet i looked at some categories like i looked at mystery and i looked at ya that's oh and i think i looked at non-fiction but like briefly so you're going to get a lot of just hot hot reactions here guys yeah i did not it's like fiction historical fiction i didn't look at fantasy romance sci-fi no no none of those i've only seen just like people talking about particular things they were excited to see or to not see so well has been prompting you like this book you read is nominated and that's what kind of took me to some categories so okay so usually i will say that i'm often i've often not read anything and oh i should also mention just because this is gonna piss people off even if i have not read anything in a category i will still vote okay i was gonna ask you about your strategy okay well these are meaningless is not the right word but like i mean i'm not voting for a president guys like it's just and i feel like i'm i'm voting with like the kind of book i would like to win a category because as you say i approach this the same way i approach voting for public office when there is not a candidate for whom i am very passionate i vote against evil yes or or like when i was a kid my dad would always take me to the voting booth which if you have children i think that that's a good idea and he told me that if you don't know who to vote for just vote for the woman or the non-white person literally how i do it in a lot of the small la elections where i don't know who anyone is yeah because he's like they've he's like if they've gotten to this point they've had to work harder than the other person on the ballot and so they'll work harder for you and i was like okay it's good logic i like that um okay so we'll see if i've read anything in this category because often i have not so i see a sally rooney that checks out um i haven't read the gunkle but i know my aunt read it iron gunkle and reading it is kind of ironic um you know she really liked it i'm here for the covers yeah the covers are nice so far let's see here oh jennifer winer okay weiner winer i never know um ellen hildebrand golden girl is this the one that she got mark still writes books someone's buying them i'm sure yeah okay the wish i'm just glad it's not in romance so so what's the thing about transition baby i heard that that was probably that was supposed to be good yeah and i didn't get around to that one but i heard it was really good was this that wasn't mad about reviews am i confusing that was something else uh no is it isn't that the memoir the lauren huff okay yeah that was uh no no no no that was a different one that this one i thought it was ellen hildebrand who got mad at somebody on instagram who did a review of one of her books i feel like it's just been an entire year of authors losing their on social media so which i mean we've all been cooped up so i mean i get it but sorry if that wasn't on hildebrand i apologize i don't mean to slander her i'm just somebody i mean get out of here correct me if i'm wrong um no google google supports you yeah it was you are correct i just had to literally search ellen hilderbrand drama and that came up so what a world what a wonderful world we live in okay so so far i think i'll vote for d transition baby if i've not read any of the other ones oh so danielle in the comments kind of wandered into what i was going to say my sidebar a lot of oprah oh pics yeah yes uh that's you are also going to see that in the y section and what's so frustrating for an author against just complaining um it's become this feedback cycle where if you're never going to get on selected by those sorts of things and not not all books are book club fiction um you'll never get nominated for these things and it's becoming this feedback cycle they have the most sales they have them they explode on things like goodreads people like and it just it's it sucks when you're which reese is very hit or miss for me like for instance i loved um firekeeper's daughter like i think that's a fantastic book i'm assuming it's nominated and if it's if it is i likely will vote for it i won't spoil you okay um but like uh what was it the sanatorium i was like this feels very it was fine but i was like i don't understand why this got picked for her book club so i don't know i just feel like i'm hit or miss on her picks a lot of times yeah um okay so so far well louise erdrich also like a living legend so that could be a good person to vote for fiction's tough it's like battle of the oh i've read this one i've read one and i liked it so i guess that's what i'll vote for in this round yay and jessie's really like i'm friends with her yeah well also i i'm i'm glad it's in the fiction category because it got sold as her next book is like the bad art friend but like a book and i don't think it was inspired by that she sold it recently this is public it's basically one off two authors who know each other one successful and the other isn't and one is stalking the other and it's like it's like single way female but with publishing and i'm like yes i mean i just made up that pitch it was something like that and i was like inject this into my veins okay well we love authors first yeah i know it was on twitter uh she sold in like a five book deal to berkeley something like that yeah they're re-upping her like majorly that well i assume that means that this book did pretty well yeah oh and uh ta summers mentions book of the month as well it's the same thing it's the feedback cycle of once you get picked for one thing you get all the other things and it's just this feeling of like uh if anyone is a fan of muriel's wedding i am one of my all-time favorite movies it's why can't it be me why can't i be the one she cries in a wedding dress that's that's that's my mantra not just me all authors who aren't those authors well and that's part of why like for instance um so like i recently started doing uh sponsorships from book of the month and part of what i want to talk about for them is like i do think that they have started since they got called out making moves towards being more inclusive in their picks and that's part of why it's important to support companies when they do that because something like book of the month club can move a tremendous number of books for authors who may not get that opportunity otherwise so like interestingly on the other side you make like no money off of that yeah it's a special edition which you you get much lower it's the so it's the exchange and you're just going to like make money off it it's good yeah yep that is interesting well now i feel bad that i've no no i mean no it's good it's it's still good for books it's just yeah it's it's like when you you when you read a book from the library it's still good it's still good i mean you still do get like it still counts as like hey that's a lot of bucks oh kitty cameo oh she's down here come here i want to show you kitty whoa you've got a marple i've got a bronte yeah um okay well anyway uh daily friends i thought this was really fun and quite unique i've not read a book quite like it so that's gonna be my vote what's your vote alexa do you have one because i know her i will vote for jesse i it's still on my tbr but for i vote for friends i'm in solidarity yeah yeah yeah but sometimes like i will i will i will know my friends nemesis and vote on their behalf in categories if i see them so and i hope that they would do the same for me yeah you know it's a two-way street party i'm strapping in because this category is almost always a show so i'm assuming because we know who who will win and it won't be the best uh mystery or thriller of the year it'll be the biggest names can i just say that i'm gonna be very annoyed if i've not read a few of these because i actually did a pretty good job of keeping up with some of the big thriller releases this year so if i have nothing to vote for i'm going to be annoyed well i think yeah okay um well i've not read any of these top four but oh you have to read the push oh my god it was so good it's a good method what what's the pitch for it it is a it has a trigger warning it has a content warning but it is in the pitch it's this woman who's divorced from her husband and they had a ten-year-old daughter and it's her writing her ex-husband a letter explaining her side because she is convinced that there's something wrong with their daughter and that she pushed their her other child in front of a bus who and the child died it's basically it's like the good sun because i'm old and that's my or the bad seed but like with a women a domestic fiction spin because it's also a little literary yeah it's really it's brutal it's hard to read you know that a kid dies in it yeah i struggle where like there's a child yeah then you but like the question mark is or is there a history of mental health problems in her family because you get snapshots of her mother and her grandmother who both were bad moms and it's this weird it's it's like quasi it's like up market a little literary i loved it um kara thomas and courtney summers recommended it on a live stream i watched and i was like well if they say it's messed up i have to read it so but yeah if you if kids is a thing be careful and i have the plot on hold the library um i'm gonna i'm supposed to read that soon supposed to be really good um yeah i'm seeing some people saying that they liked like the plot i'm seeing a lot of hype for razer blade tears which i don't know that one um jane harper that makes sense you need to talk about kevin that would be a good comp for it it's a similar vibe of where you're questioning is she right or is she wrong is the question because it might have genuinely been an accident and she's projecting so okay well i think it's at the top of the voting because i think that these are ranked by oh really yeah because they well at least in years past i think that i misremember this they would like move based on how many votes they had so maybe i'm wrong there but um okay sherry lapina i've not read that but i at least get that i don't auto buy her anymore because i disliked enough of her books but i've really enjoyed like her premises are great and then i have problems but they're not always my tropes so it's like but we both watched of course okay sorry i was wrong they're randomized and they're ordering oh that's good um all her little secrets i did see this one i found that one it's like i think this is more cozy yeah and that's the other thing about this category it's so imperfect because some of these i'm like oh i guess that would go in this category paula hawkins i haven't read that i have the good sister but i haven't read it yet okay i was right i was guessing that this would be on here i've not it was i loved it i i yeah did you read it no it's on my tbr like it's on my bed bedside as like an imminent read because i guessed it would be on here it's um it was it's my favorite alice finney so far it's really good what the heck and i hated the maidens well i haven't read it yet ama i'm really annoyed though alexa because i have not yet read any of these and i did a pretty good job of like keeping up with releases this year i feel like a woman missing and a wife upstairs is on my tbr so i have all of these uh where is it it's somewhere around i feel like this year i feel like a lot of these are more like up markety suspensey and not what i would call the best thrillers of the year well so again well let me just also pitch for the fact that i am like one of the few people on youtube i feel like who wants an actual mystery and not just a thriller so i'm also always annoyed that there's like it's always so dominated by domestic thrillers because i'm like can get an actual mystery please also why is stephen king on here always this and then colson whitehead who is a fantastic writer is this an actual mystery or is this like literally i bet it isn't and that i see a couple of these covers that clearly look like literary fiction i'm like that doesn't seem fair yeah it's our commercial category because i feel like he wins whatever category he's in i'll take that as long as the maidens doesn't win i really hated that book well i'm gonna vote for rock paper scissors because this is an isolation trope and it's like imminently on my tbr so oh now's the question what did i vote for i either voted for the push oh no i voted for rock paper scissors because i voted for the push somewhere else we'll get there okay because ultimately i was like i just enjoyed like from an enjoyment level i enjoyed that book so much and i feel like that has to get my vote over like the trauma thriller as much as i enjoyed or suspense book i'm so freaking annoyed at this category though i am every year i don't know why i let it it doesn't i know it doesn't actually matter but oh someone said that they'd love your thoughts on the wife upstairs as booktubes resident jane eyre scholar i feel like maybe we should buddy read it or something at some point yeah i have a copy they sent me a copy um yeah i've got the meaning i just didn't get around to it this year where where is it i have it i have a copy around here somewhere um yeah maybe i'll i have a few of these on my tbr maybe i need to do like a quick prioritization of those before you have to read rock paper scissors so that you can talk to me about it because i don't know what you think and then i need you to read the maiden so that i can vent to you and i want to know what you think but bethany read it you have to join our our chain she liked it i hated it so i'm hoping i'm going to like it i mean i have it so don't you dare don't be crazy well i liked um what was it the silent patient like i didn't love it but i thought it was a well-done version of what it was last year so well i don't think this is a well-done version of what it is so the silent patient is better the wife upstairs was not thrilling at all okay it's probably i mean isn't that just the moniker thing where they label everything a thriller but so many books are suspense mysteries instead i did not live laugh love the wife upstairs but i thought the xx with the same author different name is super cute yeah i like the xx and actually i just read rachel hawkins's 2022 release which was reckless girls and i thought it was an actual isolated closed circle thriller which is rare i feel like they catfish us that on that on the reg um oh so like on netgalley yeah i might try to i had some problems with the writing in the last like quarter of it but i think if you like that trope it actually gives you the trope which i appreciated um nice no i'm i'm being double catted so there might be two coming at me from two angles what a luxurious life to be doubled except one of them definitely wants food because he always wants food so yeah i mean i feel him on that um okay so historical fiction my guess is that i will have read none of these so this will probably be me just voting for a non-world war ii based historical fiction what because i feel i mean okay controversial opinion i feel like historical fiction has been loki ruined by how dominated it is by world war ii fiction it's like guys i feel like we've told almost every story we can tell from this period like let's pick like even world war one like even if we just go like you know 20 years earlier that would be great i don't know um okay but anyway that's my my hot take for the evening okay so we've got have i heard of any of these well there's kristin hannah who i know is people love um i think that kate quinn book i think i have an arc of that that i haven't read because i like uh spy stuff what's going on another hair stopping world war two story well it's world war two but aren't they code breakers that's like they are but just on principle i'm not voting for a world war two story um okay i've seen people in the chat agree with me [Laughter] um okay let's see here i haven't read the last apothecary but i've at least heard of it a female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from men who've wronged them setting i'm into that three lives across centuries on a danger okay i'm i'm into that as a premise jonathan franzen we are oh i'm like auntie i wish that there was a against a vote i had a jonathan franzen joke in my next book and i took it out and i slightly regret that it was a pretty good like dig i am and here i have nothing but time for that dig um sweden okay i've not heard of any of these i think i've heard of the paris library but i think that might be world war two oh i bet it is based on the true world war two story i could tell from that freaking cover uh malibu rising i know everybody really likes this author but i've yet to have a title from her intrigue me enough to read it so yeah no same i also didn't realize that was historical okay the prophet says some lgbt black wrap okay i'm into that i like the cover of the dictionary of last words i have no clue what that is oh i like that too okay the love songs of w du bois i love that i love w.e.b du bois um but it's an oprah club pick so i feel like i don't want to i don't know this one's hard um okay i like this is my favorite of the covers but i mean i was excited when people told me about this i kind of want to read the lost apothecary that sounds good yeah this sounds like if i was just based on the descriptions this seems pretty rad but i think for like in terms of advocating for the kind of book i would like to win this i'm going to vote for the prophets also that's a great cover not as good as the other one i was looking at but um fantasy oh idea enough the dictionary so far okay so don't be fooled by this okay that was a that was a tough one i feel like i didn't have much to go on okay fantasy i also i feel like i did an okay job of reading some frontless fantasy this year so let's see i'm terrible with this so okay i read this but i did not like this nearly as much as um oh god oh god sarah j maas oh sorry that was like see yeah oh the sergey mass okay i heard this was great i haven't gotten around to it but i've heard it's really good i like this cover um okay we're not gonna do sarah j maas no chosen the beautiful i did read and i it it does technically qualify as fantasy but it's not very it reads more like magical realism like literary fiction i feel like um oh see this is interesting i couldn't put malibu rising down but it was instantly forgettable once read i hope yeah interesting yeah anyway um okay oh no i did read the unbroken i didn't love it it was a good first try but i don't think i would vote for it um i've heard this was great but i haven't read it yet oh damn guys oh oh good okay a master of jen i read and loved that one so that is what i will vote for i was like oh god am i am i gonna have another one where i don't have something to fully get behind okay we've got river solomon we've got zareta um yeah there's okay there's this is interesting list actually yeah there's some of these that i didn't realize weren't ya i'm part of the problem well also i'm just surprised because didn't did i don't know i'm surprised that i didn't see some of the bigger names on here i guess i'm also interested that this year the jennifer l armentrout is in this category instead of romance oh interesting that doesn't seem right well this same series won romance last year and i read that book and was um not impressed with it as the winner of the category let's say um i'm going to vote for a master of gen happily but it's actually an interesting lineup this year i feel like huh um oh look at this that's impressive i read all but two and i did the press impressive i can't english today it's been a long work day yeah england i mean english is hard on the on the best of days oh that's interesting sorry i shouldn't laugh i i actually literally know that pain except not as a best-selling uh award-winning author so you know yeah i guess once you're on top it's weird to not be on top yeah once you're used to winning it's hard to yeah well and so i guess that begs the question i mean i you can ask curation questions about a lot of these categories because at least in y.a it feels like they really do skim the top pretty well but it sounds like they've missed things in fantasy so it does beg the question of how they actually curate these selections uh yeah i don't know i mean there must be someone behind the scenes who goes that one yeah that's the thing is it it makes you think that maybe it's an i don't know my question is who at goodreads is responsible for this do they live in los angeles and can i take them to lunch can i make them some cookies do they need someone to walk around i'm kind of cool so i'm actually really not but uh i try i really am not cool i hey you're i'm you we're friends so what are you saying about my taste in people yeah but i think you also are an indoors kid who really likes home hobbies so i literally only take to los angeles i'm really not cool like i don't go out much it's though i do uh i do use my amca list frequently i go to the movies a lot which is a very elegant thing to do so that is the very la thing to do um okay well we'll move then to what whatever what's next romance let's see what let's oh let's look at all the covers that look the same but apparently these i don't have a problem with because i oh okay i'm already happy because my my best romance of the years are i already see it so um actually this is pretty this is much better than last year's list already from what i can tell so tessa bailey this looks like rom-com but don't let the cover fool you because tessa bailey is the queen of dirty talk so like they may look like cartoons but i'm assure you that they go to pound town by the way here's my thing i love the illustrated trend in adult romance even though i don't read it even though i think they all look the same i don't feel that way about y.a which is fascinating like i know that's weird of me but like well i know i'm in the minority for liking these covers because i think that this is making adult romance more approachable to people who may not have tried it and i feel like it's they're attempting to destigmatize a stigmatized genre which i know readers of the genre have mixed feelings about but um interesting dirty cartoons i also love the illustrator covers but i know i think it's a minority opinion like when i go to the bookstore like i like how colorful the section is like it's definitely very annoying when i look at these books so okay charlotte this is good i've not gotten through the list yet but i do find that goodreads is always underrepresenting historical and paranormal romance i feel like it's very dominated by contemporary well and to that end i would say they're probably dominated by trad pub trends because it's like i definitely feel they're they stick to that that's a good point i don't see a single well i don't know if this is a couple of these i'm not totally sure if they're indie but okay i will say this is on my tbr i haven't read it yet i have the sequel to this that i'm excited to read this love hypothesis is gonna get my vote because it's my favorite um romance of the year um soulmate equation is also really really good and is a romance the heart principle i heard mixed reviews on that one i when i decided to think of it as general fiction i liked that's what i heard that it's not really a romance it's got romantic elements in it but i would i don't know i had an interesting conversation with um jen reed's romance we have like we were recording a podcast and afterwards we had an interesting conversation about this book because i think it it opened some interesting questions about like what makes romance romance um because on paper it does technically meets the stated criteria have a discussion yeah you're smarter than me and i like like i like it when you pontificate and then i learn things yeah okay okay i told you that before this is the news well it's about book stuff i don't know and then it has elements of like self-harm um and emotional abuse that again in a general fiction i'm okay with but in a romance i'm just not sure it belongs in that like i don't know anyway i have mixed feelings about it i can see the argument either way um oh that's funny why is there so much math in these titles because we're finally getting heroines and stem which i love i love this as a my girlfriend hello miranda yeah my friend oh hi miranda uh let's here i like the x hacks i thought that this was really cute but it has a low rating i think because i think people who are expecting like a true poem probably disappointed with it but but it's adorable that cover i know well it's basically like it it's a con it reads like a contemporary but it has witches in it oh so i thought it was just fun um oh okay good i read neon gods this weekend because i was guessing it was gonna be on this list and controversially i do not like this book i don't understand there's a comment in the chat who also did not like it wait where let's see uh lol loli's library okay lily i'm with you here i don't think it's it just it would have been good if it had been half the length but it's like i don't understand why this is so hyped now the the sex scenes gave what they were supposed to give like the sex and it is well done but i don't need 400 pages of that so so it's like plot what plot except it has a bunch of plot that you don't need well there is if you if you call like um kinky sex plot then yes i think it's a lot no i'm saying like if the sex is the good part that's plot what plot where you don't need a plot except it sounds like it has 400 pages of plot you didn't need oh yeah yeah sorry that's fan fictiony uh plot with plots are great okay i'm feeling and feeling less oh okay everyone feels this way i love it um oh my gosh you dnf'd at 85 that was when things actually started happening in the book you gave up right when they finally we finally found a non-sex related plot um it's not i would describe it as urban fantasy romance probably it's like a greek mythology retelling of hades and persephone's persephone's persephone but not really like my i'm gonna i'll do a real like eventually for this i'll include it in a video but there's a jill miles short story that is actually an erotic hades persephone retelling that i think is actually more accurate to the myth um and jill miles has a pen name for ruby dixon so of course you know she can do very little wrong am i in my world um okay so that was i did but i'm glad that i read this now because i have an opinion of it and i see it here and i guessed it would be here okay this would be my runner-up would be actor a.g brown that was really a good list like i haven't read these but i know a lot of these books on this list yeah this is actually a very good list especially compared to last year's which i was like i usually am like what the um but to somebody's earlier point like where is the historical romance and i think i see like two paranormal-ish ones so like this should really be called the rom-com not romance like because that's what they all are pretty much now the love hypothesis in my opinion was far and away my favorite romance i read this year so i'm happy to vote like i'm happy with this ultimately because it has who i want to vote for um but yeah i agree with people saying eve brown would also be a good choice um oh my gosh this like warms my heart i have yet to stir you wrong i mean i'm sure i will at some point but i'm glad that at least somebody else agrees with my opinions on romance because i feel like i'm in the minority a lot of times on this stuff so um i totally agree talia hibbert is just a queen okay let's move on to sci-fi we'll see how i do here do you read a lot of sci-fi alexa not anymore i'm terrible i actually in my q a i got a question was like are you ever going to read science fiction and fantasy again you only read nonfiction and thriller and i was like i'm a mood reader and since the world fell apart i only want to read thrillers and non-fiction sorry i yeah i'm writing thrillers so i just i don't know yeah i'm a mess but honestly even when i did read sci-fi i almost exclusively uh read why a sci-fi such as it was so i was going to say that that i wouldn't call myself well-read in um adult science fiction and fantasy i i wouldn't say it's like my number one genre but like i dabble um i do love nedia core4 so that is a possibility i enjoyed the first book um in this series i think i read that last year it was called a memory called empire that was a good one um oh i heard winter's orbit was good i heard that was great and then i do love kazoo ishiguro though that's my guess is that's more literary yeah that's the thing i think of that as literary fiction just like never let me go is literary fiction even if i mean it's like liberation but let's be real yeah but uh i guess that if that counts then i've read that sci-fi book there you go it's one of my favorite books never let me go oh yeah agreed it's probably in my top hundred books and like gosh i i included it in like a first lines video and someone's like i hated that book and like i refrained from saying like are you dead inside because like you're wrong i tried so hard reading that book uh well i just see i now see that martha wells is on here so future of telemetry here we go that will happily be my vote i think i think that's the only sci-fi title on my top 10 sff list so far this year um you read so much that's the other thing i just i don't read at a volume like i used to so i just miss out on so many books you're also writing books though so like you know that's part of the problem i read less and i spent nine months of this past year writing a book yeah so yeah i honestly kind of pieced that on nano in part because like hey puzzles be watching marple and perro but see like i'm on a reading kick and i'm enjoying it and i know it'll slow down if i go into draft mode again so i feel like those are excellent priorities exactly reading i gotta refill the well so though i'm reading a lot of non-fiction right now because that's the holds coming through at the library yeah and that's i got two new ones today so i think yeah i got an everest book last night that i requested like a month ago oh i love everest stuff because the last one i read wasn't what i wanted it to be and i was like i want this book and it exists and so i got a got a hold for it so i i like uh books when they talk about everest that like really dunk on rich people who have whack priorities and put uh the people of nepal in danger for uh climbing a mountain yeah i don't i just don't understand why you climb things like that exactly so i uh but i read these books and i'm like i read one i was like you're not examining your privilege i knocked a star for that i was like you you you're missing he was trying and i'm sure he's a lovely person he was trying so hard to be like woke at the appropriate intervals while completely missing a lot of the like sharper edge stickier politics of the whole thing with sherpas and and his wealth and whatnot and i was just like really takes all the whole system to task because it's it's it's out of control the the everest situation it's yeah i just don't underst i just don't want to die and i don't understand oh yeah no i zero yeah i'm like no that just sounds horrific and terrible um i have not read any other books excuse me by martha wells i probably should fix that but i see someone else saying the cloud roads is good by her so there you go um ursula's asking what's the book that just came on hold i'm guessing that's for me it's the third poll i forget the name of the author but it came out like a year or so ago and so i saw it was like they wrote a book for me um i also like context i like history of everest and i read a book about a guy who like was there when there was an earthquake and i just thought the book would be more like into thin air and it wasn't um and i was like no i want the historical context i want to like rail against rich who spend ninety thousand dollars to climb a mountain where they almost die and a lot of them do die and they're clogging the mountain and they're polluting and their dead bodies are just like slaying obviously well and i feel like this is a good segue into horror yeah i i like i i like just reading it i'm like i don't want to do any of this exercise this sounds painful and then you almost die and you're so out of your mind if you do summit because you have oxygen oxygen deprivation and you're slowly dying how can you even enjoy that i mean i also am just afraid of heights so oh yeah one hundred percent gonna hard pass on it so yeah for many me but not for me uh mount everest thriller when let's let me take it slow i'm riding an isolation trip thriller that has snow in it we're going to baby step this yeah um okay well i assume stephen king will probably win but let's just look at the rest someone else i don't read a lot of horror but i like some of these well i was wondering because i didn't see the final girl support group in mystery thriller so i guess they put it in horror which i can see i can i guess i can see that i want to know what that christina henry book is just because i like that cover i'm gonna look it up i've got a cat hmm which kitty is that this is hastings he stings oh i have we'll we'll talk later i have questions about hastings and paro um that we'll talk about later are they you mean like are they lovers no no i really don't like the the way that he's portrayed on the show for the crowd i've decided i'm going to watch the entirety of marple in the entirety of poirot on brickbox so for the first time so i've just been watching them and i really don't like hastings and i can't tell if it's the writing or the actor this is this is like the late 80s episodes though so it could just be that he's useless is he supposed to be useless yeah that's the whole thing he's he's he's real dumb he's very derpy okay if that's the point then i feel better i thought it wasn't intense he's the narrator in a lot of the paro stories and he's like watson but if watson we're just like real dumb he's yeah he's useless yeah okay all right i feel better now he i might warm to him yeah he's he's quite derpy which which aligns with my cat um i didn't pick that name for the for him for that reason but it's he's lived up to that name because my hastings the cat is pretty derpy we do love a good dark cat yeah yeah okay um all right just had to check i was like no no that's that's that's purposeful don't hold it and also that actor's name is hugh frazier and he is like the best audiobook narrator ever for um poirot books or for any christie he's like he's such a good narrator okay um so i'm pretty sure i'm gonna vote for final girl support group but let's see what else is in here i did not love my heart as a chainsaw it was fine i'm surprised that um that catrion award book didn't make it in okay well i've only read two of these but i definitely this is like one of my favorite books of the year so i'm gonna pick the final girls support group i might pick your brain leader because i was curious how it stands apart from final girls i'm sure it is i know they're different but i'm curious yeah it feels like a whole um there's been like a whole trend with that recently um the difference between horror and thriller i think is stakes they're gore or a fantasy element yeah and i feel like the stakes are a little different too thriller is far more likely to be like pulse pounding end of the world stakes horror is a lot more like personal like you're gonna die um and then yes it's tone and gore she says like as someone who doesn't i'm a wuss so i don't do a lot of horror and so that's where the lines are for me well and i i tend to like horror usually either skews towards the thriller end of things or towards the fantasy end um and i think i tend to like horror well i guess it depends like final girl support group is a serial killer thriller in my mind more than horror um which i enjoy but then i also like horror that's really like a kind of fantasy that is something i enjoy okay buddy right now a reader has some thoughts that are smarter than mine if you wanna it doesn't have to be gory yeah it definitely i'd say when i say gore i mean obviously there's like the literal that's like a movie thing but i i think for me it's like they'll cross a line thrillers won't that commercial thrillers won't and like i just i just think of i have a mentee who writes queer horror it's it's so good and they read like suspense fiction until goes real bad and like she's had agents who don't know to do that because it's darker than they're comfortable with it's basically horror and so we've had to like think about like uh we i might actually have her query it as adult because why almost won't go that dark he crosses lines with like killing people and how they die and that kind of stuff yeah yeah that's her specifically but yeah um and sorry people are correcting me there was um tone is so hard to pin down it's same thing with like suspense and thriller it's like i can't really tell you how to write the right tone i can tell you to read a bunch of them and then it's kind of like porn you know when you see it yeah you know when you see it it's the same thing we're like we're looking at some of these and we're like i don't think that's x i think that's literary fiction it's that same like weird line yeah um it gets really kind of murky yeah humor um i don't know if i will have read any of these yeah but i do like her and i don't anymore i i like his youtube channel so i may vote for that yeah um nick offerman is always solid yeah phoebe robinson oh quinta brunson i love her where is she oh yeah buzzfeed gal yeah i i know her from a black lady schedule okay and leslie jordan are you ready first uh let's see here okay i'm gonna move for black nerd comedy um black nerd problems just because i like i like that channel so why not moving on because i don't think we know much about this one oh okay this is not historical non-fiction though i think this is just like let's just see they usually break it out to two categories right if memoir okay yeah they've got three different categories for non-fiction so strap it there's a lot of it let's see i have not read i haven't any of these i've actually not even heard of these i heard this was great i've got it for the library i think i think i gave it five stars um i just i like the way she writes she like made me want to i would have read 100 pages more of it it was good i really liked um oh gosh what was her first one about race so you want to talk about race so you want to talk about race yeah that was really that was really good so yeah that i i've been meaning to pick that up because i like mediocre so much because yeah the writing and it was was really good so i could see mediocre john green okay knock it off bud sorry he's trying to like get his claws into the window where he will then be in pain and i will horrifiedly have to like grab him to save him from himself um okay cultish i read and very much enjoyed that i used that in my scientology video i did a few weeks ago a few months ago i didn't know that mary roach had a new book and now i do and so now i have another thing to request from the library she wrote working stiff about working in the coroner's office during i mean in new york but especially during 9 11 and it was really good she's a really good writer i tried and did not love her but i think it's just like her humor didn't click with me and that's just subjective like the writing itself i was like oh i can totally see why people like this but the humor just didn't totally work for me oh someone said fuzz was only okay compared to her others well i'll still get it from the library thank god for the library no i mean i'm the big dum-dum adult baby who did not realize until literally a couple months ago that i could uh get ebooks from the la public library i have lived here ten years and never had time to do that i'm a terrible person i know i before i got neck alliaxis i would just um look for amazon sales or not read a lot of books i would buy them when i wanted to read them and then i got neck alley and it's like a smorgasbord of free books yes and so i've just been a big weirdo who hasn't used the library this whole time oh yeah my mobile library ebooks at this point in audiobooks well that's the thing like that's my local library just sucks uh and now i'm like i love this i love all these ebooks um okay so then we'll go i picked cultish sorry that i got the wrong mary roach book it's weird because when i pulled it up on uh goodreads it totally oh there you go okay i see they're just similar sorry well then i should read stuff because i bet i'd like it i like that kind of stuff stuff well you should read working stuff which is a book about a corner boy are you such a terror memoir an autobiography okay oh stanley touch are these just gonna be all celebrity memoirs uh let's see i read a decent number of memoirs but i guess i just didn't read any of the last year there's crying in h mark that was supposed to be really good uh i didn't even hear about that one oh it i came up on my feeds a lot it's not a celebrity was she a part of um founding blm the me too movement that's right okay maybe i'll vote for her because i you know appreciate that buddy why are you just determined to be difficult yeah no i mean i've got this cat down here teddy haunting my my feet then he just jumped away there just need attention which i get um okay is there anything else yeah i've not i've not heard of really many of these so i'm just going to go with unbound i feel like i'm i don't have much interesting things to say about that one okay we'll go on okay i'm seeing a lot of co-signing on crying in h mart somebody's daughter was really good just nice all right i voted in this one you did okay you look at them all but then i'll tell you it's one of the best books i've read all year okay well bagman has rachel maddow associated i did listen to this podcast which was interesting um ibrahim x kindy we know that i'm a fan girl so that this one was really hard to vote in because another one of the best books i read this year wasn't it so two of the best books i've read this year are in this category oh okay i've heard empire of pain is fantastic it's great it's really um and i'm i'm still in the middle of say nothing i never finished it but his writing was really good in that one uh let's see here [Music] three mothers on juneteenth uh is this the uh facing the mountain no if you go all the way back to the top the woman they could in silence by kate moore it's amazing she wrote radium girls and this is about a woman who was committed to an insane asylum by her husband and she basically fought to free herself and change laws about women being their husband's property to commit to insane asylums like it was a stride for mental health it would you it was so good i didn't know who this person was uh but she has such a narrative writing style elizabeth is basically she writes it like she's a first person character it has i mean her husband's a bag of awfulness but it has like romance and intrigue and plot twist but like romance goes in quotes because like there's this whole thing with the guy that runs the asylum and she thinks they're connecting on like this intellectual spiritual level but of course you know that he's evil because i mean she's been he's literally running an asylum in the 1800s yeah yes but like it's like an hbo miniseries i really need it to be adapted for either tv or movie because it is like a focus features film where you're like you're shipping them and then he's the villain but her husband's also the villain and it's all real it's all real but it's it's quite sad like she goes into basically women would be committed for talking too much for having their own opinions for disagreeing with their husbands uh people would be committed for what we now would obviously see as gender non-conformity uh so queer people uh that you know basically it was women who didn't love their husbands anymore wink and men who didn't conform didn't want to get married and like you know obviously you read between the lines but they would just send they would commit them and there were no legal avenues and they would be there for the rest of their lives and treated horribly and a lot of them died yeah well i mean i feel like that has a lot of resonance with the free britney movement uh yeah i i did a virtual event she did and she actually brought up brittany that britney was on her mind when she was like researching and writing the book that like this hasn't stopped that you know your rights can be taken away because of some the someone decides quote unquote you're crazy and especially if you're a woman or a person of color or you know a gender non-conforming cis male or what have you or yeah what not um yeah that hysteria yeah already it's it's really interesting and you learn the history and how garbage it was i mean the biggest thing for me was reading it going oh i would 100 be committed by my husband 100 yeah one i talk a lot i have my own opinions i don't like church there's this whole thing where like uh she left her husband's church because he was a preacher um because it wasn't the reason she left the church at one of them his church was pro-slavery and she was an abolitionist which was another thing they used to say that she was crazy because she was an abolitionist depending putting a hold right so i voted for that it was hard not to vote for empire of pain because i thought it was brilliant but i just this one moved me i'm gonna vote for ibrahim x candy just because i feel like that's my brand but you have definitely sold me to read the woman they could not silence and i'm gonna read empire pain i've got i downloaded that one it was so good yeah i just i love uh corporate sociopathy so anything where it's like you cannot believe like the people who run these businesses and like how they just don't care yeah they they don't they just don't care and honestly um i'd have to finish watching it but that was my criticism of dope sick on hulu which was not based on empire of pain based on a beth macy book that i literally had to stop reading because like it was it's one of the only books i've ever dnf because it was upsetting me too much well that empire of pain will upset you but the thing that i thought dope sick that i didn't care for they humanized the sacklers and i know they're people but when you read empire of pain it's a very different portrait of what's a space david's in particular and i feel that the actor is a phenomenal actor but i was like no no you're giving him too much vulnerability and human feeling stop stop no he's a monster don't you know come on the book is illuminating um i know i throw away the word sociopath a lot but it has some very interesting anecdotal stories well but i mean i also just think when you're that rich and you grow up in privilege privilege like that i think it actually takes an extraordinary amount of work to truly see most of the rest of the world as human like truly you're equal or human in any way because you can be so removed from it um yeah no i think he's another level of pathological but the rest of the family yes they're just they're just rich um okay for graphic novel okay so i love john lewis so if i don't know anything else i may just vote for this um oh the adventure zone okay i'm gonna vote for that because i i read that one i've not i own this but i haven't read it yet so let's see here um okay i don't really recognize any of the rest of these so we're just gonna go adventure zone do you read a lot of graphic novels i don't i really am terrible i just read non-fiction and thrillers nowadays hey all reading is good reading ooh poetry i don't know have great this may be a i like the cover kind of voting category for me um or if i recognize any of these authors oh moth was supposed to be good oh i did hear about that also this is a great cover so maybe we'll vote for that oh but amanda gorman's on there i know her oh okay well i actually yeah like that i've actually read so i feel like that's probably what i should vote for she's a good egg she's like famous now so like i'm not talking to her or anything like because she's famous but i i literally knew her before back when you know no she was she's a right girl the organization i mentor with oh that's right i think you told me that literally she was 16 and i told people she was going to be president and i still think that's going to happen she's she's she has been phenomenal for years mind you still a teenager and that's what's so bonkers to see her grow up so much where i'm like yeah oh a baby good person that was like spine shivers down our spine moments um casual word by oprah like you do yeah okay debut all right let's get into this so we've got one i've already voted for the prophets so that that could be my vote um okay got a lot of different categories here i appreciate that oh firekeeper's daughter that's probably what i will vote for um [Music] yeah that's what i'm gonna vote for what did you vote for in this category i voted for the push okay because because i've read it and that was my consolation that i voted for rock paper scissors that i would vote for it here because it is a pretty extraordinary debut um but i mean it's cause i write i've read so little and i was just so excited to see a book i'd read hey that's that's why this is popularity man like you just you see something you're excited about and you just go best young adult fiction okay that's right i did glance through this just to see who all was in the mix here okay most of this looks pretty right what you'd expect yeah and that's why i do wonder about how they've created some of these because like why a it's pretty clear to me how it was curated these are with only a couple exceptions the biggest books of the year yeah and a lot of reese's book club picks which is one of the trends that i noticed i'm friends with sophie she's great read her book perfect on paper um shout out to so last thing she's she's one of the few where where like sophie's not a huge bestseller she should be because she's my friend she's not a lead title she didn't get a ton of marketing so i honestly think it's incredible that she's on here um she has a lot of readership and fans but like she's good most of these other books were like reese's book club picks or lead titles bestsellers so yeah i did read the inheritance games i haven't read the hawthorne legacy yet but i love still on my tbr um but i'm gonna vote for firekeeper's daughter again because that was one of my favorite books of the year so but yeah i mean i at least get i get this list like this makes sense to me like imagine what we could have had with writings i know and i don't just refer to myself selfishly but like i just like because there's so many way books published also imagine if we had a separate category for thriller well or yeah i now that i've proposed it i do think it's right which is i think there should be a drama and a comedy for why a contemporary like ones that are like heavier in tone and ones that are lighter in tone i feel like that's that at least would be helpful um let's see here we've got a lot of aces spades votes we got some yolk concrete rose cousins oh okay oh is box in the woods only a one book mystery because that i might try that was my issue with that trilogy was that it should have at most been a duology so maybe i'll try box in the woods because i like the setup of that one okay sff for y a let's see if i've read any of these again usual suspects for the most part yeah i mean gilded ones that's who i expected leigh bardugo aidan thomas holly black oh i stopped reading this series because the second one was so bad that i decided i only know people have read the first one so i don't know i like the first one it was very soapy um but the second one was not good okay let's see here i haven't read any of these same but i personally i'll tell you i voted for uh jay for jiren because she's on youtube or they're on youtube and they're great iron widow where that's like that's who i voted for vote for your okay uh i'm trying to like i don't even know i i don't really have any sense of this um i just you know i do like this color you know that's all no no shade to her except she doesn't need my help sarah j mas doesn't even help so i mean i like this cover if we like this person sure i think okay they're sassy yeah i'm bummed because i i did read a few why a sff this year so i'm saying well again imagine if we had a write-in option some of the books that could have ended up on the list because exactly that's a very slept on list yeah um it's it's certainly missing good books from the year i'm sure i mean they always are you can't win essentially write in needs to come back is what i mean it does middle grade and children's so let's see how many uh uncle rick related titles we've got we've got one gracie that's a wreck and i know gracie gracie's great um three four huh which again imagine a writing option because like i can think of a couple middle grades that would have been great to write in not to be mad at uncle rick but there are books that are not from his imprint i do love uncle rick um i read and enjoyed this that they randomly sent this to me and i thought it was good i think i'm going to vote for amari in the night brothers actually oh yeah everyone loves that one it's so good it's a debut and i think for a debut it was really really strong also i love this cover it was very wholesome which is like what i want from middle grade root magic was also very good so i feel like that would be a good actually red i'm impressed i read as much in this category as i did i have daughter of the deep but i haven't read it yet but i'm gonna vote for amari in the night brothers i also feel good because i just read that last weekend so i feel good that yes i read that i snuck it in right before um let's see here okay i think we're getting close here was that oh that was it oh really oh yeah there's no cooking category this year i need to read more um there was no picture book yeah they didn't have i got rid of picture books yeah um well okay so now that we've been through them thoughts i mean yeah it's my main thing is just it's it is what it is it's it's a popularity contest and yeah oh well even aside from my own bitterness like i i guess i i was eligible last year in the sense that a book came out but it wasn't ever going to happen and i felt the same way about last year's but there was the writing option so i wrote in some where i'd be like oh they totally missed this book that was amazing and i just feel like they're always going to miss miss things because they've got some weird rubric that we don't know exactly what it is and it's always going to be limiting so and it's also timing wise i feel like is always awkward because they have well the cousins is on there and that came out last year because it's november and november well and and there'll be books i feel like it was even worse last year but this i'm sure it happened this year too where like if you're voting right now maybe a book is eligible that came out like last week yes and then sometimes those books are the ones winning just because it's a popular author and i feel like that's always kind of a weird dynamic so yeah definitely feel like is the most popular season for like the biggest authors and they they'll really start right before the holidays yeah yeah so i just i feel like they've got i think it's a far from ideal uh award system and yet i always follow it i don't know why it is fun i mean even just going through there a couple of the categories i saw books that i didn't know that i need to investigate because they look interesting to me so it's true well and i mean literally i just placed a hold at my library as we were speaking based on your in fairness i had to give the elevator pitch yeah um it should hire me yeah i feel like i i i'm gonna let's be positive i will say i feel like the romance category this year was far better than i think it's been in the last several so someone i feel like yeah did something to make that better um there must be someone on staff who has some control over the final nominations and slips in their favorites right which great job if you've got it you know like i'd love to be able to kind of put my thumb on the scale of who the finalist was but yeah so far from perfect and yet we can't look away um but alexa you were saying that there's a different award that you were telling people to go write you in for or vote for you oh oh i i know i succeeded in being written in i mean it's because it's all like the first round is open the book shimmy awards for the epic reads thing it's it's it's all i have it's a small piece i'm nominated for something i'll take it take it using my power for good or evil i don't know yeah i've never thirstily asked my youtube uh subscribers to do something like that for me but i i was like now's the time so uh yeah i mean go for it i say also i think book tick is tick tock the someone who made romance category better i think if if if it had been tick-tock i feel like it would have all been like daddy l arma trout nominated yeah um i'm not complaining about that but i mean i i don't see good reads full-throatedly having an idiot also i don't i didn't see tic toc impacting the way a category that didn't feel like tick-tock books other than maybe whatever also tick-tock if they had been impacting romance surely there would have been a barbarian on there and there was not sadly i mean to my triggering that was someone who was reading the whole series in the span of a week so they regaled us with the recaps of every book so oh i have an hour-long recap of my original journey through that series so if people are interested that's somewhere on the channel uh but ice plant barbarians is it's one of those ones that got legs and i'm like yes this is one that deserves to get the amount of love that it gets versus some things that take off i only know that series because you talked about it at booknet fest two years in a row and that's why it was on my radar oh i went to that panel i listen i pay attention yeah i mean you know it sent me on like a i actually sci-fi romance has become like my comfort read in the last like year and a half two years i guess like during the pandemic basically because it's just like you know dudes with weird pain situations uh you know there's like different books i mean murder murder i like i like books where there's a murder i like books where there's weird genitals i like books i've learned something about the world and one of them have many talents and love um oh yeah that's a good point neon gods is beloved on tick tock which i don't understand fully but you know to each their own um well thank you for joining me alexa oh i mentioned this at the beginning and i forgot so i will say it now this is in america this week is american thanksgiving and um i went to a great presentation last week from the national oh i forget what it is i will link it in the description but there's a tennessee chapter i think it's the national association of um native american indians i think is the name i'll link it below but it's a really they were talking about what their organization does i know here in tennessee um basically they're shocking no one because tennessee is tennessee there are like no official government um agencies that help native americans take advantage of the benefits that they are due and that's part of what the work that they do here locally so during this week where we have you know nice time off to spend with our families but with a lie of a backstory of why we have this holiday this would be a great opportunity for you to uh donate to whatever your local branches of that organization so i will put that in the uh in the description and um yeah it's also uh native american heritage month so yes it is yeah i have to know all that stuff for my job so i always know what the heritage month is oh so you're always yeah i'm on uh i i'm the and all the major holidays so i'm i'm always keeping up with those two like you know i always know when it's diwali yeah the usual and i usually when we're in the office i get some delicious food so yes no i'm uh i'm i'm a a committee member on our apa group so i've actually coordinated diwali parties before as long as these celebrations when we were in the office that was part of my role well and i'm sure every office has this but uh we have like groups basically so like there's one for black employees and allies that's what our apa one is yeah we have there's one that's dedicated to like international employees and i think selfishly i want to join that one because like they have all the best events so i'm like i'm already in the one for women i'm in the one for allies of lgbtq plus and now i think i'm gonna join that one so i can go to all their fun events what was really shocking is that so my company only just created their um indigenous people's group it took that long we finally have one we don't have one boys yeah um yeah but anyway sorry [Music] is that your timer to make sure that we don't talk forever this well because i have i have to unlike you i have to go to work in the morning so um but yeah anyway sorry i meant to mention that at the beginning so i will try to i will remember to to leave a link in the description to that and to the book shimmy just for all the linkage yeah sure let's let's shamelessly uh stroke my ego yeah that's all i have i have so little hey plug away for what other reason do you have a platform come on it's weird though sometimes where it feels wrong right and yet i know other people shamelessly use theirs i'm just very bad at it i know i always feel weird well because i'm not on youtube to sell books i really like being on youtube it's very strange yeah well or like like i just didn't do merch and it's like obviously yes i want people to buy it because i think it's cool but it's also just like yeah i wanted it so i made it because i wanted it i should make merch people have asked i'm just too lazy i might pick your brain it's so fun because yeah like i people um uh inspiration for people who don't finish books is one that people really wanted me to make merch of because that's one of my quotes i'm i'm savage it's terrible i'm terrible i feel like you should yeah it's fun to make things that you want that's to me the point of doing merch unless you're like you know a legit gigantic youtuber and that's like a true revenue stream i know can you imagine anyway but anyway i i wanted an excuse to have a t-shirt with my cats on it and now i have that so that's exciting nice yeah anyway side notes um thank you we're getting loopy it's great i know i know i'm sorry i'm yeah um but uh yeah thanks to alexa for joining me thanks to everyone for joining and uh you know goodreads awards still trash but we can't seem to quit them so that's where we're at i voted i need to vote in more categories now that we've gone through them all so yeah well i hope everyone has a great thanksgiving if you're here in america and thanks for joining and we'll catch you later bye

Channel: bookslikewhoa

Views: 3,879

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Id: cWhs47d5-Ng

Length: 95min 46sec (5746 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021