March Wrap Up | 2021

hey everyone okay i know it's a change of scenery but i can't stop moving things around in my apartment and places and actually like this setup and i kind of set up my own vanity and i was like oh maybe i could like be less stiff and uncomfortable standing doing every video not that like standing is uncomfortable for me but just like it just feels like a weird thing for me it feels very super formal and i don't like it feels like i'm giving a lecture in class you know um so we're going to try this way you can still kind of see my books and i just noticed my trash can but uh maybe this will also motivate me to not keep my trash can overflowing until i literally can't put anything more in it and then i empty it um but anyways do the youtube stuff um we're going to do this month's wrap-up and let me know if you absolutely hate this location don't know that it'll make me change it because i kind of like it if anything it'll make me get a better chair because i just have a cheap falling apart dining room chair that i am the like 12th owner of right now so um and also i don't know if the quality of this video is going to be great or horrible or better than normal whatever i got a new phone so i had an lg and i've had like three lg's and my tab finally got paid off and i was like maybe i should you know it's slowing down maybe i should get a new one and then i looked and like literally five hours before lg had announced that they were getting out of phones and i was like why so end up having to go with the samsung because i refuse to pay what apple wants for apple products to then have to buy adapters to make it work with everything else so we're going with the samsung don't know how good this is gonna look but anyways um yeah we're gonna wrap up um march march wasn't uh reading month for me i i feel like i had a lot of um just a lot of duds i don't know if it was my reading mood that just didn't vibe with everything or i just like happened to get a fair amount of meh books but i did have some super good ones so we'll go through what i read highlights and then just update for the months on life and yeah so starting off i did um i read most of this actually in february but um as soon as the trailer dropped for shadow and bone i think it was which trailer was it was it the teaser or the full trailer either one i was like we're gonna reread the series so um i finished rune and rising the last like i don't know third or so in march technically um i in my reread of the series really want to slap younger me i don't know why nikolai just like never registered to me before and then i remember like joining the fandom like years after i had read it when i like finally joined like online book groups and everything and i was like maybe i'm misremembering it but he was just like an okay character and then like rereading it now i'm like what is wrong with me like nikolai is literally everything i like in characters and books i just really do wish that for like rule of wolves came out so i was like maybe even for rule of wolves she did an alternate ending for pre-orders as a pre-order incentive and just rewrote the last i don't know quarter of it and was just like this is what would have happened if i had picked to go down this other path that we don't go down um i know that would have impacted everyone else's storyline but i'm like just literally just give us this thing for how ruin and rising would have ended if she ended picked a different path you know too curious then i read the order of the pure moon reflected in water which is a mouthful of the title but honestly such a weird book that's really the only way i can explain it is just really weird um like this like kind of nun warrior situation falling around this like group of soldier band things it's such a weird read it's super quick though and it was just really fun um wonky read i that's all i know how to explain it is really good read though solid 5 out of 5 stars i got my copy and then immediately blew through an unexpected peril by deanna reborn this is book six in the veronica speedwell series i think they're supposed to be one more book in the series um this was good it did there is like a noticeable difference though in this book and the rest of the series now i don't know that i can really explain why without spoiling the last like two books in this series um but the books before focus so heavily on veronica's family lineage and then um stoker's you know batshit crazy ex-wife and then the whole like will they want a sexual tension banter which i love this book focuses so much more on like veronica keeping who veronica is you know what i mean um that she's not going to fold into her family or into stoker or into all these other things she still wants to be her own individual and she series a lot of hey the fact that she has kind of a doppelganger in this and then she sees this other path that she kind of plays around stepping into i think it was really interesting concept as a whole to tie this plot with this whole like veronica making sure she stays her own person rather than being swallowed up into society at the time which she does not really fit into so she would definitely lose who she is that's a really well kind of tying both those things in together and i think having a doppelganger to show that in a couple different ways was really really smart cannot wait for the next book solid 5 out of 5 stars but if you want don't go in expecting like the tons of veronica and stoker banter that's not really the point of this book not that there isn't that in this it's just not the point uh then i read an arc of the stolen kingdom someone told me after i posted my tbr last month that i was going to be reading the arc for oh what's it called not the binding the betrayal the betrayals i think it is um by bridget collins i got an arc approved on idolize um someone informed me afterwards that the author is a is transphobic basically let's be real um she's a jk rowling um so my interest in reading that kind of plummeted after that that's incredibly disappointing to see and sure enough looked online i didn't i didn't even actually follow the person on on twitter before and looked online and yeah i know sure enough so that was disappointing and my interest in it really waned so i was like cool what the heck arc am i going to read in that substitute um then the stolen kingdom by jillian boehm um showed up on netgalley and i got approved right away for that and i have read jillian bowman's uh previous fantasy standalone um it's like a moulish e retelling i say moulinish when everything is like a girl dressing up as a guy okay but i really enjoyed that i remember really really liking that so i requested this and honestly this author has a real skill at short standalone fantasies in y a i feel like the only other author that i can see even having that has some of those same skills and it's not they don't even really have the same writing style or anything is trisha levinseller um between with like the shadows between us and um warrior of the wild that she has these this ability to write characters that you get attached to you don't spend you know it's not a 4 000 page book you know it's not this whole series but you have a conflict you have characters that you end up liking you know who the villain is you go on this kind of adventure um and it feels like you really do cover a lot of a plot geography and character growth in such a short amount of time and so this is just a perfect example of that um traditional y a fantasy for the most part so you know what you're getting into but there are books that i think are really good options if you want a break between these giant series um to to dip your toe into if you like traditional y fantasy i think these are really good ones to go for so i think the stolen kingdom was like a four or five out of five stars it was really good quick read it was exactly what i wanted it was exactly what i was expecting from it then i read the missing marquess the anola holmes book um i was actually surprised how similar i guess it was to the movie maybe i would have noticed more differences if i had read the book before the movie you know which i tend to do most of the time but this was just a different situation because i had never i didn't even realize they were books until after i kind of was like halfway through the movie um and i really liked the movie so i was going into that too being like i like this movie so you better like this book honestly it's fun it's cute it's quick read um i think if you liked the movies you will for the most part like the book i don't know that i'll read the rest of the series i don't know that it offers anything super unique in the realm of way of not why of middle grade mysteries but if i ever do run out of them this is a series that i circle back and like okay let's read the rest of the books you know uh the tbr and beyond group we are doing a month no three months long i guess read-along um of the from blood and ash series it's just everywhere on instagram on tick tock and everything so everyone was comparing it as like if you liked a qatar give this series a read um so i did give it a read it's it's it's all right i'm not joining a cult about it okay i'm not saying it's bad but this is my first jennifer armatra book so i think that maybe like some people are just like huge huge fans of her and they'll love anything she puts out this is just a new to me author you know i don't hate this book by any means i'm not saying that i hate it and the ending like the last half of it so good so good but it really does take a while for things to get set up and everything and if i didn't have like a horde of people everywhere being like no it's good it's good it's good just keep reading it it's good i don't know that i would have kept going past the first you know 100 150 pages which is sad because the rest of the book is really good the ending is wild i'm super curious to read the next book we're reading a kingdom of flesh and fire which is the sequel in april and then in april the third book comes out um and then she announced that there's a spin-off for a different character's pov in this series own book coming out in october i think it is so lots of stuff i think every six months or so there's something coming out with this series and i enjoyed it so if you gave up you know first 50 to 100 pages in and are disappointed i would suggest giving it a try maybe try the audio book instead or something else but um i think if you can push past the first half of it it is an enjoyable read then i did a read of the devil and dark and the dark water by stuart turton um this is the first book i've read by this author i think he has a couple other books out the seven deaths of evelyn hardcastle um this was a lot more i don't know if preachy is the right word there's a lot more religion in this book than i was going in expecting um there's this like whole mystery on on board and i i thought that was going to be the focus of it in solving this um and then the character oh my god why are you snoring so loud and then uh like the the character like trying to prove innocence and all this stuff but it came off a i think there was it's very dense there's whole chunks of it where i'm like what are we doing then i read dangerous remedy by cat dunn and i am so bonkers as hell confused this book has like a three point i don't know two or three or something like that on goodreads and i was like well that's disappointing but like i got the audio book i say for like four dollars off of audible or some ridiculously low price i was like i'm i'm okay with that and as someone who's been struggling with why a fantasies why don't you people like this book i don't understand i just blew through this book it was fun it was quick and enjoyable i liked the concept i liked the time period everything about it for the most part worked for me this was just good to me maybe it was mis-marketed and i just didn't see what it was marketed as or something because i know that happened with the these rebel waves book or something like that i don't know i really liked it and i plan on reading the sequel and i'm kind of tempted to buy the uk copies of this book i picked up the name of the wind honestly kind of hoping i would dislike it a because it's been like 10 years since the third book was supposed to come out or or 10 years since book 2 came out and we're still waiting on book 3 and i i think the author will die before he ever actually releases it um it seems like a whole george rr martin situation which i understand that like writing is a process but like when there's like you have authors like george r martin or samantha shannon or even patrick rothfuss i think someone's saying like he was on his twitter upset that people were like telling him like you know what's going on with the book and i understand being like dude i have a process but then there's like um are you ever going to finish the book and i don't know that you can really get halfway through a series and then be angry at your like cult following of people being like dude i just want to read the book like anyways but honestly not for everyone but for me definitely for me it's not um there is adventuring but it's not like high fantasy adventuring you know with like lots of battles and pirates and all that kind of sense it is high fantasy but not in that way um we go through this long chronological um path with the main character and him losing his parents and then going to the school to learn skills when he is of no he doesn't have money that a lot of these other people do and then the classism attached to this and then the whole like voting system and like politics within the the university with the professors and it's just so interesting so so interesting i and i it's just such a unique but weird but also common concept and i don't know that's going to make any sense unless you've read it but like i don't know that i've read anything like this but i have also read things like this before but like just not as good i guess maybe in that sense um i love the illustrations in the anniversary edition especially i wish there were more of them they're beautiful there's this whole scene that i don't know why it's stuck in my head specifically this scene because it really isn't super important to the rest of the plot for the most part but there's a scene where he goes into like this the library and someone essentially tricks him into paying and then gives him a candle to go to the library which is completely dark and then he walks through the library and then someone else is like what are you doing in here you're not letting me hear with candles you can burn everything up and like she kicks and he gets in trouble and i'm like why does that scene stick in my head like this and that's where this i don't know why it sticks in my head so much but it's just like something i'm remembering from this book specifically then i did my read of queen of volts and finished off the um ace of spades no ace of shades ace of shades series um this was good i think it was the of the three books the least favorite for me um yeah i don't know but i this is a series where i feel like it would be interesting to like i didn't end up reading book one or two when i was reading this i started it and i was like okay i'm fine i don't need to go back and reread this is honestly a series i'd be super curious to give a reread like just binge all three books back to back to back because there's some series where you're like oh you have these large gaps in time so like after book one when you start book two it's like oh and three months after book one or four years after you know whatever this one these these books are pretty like smacked together so i feel like it would be more interesting to read this series as like a whole like just flowing one into another um like this whole plot without space in between the way i did then i read killers of the flower moon this was one of the group reads we did in the tbr and beyond group um this month we don't do a ton of true crime but we have a few true crime junkies and i wanted to read this one mostly because i've seen it everywhere and it is becoming a film leonardo dicaprio and robert de niro and another actor i've seen him in other things but i can't remember his name and martin scorsese are in the production martin scorsese is producing it i think and the other two are um cast in it um i had heard of osage someone corrected me in the in the youtube comment section one of my videos i think it's osage i think it was called osega or something like that um indigenous people um and this was really interesting i went into it relatively hesitant honestly because the author at least i couldn't find anywhere does not identify uh with any indigenous community so um and based on his picture he is white passing so i was like oh great another white man telling the story of indigenous people but this i'm not indigenous so i can't review this book from the perspective of an indigenous person to say you know certain you know to flag some stereotypes of people or anything like that even though i try my best i am still never going to be able to do that um this was incredibly interesting and i didn't feel like it came out to um paint indigenous people in any stereotypes that really that stood out to me i could be totally wrong but i i didn't really see any of those so that was a wonderful surprise but this whole story is utterly bonkers and i the the this community was forcibly relocated because white people wanted their space and started murdering them they finally moved somewhere and people die along the way and all this and finally go somewhere and it happens wherever they end up settling that no one wanted the land at the time wouldn't you know what happens to have oil on it and in the 1900s when the oil boom was happening they people in the community become millionaires and so it's a still pretty common thing i think in a lot of communities um i i'm again i'm not indigenous so i can't specify it because each community is very different with rules and how they're set up even with the federal and provincial government's knowledge and then in canada there's first nations met and inuit who are all treated very differently and like only in alberta or metis settlements uh identified like at a government level it's a whole weird thing but i know people in certain indigenous communities that have things like casinos and stuff they pool the profits that they make and then they distribute it to people who are card holding members in the community or something like that um so the same thing happened in a situation when they gave out rights to come to companies to come drill oil they paid titles to the in in to the community and that community then divvied it up between everyone so they very quickly because of the oil boom became multi-millionaires and then there's this whole discussion whilst the fact that a bunch of people on the on the reserve are being straight up murdered there's a bomb explosion there's poisoning someone thinks they have diabetes and they think someone's actually poisoning them and not giving them insulin and then there's this whole white men marrying into this indigenous community and like did he plan on killing the family and the woman like from the beginning like what is this whole thing it's an utter mess but then there's this whole discussion about conservatorship i had no idea that this happened in the united states i don't know if that happened in canada as well because we have some similarities not everything is the same though um that people were multi-millionaires in this indigenous community but they had like white people essentially held onto their bank account because they were not deemed competent enough to spend their money and like people would hoard conservatorship and then people that they had the conservatorship would be dying straight up just dying from lack of health care and no one said anything so it was like this is happening this community and then the author talked about this is actually not isolated to this community this was happening all over the place and no one did anything about it because the fbi that was getting up set up was corrupt the local cops corrupt and incompetent pis take money you just disappear corrupt you couldn't like it's it bonkers the then i did a read of the electric kingdom by david arnold i loved this i was not ex i i didn't go in thinking i was going to hate it and everyone seems to love mosquito land i hadn't read that before but i did not expect to like this book as much as i did a lot of people die um but it's really interesting that they're living in this pandemic kind of that um flies essentially that people keep just like all of a sudden getting sick and then like dying and then they're in a dystopian where like a bunch of the world population's been wiped out and we switch povs quite a bit and their stories are tied together and we kind of see them these characters bump into each other off and on and it's just an incredibly weird but interesting book that is so heavily focused on the characters more than anything else um you have some of the traditional things of like what will happen you know if you're in a dystopian and just walking as like a group of four teenagers or so you know someone you're gonna walk by in a weird sketchy town that gives you bad vibes and the people that are there end up being bad people and so there's some of those stereotypes but it's just such an interesting read i don't know that any of the plot like really surprised me in any way but it was just so well written it's so interesting i loved the characters and i did like the fact that like not everyone was safe then i did a read of the duchess war by courtney milan i discovered quitting mulan with the duke who didn't and it's labeled as a series on goodreads but i haven't seen book two pop up anywhere so i was like i'll go back and read the other um stuff that she has and this duchess war series is one that's popped up a couple times on my timeline and i know now that the series is different um main characters each each book um and so i read the duchess i enjoyed it it's good i like it i like the the uh i don't know if it's a me cute or whatever but how the main characters meet of like someone hiding behind a couch trying to avoid their responsibilities is a fun read i really like her writing and i like her cast and characters and um she's an author i'm going to keep working through the back catalogue of i read we are the ashes we are the fire and it made me you know as angry as i thought it was going to make me um and if you watched things like the brock turner who's a rapist um because i have to make sure every time i say his name um made you angry i feel like this book is a way of like coping and i wasn't sure going into being like i don't know that i want to read this book it's depressing i see this all the time of us making excuses for boys just being a like just horrible human beings and it's supposed to be justifiable because they're boys but then we hold women to these just ridiculous standards by trying to also tell them that they shouldn't have access to bodily autonomy but it's not sexist don't worry like just there's so much and it's i but i feel like this book is a a book that when you see that it helps it's a way it's like it's like taught a coping mechanism i guess i picked up legacy of kings and i think i got like three chapters in i don't even know if it was that far in and immediately realized they were using the kind of incest romance trope and i went nope not interested in that maybe if this was the first time i read city of bones and didn't register to me but i don't know why fantasy is obsessed with making the main female character be a badass and for some reason have sexual attraction to someone who isn't blood her sibling but is literally raised like a brother to her it's creepy it's weird i don't want to read that then i read the killing moon by nk jettison um i've read the fifth season by this author and the city we became i don't know if i read anything else i own quite a few of her books i just don't think i've ever actually gotten through all of them quite yet um of the books that i have read so far this was my least favorite of it it fell into i think a lot of like and i think nk gemmas and i think things are just going to be a little bit weird or different or epic or just something's not going to fit into that mold and that's the reason i love it plus her writing is amazing um this was a little too traditional i guess for what i was going in expecting then i did a reread of the house in the civilian sea because i don't know i just felt depressed at some point last month i can't remember what it was the reason this time um but i reread it and it's wonderful and everyone should read this book then i picked up the mask of mirrors by m.a carrick i was unsure about this one i love the cover and i saw at my bookstore and i was like oh i want to read it so badly um and but there's some mixed reviews on goodreads um if you like adult fantasies that is not again centered around like high-stakes non-stop battles this is a lot of conflict development world and characters there's not really a lot of physical action taking place but the world has several families of wealth and prestige and then the main family that we're looking at the beginning is not it they're one of those families but they're broke basically um and one of the care and a character reappears that she is related to them by blood her parents had falling out between them but she wants to come back and kind of fix things and whatever and then we start following her path and there's these like sketchy characters and i think one of the brothers in the family is this sketchy character called the rook and like it's so interesting it goes a million different ways twist and turn i didn't know how long like it's a big book but i wasn't totally sure what the plot was actually gonna be the point like the goal of the book changes like three times so it was really interesting to me i love these sorts of books that have a lot of character and gr and um uh world development um it was just really good for me definitely very excited to read um the li the layers no is it the liars list the liar's lust something like that on goodreads is up um so i'll just watch for the cover very yeah if we have similar reading tests i would suggest giving this um a shot then i did a quick reread of these violent delights by chloe gong uh we did a group read of it in the tbr beyond group this month um and i end up having to step in for a mod to help with that so um just reread it to refresh my memory and the ending still messes with me i love this book then i did a read of the conductors by nicole glover glover i think that is um this was an interesting concept um but i do have to agree with a lot of the general sentiments on the goodreads reviews that the world um is interesting the concept is interesting the magic system is not fleshed out enough it does not explain i don't understand what the limiters are there's this whole thing that like that different characters have these different powers and using that um in the concept of slavery and getting people to freedom and just all of this complicated stuff but i literally at no point understood what the restrictions of this magic were i didn't there's no it's not explained enough um so it was kind of distracting that at a lot of points they couldn't understand if what they're talking about was feasible or if it was ridiculous because there's this whole mystery of who's killing all these people and i'm like i don't know what our restrictions are for this i don't know how to form a guess of who's doing this or what's causing this because i don't understand what our limitations are so that was quite frustrating um but i think that's something that you know hopefully as the author grows and there's a sequel maybe that'll become more fleshed out and i think the last book that i read this month because near the end of the month i started forgetting to write things down so i went back and tried to figure everything out so i think this is the last book that i read the month is act your age eve brown by talia hibbert this is the third book in the um brown sisters trilogy i think it's just a trilogy um we have chloe brown before this that started off at all which was like wildly popular um i like the sister i think arguably the most because i probably connected her with her the most a because she has colorful hair um but i just think like the other two were they have a bit more of like a con like i think i saw myself in in each of them in a few different ways but i think she's like the most messy of the sisters and being the youngest i feel like she just had i just had more in common with her than i think everyone else um this though on like in the actual plot i felt like i couldn't understand what the conflict was until like the last second i was like i literally don't know what we're building up to is the conflict um so i think of in terms of plot it was my least favorite of the three it's not bad by any means um but i like the sister i like eve brown the most out of all of the sisters so um that's that was an interesting twist for me i wasn't totally expecting to to notice that difference between them but i really enjoyed this so highlights least favorite of the month um keeping in mind that i don't include books that i didn't finish so legacy of the kings is not um up for candidacy because i didn't finish it um least favorite probably the devil in the dark water most surprising read honestly it's probably a dangerous remedy because honestly i mean like i've read books before where like the rating is like 2.3 stars i'm like and i read it and i'm like this is five stars for me and then my brain immediately goes to like has the author said something racist or bigoted online and i start going through the reviews to try and find out if these are actually one star reviews from reading the book or if they're one star reviews because this person the author may be up something um or it's just a shitty person and so i didn't i just saw that this had like a lot of man reviews and it seemed to me from people who actually read the book so i was so confused because on top of that i have just not been jiving with y fantasies for so long now but this was good i didn't understand i was so confused and favorites um of the month again i don't include rereads so cerulean c is not a candidate um nor is rude and rising um i really did like an unexpected peril but i'm at the point i kind of feel like it's cheating to choose a veronica speedboat book because that's like my favorite series of all time um so it was honestly a bit of a toss-up between the mask of mirrors and the name of the wind but when i looked at it it was like the name of the wind it was gifted to me as a birthday gift i want to say or a christmas gift a few years ago now so it was an anniversary edition i think it's like 50 bucks in canada it's a pricey book and i was like would i having read it now go buy my own anniversary edition of the name of the wind yes would i go buy a 50 anniversary edition of mascara mirrors it's good but no who wouldn't do that so that was my my way of figuring out it was the name of the wind which i'm annoyed because i honestly wanted to dislike the smoke an awful lot so i wouldn't have to pay attention to it and wait eons for book three but that is just not how it ended up working for me so this was my favorite read and life update what happened this month oh i got my new couch i think that happened in march i'm pretty sure that happened in march um it's wonderful comfy i've slept on it several times honestly just because i was like it's one of the big reasons i got it so it's like an angle couch this is like the love seat and then there's like a long thing um this lifts up so there's storage here but then the love seat section you can pull out underneath it and lift up and so it's just a big bed basically so my appeal was like i only have a one bedroom apartment so when my mom has visited you know we had to share a bed and that sort of stuff instead if i do have friends visit my family visit even when i move you know i'm gonna take this with me um having another space that i can make into a bed um even if it's like for a weekend or for you know more solution whatever it may be so i tried it it's actually really comfortable and it's just nice too when i pull it out it's not super big so it doesn't take up my whole space even though my space isn't super big in itself um but the dogs can lay down and just sleep on it and i can just lie down and like watch movies or whatever it's perfect i love it so much it's such a good couch it's perfect for what my needs and my space were and everything like that so in the last 24 months i have purchased my first like almost new vehicle i am the second owner of it i got through a dealership i have a car loan all that and then i what else happened i bought a new bed i've never owned a new bed before i went to sleep country and i bought a bed a mattress a box spring everything i'll eventually get a headboard i just haven't seen anything i liked and the same thing i eventually want to get a new dresser because i like the fifth owner of this thing it's not falling apart i just haven't seen anything i liked um so like i'm i'm happy with what i have now and then i got the couch and like i've just been decluttering and keeping trying to get rid of stuff in the house that's just been piling up with a pandemic and then getting rid of all the pieces like the old bed frame that i had and all that stuff that was sitting out there so i had to go to the dump and like just feel like i got a lot of adulty stuff done today and with all of that going on and busy and kind of sort of but then eventually having to backtrack and i was working in the office a little bit for like a week or so um i didn't feel like i fell back into my old eating habits either of like going to starbucks every single morning honestly part of the reason is because the starbucks that they opened up that between my house and work shut down because of the pandemic so um like literally closed it that store is no longer there so i feel like i've retrained a lot of my eating habits now um i'm not i haven't this past few weeks been doing so well on doing sunday meal prep so scheduled and regimented but i've been better at like coming home on tuesday being like okay so you your dumb ass didn't prep just go make something yeah so that's been my march let me know what you read or if you had any personal successes or any of that this month i am sorry if watson has been storing this whole thing and you've been able to hear it but anyways i will see you all next tuesday for what's next tuesday gonna be cover reveal um [Music] tier list or something like that probably yeah you

Channel: Sassenach the Book Wizard

Views: 260

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: sassenach, book, wizard, booktube, wrap up, end of month, what i read, what did i read, 2021

Id: AMtk52bDcbI

Length: 33min 42sec (2022 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021