May Reading Wrap Up

right so hello and welcome back to books and things and welcome to another video and today i'm going to be doing my may wrap up and telling you about all the books that i read in the month of may so for me may was the 1900 to 1950 readathon that i was hosting throughout the month all about reading books from around the world published between 1900 and 1950 i really enjoyed doing the readathon and i really enjoyed hosting it and reading lots of books for it i obviously did not get through nearly as many books as what on my tbr but there we go so in the month of may i read 22 books six those were books that i read for work i work in publishing and the other 16 are books i can tell you about today 15 of which were books for the 1900 to 1950 readathon so i didn't get through my massive tbr of 27 books of course but i still read a lot of wonderful books in may and i also did manage to take off all the challenges for the readathon which i'm pleased about um so yes let's get straight into the books the first thing i want to mention that i read in may was the playboy of the western world by j.m singe this is an irish play from 1907. and this one was a weird one and i still don't really know quite what to make of it this is a play um set in a rural irish community um around a pub and one night a young man comes into this pub um and says that he has killed his father and he comes into this community and kind of on the run from the police having done this um and everyone applauds him for this great act of bravery and wants to be his friend and is really interested in him um and we know from him that he wasn't very popular in his old life but now in his new life having killed his father everyone is kind of hero worshiping him in weird way and everything goes on from there and the ending is quite weird there were a lot of things that i slightly struggled with in many ways i quite enjoyed the playboy of the western world and i really enjoyed the reading experience because i really enjoy reading plays and one thing i quite like about reading a play is that you can often read it in one sitting you know i read this in one evening in sort of two hours which i really enjoyed the dialogue is really engaging and it's well written and compelling but i sort of don't believe the main premise and conceit and i found it quite hard to really believe that everyone would react to this character and what he's done in the way that they do which i feel like is the kind of thing that if i saw it on stage and it was acted in a believable way i could believe but i feel like it's one of those plays that just reading it and not seeing it is not quite enough to like help you suspend your disbelief of the odd situation that's happening and the strange circumstances of the play so i kind of enjoyed it but i also didn't like fully like go along with the story in the way that i might have done if i had seen it on stage but there we go the next book i want to mention is this this is the sad end of polycarpo charesma by lima barretto which is a brazilian classic from 1911. this was a really interesting book and one that i really enjoyed in many ways um especially the beginning and the end i liked the middle s this is the story of a government clerk living in brazil in the late 19th century i think possibly the early 20th century but i think it's set in 1890s i think he is a government clerk and he is incredibly patriotic to the extent that he kind of wants brazil to get rid of all its european customs that it's adopted and he wants to abolish the portuguese language in brazil and replace it with an old indigenous brazilian language and he basically wants to change society in order to make it more brazilian it's about how people initially react to that people judge him very harshly for his unusual behavior and sort of think that he is going mad and then the kind of situation changes and people don't think he is going mad in the same way that they did earlier i can't really explain more than that i think without spoiling it um but there's a sort of shift in the middle of the narrative um and things become more complicated there were some things that i really liked about this book and some things that i like slightly less basically um i really really enjoyed the beginning and i really really enjoyed the end and i didn't like the middle quite as much the beginning is quite kind of domestic and personal i suppose a very focused on individual characters and then the ending especially like the very ending um is again a bit more focused on different individual characters but the middle is a bit more political and we get a bit more like this is what's happening rather than um internal psychology of the characters so i really enjoyed it overall but there were definitely bits of it i liked more i really enjoyed the exploration of sort of like brazilian culture and what doesn't doesn't count as brazilian to this character and i also enjoyed the exploration of particular social issues in brazil at this time so yeah this was a really interesting read and definitely one i'd recommend i also read this first world war poems from the front this is a collection of poetry from the first world war and one that i really really enjoyed i'd read some of these poems and other things by some of these poets before um but there were also quite a lot of poems in this collection which were new to me which i really enjoyed so this collection in it has the work of 15 different poets writing about the first world war um the majority of whom are soldiers but there are a few nurses and a um military chaplain as well and the book is kind of ordered by poet um and at the beginning of their section it has like a page of kind of biographical information about their life and the role they played in the first world war which i really enjoyed and i thought was great i also really liked the variety in here like i said there were poets in here which are very well known like wilfred owen and situation but there were also some poets and that i haven't read much by like any anthology there were some poems i liked more than others but i really enjoyed this and i'd highly recommend this edition next i want to mention this um this is despised and rejected by rose allertini this is a british novel from 1918 and this is my favorite book of the month and will be one of my favorite books of the year this is one of the most interesting books i've ever read as well as being an incredibly brilliant book so this is a novel about conscientious objection during the first world war and also about sexuality so we're following two main characters antoinette and dennis um and we're following them in the lead up to the first world war and then during the first world war dennis does not want to fight he is a conscientious objector and we look at him and other people who do not want to fight in the first world war who are pacifists and meanwhile we're also looking at sexuality because dennis is attracted to other men and antoinette finds herself drawn to other women and although she also thinks that she might be interested in dennis but she's not really sure and it's about their friendship and their relationship um as well as their relationship with other characters around them and it's about feeling like an outsider in your society being treated like an outsider in your society it's about pacifism and individualism in a world that is obsessed with war and patriotism and nationalism and it's about being attracted to people of the same sex as you in a world that does not think that is okay and it's just fantastic the fact that this book was written and published in 1918 when it looks at these incredibly controversial topics for the time in this amazingly powerful open way is just fantastic like i've read lots of other books from not this time but a little bit before this time that basically do talk about sexuality but in a very like veiled way where you have to read between the lines a lot and you don't have to read between the lines in here at all like dennis and antoinette just have like open conversations about their sexuality in an amazing way and it's just so fascinating um the afterward of this book talks about the history of it quite a lot it was published and then banned quite soon after publication and the remaining copies were kind of pulped so interestingly it was put on trial not for the depiction of sexuality in this book but for the um sympathetic portrait of conscientious objectives because it was considered to be kind of anti-war and it was published during the first world war this book has a fascinating history and is incredibly interesting in the themes that it tackles in the time that it was written um but it's also just an incredibly wonderful story and i loved the writing and the dialogue and the characterization was just wonderful so absolutely love this what a book yeah i highly highly recommend this this was my highlight of the month i barely read this with jen the librarian whose channel i'll link down below and i've really enjoyed discussing with her and yeah just such a good book i'm so i'm so glad i read this it was just just amazing another book i read this month was the enchanted april by elizabeth von arnhem this is a british novel from 1922. i listened to this on audiobook and it was a really fun read it is about these four different women who don't really know each other who end up through various circumstances go on holiday together to italy for a month none of them are very happy at home but in this wonderful house in italy and they start to kind of reassess their lives and become a little bit happier and they end up kind of learning to understand themselves and each other better as their friendships grow and everything changes and it's really really really fun it's just a really delightful read but i liked that they had a good balance of kind of fun and seriousness because it is quite fun and in places it is quite silly um and it is very kind of like sweet and charming but also it does have moments where it really looks at kind of complicated themes like you know one of the reasons why a lot of these women are kind of unhappy is because of the particular kind of social pressures that i put on women at this point in time which i thought was explored really well um and it was just a really really enjoyable read so i'd highly highly recommend it and it was great fun really enjoyable very lovely and the audiobook was great as well next i want to mention the beautiful and the dad by escort fitzgerald this is an american novel from 1922 and i buddy read this with marissa from blatantly bookish and heather from fresh parchment i did not like this book very much and i did the other two so i've read a little bit of scott fitzgerald before i've read the great gatsby which i read years ago and really enjoyed and i've also read quite a lot of his short stories and i've really enjoyed all the short stories of his that i have read um but this this i did not get on with very well there are a few reasons um this is a book which basically follows this couple anthony and gloria and their complicated tempestuous relationship between kind of the early 1910s to um the late 1910s early 1920s and they are both upper class anthony's grandfather made a lot of money and anthony's kind of just like doing nothing not working waiting for his inheritance when he meets gloria and falls in love with her and we follow their relationship and they're kind of increasing the struggles of money because neither of them are working but they also kind of want to live up to the upper class life and have a lot of parties and and kind of be in a particular social set that they can't really afford to be in and it's about their relationship and i think in some ways it is supposed to be a criticism of this particular set in society and the kind of like lack of purpose in their lives i think that is what it is trying to explore but it doesn't quite work for me and i think the issue i really have with this is that none of the characters are likable which is fine i don't mind a book about unlikable characters but they're also really boring and i feel like i don't mind unlikable characters if they're interesting but anthony is just not interesting at all as a character and gloria is like occasionally interesting but not very often interesting i just i just didn't really get on with it very much or get much out of it i also feel perhaps even more importantly than that but this book is just a mess like the structure and the story and the pacing and like where the focus of it is is just nowhere like it doesn't really have a proper structure and then i thought the ending was going to be really interesting but then it wasn't there were a few like scenes and moments which were really well thought out well i kind of like got a glimpse of the s scott fitzgerald that i have seen and liked in the great gatsby but a lot of the rest of it was just a bit a bit messy and maybe that was the point because that their lives are lacking in purpose so the book is lacking a purpose i don't know but i didn't i didn't really get on with it i also there were a few things which made for uncomfortable reading as a modern reader and the way anthony talks about and looks at women and the way even gloria like talks about herself as a woman were was not great and at one point they employ a japanese servant and the way that escort fitzgerald writes that character and also the way that other characters in the book treat that character um is not great so yes i do not really enjoy this one if you're going to read something by escort fitzgerald you should read the great gatsby not this another book i read this month was who's bonnie by dorothy l sayers this is a british crime classic from 1923 and this is the first book in the lord peter whimsy series which follows um lord peter whimsy who is an aristocrat who is solving crimes i really really enjoyed this it was very delightful and great fun i am very excited to read more in this series in the future i feel like i loved um the setup and the characters more than necessarily like the plot itself the plot was good but i can imagine that there will be future lord peter whimsy books that i would like even more and because i just love the characterization the murder mystery itself is really great as well we're following what happens when um a body um unknown and not wearing anything turns up in one man's bathtub in his flat and he doesn't know why he doesn't know what's happened so he calls the police and also through lord peter whimsy's mother um calls in lord peter whimsy to come and help as well the thing that i really enjoyed about this book is lord peter whimsy as a character he's a really wonderfully drawn character but also he's just a delight to read because his dialogue is so fun one of the things i really enjoy about who's body is that it feels to me like a cross between agatha christie and pg woodhouse like imagine if bertie worcester was like really intelligent and solving crimes that's that's the best way to explain lord peter whimsy even though they're really different characters he talks with the same kind of like upper class 1920s slang as bertie wooster does and also he has a man-servant um and his man-servant um is really interested in like photography and crime photography so he like comes to crime scenes and like takes photographs of fingerprints and develops them in his dark room and so they like help each other solve crimes as a team it's just excellent fun um very very enjoyable and yeah can't wait to read more in this series in the future next i have quicksand by netherlassen this is another book that i absolutely loved and i really really enjoyed this is the second thing i've read by neil larsen i read a passing last year and loved it and this year i read quicksand and it was also amazing this is an american classic from 1928 and we're following a young woman called helga at the beginning of the book helga is teaching at a school but she is increasingly disillusioned with her life there and so she decides to leave um and try and get a job elsewhere and we're basically following her through her life as a young woman and trying to find a place for herself in society and it's basically looking at her experiences as a mixed-race woman at this point in time and her kind of struggles with depression and loneliness i suppose and it's amazing but something about the way another larson writes that is just incredible i think she has like a really really precise writing style which is just the kind of precise writing style that i love it's just fantastic and i cannot recommend her work enough i don't think i love quicksand quite as much as passing because passing was just so incredible and the ending of passing is just like i don't know how any ending of any book would really beat that um but quicksand was very amazing too and just yeah just fantastic i i wish she had written more i wish i had like 50 novels by nella larsen to discover but i don't these are the only two novels that she wrote i do think she has some other short stories so i'm sure i will try and get my hands on them in the future but yeah this is just a really really wonderful read next i read another book also called quicksand this time by ginochiro tanzaki this is a japanese classic from 1928 to 1930 and this is a very strange novel which tells the story of a young woman she's in her early 20s she's married and what happens when she meets another young woman who she is incredibly attracted to and they sort of begin a relationship but it is very very complicated and very messy where there's sort of a love triangle and sort of a love square and everything is very very messy and everyone is constantly lying to each other the amount of lying that takes place in this book is just immense i really liked this it was very weird like some of it especially some of the lying and the kind of like stories that people tell each other feels very far-fetched um but because tamazaki writes wonderfully i just kind of like suspended my belief and went with all the strangeness in this book it's a very old novel but i really liked it i really enjoyed the reading experience of it it's not my favorite tanzaki i would say um the machioaca sisters and some prefer nettles would be chit for me um but i did really enjoy it and it was a really interesting read the next book i have to talk about is brave new world by aldous hoxley this is a british novel from 1932 and this is a classic dystopian work so it is set in some point in the future in a world that sort of thinks itself a utopia thinks it has solved every problem um where kind of everyone is very heavily um genetically modified and basically they sort of genetically modified people into classes it is a society which has done away with family which has done away with marriage which has done away with committed relationships and monogamy um and which has done away with um kind of biological birth so all people are kind of created in labs and brought up in kind of big schools which condition them to think a particular way everyone spends a lot of time on drugs everyone is happy sort of but no one really has any individuality and we're following various characters um one of whom is a man who doesn't really feel like he belongs in the society um one of whom is a woman who does feel more at home in the society and they end up meeting another man who has grown up in a kind of different bit of the world where he has not grown up in the same world as them and when they meet him everything kind of goes on from there there were some things that i really liked about this book and some things that i liked less basically i think the premise is incredible and the world building is fantastic and felt believable and kind of like thought-provoking and compelling and sort of horrible but also like understandable like i found it really interesting comparing it to 1984 i think it's really hard not to compare it to 1984. that was definitely what i had in my head while reading it because i think in some ways like the society is sort of less evil than in 1984 like the people in charge seem less evil but that almost makes it worse because the world is like so horrible and dystopian in so many ways but also like people don't know like no one realizes which i kind of guess is sort of a case in 1984 but i don't know there's there's not like a resistance movement like there is in 1984 it's just a few individuals being like is this really right is this really how i want to do society the world building is incredible and the premise is fantastic the plot is less good especially in comparison to 1984 i think the premise of brave new world is better but plot is so much better in 1984 and i feel like the pacing and the plot and like who the focus is on is a little bit messy in brave new world and so i feel like the plot isn't quite perfect in brave new world and i also did find that the kind of presentation of women in it was like i found that quite frustrating um all the people who think there might be anything wrong with the world on men and then like all the women are just really enjoying all the drugs and like i kind of presented a bit stupid and which i didn't really like so they had such an amazing premise and i kind of loved it but also i slightly struggled with it another thing i read this month was um some short stories about arsene le pen um the gentleman thief by maurice leblanc and these are french short stories um from the early 20th century arsenal le pen has a character is a a thief but he is a gentleman he's the kind of character who will like steal someone's jewels but leave behind in the dual chest the ones that were fakes because they're not good enough for him like that's the kind of character arsenal pen is and he's obviously very kind of intelligent um but also kind of like debonair and charming and it's very good fun the stories were a bit hit and miss for me and some of them were really engaging and really hilarious and great fun especially those that focused on us and le pen where we followed him a lot um but some of the other stories were a little bit like dry and a bit long-winded slash tangential um to me so a bit of a mix but pretty good fun and the character i'm sure i'll enjoy revisiting in future then this month i also read put out more flags by evelyn war this is a british novel from 1942. this is set during the second world war and it's about a group of kind of london elite people and what happens to them when war breaks out we're mostly following a man called basil i have very mixed feelings about this like i do about all evening war and i'll link my video about even more that i did this month down below basically i didn't really enjoy the main character basil he wasn't very funny and he wasn't very engaging and whenever it was that him i wasn't very interested but i liked all the minor characters a lot more especially the character of ambrose who was really interesting and who i would have happily read a whole book about so i sort of liked some of this a lot and liked bits of it a lot less and it was a bit of a mix as it always is for me with even more another book i read this month was a tree grows in brooklyn by betty smith this i was participating in a read along for um run by marissa from blatantly bookish and k howe this is an american novel from 1943 but it's set in the 1910s in brooklyn um following the kind of upbringing and the sort of coming-of-age story of a young girl called francie from when she's sort of i think nine or ten till when she's sort of 16 or 17. um and francie is living in extreme poverty with her mother father and brother and we look at kind of how they get by and how they live and what happens as she grows up there was a lot that i loved about this book basically i really really enjoyed the second half and i don't know if that's just that the second half was about stronger or it just took me a long time to get into i sort of was reading it quite slowly and then once i got into it i sped up my reading so it might just be that i enjoyed it a lot more once i sped up my reading it's quite a long book i'm not sure it needed to be this long it did feel a little bit um tangential in places but i really really enjoyed it and i really enjoyed the exploration of kind of being someone living in poverty at this time and the kind of social and economic things explored in this book were fantastic and then i also read animal farm by george orwell this is a british novel from 1945 and this is a sort of parable fable um based off the russian revolution it's set on a farm but it's kind of retelling the story of the russian revolution through um animals overthrowing their human overlords on the farm and it's kind of about how like even when there are big social changes kind of in the name of the people there are always kind of elites that are going to like exploit the people or the animals in this case this wasn't a weird and interesting read because like animal farm is so much in popular culture and i've like seen a play adaptation of it before so it didn't feel like i was reading this for the first time even though i was because it felt like very familiar to me and also i studied russian history quite a lot of school so i kind of knew all the like historical backgrounds so it didn't really feel like a new or thought-provoking read because they felt like i kind of knew what i was expecting but i'm so glad that i finally read it because it has been on my tbr for a very long time then i also read crooked house by anchor the christie which is a british crime novel from 1949 this was a really enjoyable read and it was a great one and just thoroughly engaging i really liked agatha christie a lot and this was no exception this is a standalone novel um and it's about um what happens when the kind of patriarch of a family gets murdered and everyone is wondering who in the family possibly could have done it um and our narrator um is in love with and sort of on the point of becoming engaged with the granddaughter of this man and it's about their relationship and him trying to work out what actually happened his father happens to be in the police and so he kind of gets involved from both sides trying to figure out what happened and everything goes on from there it's a really really enjoyable read and just really engaging and great i didn't find the ending quite so surprising as i think it was meant to be um but i still thought it was a really enjoyable read and i just love acacia so that was great finally i read one book this month which was not for the 1900s to 1950 readathon and that was a bear called paddington by michael bond and this was sort of a reread for me i had read and the first half of this before in a separate collection um that just had those stories on its own um but this is kind of like the full original first book of paddington and with all the original stories about paddington bear and his adventures with the browns and all the like um scrapes he gets themselves into it's a children's classic from the 1950s and it's just great fun and entirely delightful nothing quite so charming as a story about paddington bear so that's it for now those are all the books that i read in the month of may please let me know how your 1900 to 1950 readathon went what did you read this month what did you enjoy the most and that's all for now thank you very much for watching and i'll be back very soon with another bookish video

Channel: Books and Things

Views: 1,908

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: booktube, books, literature, reading, currently reading, book review, book reviews, review, reviews, classics community, new books, literary, book love, bookish video, booktuber, reading wrap up, classics, 1900 to 1950, 20th century, twentieth century, early 20th century, modern classics, classic, lgbtq+, lgbt

Id: 5XRulLJNg5E

Length: 26min 9sec (1569 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021