May TBR 2021

hello and welcome back to my channel i am mel and this is mel the raven girl um today's video is going to be my may tbr but before we kind of get into that i really just kind of want to do a little quick like update a swear mark because april was a weird month um but also it's been quite a busy month for me i'm finishing up uni i as i'm filming this um have a few days left of uni where i'll be like doing my final performance and um and then i'm finished basically uh other than that i used to watch everyone else's performances over the next two weeks and i'm done finished uni finishing my bachelor's degree um now i have to try and start a career which is exciting and terrifying and just life also in april i ended like a massive reading slump because i was just so like run down with like everything that i've had to do i went back to work um because lockdown lifted and pubs opened again um and if you don't know i work at a pub so i'm just kind of a bit like all over the place but hopefully may is going to be different hopefully just like the rest of the year is going to be different um touch wood i just really want to get back back into reading i am about four books behind on my goodreads goal i want to enjoy all the books i own i ended up buying a lot of books in april which i didn't mean to do but i just did anyway so um a haul should be coming your way soon um and also i ended up dropping like a lot of interesting videos i really wanted to do like reading vlogs and stuff because i wasn't a slump and i just wasn't actively doing the vlogs so i just feel at this point that doing those vlogs is gonna be subpar i don't want to put bad content up so um yes hopefully now that i'm graduated and i'm out of education um i can be a little bit more consistent with my content which is just the goal my goal a big goal from this summer is just to kind of make sure that i'm in a position with this channel where i can have consistent content at least one video a week um along with extra stuff like that i want to do um so yeah that's kind of where i'm at right now and um let's move on to the tbr so last month i ended up building a really really big tbr and i ended up reading like three books like finishing three books and then i finished a book today which um i read like the last like 20 pages of this book today so kind of finished it yesterday i don't know i read most of it in april and then i ended up starting a lot of books and then not finishing them because i was in a slump when i'm in a slump i kind of just like jumped through different books like i'll start reading the book and then i'll get bored of it i'm not bored but like i just won't have the motivation to pick it up and then i'll get like a shiny new book and i want to start reading that and it just it gets hectic so now i'm currently reading like five books which is insane but we i was gonna move on um with my reading i want to make a new tbr if any of the books that i'm currently reading will fit into any of the new prompts then i will pick them but if not i'm not going to worry too much about completing every single book that i've already got a bookmark in like it's not the end of the world and the only two books i have to read um this month are two books that i'm reading for the pride tours on instagram um let me just find the titles of them so the two books i do have to read in may are strange things await by jamilah a stone and darkness awakes by jimin a stone these are two books in the same series um that are both queer and they follow a girl who like it's like an urban fantasy set i like this boarding school with like vampires and witches and werewolves and stuff and it's it seems really interesting i have started it i'm not like really really gotten into it yet but um it's been a fun time so far so i'm excited to read these two books if you're new or you missed my last tbr i have started a tbr jar um just because i find it really fun to make a set list i don't have to stick to that list i'm not being super strict to myself there's no punishments or anything but i think this is just like my favorite way like prompts and my favorite way to pick a tbr and to kind of um like structure my reading in a little bit without like like being overbearing so i am going to pick six books this month and then that just kind of see what happens throughout the month and see what i get to and what i don't get to and if i get to more less just completely different things it doesn't really matter as long as i'm having a good time so yeah let's just get to the first prompt [Music] okay so the first prompt is why do i always do this we established in the last video that my auto focus isn't the best um so my first prompt is non-fiction which is great because i'm currently reading a non-fiction and i want to read it and i'm obsessed with it so far so let me go get it so for this prompt i'll be reading natives by a color this is a non-fiction uh book about racism and class in the uk specifically and how that kind of affects day-to-day life in england and the uk um i am currently on page 44 of this and it's amazing i can tell this is probably going to be one of the best books i read this year every single line is just phenomenal like he just like akala just makes a really good point in every single line that he writes um and it's kind of blowing my mind and i'm loving it so um hopefully i can finish this in may and just um educate myself a bit more on the structures in the world um i actually got this from book bar which is a new book shop in london which is amazing it's a coffee shop a wine bar and a bookshop at the same time and it's great people who run it are lovely and i recommend everyone go because it's amazing let's do the next prompt and this is a most recent purchase okay that's great because technically my most recent purchase was darkness awaits by jamilah a stone i got the ebook i was given the pdf but um the pdf for the first book is like just not formatted in a way that's really easy for me to read so the second book was like on sale for like 77 p so i was like might as well pick it up and support the author financially anyway um since i'll be moving and hopefully loving this series next one is a twitter pic okay so this means i could just put a poll up on twitter and pick a book there i actually don't know what i want to put as a twitter poll um so when i we're gonna save this i think we're gonna save this until later on in the month when i actually need someone to make a choice for me because i can't think of anything right now um book number four [Music] oh a book from your latest haul which is also great because another book that i just started reading is going to be in my latest book haul and i've started reading it i want to finish it um and that is in the dream house by karma maria machado this is also a non-fiction it is a memoir about an abusive suffix relationship and like how our author has like struggled with that i'm working through that so i have my roommates in the background i just can't be assigned to show up um uh but yeah i started reading this i'm on page 34. i'm listening to the audiobook which is amazing the author is narrating it herself and i really really enjoy her narrative style um and the writing of this is so beautiful i did read her debut book um her body and other parties last month and really really enjoyed it and i picked this i bought this whilst i was reading that because i just knew i was loving that book um and she's a very interesting writer so i'm super excited to get to this one um and continue on i i actually like when i picked it up my plan was to read it in one sitting but then it was just i don't know why i didn't think it would be super heavy but it is quite heavy already and i just kind of like didn't want to like overwhelm myself when i really wasn't in the mood to read something too happy so i'm excited to get on with it though this book is really amazing and it's also matching my top yay okay book number five is book number five is a polarizing book um what books do i own are polarizing so for this prompt i'm gonna go with catherine house by elizabeth thomas which also kind of like low-key matches my outfit i don't know what this lighting is if i can just like adjust myself oh god this lighting is terrible i'm sorry anyway for polarizing book i'll be reading captain house by elizabeth thomas this is a dark academia mystery thriller kind of book about this woman who ends up joining this university program where while she's in it she's not allowed to contact the outside world this is a book that i've seen so many people love and so many people hate and i think i'm gonna love it i just get the vibe i'm gonna love this book um i'm super excited to get to it uh but it is very polarizing a lot of people don't like it um but i think it's queer as well i'm not 100 sure but it seems like it may be um and it's also a little bit harder like it just seems like a lot of things that i would love and i'm super excited to read it and i know people who love it i know people who hate it and it's very polarizing um but yeah i'm like not making any coherent sense in this video but we're gonna move on so now what's our last look because they're not doing too many boxes so the last prompt is set oh my god i hate this prompt set in the decade i was born i did this last month what i was thinking about oh i was thinking about this prompt this morning and i was like what are the books that i do own apart from the one that i chose last month could i use because clearly i wasn't going to get to that book and i really want to try and just read stuff on my physical tbr and i realized that i can finish a whole series and i just i'm dumb this series is set in the 2000s i was born in 2000 exactly and this series started in like 2006 um and continued on from there but like in the series it's not like it's like years go by it's set in the 2000s okay i don't know if this one specifically is i'm assuming it is because as far as i know there aren't like jumps in like years um like the series kind of takes place over the course of like i think like one or two maybe three years like everything kind of happens quite quickly but i need to finish this series and i've been wanting to finish this series for a long time now and i just haven't gotten to it yet um so i'm gonna finally get to city of heavenly fire which is amazing because then i can read quack quirk princess yes that's the one that i need to read after this um so these are for the six books that i plan on reading in may i will be doing a twitter poll so you need to follow me on twitter if you want to know which book you guys will choose i think what i'm gonna do is maybe let you guys on twitter choose my tbr or at least the main focus of my do the thing-a-thon if you don't know what the the dude of thing-a-thon is it's a read-a-thon that is going to be hosted by ashley from frolic through fiction where the goal of the readathon is just to meet goals or work towards goals that you have for your reading year overall so if your reading goal on goodreads is to read 10 books and you've already read eight just read two books during that week and you'll meet that goal or if it's to read um all the queer books on your shelf you just read queer books that are on your shelf for that week it's it could be anything to read more fantasy you read you spend the week reading fantasy to read books that are translated read translate join me like anything that you want any goal that you have um so i think what i'm going to do for that is to pick some books i want my top 10 books to read this year list i didn't make a video of that but i do have a list and just pick three and then let you guys choose which one i focus on one of the ones is um one of the books on that list is city of heavenly fire but i won't choose this book specifically um but if i haven't read it by the time that week comes around i will read this um so yes follow me on twitter so you can choose what book i read during that readathon um follow me on instagram because i post pretty pictures there follow me on goodreads so you can see what i read in real time um i'm also on story graph which isn't as established but i am on there and i think i might be joining weedly at some point i don't know that there's some buzz around that so i'll i'll see um i am talking nonsense i feel like i'm gonna hate editing this video because it makes no sense but hopefully you enjoyed it hopefully it was a good 10 minutes of your day and you enjoyed it enough to comment down below your opinions um like if you like the video or if you just liked it just thumbs down it helps me either way i don't really care um and then subscribe because this is the amazing content that you'll be getting on a regular basis if you do so yeah that's it for me for today and i'll see you guys in my next video bye i'm sorry

Channel: mel.theravengirl

Views: 121

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: booktube, book, books, tbr, to be read, tbr jar, reading, fantasy books, cassandra clare, dark academia, non-fiction, reader

Id: OhSWsjvXkbw

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021