Mid Year Book Freakout Tag!

[Music] hi everyone bear from bare reads books welcome back to my channel time for a tag video from me you never see me do tag videos um but i thought i really should try and get back to them there's been some great tag videos out there recently i think oh man i should really do those and then time passes and then you forget to do them but this one i've done before i think or maybe last year even the year before so i really like this video i watch a lot of these tag videos so i thought i'd do the mid-year book freak out so many people have done it already so as usual i'm late to the party but this is a really good tag with some great questions so here i go the question best book i've read so far in 2021 i was going through my list and there's a lot of dark stuff there in 2021 i don't know why and there's a lot of booktube prize reading as well but the one that i chose as the standout for 2021 so far is mayflies by andrew o'hagan and i've spoken about this a couple of times i didn't do a standalone review but man it was a it's a fantastic book about about the friendship of boys and young men growing up in glasgow in the 1970s 80s 90s and modern times it is an incredible uh achievement of a book um i which tells the story of these group of friends that grow up uh in glasgow it's pretty hard neighborhood it's a hard city to live in and it's filled with poverty and violence and these group of boys spend their time going to a music festival so they all travel to another city to go to a music festival and it's about the getting the money together and finding accommodation and just really spending the time with each other as young men and exploring that and as young men they were they're wonderful beautiful human beings uh they don't treat people poorly they don't speak with they don't act out with violence don't drink too much and be stupid there's there's it's it's a picture of men that we don't regularly see and and then that narrative is balanced with a later narrative of the story of the same group of men when one of them falls sick and is requesting help to allow him to die with dignity so you've got these two dual narratives playing against each other and they're really quite an amazing book and it shows up again in this list a couple of times down down further below because when you keep asking me questions like like are on the book freakout tag i just keep bringing this book to the front of my mind if you haven't read it you really should there's a couple of really good reviews out there that other channels have done as well so check out those reviews if you're still not sure but may 5's by andrew hagen is my standout for the year best sequel i've read so far in 2021 i don't generally read series and i don't generally read sequels but i am in the middle of one and i have finished one it's like the only one i've finished is um ready player two and that was this that's a sequel obviously to replay one and it was a serious disappointment i really didn't enjoy it as much as the first one i think because it was a carbon copy that had lost some of its sheen of the first one the first one was so new and different and and was really trying to do something exciting and capture a market that had never been captured before and then the second one just really copied that but didn't do as good a job so yes it is the only sequel i've finished i'll get to the other sequel a little later because it shows up uh in a later question but really don't really read series but best best sequel the only sequel ready player two new release i haven't read yet but i want to and i bought this book just last week because a few people have been been mentioning it on their channels it's called assembly by natasha brown the reason why it attracted my attention specifically is because people were drawing comparisons between this and virginia woolf's mrs dalloway which i have reviewed before and i've said marvelous things about many times on this channel and it's just something that's really captured my thinking and and and emotion when it comes to books is mrs dalloway and this is a mod not a modern retelling it is its own story it's its own thing but it is this very similar uh story structure in that a woman is i'll read it out the narrator is a black british woman she's preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate set deep in the english countryside at the same time she's considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself as the minutes tick down and the future beckons she can't escape the question is it time to take it all apart and in essence that kyla is what mrs dalloway is doing is considering and reconsidering her own life her own choices and the path that she's taken as she does this circuitous route around the streets of london and here uh is also in in london a black black british woman is on this uh ex personal exploration as she goes on her daily jobs and routine before going to a party so on the surface it really does seem like a mrs dalloway type of story but at a very slim 99 pages i'm curious to see how all of that comes together in such a slim volume and as a modern as a modern telling of a similar story and i'm interested in those kinds of stories where people just walk around for over the space of a day and there's quite a few of them uh and we just get to hear their own internal monologues and see all the things that are happening around so that is something that i'm um that i really want to get to and it's been released i've bought it i'm ready to go it's only 99 pages so i'll probably knock it off sometime very very soon next number four most anticipated release for the second half the year i don't think i can go past sally rooney i'm still yet to do conversations with friends so i've read normal people and it when i read it it was one of the most amazing things i've ever read and i think it does an amazing job of redefining what story can be and what dialogue can be and i think there's so much interesting stuff happening in a sally rooney novel that it was incredible it really was an eye-opener when i read um when i read normal people and i think when they made the tv show as well they captured that until they captured that mood and that that emotion very very well also uh i unfortunately haven't got to conversations with friends so i need to get to that before the new one comes out whose name escapes me i'll put it on the screen but the new sally rooney novel comes out later this year and i must must read it number five the biggest disappointment and this will challenge a lot of people but i think i've said it before my biggest disappointment so far uh reading this year it was released last year was a promised land by barack obama i'm not an american i'm not embedded in american political life um but i have an opinion like like most other people but i just found it to be a dissection a daily almost dissection of a presidency that in and of itself is is a very interesting and noteworthy presidency but i just found the retelling of it to be a simple daily dissection and it wasn't enough for me because i can pick up any story of any prime minister of australia or any other president of the united states and get the same experience i don't think it did any more than any of those other political autobiographies and to know that there's a second volume coming out that'll do exactly the same thing turned me completely off it so yeah barack obama a promised land it's a big no for me number six the biggest surprise for 2021 so far was a really big surprise i didn't really think uh why did i pick it up in the first let me let me have a think about it but the number six i put as monique raffi's uh the mermaid a black koch such a strange and excitingly good little volume of work it was the winner of la la what did it win the costa prize so it was it won the costa prize for literature this year um and i think that's what prompted me that was the only thing that prompted me to pick it up and being a prize winner you know they're not all great just because it wins a prize and me reading in another country uh doesn't mean i'm going to enjoy it i mean there's plenty of prize books that i've that i don't enjoy but i picked this up purely on a whim purely because it had won the costa prize and it was surprisingly good it was amazingly good very very good story tells the story of a of a fisherman in the caribbean who meets a mermaid and falls in love with a mermaid and on the surface of it that sounds like an interesting tale for children it is not it's got the greatest longest sex scene that i've ever read in literature and this is a small book it's got a crack and big sex scene in the middle of it that is amazing and it really is a story of love and magic and i was absolutely captivated by it if you haven't read it you should um uh it it's incredible um the mermaid of black conch by monique raffi uh number seven my favorite new author debut or new to you me me uh and i'm gonna go with australian book for this one i i don't know if i've talked too much about australian books yet no i haven't wow okay favorite new author this one uh was a uh an author called jessie two and her book a lonely girl is a dangerous thing was nominated for the stellar prize i think it got through it was long-listed i don't think it got to the through the shortlist it really should it it polarized a few people because of the descriptions of of uh sex and not violence but of sex and there was some very very detailed descriptions of sex in this book it was about a young girl who is world-class uh performer for the violin and she works tries to work professionally as a violinist but she is constantly in fear and anxiety about her own ability and about what other people think of her so and at her core she is incredibly lonely she finds it difficult to make friends she has a problem with her family and that she doesn't connect well with her family and all of that history is laid out in the book as well and what she does to overcome her loneliness is seek out empty sexual encounters and when you see those sexual encounters in light of a loneliness then it makes perfect sense why she's doing it and you see those quite graphic uh descriptions of sex in the book as not as tales of love and lust but as tales of pure desperation and loneliness and that's what and it's quite a sad book there's um but i thoroughly i thoroughly enjoyed it uh and as a new author jessie too has has captured me completely i can't wait for whatever she does whether it be something published online a short story or whatever i'm i will be seeking it out that is jessie ii uh and her book a lonely girl is a dangerous thing i hope it's available overseas if you're here in australia it is available everywhere eight my newest fictional crus crush don't generally do fictional crushes although i have had a fictional crush crush on i have fictional crushes on authors rather than characters like is that what this is referring to because i've had a fictional crush on on um i've had a fictional crush on donna tartt ever since she released her first book a secret history back in the 90s and she's written a grand total of three books in 20 years or 25 years and um i just eagerly await anything that she writes but she she publishes so infrequently that it's it's a labor of love to stay connected to her but that's not new probably my newest crush i guess is another author ben lerner um and again there's been criticisms about this about ben lerner for being over complicated and and overly self-absorbed and it is auto fiction it is meant to be describing ben lerner's own life in a fictionalized way uh but personally i find all of his books incredibly uh for a couple of reasons i think his characterization is amazing in in how deep he goes into a character's psyche that you can understand a character so much [Music] and that i love because in some books you just carry along with the story and in other books you're you get wrapped up in a particular character and for ben learner it's it's all about character i think i think his stories are sometimes a little bit too disjointed to get completely enveloped in um but the books that i've read have been learners and i've got one more on my shelf that i haven't read and all this stuff that's online short stories and interviews and things like that um yeah there is a there is a crush there and i wish i was as good as him in anything i think he's one of these obsessive people that that writes and writes and writes and he's this craz this crazed artist type i think he writes poetry he writes about poetry and then he writes literature short stories and online essay pieces there's a bunch of stuff about him online if you want to go digging and that's ben lerner his most recent one the topeka school won a prize i can't remember what it was was it the pulitzer no it wasn't poets it was something but ben lerner's topeka school won a prize but again it was criticized for being overly complex and overly self-self-absorbed and you're right it is and that's why i like it does that make me overly complex and overly self-self-absorbed i hope not i just seem to enjoy his books i hope you do too that's that was number eight my newest fictional crush my newest favorite character let me grab this book my newest favorite character and i mentioned that when i go away with friends my none of my friends read the same way i do all the same type of books that i do so trying to find books that we as a friendship group can read together when we're on long car journeys or something we can talk about together is really difficult and when we went hiking a couple of months ago we had enough time with the drive there and the drive back to complete an entire audio book and it was this it was matthew riley's seven ancient wonders and it's a jack west novel this is the first of the jack west novels and there are seven of them because the second book is six something somethings and the third book is five something somethings and we listen to this and so as my newest favorite character i'm going to go with jack west now these are almost throwaway novels you read them you go ha wow and then you just you just throw this in the recycle bin these are not pieces of literature this is pure fantastical entertainment full of guns and shooting and and just weird technology and descriptions of of a bullet entering someone's skull it is just non-stop action aplenty and that's not going to appeal to everybody and it doesn't always appeal to me but when i'm in a car for a while you can fall asleep for half an hour wake up and knowing know exactly where you're up to it's kind of like a soap opera in that respect you can skip bits if you want you'll still understand what's happening but that was the first one and i have started the second one and i'm nowhere near finishing it and it'll be the sort of thing that i come back to in six months time and just go oh yeah that's where i was up to because it's it's not the sort of thing you need to concentrate on very much i can't even tell you what the second one is called six something somethings ah the six sacred stones that's what it is the six sacred stones i thought it was all s's um so that's he is my favorite new my new newest favorite character from from these action-packed and he's a terrible character like there is nothing good about uh matthew riley's books apart from the action aplenty stuff his characterizations are shallow his storylines are completely unbelievable but if you want to escape in a book for a day or a weekend there is nothing better than to just fall into one of these things and just laugh along with it they really are that ridiculous and for that for that entertainment value only he is my favorite character jack jack west junior the books that made me cry and i've got two on my list and one of them is a return from the top of the list which is mayflies by by andrew o'hagan which i've spoken about before it seriously made me weep it is it's sad and it's like it's the next one as well books that made me happy is is mayflies by andrew o'hagan as well because his portrait of male relationships about how men relate to each other or how they should relate to each other is perfect and that makes me happy so i'm crossing into number 11 here but that makes me happy where this relationship and the the things that these two men go through together as friends made me cry and i can't urge you enough to read this book andrew hagan's mayflies it made me laugh it made me cry it made me very happy very very sad all at once so the other thing that's on my books that made me cry list for almost the same reason i'm guessing it could go on the books that made me happy list as well another australian book on this list that i'm going through for the tag it is a book that i've just finished in the last 12 hours like last night it's called we were not men by campbell mattinson an australian author his first book and he said he's been writing it for something like 20 25 years and it really is an incredible book and again it's about the relationships that men have with each other and this tells the story of two of twins twin boys whose lives are upended with a horrible event when their parents are killed in a car accident and then they have to go and live with their grandmother who's a bit loopy and a bit of a drunk and it it tells the story of these boys lives and all of the things that happen to them along the way the stuff that happens to them is not unrealistic like we're not talking about thing after thing after thing after horrible thing happening to them it really is it could be anybody's life whose lives were turned around completely by the death of their parents and then what happens after that and that the emotions are very realistically brought to the page and i really felt for these two boys i really felt for the family and the grandmother even though she was a bit strange and every character in this book has something uplifting about them uh there's no oh there's a dark specter of a person hiding around the corner now it's not that it it really is kind of like mayflies there's no one working against anybody it's just a picture of people getting on with their lives the best way they can and both of these books in a similar way considering that they're both about relationships between men do a fantastic job and they both made me cry they both made me happy i'll say those titles again mayflies by andrew o'hagan and we were not men by campbell mattinson uh i hope it's out where you are it's just been released in australia i had it as an advanced reader copy on netgalley so it is out now uh number 12 the most beautiful book i've bought or received as a gift this year i did buy it for myself and i've shown you this book before and it is this lovely bound version of poems by emily dickinson it hasn't shown up on goodreads as something i'm reading now i haven't really talked about it since i bought it but i have been flicking through it and rants i'm not reading it back back to front or anything but i have randomly picked it up when i felt like a poetry hit if you ever feel like that and just read a couple of pages or a couple of poems and just ingesting it in that way and that's been lovely but it's so tactile with this embossed leather feel front cover and these beautiful birds in cages on the inlay front and back it's just a gorgeous book and lovely thick pages and lovely tight face i don't usually fall in love with how books look but this one absolutely blew me away as soon as i saw it and then even more when i grabbed it off the shelf and touched it i had to have it it's beautiful um number 13. what books do i need to read by the end of the year i do need to read these i said i was going to read them excuse me i really do need to read these i said i was going to read this at the beginning of the year i need to answer just a big lump of a book don quixote by uh cervantes the reason why i wanted to read this is because salman rushdie is that a a modernized rewritten version called keyshot which is the i think the correct pronunciation of quixote so before i read the reworked modernized version by salman rushdie i wanted to give this a shot such a big thing it's just about finding the right time so i really do want to do this this year but then this came as well edward rutherford china which has been promised to be arriving for about last 18 months and then just finally dropped on the shelf without any warning at all uh without any fanfare it is kind of mass market fiction but i love it edward rutherford um if you've never tried him he does these massive big multi-generational family history things that really just draw you in amazing they've even got like family trees on the inside inside pages on the first few pages they've got maps of where people move it's just amazing edward rutherford's china so they're things i really do need to get to this year um and i'm if i i think if i start them if i start them during this period now that i'm not doing a a booktube prize reading session then i'll i'll keep going with them but i do need to get some of these others off my shelf i've got six books on the go at the moment so maybe next favorite book community member number 14 that's the last one and i do have so many that i that i watch regularly um my favorite book community i had so many favorites let me let me do three um probably the the channel that i watched first and i still watch is a book olive and if you've never seen olive from a book olive she's great and um she does all types of books and all types of discussions as well as the tags and all the normal videos that i'm really bad at but she does all of that sort of traditional booktube stuff as well as just has discussions about topics and things like that and and for that she's and she works non-stop there's videos all the time and that's ola from a book olive i'll put the links down below uh the other person that i that i found early and i continue to watch is brian from bookish and i do mention him a lot because i think we have similar reading tastes i think um and he does he does similar things in that he will do straight up book review he'll do tag videos he'll do life updates he'll also do just political rants some of his recent political rants have been fantastic thank you brian uh and i i and uh i've been watching him almost since the beginning uh and one of the newer ones the third one i'm going to mention one of the newer ones is australian uh bunch or australian couple their channel is called gunpowder fiction and plot they again they're trying to do something different they have the questions they have about books like and or genres of books and recently they've done a couple of videos about what's the point of literary fiction and you know but they read in literary fiction they read lots of books in literary fiction but doing a video about what the hell is the point about literary fiction they do they're trying to do interesting things and for that i really enjoy their videos so there's three there uh that i've been following for quite a while and i really enjoy the videos get on them but really everybody i'm uh everybody should be doing this tag it's a great tag but that's it 14 questions it takes a while to get through that though enjoy the rest of your day everyone wherever you may be and i will see you again soon thanks bye you

Channel: Bear Reads Books

Views: 427

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: tag video, mid year book freakout, book review, best books

Id: jT1EgEE82AM

Length: 28min 53sec (1733 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021