Some Of My Favourite Big Books | May 2018

hi everyone and welcome to my channel I'm Simon the secretaries and today I thought as it is all my big book weekenders I would do a video all about some of my very very favorite big books some of the big books that I love hugely as it were apologist sorry this there's so many puns that you can do when you're talking about big books like you can apply etc is to ease into tempting frankly anyway it's almost fifty on it if you're wondering Warner is a big book weekender um well I shall link a video down below that talks about it but basically is wherever the bank holiday weekends this year I decided I would try and get through some more big books and if you guys wanted to join in with whatever book she wanted to read that was ace and lovely and lots of you have and it's really really nice but some of you also one is training was why I'm reading and if you want is training late in the game it's not too late it's only Saturday as this goes live then it's the book that I'm reading this weekend it is the parent ations by Kate Mayfield which I've discussed a few times on this channel I think and it's quite different it's quite a quirky historical novel that's what I'm gonna say for now so let's go on to ten big books that you might want to head to this weekend too or you might just want to head to over the next few weeks or months or you might want to take a few or get a few and from your library or from a bookshop or whatever roughly don't steal them from someone's house but whatever you want to get them from and read them on the next big book weekender which will be the last weekend in August there we go happen all done let's get on with some of my favorite books and I thought so my favorite big books I should say and and I thought I would start off with some lesser-known books and one of the less known contemporary books that is older but they're some lesser-known big books and one contemporary lesser-known big book that I think should be better known who is pilcrow by además James now I do apologize about lighting are chosen from a really really silly time of day but if I don't do it now I won't do it so I'm getting on with it this is all about a young man called John Kramer who grows up in the 1950s he's growing up both gay and also with a disability in a time when neither of those things are either dealt was particularly well or well yeah they're not dealt with particularly well it's a story about how he seems a really unlikely hero and yet how he becomes one just because of how he defies the expectations that are laid out of him is also part of what was meant to be a trilogy the second ones the dealer came out but I haven't heard anything about a third one which makes me sad but I would highly highly highly recommend this book I need to read much more Adam Mars Jonesy's when some of the books I haven't read so yeah really really recommend that it is the case of a narrator or a hear of the piece that you won't forget which already really loved I thought I'd also go with a really kind of sort of under the radar classic it is a cult classic and it is oh and you can't really see that very well sorry eastland by Ellen wood now when I used to be a tour guide at Highgate Cemetery I would always point out Ellen woods or the sometimes she's known mrs. Henry wood and but Alan wood to me because you know forward-thinking and yeah she was a kind of grave that I always pointed out so I felt like she was a little bit forgotten in the Victorian era in this book caused such a sensation there was a huge period of sensation novels and if you want to talk me to talk a bit dirt if you want me to talk about sensation novels later in the air because it autumn is the best country to sensation almost be fair and then I will did but basically they're all about the things that were sensational at the time so you get murdered quite often you get bigger me you're all those kinda things and in this case it's about a woman called lady is about who leaves her family behind for her very wicked seducer but it's also what goes on in the whole of the village of Eastland at the same time and there's also an incident with a governess as well and I won't say more than that because the twists and the turns and the kind of shocks are what are wonderful and by love sensational fiction I absolutely listen my favorites and it generally happens around the eighteen sixties onwards where these books just kind of wash out to shock people and one more is coming up and today not next next up is a book by an also who I'm sure you've all heard much much much about by I think I've mentioned him that much on this channel and I used to really relive him not like don't love him now I just haven't read him for quite a long time and that is Haruki Murakami again sorry about that book and is his calf con the short which was my first Murakami that I read and I instantly completely fell in love with that Jenny think any I was expecting it's really bonkers really weird it kind of follows two main characters and you've got and I want to get this right Mora who runs away from home at 15 and who I seem to remember has really weird dreams about sleeping with his dead mother's ghost that's that kind of book it is mm-hmm and you also have Nakata who isn't aging I think he goes out for my remember cuz there's a really bad captive goes around killing cats but Nakata goes around trying to rescue lost cats will try to track them anyway and what's also this was this really evil dark demon figure who is going around killing cats if you love cats possibly not one of you but very quirky very bonkers very weird a book that has been mentioned on Jen Campbell's channel a lot and I agree is a wonderful wonderful wonderful book is the Crimson petal in the white by Michelle Faber and this is all about a prostitute cause sugar in the 1870s I think yes eighteen seventies London and it's just how can I describe this other than just one of the best romps you're ever gonna go on it just takes you into the world particularly mr. castle mister mister missus castaways brothel is just a wonderful kind of my dad all the scenes are now wonders and beer I love this book very very much indeed and it's been well read as you can say properly used to crack the spines and all souls will love them now and be a I don't know what more to say about this cuz most you would have heard about it anyway I think this is an absolutely stonking massive book it's a stonking big book and I cannot lie for him in the comic just that was bothering me then we have a kind of it hasn't become a modern classic yeah I don't think he can be a modern classic yet but what is it Simon I'll tell you it's Andrea leave is a small island and this I got a bit bored of world war books because I was brought up in in a time where for some reason I think our year just constantly throughout all of our history years at school always learned about World War one or World War two and that was kind of it where was the Tudors where are the Victorians my two real favorite periods in history but maybe they won't be my favorites if had studied them as much as they did World War one and two anyway this is set after sorry it's the beginning no you stop he said just after come on Simon it's set just after I got me his wrong I was given twenties in me for his mixed up anyway it's set after World War two it is when Gilbert brings his wife over from Jamaica and what happens is they end up having to well they have no heads lifts they end up living in the house of Queenie blithe who was renting her rooms while her husband has been at war but that's not the only thing that she's been doing when a husband has been at war what else has she been doing that's the secret that I can't tell you what I can tell you is neither hortensis narrative nor Queenie's narrative will be narratives that you will ever forget these are some of the most vivid female characters I have ever read and I loved them for it and I love that book for it speaking of vivid female characters would you like to know about a character that was so vivid in so wicked and so vividly wicked that she was almost well I think that book was banned briefly because people could not believe a woman could be so evil and that's possibly why I love this book because you know from the off you're dealing with a villain s and sometimes is wonderful to kind of follow their antihero or to would get to villain s I suppose what's the book silent go on tell us it's Armadale by Wade Collins now Wilkie Collins is one of my favorite Victorian authors and you do be expecting possibly a Charles Dickens big stonker to be in my top big books of all time however I don't really like Charles Dickens I think we'll he Collins wiped the floor with him shock horror sorry I think it and that's because I think his stories have more pace they deal with all the cultural stuff and all of the societal stuff of the time that Dickens does but I think they're doing a much more punchy vivid often I actually think more realistic despite how bizarre and again this is a sensation novel there's a lot of murder in here in fact Lydia grill why is she so evil Simon tell us well you know from the off that she's a temptress she's a bigamist she's a laudanum addict and she kills her husband she's a husband poisoner but that kind of you know from the off and I think this book although I have no proof of this may or may not have been an inspiration for Daphne du Maurier's my cousin Rachel it's just a don't know why and but yeah it's just a fascinating fascinating gripping twisty murderous villainous fantastic big book and they're my source of favorites and actually a book that goes nicely in that sort of theme is a book that also looks at the 1800s but is bringing contemporary that she's also set in the 1930s with the main character looking back on what happened with her in Gillespie and I by Jane Harris which has another one of my favorite ever female on the writers and that is Harriet Baxter who if you like an unreliable narrator you are gonna have an app salute field day with this book you're gonna love it you'll just know that girls get enough of it it follows how she met Nick Gillespie and then his family and how she sort of well how she twists her way into their lives and makes herself a big part of their lives when really they don't know her at all initially and there's a little bit of fatal attraction about it yet in this old lady Victorian era I think it is sensational wonderful sensational sorry but I think this is just such a wonderful book you know when sometimes read a book anything that book just chimes with me so much it surely must have been written for me well it wasn't but in my head it was I love Jane Harris's other books and of sugar money that was one my favorite books last year and actually I could have chosen the observations which was her debut novel which is another big historical Rumpy fabulous and the writer in the form of Betty Buckley who is just this sort of Falmouth's wench I suppose is how I describe it but you loved her so much and she star you just reefer and all the secret search finds animals are sort of well ways you get self into trouble anyway so I start talking about both of Jane's books maybe I should do a video on Jane's books full stop which as I can all this spotlight video and Jane Harris I may well do it and yeah so I would highly highly highly recommended last night it felt like it had been written for me and that's amazing when that happens then came a whole long with sensational it seems to me that I like a bit of a sensation nor would you know murder and all those kind of things going on we have Peyton Place by grace metallus now this I think is a great well I think it's one of the real American grades and again there might be people watching they said you've just been doff Dickens I know he had been in off Steinbeck instead of and and save and switching him sorry savoring I don't think I'd ever want to save a Steinbach but I have friends time I can see the grapes wrath that's a very big book didn't really like him ironically very depressing considering it's about the depression or maybe not ironically reached I mean right into this and Peyton Place is set in Lee I think his nineteen sixties or nineteen fifties it was written in 1956 that I think it might have actually got bound it might be a banned book and it's now a banned book week coming up in September maybe so this could be a good bullet headed for that anyway it's about Peyton Place which is a well town in America and what I love about this book is that it's not really about one character although it kind of is but not really it's about all the twitching curtains of that village and all the things they think you're going on but you get to go behind those curtains and see the secrets of the curtain twitches who are watching over the people who also have amazing secrets it's all about secrets it's all about desire murder I mean there are some really dark themes in this book actually just to give her a slight trigger warning there is a very dull stuff going on here too but I just think it's amazingly written and what makes me sad about this book is valley of the dolls seems to become this cult classic and I think this deserves that sort of status it is just a phenomenal book and yeah I think it's treated as a bit of a throwaway one every so often and that to me is wrong then we have a Man Booker winner okay but we do have a one bounnam no not a one burner Minute Man Booker winner and that is the narrow road to the deep north by Richard Flanagan again serve as grab traces from very very very white books this novel absolutely blew my mind I was not sure how I was gonna feel about it again his base ran world war two is based around a prison camp and the Burma Death Railway and it follows dareka Evans who is a doctor but then ends up prisoner of war and ends up being part of this death Road where Burma death railway and it's one of the most moving touching heartbreaking wonderful books that ever everything I don't know if you can just grab a book as being wonderful if it is it utterly heartbreaking but if you have not read this book please please please go and get it because I cannot urge you enough to read it it's I don't think I know anybody who's read it and hasn't completely and utterly fall in love with Dirigo but also a character called Mickey who I will say nothing more about but historian is just oh well anyway I mean it's really where doesn't it have some books you start thinking back to them and you're very emotional this is one of those books for me I just I went through the whole gamut of emotions reading it and I thought I was gonna have to play as well as books as she almost couldn't review because it was so impactful maybe like tim'm by sarah moulton is very small but there are certain books you read sometimes that they have certain effects on he you can't actually write how that is you can't write those emotions down or type them up whichever and but yeah police pcs is also an amazing love story as well um and I don't normally love love stories so this one I did love and a yeah I think that also just for me personally as to its awesome love story I don't like that and then finally I couldn't not mention this book I know it's a contentious book I know some people hate this book but I think it is quite an astonishing piece of work and that is of course a little life by hanya yanagihara this follows Malcolm JB Willem and Jude and it looks at their friendship and initially is kind of I remember starting spoofing you where's this gonna go and then as it goes on you saw break away from the four as a group of friends and actually focus on Jude and his life and his background and what's happened to him in an and found him in the position is in where he's constantly in pain he is disabled and you know something deeply deeply traumatic has happened to him and all of his friends know that this traumatic thing has happened and what's incredible is he well you as the reader begin to learn what's happened to him way before his friends do and I think that was dealt with incredibly it looks at male friendship which is something that I don't think he's talked about that much he looks at sexuality it looks at disability it looks at whether we should or should not want to survive which i think is a really interesting conversation and yeah I just think this book is incredible really really tough to read really how going masses of trigger warnings around this book but if you want to try a big book that's gonna make you really go through an emotional well it just it just pulls you through all the emotions and yeah this book is such a book I know lots of people hate it I know sorry I just really bang that down and I know that Jim Campbell will probably be swearing at this screen along with many of the people that I know and love just throwing that in Lebanon but that's what's amazing isn't it is that sometimes you can read these books and have such total polar opposite ideas about them but at the same time still love each other deeply I'm just turning that in so yeah those are 10 big books that I really really love hugely to take em and I would recommend to you what are your favorite big books why let me know because it might give me some inspiration for some books to read either to pull off the shelves this weekend if I already have them or to get my hands on for the August big book weekender which will be the last weekend in August anyway I'm gonna go now and I will know what and if you've noticed I have got new glasses on and but I already have it out and I will speak to you tomorrow in fact no tomorrow is the first of the queer quarterly videos from me and well it's one of our first book choices it's not actually the first video we did a very introducing it before I'll link that down below too just for fun and but yeah I will speech will on Monday or I'll reroute now especially in the past with that one I will speak to you again Simon just say goodbye bye

Channel: SavidgeReads

Views: 13,806

Rating: 4.9649739 out of 5

Keywords: Savidge Reads, Booktube, Big Book Weekender, Big Books, Kate Mayfield, Adam Mars-Jones, Ellen Wood, Mrs Henry Wood, Haruki Murakami, Michel Faber, Andrea Levy, Wilkie Collins, Jane Harris, Grace Metalious, Richard Flanagan, Hanya Yanagihara

Id: 6I_9rwicpw0

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Sat May 26 2018