Standalones & Palate Cleansers to Read in 2022

are you guys ready for some more end of the year content of course you are let's talk about some standalones some pallet cleansers [Music] hey what's up bookworms mike back to talk a little pallet cleansers and some standalones that i plan to read next year now you're asking how is this different than the new series you plan to start next year well guys look as a fantasy fan we get roped into a lot of series don't wait we get wrapped in a book one of three uh book one of a planned seven book series things like that so every once was like man there are no like unicorn fantasy books out there anymore where it's just one story and done right so i thought what i did last year i talked about some series or some new books or palette cleansers as i called them where i was like okay these are either just a standalone book or these are some series that don't require much brain power really to consume they can help you kind of wash off the funk of trudging through another 850 page fantasy book right so i thought it went over pretty well because i ended up reading almost all the ones i mentioned last year sorry sorry naomi novik that was my bad that i missed that one but the rest of them i felt like i did a pretty good job of it i've got them stacked here and i realize now that they're in the camera so this is great great great great production value isn't it i can't say that enough i deserve one more grade in there but we're gonna do that now we're gonna get into some of these books why i try to plan to read these why these have kind of come to the forefront a little bit of maybe what they're about if i know uh so let's kick off the first one here this is american psycho brent easton ellis uh brett sorry brett east allis i'm saying brett because my patron brent actually sent this to me one of the moderators in my discord thank you bryn but the thing is i think what i asked him when i got i was like look i love that movie never read the book i was like can this book explain that weird ass ending to me he's like not really so i'm very much excited to do that because uh i really am i just became enamored with that movie like a lot of people in my age bracket did and i just i can't wait to see really what the author was kind of trying to get across but yeah it all comes down to me wanting to try to understand that ending a little more so i look forward to it and then the next one is another movie that i've seen the book i've seen the movie of the movie i've seen the movie this is starting off just great isn't it but a book that i i think a movie that i'll always consider when i talk about american psycho is another movie that i saw at the time which was fight club this one by uh chuck chuck p what does it say chuck p i don't pretend i cannot see like palumbo uh chuck palumbo i think that's a wrestler anyway again i'm just i'm on fire today guys i had to cut that whole bit out that was ridiculous but anyway i love the movie it was one of those kind of movies where the first time i watched it had so much hype that it was going to possibly met it and i watched it i was just like ah it was okay and then like randomly like five or six years later watching me become like this is amazing and i was like yeah we know right so i again my wife actually says that this book was life-changing for her she saw before she before she saw the movie she read this so it was one of those things where i take that seriously when someone says that because i always say that about dune i know a lot of people be like oh yeah book was great changing my life it's like really what's like about like uh uh everything it's like so it didn't really change your life so uh yeah she gave me a big old rundown about why this book was so important so i think much how like i read alice in wonderland this past year because that is her favorite book this is one that really she's kind of influenced me to want to to read because uh says it is very not very different than the movie but it will get some things across that maybe the movie might have missed so if it's even half as good as that movie is uh very excited to do it but you know what i don't know if we do a review about this one do you know why because rule number one guys you can't talk about fight club next up this is one that i think is a long time coming i first read beowulf in high school years and years and years and years ago and i remember liking it but being kind of like this is weird yeah we don't even know who translated this or whatever when we read the one we read in high school but i didn't even know the man the myth the legend jr or tolkien has a translation of beowulf why would i not want to revisit this the interest for this actually came up because i did i reviewed eaters of the dead by michael crichton this year which is very much his take on beowulf with a but you know add some vikings into it and uh i haven't actually spoken with philip about this yet i feel like i should have spoken with him before i put this on camera but what better way to apply pressure than to put him on the spot here i'd actually like to do this as a buddy read with my guy philip chase because i think it would be a lot of fun getting into something this heavy with phillip and then maybe him and i could do like a you know a buddy review of it i think that'd be a lot of fun so uh if he can take you know a billion books he's reading with ap canada maybe he can fit in one with me i don't know we'll talk about it i think i hope very very soon but i would love to read this with philip even if he says i don't have the time mike and i understand i'm very much looking forward to visiting that and seeing how tolkien actually addresses this story because they could be a lot of fun because that's the man right how about some horror guys uh this one i have heard a ton about lair baron i don't know a lot about the guy but i have heard a ton about him so this is the imago sequence and other stories i think i'd just be just committing to just the short story of imago sequence and now if i end up liking it then yeah i would obviously read some more but a lot of people in my horror content you know that does no traffic here the people that do watch it have really highly recommended this so i again i don't have anything else to say about except that he's become highly recommended in the horror community and there's so many uh modern horror authors that haven't really clicked with me so i mean i think the last one i got recommended highly was all makatsu and that did not click for me so i'm hoping that i have a better experience with this one so any feedback you guys got on this i definitely would appreciate it now a horror writer i do know a lot about and yes i do consider her a horror in fact i consider her my vampire queen that of course is miss anne rice writing about something other than vampires this is the mummy look i have never read anything by anne rice it was not vampire chronicles anything outside of that i haven't really read of anarchy this is one that i've always heard a lot of good things about so uh i this is back when she was really writing some good good horror stuff so i'd be very interested her take on ramsey's here i think it would be a lot of fun so uh i fun might not be the word for some people but gosh i just i would love that feeling that i used to get of oh my god a new anne rice book i'm just going to devour this bad boy and have a good time with this so yeah i'm very excited to visit the queen again sometime in 2022. you guys know i've talked about the star wars eu on this channel a lot right and that is very much something i still consider canon i do not recognize the disney star wars as can i do recognize legends as they call it now as the one the only the true star wars eu so i will always stand by that i've made several videos on this channel knew that if you disagree that's fine just how i feel it's hard for me to take these years of them saying yes this is canon oh no never mind it's not canon because we want to do something differently i was accepting of it at the time but after the result we got like look if you're going to scrap a lot of that cannon you better do something better they didn't do something better but one thing i never read in the eu read over 70 star wars eu books but i've never touched the x-wing books and i thought rogue squadron would be a great one to start with because everyone in drops into star wars eu videos and says you gotta read some x-wing books if you haven't so uh this gives me some more wedge stories i'm obviously very interested in and i think that this with star wars eu books guys these are the ultimate palette cleanser sure it's a greater over i think there's like 12 or 17 freaking x-wing books hey one of these once in a while i think that could be a lot of fun and i'm not gonna lie i've been itching to return to some star wars eu i reread the thrawn trilogy last year but uh yeah i think i would have a ton of fun getting back into some star wars series that kind of maybe fill in some gaps in some of those eu books that i've read i think that could be something very exciting to go to but rogue squadron obviously is one i've heard of michael stackpole this is a one that we're going to be doing a movie of but apparently that got scrapped now too so the movies are just they're in disarray right now but the eu will always be special to me and i'm looking forward to adding on to that uh sometime next year i think they could be really really great fun uh this one is an author that sent me this book and it's cameron johnson this is the maleficent seven and you would usually say mike but i thought you didn't have time to read indie authors well i i don't know a lot and look guys i wanna be honest about that with the whole thing about i don't have time to read in the authors also is what if you're an indie author just getting going okay and i read and review your book and i don't like it i feel like i'm going to torpedo your career i definitely don't want to do that so that's why i maybe wouldn't do a review but i could actually read this one just because so many people that i trust on grimdark have said it's very very good i think a very suicide squad in a grim dark setting is how it's gotten sold to me and it sounds great and it sounds like it's a quick read so i i i'd be interested maybe checking that out this is obviously lower down on my list of things here i doubt i'm going to get all 15 of these on here yes i have 15 of them i don't even get all of those on here but these are ones that always are always going to come up if i've got some free time in a month like i just did with empire the vampire in november i got an extra time i can fit in one of these once in a while this would be one that i think that i could probably that not very many people have heard of that that i could probably squeeze in sometime uh other than that i don't know a ton about it i am starting to know a lot about blake crouch though guys i have read five blade crouch books and i have loved capital l loved all of them so far dark matter recursion and the waiver pines trilogy have all just been phenomenal so at this point i think anything that blake crouch writes i'm going to read good thing too because he's got quite the back catalog to go back to and steph actually sent me abandon that's one of my patrons and one of my favorite patrons and steph sent this to me and so i would love to get into this it's a big old boy here but blake crouch books man they go so so fast i don't doubt this one is any different i think this one actually takes place like the 1800s though so that could be an interesting little uh twisted what i'm used to with his stuff so again guy has not hit anything except home runs for me yet this is the pinch hitter i want to call up when i need a big hit if i'm in a reading slump or something like that and i think this is going to be perfect for when that time inevitably comes in 2022 it's gonna happen guys everyone everyone hits a reading slump once in a while right uh yours truly included it happened to me twice this year and it took some pallet cleansers to really get me out of that i think this year one of my biggest ones happened and then i read what childhood's ended by arthur c clarke and it just crushed it and that really just kind of like boom all of a sudden i was reading really really fast again uh last one here this is a series when i did my last live stream i got so many recommendations for it i began to wonder if the author was in there and he was telling his fan club to attack and this of course is the cradle series by will white i've got the first two books and everyone says these are just very much like even a lighter version of dresden files and not that the content's the same and that you can read them between some big epic fantasy books and just blow right through them that sounds exactly like what i'm looking for i was tempted to put codex alira on here over this but i just i get so many recommendations for this series everybody tell me they think that it will be something i absolutely love so i like to listen to the people and uh this series apparently the guy writes super quick too i think he puts out like two of these a year so it still is an ongoing series which has been hesitant you know i don't like to start a lot of these big series that aren't done yet because now like for example speaking of dresden files i have to wait for the first time and i'm not thrilled about that but anyway this uh again nothing but great great things have i heard so far and i believe a lot of them apparently are on amazon but kindle unlimited so if you have a kindle you can apparently get these uh you know included in your program so there is that if you are interested in joining those the rest of them i don't have physical copies of i have uh digi actually you know what the next one is between two fires by christopher buellman and i know i know one of my viewers sent that book to do me i have it in here somewhere i looked all over the place i could not find it but i do know that i have it so i'll have to try to dig it up before that happens a lot of people on my discord are reading black tongue thief by him right now and they all seem to really really like it but between two fires is the one that i owned somewhere so that's the one that i picked and i think my guy mark slowly read he uh i think he recommends it was one of his favorite reads of the year and after his recommendation of empire the vampire just completely crushed it for me uh yeah i'm always going to listen to my guy mark when it comes to some of these things because that is my my grim dark guru right there but uh chrisman an author i keep hearing a lot about recently and uh yeah excited to do it uh next one up is robert mccammon which book you ask well it came down to two was it gonna be swan's song or was it gonna be boy's life every time i talk about stephen king i get someone dropping the comments saying mike you gotta read robert mccammon right i looked at them and i said hmm swansong is a really big chunker but that never really chases me off and things like this even for a palette cleanser a big chunk doesn't really chase me off what pushed me over the edge when i talked to brian lee durfee when we talked about stephen king he really recommended boy's life for me knowing how much i love the coming of age subgenre and apparently that's what it is so i think i picked boy's life i sometimes antoine that's that's one that like if i was doing a permanent ink one that's one that's really high up there i would really like to read some robert mccammon just because of how much it gets recommended to me and uh boys life is another one i don't think i've ever heard a bad thing about so uh if you think i should do siobhan's song instead shawwan saying like sean conner schwann strong do you think i do schwann instead please drop in the comments and let me know but uh right now i'm really leaning heavily towards boys life now i did read another joe hill book this year i read uh god what was it called uh heart-shaped box hello uh but uh yeah i uh despite the fact that i couldn't remember because guys it's just sometimes some things just don't work up here i really liked that oh not as much as knows ferrazzi i like nosferatu a lot but again i've read two books by the son of king and i've liked both them so far so i said okay i'm gonna keep going so i think i'm gonna go back and do the fireman next the firemen is one that when it came out i thought about doing it and i just i never really got around to that or horns uh and that was actually before i even knew that he was stephen king's son but uh yeah i i really liked his two books that i've read so far so i i think uh like a blake crouch or or or now a uh jay kristoff i'm going back and discovering some of the earlier works i think i could kind of just continue to work my way backwards you know because i i like what i've read from them so far so i think it's a good formula you know and i feel like uh i won't say that um you know he's you know he's just like stephen king you know apple didn't fall for too far from the tree kind of thing but i definitely think that he paid attention you know when you have that that level of an editor in your house someone to give you feedback to go through i think he obviously listened and paid attention to a lot of those lessons because uh yeah i can see his stuff taking place in the multiverse which it does apparently so i i can't wait to do a little more joe hill now this one next one guys i have no idea what it's about i have heard of suzanna clarke numerous times but the story that keeps getting recommended to me a lot is jonathan strange and mr norrell i have it on digital don't know the first thing about it at all it's just a lot of people whose opinions i value have the highest praise for it so that's why the one that i kind of put on here uh suzanna clark like i said author i hear a lot about so i'd like to see if the hype is real for that one i got a couple more here this is one of the big old chunky boys now one of my favorite movies of all time is the godfather i mean i'm a 43 year old man you think i don't love the godfather i mean come on let's be honest about it here i've never read mario puzo's novel so i think i would really enjoy dipping into that because it's legendary guys it's one that you've heard a ton about and again i love that movie so much that i can put it on mute and hum the music and recite all the dialogue because it's just that good of a movie one of the best movies ever made right so i gotta imagine the source material must be pretty strong so i am looking forward to finally dipping into that learning a little bit more about the corleone family because i think it could be just what i'm looking for when i try to step outside of sci-fi fantasy and horror it needs to be something significant and i think that could be something very very significant getting into the crime family business you know got to keep it in the family last up guys if you don't know i am a huge james bond fan i've read two of ian fleming's novels uh for your eyes only and uh octopussy have the only two that i have ever read and i like them in fact that's why i said i feel like timothy dalton's actually kind of played the character the most like ian fleming wrote i'd like to know more there is a chronological order to read these books so i'd like to kind of go through and do them all in a chronological order as opposed to a publication order because i just think that that's a lot of fun to do it that way i there isn't really something like that for conan by robert e howard but there is like some fans that put together a somewhat meaningful timeline for those with this i think they could be really really neat to do so that starts in 1953 with casino royale so i'll be doing casino royale for sure sometime in 2022 because i love me some james bond and i have no excuse for not reading more of mr fleming's work so i gotta believe that uh you know these books were popular enough to make one of the most popular movie franchises of all time for a reason because the material was good uh yeah so i like the two that i've read so i'm very much looking forward to going back to the beginning and seeing where it all started with bond james bond guys that's uh that's 15 books that i plan to get in here sometime in 2022 given that i do have time and we have seen over the course of the last couple years i always find a little extra time here and there to do these things so guys you have any uh standalones power cleansers that you're interested in dropping in and sometime in 2022 drop them in the comments and let me know if you know anything about these that you want to talk about please i appreciate all feedback so i'll talk to you guys there [Music]

Channel: Mike's Book Reviews

Views: 8,215

Keywords: Review, Reaction, Reading, Books, recap, Mike's Book Reviews, 2022, tbr, standalone books, standalones, palate cleansers, list, ranking, american psycho, fight club, beowulf, imago sequence, the mummy, anne rice, rogue squadron, star wars, blake crouch, cradle, will wight, between two fires, boys life, robert mccammon, joe hill, fireman, suzanna clarke, godfather, mario puzo, ian fleming, james bond, 007, tolkien, laird barron, christopher buehlman, abandon, swan song, stephen king

Id: mLA8Ok9fgJA

Length: 18min 26sec (1106 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 14 2021