starting & completing book series // december vlog 02

hello my friends it's two weeks until christmas and i have some catch-up reading to do oh my god look it looks like i'm wearing like a crown sorry let's talk about what i'm reading this week um my channel members so kindly chose the theme of this vlog which is going to be series and books that i'm reading authors and reading for a second time i'll explain let's come down here in my first vlog i showed you a whole stack of books that i wanted to get to by the end of the year and they were a total mix of genres and vibes and i ended up reading a lot of y a in the first episode especially contemporary and then i figured i'll theme the rest of them so i know i have a whole stack of like spooky horror mystery type stuff that i also want to get to and in the vote people were saying that they wanted me to do that last because it'll give me a bigger break between the horror video i just did and that video which i think is smart so thank you very much and then the rest of them i've just kind of lumped together as mostly series but also it's just this idea that i'm reading authors again and if we're looking at books that i think could potentially be favorites i have to look at authors and books that i've included as favorites before so i know that i have started quite a few series and if you look at my tbr closet i have some sequels that i know people want me to read so no matter what somebody's gonna be disappointed by something that i pick but these are all books that i'm like excited to read so i hope that you'll be excited with me so the first one is something i absolutely refuse to end the year without completing and that is the song of wraiths and ruins series these are naked hardcovers spines are just so pretty uh this is called a psalm of storms and silence by roseanne a brown it was one of my favorite books of last year um not in my top 10 but i did this series of six photos each featuring six different books in different categories just because there are certain books that i want to feature and are amazing but like wouldn't ever make it in a favorites list like mystery thriller often doesn't make it there why a contemporary doesn't make it there anthologies often don't make it there um but the first book in the series made it into my fantasy list and over the last day and a bit i got to the halfway point of this i am listening to the audiobook of this in tandem with reading it physically and i don't love it as much as the first one but we'll see where it goes in the story we're following malik and karina and there's like royalty and casts and magic uh next up i really just want to read dune i want to complete not complete the dune series but this book is so closely tied to the first book that it feels like it should be like one big book i just want to wrap up my thoughts on this overall story so hopefully that's a thing that i will do next up i have started and dnf'd black sun like three times this year i can't explain why i just really need to get past like the hundred page mark and commit myself to this story because i think i could really love it i just i don't know what's stopping me and this is gonna be my push to complete it this year this is my second time reading uh rebecca rohnhorst trail of lightning was like a four-star really enjoyable read for me and as far as reading authors for the second time two 2021 releases that i really wanted to get to um who are from authors that i've read from once before and loved our darcy little badger and today thompson alate was again another favorite fantasy and the murders from wally southbourne was one of my favorite ones that like didn't fit into a category technically it's sci-fi but i didn't have enough sci-fi last year to make an entire like grouping so i made the grouping just like other things that didn't fit into the rest i forget what it's called my mom has it i have to go pick it up this weekend i think it's called the light the light beyond heaven or something like that i'm interested to see if i can enjoy a longer length book from him and then i have a snake falls to earth which i just have very high hopes for even though i don't remember what it's about i also didn't talk to you about the fact that throughout all three of these vlogs i'm also reading um feminist theory i'm reading it in little chapter segments i have for technically months i guess and i do want to wrap this up within these vlogs so hopefully i'll just check in with you like once or twice about this one because this obviously doesn't fit into any of my other categories it's the only nonfiction that i definitely want to finish by the end of the year and that's where i'm at there's the intro our whole family woke up feeling a little bit under the weather today so i don't think we're gonna be doing much of anything this weekend uh i'm gonna be lying around reading a lot so feel good about the likelihood that i will get through all of these things liam and i are building a gingerbread house today oh sour patch yeah we're patched [Music] hold it there don't continue to not move [Music] wow we really put this on crooked what's wrong with us why don't you get a little wiggle in a little bowl maybe two bowls [Music] this is me trying to get into the house but i forgot my key so i can't go me over here you're hearing attached to the hat i take myself to the house yeah that's right wait i really like your roof i tape myself to the house okay well that's a little weird oh my god where should rob on the roof [Music] oh my god his head fell off he's gonna be so impressed when he wakes up from his nap you put this roof on upside down liam i got on my hands i'm allowed to eat if i accidentally get on my hands oh me too oops [Music] like they have a wreath on the front how did they make that you're oh my god you're not a good drum it's snowing [Music] winter wonderland okay show them our final work here we go you can rate us can you tell by my braids that i took a nap and now it's late at night and i'm not tired actually we all took naps today so feeling better i think uh not feeling better about my read this isn't going well for me um i'm almost done and i like don't even want to finish it i thought this is a duology it's gonna be just as strong as the first book i don't have to commit myself to three books seven books ten books it's just gonna wrap up in two and i'm gonna love it the plot twist of the year truly the first one was so fun to me because there was like a competition kind of involved basically the whole story oh god how do i swap the whole story we have a girl and a guy she's royalty he's not and they both like want to kill each other that's their goal in the entire book she has to kill him to resurrect her mother and his sister has been like kidnapped and he has to kill her to like get her back there's magic involved there's spirits involved there's resurrection involved and there's just like a hint of a romance it's not like a big fantasy romance and i feel like i remember her even saying that like this book she didn't want romance to be in this book at all and then throughout edits or something like they ended up having a romance so the romance in the first book isn't the central focus but there is enough of it to like keep you interested if you need that to love like a fantasy series but then this book i don't know it like almost leans too heavily into the romance but it's more just like pining but not in a way that i really enjoy and also the characters are super annoying to read and now i don't know if it's just been so long since i read the first one but i feel like their voices are are different because i didn't find them challenging to read the first time but like i'm just exhausted these are exhausting points of view they're constantly talking about the same thing thinking the same thing there's just like so many side characters that i don't care about and i can't like were there this many people in the first book were there so many things distracting me from the main plot that i actually cared about i don't know i'm not having a great time what i will say is the atmosphere is still absolutely phenomenal like the world building the magic like all of the names and all of the concepts going on i really love but there's something about these two main characters that i'm struggling with so i was trying to wrap it up and i would reward myself by watching a movie but i really just need a break and i need to experience a true hate to love story so i'm gonna watch the hating game i know i put it on instagram and you guys told me that i'm not gonna like it but i feel like i wanna watch it more now that you're telling me not to i haven't read the book i would never read the book but i like a rom-com and i think that you think that i don't like romance because i don't like romance books and i've seen some people put out videos today like chandler and noel reacting to the movie and i want to be able to watch it with some context i don't actually even know the story line i think there's two characters did i watch the trailer i don't think so two characters they work together and they hate each other and then eventually they don't maybe i will hate it but rob and i need to hang out and watch a movie so we might as well make it that one and also i was just thinking speaking of chandler uh she zoe and spencer have a read-a-thon going on right now called the merry bright readathon it just started it's happening the entire week that i am reading for this vlog so i thought i would look at the challenges because i remember vaguely there being a hate to love prompt but that's the only one that i remember i'm gonna look up all the prompts and see if we're hitting all of them i'm not officially like i always do this i've done this like four or five times this year where i'm like not really participating in a readathon but i like to see if i'm hitting the challenges anyway and then i like to pretend that i'm participating in the readathon so we've got a book with white on the cover no a snake falls to earth has white the second prompt is something with cozy vibes well i i won't know that until i until i read all of the books can i weirdly say that dune gives me cozy vibes but maybe a snake falls to earth we'll have cozy vibes we'll find out uh something you already owned is a prompt which is all of them uh purchased last year and never read okay well now i have to read black sun because that's the only one that counts for that enemy still lovers or unreliable narrator this is definitely enemies to lovers oh dual perspective is the last one and this is dual perspective i'm participating in the readathon okay that movie was very cute a little stupid but cute without knowing a single thing about the plot uh rob and i predicted like the entire movie every single thing that was gonna happen except for we both thought that smurfs were gonna play a bigger role like she was gonna get he was gonna like gift her like a rare smurf that she couldn't find or something also i don't know about um what was his name danny in the book but i loved him like i was rooting for him i would have i would have liked i liked him better though i will say two shocking moments one at the wedding and uh one with the wall color i wonder if that's in the book because that's adorable and very weird because i'm gonna spoil it so if you haven't seen it seriously don't watch this because it's a cute like little reveal moment but it's funny because just a couple weeks ago i changed the background color of my phone my lock screen to be um rob's eye color and that's what happened in the movie is he had painted his apartment the color of her eyes which is creepy and adorable we love a silly rom-com and it was a nice like seasonal little bit of christmas stuff so that was a good time i'm not gonna finish my book tonight i'm gonna do it tomorrow and then move on to something else i didn't see you there that ladies and gentlemen is called acting i did see you i'm taking some pictures for my instagram i don't think i have anything on my tbr shelf that's the pantone color of the year um but i do have some of these so i'm taking a picture the pantone color of the year is kind of like my phone case color no it's not it's more blue also my phone case is covered in paint if you know you know in theory i love a duology because you know how i feel about series sorry i'm just gonna edit my photo while i talk to you i'm not always down to invest my time into a trilogy a big series so duology seem like they're the perfect solution for me but more often than not i find the second book to be kind of a flop so a song of writes in ruin was a five star for me and i think this has to be because of the ending and how much i respect the ending let's say a 2.75 that last 10 percent was quite good and the first 20 was good i feel like it did a great job of re-explaining what needed to be explained but didn't waste too much time but what i feel like happens with these books another example dear mighty things another example the wrath and the dawn another example the girl from everywhere i think i gave all of their second books three stars the only exception is six of crows but even then i gave this four stars but they all fit into this idea that i feel like the conversation at the publisher goes like hi i'm an author i want to write a fantasy standalone but it's really big it's like 600 pages please let me publish this book the publisher is like no you know what we should do we should make it into a trilogy because everything's a trilogy and everyone loves trilogies and the author's like i do not have enough content for a trilogy so let's meet in the middle this is my imaginary conversation that happens and i'll make it a duology and basically what they do is they just take that last 200 pages of the first book put it into a second book and then add 100 pages or 200 pages of fluff that they didn't intend to be a part of the original story but they need to fill pages that's just how it feels to me like almost all the time when i read a duology it feels like something that wasn't intended to be a duology but as someone who can't commit into a series longer than two books i love the idea of a duology but as i was looking at my bookshelves i made this realization that i don't think i love duologies i think what i love is companion books so like we're in the same world there are references or little moments where we see the characters in the first book but they're their own story with their own characters this is contemporary so it's different but like this is great there's some familiarity with the setting with the characters but they're two different time periods and we have different main characters which is why i probably should have picked up a chorus rises or of course all surprises i don't remember the name so i actually just placed an order like this week to get this book i probably won't be able to read it by the end of the year but i should have read this book because that's what that is this is why i'm so excited about the middle game sequel because i think there is meant to be more books in the series but we're not following the same characters in the sequel and i think i'm gonna love that then i was standing there thinking there are so many books that i would love a companion story to like the wise and the wicked i don't want a sequel i want a companion when a book so well develops a world in a setting i want to continue to be there but not like in the same time period with the same characters like give me this 50 years in the past i would read the out of a companion to the wild ones same with a lats away part of me wonders if a snake falls to earth exists in this world and i'm gonna get that but like i love this world same thing with catherine house it's such a distinct setting that i would like to go back there give me the origin story give me the origin story of the outdoor life of holly chase give me saw kill girls at a different time with different characters but dealing with the same weirdness that's what i need more of in my life if you can think of any two book experiences like that that you love i would i would really appreciate some recommendations these covers still remain some of my favorites and i really liked the audiobook narrators bonnie turpin remains one of my absolute favorites i wish she was in it more though something that's cool about this duology is that there's like we have those two povs but then there's also this other narrator that's like kind of telling us a bedtime story and it's fun and it's cute and i think it's generally well written i just don't think the plot is there but it's so tough because i know that i wouldn't have picked this up if it was like a 700 page fantasy novel so it being a duology is smart i just feel like the ending was strong and really well thought out um but there was a lot of filler stuff that i didn't really enjoy i'm not sure what i'm gonna read next rob and liam are out right now doing christmas shopping and i wasn't invited right now i'm just catching up on vlogmas content because there's so much people are putting out such great things that i'm really enjoying watching so i'll probably see you late tonight reading update my mom didn't like it so that's a bummer i am 60 pages in and i don't know how i feel yet i really was not willing to dnf any books during these vlogs because like even if i don't like these books like they're ones that i i wanted to finish and i'm not gonna have any more motivation to read this book ever than i do right now i'm gonna give it a 100 pages i feel very similarly as how i felt when i was reading a small way a long way to a small angry planet which i've dnf'd three times i know that i've said my mom even said she called me up she was like i thought you didn't like space books setting space and i do i just my favorite space books don't get too spacey um i don't feel like this is gonna get wildly spacey like alien like other planet like really craziness we're on a spaceship and we have like a classic setup of a woman awaking and the rest of her like space mates are not awake yet the synopsis says first mate michelle campion rouses she discovers some of the sleepers will never wake and i feel like that doesn't fully cover it uh she discovers some of the sleepers will never wake there's it's a little more intense but then we're also following investigator rasheed finn who's tasked with finding out who's responsible for what happened a sinister mystery a lot of people are saying this is like a thriller this blurb says characters are fighting for their lives aboard a dying starship this blurb says the setting is interstellar but it feels as real immediate and lethal as today's headlines so like all of these reasons are reasons that i wanted to pick it up but most of it seems to be from finn's perspective and i'm just not like into it i don't know if i can fully explain it i'll get to page 100 and i'll decide from there if i can explain why i'm not liking it and try to justify my dnf or and hopefully this latter thing happens where i start to enjoy it more i want to continue past 100 pages reading update it's not going well page 130 is where i'm stopping perhaps not permanently i think i'll try again in the morning maybe there's something going on with like my ability to focus today because i'm just not following i really like i don't understand anything that's really going on i feel like we were dropped into so much and i'm just not into the writing style and how things are being described to me i don't know why i didn't even consider why there's a wolf on the cover and that was a big surprise so i'm gonna try again in the morning like i'm already probably 40 through this book so it feels weird to abandon it now but if i don't dnf and it ends up with a low rating i'm gonna wish that i had dnf'd it this is confusing good morning i know you're all gonna yell at me because i decided to power through the book and then i gave it two stars anyway listen there were some interesting concepts and this book is kind of a like locked room mystery it's inspired by an edgar allen poe story locked room murder mystery set in space but not too spacey those are my buzz words even in the authors now he was talking about how it's a space opera but it's without massive space battles and empires and just about people living in the greater universe or something like that and that sounds like something that i should like but it was a really fast read and i knew there were going to be some interesting conversations as far as like colonization and there were i tabbed specifically chapter 24 for its entire explanation of like planets and colonies and space travel and how all the white people of earth were disappointed by like the success of these colonies on other planets because it was the black population that went to that colony and all of the racist people on earth were like yay they're gone i've said before again and again the most success that a horror book can have for me i know this isn't horror but i've talked about it in the capacity for that when you're pairing supernatural fantastical or science fiction elements like with the horrors of reality and human beings that's when books really work for me because it's just so up and building that historical context within an sff book is always just like so interesting i have seen some people call this horror and there are some gory scenes and it's scary for the characters because we have like three main characters we have captain of the ship we have the investigator guy and then we have a guy who like used to work with the captain of the ship and he's like checking in on her and then we also have the like rogue ai situation which i typically love seeing how an ai acts and behaves and like feels like a person here's how i think i could have actually loved it if it was written as a series of novellas so we had shell and she just had like maybe if you read this book just in the not in order but just like read all of shell's pov and then go back and read all of finn's pov because i love a multi-pov but how quickly we went between them and also how we would like find out the same thing and it would be like the same reveal or the same cliffhanger but then we had to read it from all three different perspectives i get what he was going for i just didn't like it i also just don't think everything matched up perfectly for me like the world building with the characters the characters how they actually act versus how we're told they're supposed to be it was just all a bit messy for me the mystery itself was not interesting i did not care by the end of it like who the murderer was what was going to happen to them i think i'll continue to pick up novellas from him but not like full-length novels because i just don't think the structure is something that i enjoyed anyway today i am gonna read dune messiah and i'm gonna try to film the few like ten days of lola miss twelve days of follow along whatever i'm calling it this year there are a couple i think i can pre-film so i'm gonna try to figure that out okay welcome back to my little yellow toned corner do you want a book update do you want a life update i don't have a life update except that today i killed four spiders in my house and i think my christmas tree has an infestation update number two um i ate a piece of bread today for the first time and probably legitimately three years and there was mold in it and now i'm really upset okay i'm done that's all doom messiah five stars not even because it's like this great incredible book but more so that i'm just lumping it together with dune this is basically just an extended epilogue or a bridge to the next book where we're following like other kind of characters so this i am now as i assumed i would i'm just considering doing and doing messiah the same thing and it's all five stars and i really like how the story wrapped up the ending was perfect i had feelings that's it if you want to know all my thoughts on dune here's a video where i read it and actually talk about it i'm thinking of black sun which i was looking back on my last year's christmas content why was i looking at it oh yeah i was looking at it for like the pantone video that i did because i posted my little pantone thing and i wanted to grab a screen grab but when i put all the pantones on the same page and in that video i show my bookshelf of all the books i wanted to read at the end of 2020 and i didn't realize this was one of them this has been on my tbr for a long time and i just remembered i have the audiobook it was a long time ago when i found all of those credits on audible i didn't know i was paying for and then i bought like a whole bunch of books this was one of them um and it comes with a little pdf too summed up right here anyway so it's all of the characters because there's so many different characters it seems like that we're following like a main character from each of these different places because we started out in the o red g mountains following cerapio um who got his eyes sewn shut in the very first scene which i did not like and then we're also in the city of cuacola and we're following ch challa and she is a captain and sailor and then we're also following narampa who is a watcher and it also says a sun priest order of oracles in in the city of tovah and there's different people like traveling to the city of tovah i think shiala is being hired to take someone to the city of total i haven't met any of these people yet i don't want to get confused so i'm going to take the audio book really slow and then later tonight i'll probably take a bath and take the physical book and see which i prefer and then tomorrow i will continue which with whichever method that i'm liking i could have just read you the synopsis which i think talks about all of these things oh her passenger is the young man blind scarred and cloaked in destiny the series is inspired by the civilization of the pre-columbian americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecy political injury and forbidden magic i'm currently watching reading sprints on mina's channel i'm 100 pages in exactly and it's going well i love black sun i hope you're enjoying it if you've already started it i actually i love the audiobook it's not that i prefer reading it physically but i find myself zoning out a little bit with the audiobook so i'm preferring just currently reading it physically though i would completely recommend the audio i'm about 150 pages from the end at this point i don't really have a lot to say about it um i think the three well i think all the characters are really distinct and we're at a point in the book where a lot of shifts are taking place a lot of things are happening very quickly i think it's going to be a wild last 150 pages but yeah loving the characters i think i'm following relatively well uh and then i got halfway through feminist theory and then i went on twitter distracting myself from reading and found out that bell hooks passed away like yesterday as i was reading her book which is so sad this is fantastic i thought that it would be a little bit dense um as far as something to recommend as an introduction to feminist books if you've never read one but i i don't feel that way at all i think this is a fantastic introduction in fact it's doing a lot having a lot of conversations that i have read in other books but i think that the last half has the potential to introduce like new concepts and go further with my understanding of lots of conversations so these are both going well and i'm hoping to complete them no i'm completing this one in the next vlog because i just realized that time wise i'm supposed to wrap up this whole video tomorrow so i need to finish this tonight and read the entirety of a snake falls to earth i'm obviously not going to push myself like i'm never in a race when it comes to my reading if i feel like taking it slow and extending the vlog i will but like the goal in my head was to have this vlog up on saturday so i need to complete the vlog friday anyway rob picked up something grabbed us each a gingerbread house making kit and we're going to be doing a members live video where we get drunk do a q a and have a gingerbread building competition so that's going down on december 23rd probably pretty late like 9 00 p.m pst and then some of the i'm going to film it as well as being live so the footage of the q a will be in next week's vlog so don't worry you're not missing out i just feel like it'll be easier to get through comments um in that state if there are less of them and if you want to leave uh your questions down below then i will take some from the comments here and if you want to attend the live show then the link to my membership will be down below and i just thought it would be a fun thing to do live as well as filming so we'll see how that goes in tandem i don't know the boys are off watching spider-man and i'm home alone with not a lot to do except i've been working on my end-of-year content but i'm going to leave that alone for now and focus really hone in on my reading since i have the time and the the ability that's what i'll be up to okay i don't want to frighten any children so um prepare yourselves for my thick chunky face mask big shrek vibes um those bath bombs that you saw in my bath clip are from lush and they always give you like a free sample and they gave me this amazing smelling power mask is what it's called and it just feels great i finished black sun it's so late i feel like there are quite a few things in the book i don't fully grasp and i don't know if that's a me thing and a lack of experience with high fantasy thing or just like the first book in a series thing and we're gonna get more in future books i also don't have the vocabulary to discuss high fantasy i feel so i don't even know how to talk to you about like what all happened in here or the things that i think were successful i'm giving it a four that's all i know i think i'm picking up the next book because wow did this leave on a cliffhanger with a bang it's not getting a five because way too much happened way too fast i didn't have any time to like sit and digest what was going on because the book is so much lead up there's a countdown i love a countdown all these different povs loved how often we switched we got a couple newer characters towards the end and then it just started to be a little too much because we're building to so much and then like a lot happens but a lot doesn't happen and now i need to continue to know like the full circle of all of these characters experiences um there was a romance i liked there was a romance i didn't like there were characters i was on board for from the very beginning challa is like my favorite um narampa narampa i started to like halfway through there's something that um happens and then i enjoyed that perspective so rompo is definitely the most fascinating character i definitely just wanted more of his like backstory his mother's backstory and i wonder if future books are going to be more history or if it's all going to just be a linear storyline because there are definitely even naropa's past i want to understand more i feel like this is a big book about loneliness and um finding like where you belong and finding your people amongst all of the povs there was a running theme and i really liked that anyway i'm gonna wash this off now i'm gonna go to sleep and that's it good morning friends look at my chandelier i put ornaments on it and all of the snowflakes fell out of my window so i'm bummed about that my day's not going great my reed's not going great but i think i can turn it around if there's some book mail i love this combo okay let's go well i was definitely hoping more would show up but a lot of the mail is just stuck right now because the floods i've talked about it before i still have a lot of christmas presents on the way and certain things that i need to like wrap all of the presents which is what i was hoping to do this weekend but it's friday so all the mail is done and i just i have what i have it's also liam's last day of school so he's very excited to come home and have two weeks off and i've been taking it easy this week and feeling guilty for taking it easy but i just know that the next week is going to be so chaotic that it felt right but i've just been so you've seen it just been lying in bed i've been in my robe i have been getting stuff done but like things that aren't interesting to vlog anyway i opened this one off camera because i knew it was unsolicited and i don't show unsolicited books but now i feel really bad um not because it's something that i have even heard about but because um i opened it and there's no book the poor people from macmillan sent me this i mean beautiful marketing package i don't think i blended my contour very well and there's lots of little things in it and like maybe they just wanted to send me the accessories but i doubt it this is one that i ordered and i should probably save it for my book haul but it's kill creek i really want to read kill creek i'm just getting so hyped i've been getting hyped at the idea of reading kill creek so and then the other mail i got are presents which i can't show you but if i do my wrapping in the next vlog i guess i will be doing my wrapping in the next vlog i will show you what some of these are because that vlog will be going up like midnight christmas eve so that should be fine oh this is not what i thought it was oh that means rob's christmas present is not here yikes okay but you know what's here uh present i bought myself i shopped almost exclusively on etsy this year for christmas presents and of course i saw things that i just wanted so i got this little like bubble bobble candle for myself i just stuck that right up my nostrils and it doesn't smell like anything well maybe this one isn't a present either while i open it i'll tell you about a snake falls to earth i'm one third of the way through i found a little snake bookmark that's not a snake what the is that do i have one with a snake i swear i have one with a snake that's embarrassing what is this like a like a chicken dragon peacock creature somebody tell me what this is anyway i just lost my spot now as my last read for this vlog and my most anticipated i thought we'd be ending on a bang but i'm not really enjoying it yet um we're following a girl and a snake boy and i'm now remembering a bit of the synopsis nina is a lip hand girl in our world ollie is a cotton mouth kid from the line of spirits and monsters he's been cast from home and has to like find a new place to live and it's just like a lot of my life as a snake vibes and i don't know if i quite love it yet uh we were talking in the house on needless street live show like books from animal perspectives and if we liked them if we hadn't need to recommend and i don't think i had an answer then and i don't know that i have an answer now i don't know where it's gonna go as far as this tape is unreal i just don't know what to expect from the story it's feeling very middle grade at this point which is fine oh this is stupid and you'll judge me for it but it's like dried oranges kayla can you just dry oranges yourself for sure listen i was having a field day on etsy i'm gonna keep reading this there's the snake there's the girl still obsessed with the cover and i'm very interested to see where this goes like i wouldn't say i'm loving it right now but i am definitely interested in the direction that we're heading because i don't know what to expect also aaron messaged me and said look at the end pages because it's like snake skin and you can barely see it but it's so cool levine querido really is doing quality books like their books always feel like so much thought went into the packaging the design like every little detail um i think this is chronicle books yeah so maybe it's partially related because this is distributed by chronicle books i don't understand anything about publishing but chronicle books also make some of my favorite reading journals that are also like very high quality and just nice to feel and hold and write in and read so that's my biggest compliment of this book so far jesus christ it's nice to hold i'll see you in a minute okay tonight i'm doing reading sprints again so i have lexi and gavin on and i'm ready to get back into this i pretty much wasted my day but i'm ready to go now and i know it's totally inaccurate but oh my gosh do i love it i'm balancing you on a snow globe hope you're okay with that i lost my bookmark i'm almost done with this it's fine i don't know why this vlog isn't going great like i want to read something that's just so amazing and makes it into my favorites but we're not there this is such a wholesome read it's sweet it's nice i don't want to say it's middle grade because i get that you can have a story like this and it doesn't have to be for a young audience it just feels very young like would 100 read this to liam should have read this with liam i would recommend it for those who like middle grade stories it's almost a middle grade like adventure story but it's too slow to really consider it that but it's about like friendship and just helping people and we have two really just nice characters what i'm loving is the storytelling i love that about laxaway as well we have um oh my god what is her name nina nina we have her grandmother and there's a lot about language in here and her grandma has stories um but she can't understand them and she's trying to like decipher these stories and then ollie just is a snake and wants to have naps in the sun i wasn't expecting the casual ace wrap which i really appreciate also seen in the last way what i wasn't expecting is i didn't know we'd have like shape-shifting stuff um i'm not captivated at this point but i'm excited to wrap it up um i just remembered that i threatened you to subscribe last time and we need to check in on that basically i said a year ago in that vlog only like less than two percent of the people who weren't subscribed who were watching click subscribe and i think it was like uh was it 13 of my viewership was not subscribers and i wanted to increase both of those numbers for what reason don't know i was just in a silly goofy mood so i told you to subscribe and we'll see if you listen let's check the data in the first like three days we got 15 200 people who viewed 85 people subscribed 12 percent of the viewers are not subscribers and 85 people subscribed so 85 is what percentage of 1824 which is how many people weren't subscribed that's 4.6 okay that's not five percent the goal was five percent but for no real reason that's more than twice the success of last time so asking you to subscribe gets twice the results of not asking so please won't you subscribe it's funny tic toc keeps giving these compilations of like the most wholesome um streamers and it'll be this compilation of people being like oh my gosh thank you for all these subs like you don't have to there was even this one that was like how can i give the money back like this is too much and i was watching it and i was like wow you're really not that like wow you're like yelling at people to subscribe to you you're just not that gracious humble girl wow okay but you know what now you know who you're subscribed to if if you didn't already know i made dinner power went out so all my times are different because i don't ever fix them um i'm gonna finish this one last check-in and we'll be done week two um i'm giving this three stars i thought it was nice i thought it was good i really like darcy little badgers writing and i'll continue to pick up everything from her it just wasn't everything that i was looking for i still think this will work for a lot of people and it's absolutely beautiful these characters are super memorable i feel like every year i read i read a book where i didn't give the book five stars like project hail mary where the characters are so distinct that i will think about them for a long time super well developed distinct personalities strong povs just the plot and the pace wasn't absolutely perfect which is fine overall here's everything i read it's not a very festive colored stack rip to my thumbnail goals um we had a five star we had a four star we had a three star a two and a half star and a two star does that feel good to me no because even though i gave out a five star it's not one that i feel very strongly about and black sun the more i think about it the more like of an objective four star it is i think that as i was talking about it you could tell it wasn't something that i was like super passionate about but it's such a good story i'm hoping that this is the flop of like this whole series because the first one was good everything in it was five and four stars and this one was a mix of everything but like i had some two stars so i think this has to be the flop and that means the third video where i read mystery and horror things it's either gonna be the in-between and the first one i did is the amazing one or it's going to become the amazing one it's all gonna be five stars it could happen we'll see i'm also halfway through feminist theory but i really like the idea that the first time i had five books this time i read five books if we include feminist theory in the third vlog there's five books in that one too at least i hope i'll get to all five that's gonna be the shortest vlog of all of them as far as how many days i've allotted i'm gonna try and do better of actually explaining the books and my thoughts in the next one this week i was a little off and so were the books so it's bound to happen and i will see you next week i don't know if anything's coming out in between now and then probably not so tune in next time for me and you hanging out christmas holiday vibes whoa

Channel: BooksandLala

Views: 9,244

Keywords: books, booktube, bookish, booksandlala, obbsandlala

Id: 9wJj7iwfvRM

Length: 47min 55sec (2875 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021