ten favourite books of all time

hi guys it's me jamie and welcome to the rebranded version of leo reads i actually spoke about my rebrand a little bit in my live show that i did recently for my birthday with caitlin and chloe so if you are more interested in that side of stuff then you can check it out but yeah i'm not gonna go into heaps of detail about it it's just i just wanted to rename my channel and kind of like escape the box that leah reads kind of put me in i guess and just made my channel a little bit more personal that's literally it but if you are new here hi my name is jamie this channel used to be called leo reads and i would definitely just talk all about books and stuff and do reading vlogs and stuff like that and because i don't really have any new videos on my channel for a little while i thought why not start off the new channel by doing a video on 10 of my all-time favorite books so you kind of get more of an introduction into my sorts of reading tastes and the books i'll be reading and talking about on this channel i'll try not to go into heaps of detail about every single book because otherwise this video will just be so long but i'll just talk a little bit about what it's about and why i like it so much and why this book kind of shaped me as a reader and all that sort of stuff so first i thought we should start with a classic which is the princess bride by william goldman this book was one that i read when i was a teenager like all quite young maybe like 12 13 and it kind of made me fall in love with like the fantastical element of storytelling like classical fairy tales and the escape from reality uh which books so often provide us i feel like a lot of people have watched the movie of the princess bride but not a lot of people have read the book but if you have watched the movie the book is literally exactly like the movie the movie was very very loyal to the original concept it's also a story within a story which is really really cool like it's about like the author is kind of like pretending that it's real and everything i don't even know how to explain it but it's so amazing it's basically about this princess here called buttercup and she falls in love with like the farm boy who then ends up getting like shipped off to work somewhere else and then the ship sinks and he dies and then it's just this tragedy from there on it's just got so much adventure and there are so many story lines like i literally don't even know where to start so i definitely recommend picking up this one if you're just looking for something really fun and just a best escape from any form of reality this is just so comforting definitely one of my comfort reads i also read it recently when i was like 20 and i it's still it was still hit it was still really good so yes definitely vibe with this princess bride the next book i'm going to talk about is more of a recent read i actually read it in june i believe but it is fowler's fair by hannah cappin now this is a ya retelling of macbeth and it's told from the perspective of our character who is posing as lady macbeth she gets gang raped at a party it's really intense but if you are worried about reading about that sort of scene it does not go into too much detail it's definitely more like the atmosphere and it alluded to what happened and it's very like straightforward about what happened but you don't have to it's not gratuitous like you don't there's not a full scene where you're she's getting raped she then decides that she's gonna take revenge on all the boys that were involved she enrolls in the private school where all the boys go to and she just takes them down one by one with the help of her friends who are kind of the parallel of like the witches and the play macbeth there are so many incredible lines it is so good it's one of those ones where it just makes me so happy to be a woman that sounds kind of weird like because at the end of the day this character is a victim but she refuses to be defined by what happened to her and her victimhood and she just like takes what happened to her and turns on its head i feel like this book isn't for everyone it is very jarring but it's just so one of the stories that i think is so important it made me fall in love with reading again like the way that it's written is just so empowering i am in love with this book and i definitely recommend it to so many people obviously there is the trigger warning for like murder and rape and stuff like that but it's just the most amazing revenge fantasy i've ever read if you can handle it absolutely give this one a go it's just incredible another book that really shaped my reading taste is never let me go by kazuo ishiguro this is actually a book that i read really early on like i think i was maybe 16 and it made me fall in love with i don't want to say literary fiction because i'm not sure if this is classified as literary fiction but it made me fall in love with the art of actual writing itself and how beautiful and poetic and lyrical it can be it's like a really weird kind of dystopian book it tells the story of these kids that went to a boarding school and they grew up and it's all very idyllic and really beautiful in this world people die really really young so it's very much a story of like making the most of your childhood i absolutely love it it's just one of those ones that is just so beautifully told it's just got such an amazing element of mystery and almost romance like the way that the story is told the narrator has just such a beautiful outlook on life and romanticizes everything which is definitely something that i can relate to so i definitely really really loved it it's heartbreaking it's sad it will make you cry so if you are into that sort of thing like i am then definitely pick it up and give it a go i love it so much another book i want to talk about which is also very heartbreaking is the sun is also a star by nicola yoon this book is all told in the space of one day it's from also from two different perspectives we hear about this one jamaican illegal immigrant who is in america and her family has been deported and she has one last day to try and stay living in new york which is where she grew up and it also tells the story of a korean boy who has his interview for yale he's feeling a lot of pressure from his parents and he's just not feeling the best they end up having a chance encounter and spending the day together and falling in love it's so beautiful i love romances that are heartbreaking and tear people apart and tear people away and like the yearning that comes with that and the fact that like people cannot be together and meeting the right people at the wrong time like i am just obsessed with stories like that so this one is so good it's also like it's just a really fun fast why a romance but i will say the end is heartbreaking definitely have some tissues with you when you read it but it's definitely one of my favorite love stories that i've ever read i wish i could go back and read this again i still need to watch the movie i'm trash the fact that i haven't watched that yet like who am i but i love this book so much and i definitely recommend it it's so good speaking of star cross lovers another book that is just one of my favorites is the song of achilles by madeleine miller now this is a mythological retelling of the iliad but we focus on petroculus who is the lover of achilles these boys oh my god their love story is so tragic and so beautiful it's so heartbreaking the characterizations of these characters are amazing the tale of achilles like getting blinded by his own ideals of heroism is just so good it's so beautifully told i have so many tabs of just like beautiful sentences i feel like you also don't need to be into mythology or classical history to get the most out of this book i think it's just one of those books that's so beautifully told if you like to cry if you like lovers that cannot be together if you like tragic love stories this is definitely one that i recommend highly like it's just so incredible i literally don't even know what else to say about it like i feel like anything i say about it just won't do it justice but definitely one that i recommend everyone picks up like asap it's so good and also such a fast read for what it is like i read this in like a day and cried so much so yeah definitely recommend okay we seem to have a theme here because another book that very much features people that should not be together conversations with friends by sally rooney i read this book last year and it was just so dramatic and messy and so what i needed so basically it tells the story of these two friends who used to date but they don't date anymore uh francis and bobby they end up becoming friends with this really cool like older couple in their 30s and they have all these house parties and bobby is just incredible like she's one of these really like extroverted like annoying characters but i love her so much america francis ends up having an affair with nick and this really crazy dynamic ends up happening it's just so messy it feels really slice of life but like the best most dramatic parts of life i obviously don't want to be living the life that they're living but if i could be friends with someone who is in that weird messy quadruple relationship god my life would be so much more entertaining it was just so good and described so much of the messiness of mental health and adulthood and like really it was coming of age but for like people who are in their early 20s and don't really know what they want to do with their lives yet it was just so good i just recommend this to everyone it's kind of heartbreaking it's people that want to be together but can't be together and like yeah i don't really condone affairs and cheating but the way sally rooney has written the story is just so good it just really displays the messiness of human beings and like not everyone is perfect not everyone really is a really good or really bad human being it just i feel like i've just been rambling i don't even know how to describe this book i have been so messy about this book but honestly it's what it deserves so conversations with friends definitely pick it up especially if you're just getting into adult fiction as well i definitely recommend it another book that i want to mention that i actually read for the first time last year is vicious by b.e schwab this book blew me away when i first read it basically it's kind of dark academia these two friends victor and eli they end up doing a experiment at university for their phd and eli wants to do one on these things called extraordinaries which are basically people who have been dead for a certain amount of time and they managed to come back to life and they come back with powers essentially like superhero powers oh my god talk about morally grey characters these characters are so dynamic the way it's sold is amazing i'm a really big fan of non-linear storytelling i really really love time jumps and stories i feel like it really keeps me on my toes and keeps me invested so i love that this is how the story is told we hear about their college days and kind of them coming to terms with their powers and like getting them and stuff and then we hear about like 20 years later victor's been in jail eli has a god complex there's two other girls that are involved now as well it's just so good i definitely recommend it there's so many funny lines it's very it feels very tongue-in-cheek the way that she's like told the story if you're into kind of like science fiction but don't really know where to start i'd say this is a really good one because it's very low-fi science fiction like it's not a lot of like space travel and we need to save the universe it's like very it's kind of set in real life but people just like have powers so i absolutely love that and would definitely recommend another book i want to talk about is the beach by alex garland i read this in high school and absolutely fell in love it's one of the first kind of adult books that i read i read it essentially right after i read the secret history which i will be getting to but this book just really made me fall in love with like adult fiction so basically this guy called richard he's on a gap year and he has traveled to thailand and in his crazy hostel he meets this kind of insane guy who doesn't seem to be all there he seems to be very kind of like what's he on about but he gives richard a map which leads him to a secret beach where he finds a secret civilization and he ends up joining the secret civilization and they are so removed from the real world they fish for all their food they go hunting it's really kind of toxic but he ends up kind of falling into this lifestyle it's so mysterious and again it's one of those books that are really like discusses like humanity and what humans would be like without civilization i don't know it's just really good also just like an incredible character study and i really liked it and it's just full of adventure and i love it so much and i definitely would recommend this as well like the ending as well so intense it's just so good definitely pick it up i haven't read it in a while i definitely want to read it again soon because honestly it could be the type of book that might have some problematic lines that i didn't pick up on when i was 16 but i still definitely recommend it it has stuck with me throughout the years so yeah i might actually do a vlog rereading some of my favorites if you're interested let me know another book that i want to talk about is one that when i first read it i wasn't sure if it was gonna be a favorite i actually rated it four stars but i have not been able to stop thinking about it i would say it's probably one of my favorite books that i've read all year just because of how much i go back to it and how much i think about it but it is emergency contact by mary h k choi now this book it says it's a ya it feels very much more new adult to me one character is like 22 23 and then the other is in her first year of college so it definitely feels very new adult but basically it's about these two characters that have a chance encounter our main male lead he has anxiety and our main female lead finds him on the side of the road having a panic attack so they end up exchanging numbers and being each other's like emergency contact if anything kind of happens to them but that's too embarrassed to like call one of their close friends they end up starting this beautiful relationship all through texting and usually in like ya books and stuff like that i really hate like text conversations because it feels so fake and so wrong and so like unresearched but this one genuinely felt so real and you just kind of fall in love with these characters and the way that they fall in love with each other it's definitely a complicated relationship and very complicated characters a lot of people hate this book because they're like oh like penny our main female character is so like she does so much girl hating and like it's so pointless and the characters are so horrible and judgy and i'm like that's kind of what i love about it because that's realistic like i don't know about you guys but if you've ever been in a relationship with someone or you meet someone who you feel like is so on your same wavelength that you think it's like us versus the world and everyone else in the world is but you two are like the best and you could never like meet anyone who is on your level i felt represented as a leo like i'm not sure if i made any sense and i feel like you really have to have had experience that sort of relationship with someone and that sort of mindset like not saying it's a healthy mindset but i feel like you have to have had experience that to understand what i'm saying but it was just so good i just loved it so much and i have a full review on goodreads as well which i'll link down below which i think i go more in depth with my thoughts and again this book probably wouldn't be for everyone but i just flew through it and i loved it so much i fell in love with both the characters i definitely recommend giving it a go even if you you just need to look past like the judgmental characters and stuff and understand that like they are real representation of human beings like not everyone is perfect and these guys are exactly that so yeah i definitely recommend picking it up please do and the last book i'm going to talk about i feel like if you are a long time subscriber i you'll know you'll know like why am i even okay the secret history by donate this has been my favorite book for probably like seven or eight years i have not found a book that tops it just yet there are a few in this list that have come pretty close but nothing gets my heart racing like the secret history it is literary fiction dark academia it's about a group of classic students who are very elite they end up killing this guy when they are in like this when they do a baconal which is like a drug alcohol-induced state of mania which is like led by the gods i guess what they believed their best friend who wasn't invited to the back and all finds out about it and like blackmails them and then they have to deal with him as well so it's just like so much murder and revenge and mystery and i love it so much i love the pretentiousness i love the elitism i love the slogan the storytelling is so beautiful there's so many beautiful lines i guess i'm just one of those people that loves to read about unlikable characters when a character is too good at everything and too nice and too much of a bloody cinnamon roll or whatever people like to call them i'm like i'm sorry i'm bored bring the mess bring the drama like i'm sorry also maybe it makes me feel a little bit better about being a shitty human being but yeah i just love this book so much i recommend it to anyone you know i say that and then a lot of people i recommended it to ended up hating it but what are you gonna do i guess i just love this book so much and i would write home about it and if you like it as well like it's the sort of book that i will talk to i'll talk someone's ear off i recommended it to this girl the other day who's like not even on booktube or anything just like in my life and i recommended it to her and then afterwards she's like let's have coffee we've never had coffee before but we go and have coffee we talk about it for a good hour like nothing else but this book so it's just one of those books where i can't describe it like you've just got to pick it up i also like don't really like any other dark academia books like anything that is compared to the secret history i hate so please don't come into my comments and recommend me to read if we were villains because i'm telling you right now i hate it i just love books about shitty humans clearly so yeah that is everything thank you so much for watching if there are any kind of books that you think i would enjoy based on all the books that i enjoy in this video let me know and i really hope you enjoyed it and i hope that you've probably picked up some new books as well that you want to read but yeah um thank you so much for watching thank you for sticking around if you're still here after all my hair this is like genuinely it means so much there will be some there will be much more coming in the future i promise this time i promise i hold you to it pinky promise but yeah again thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in another video bye but she says nobody

Channel: jaime's library

Views: 8,405

Rating: 4.9523101 out of 5

Keywords: booktube

Id: znhHJi9ABeU

Length: 17min 30sec (1050 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020