The Books I Love The Most | 2019

hi everyone and welcome to my channel I'm Simon of savage reeds and today I am back on Valentine's Day with a video that I've pre-recorded which has a love theme only in the sense that it's me talking about the thing that I love most in the world which is books but I talk about it all the time so what makes us different because these are the books that I love the most and I haven't done a video like this I think I've ever told you about my favorite books ever in nearly three years which is a shameful thing to do or not have done so that's why I'm gonna do that I'll link all the books down below so hopefully then you can go away read them if you haven't loved them and then love me for bringing those literally books into your life and the love will go all around that's all mr. Leon before I get saccharine in a bit weird there are sixteen sort of seventeen to go through so I'm just gonna get right on with it so at number sixteen technically and it's a book that she was really surprised came at the bottom of my favorites which is sort of a backhanded compliment isn't it because it's a book like I always say it's one of my very favorite books and it is the woman in black by Susan Hill this tells of Arthur Kipps who is a young solicitor who goes down to sort out the estate of alice drablow of eel marsh house which is off a causeway really spooky by the sea lots of fog a Miss very atmospheric and in doing so when he starts to mention he's come to so they say how people in the village starts to look a little bit nervous for him and soon enough we learn of the legend of the woman in black who appears and within a few days somebody normally dies generally a child once anymore notices a slight spooky wonder I really love the brevity of this and it's interesting I've had the most sort of controversial conversations with people I know when other people come and go through my bookshelves generally around this book because I really love it but partly it's very very much about my book a very mama but all the tell me later but that is seasoned Hills Theatre William like next up is a book that and I think I've talked about much on this channel and I want to talk about this also more because she is an author that I love this is Bethany Roberts my policeman this tells of Marian who when she's young and she meets a policeman called Tom and falls in love with him she's completely smitten however Tom whilst being smitten with her scene becomes quite attached to a man called Patrick and this sort of twisty twisty thing starts to happen where Tom becomes both Patrick and Marian's policeman and looks at how difficult sexuality was to discuss in 1950s the setting of Brighton is really interesting about the never seen this place of real LGBT freedom but actually back in the 50s not that long ago it totally wasn't and it also looks at the relationship in the present all those years on when Miriam has become quite embittered if I'd only if too much way but is utterly brilliant Bethan can write characters and situations like domestic nor really really well then we have a short story collection and this is diving balanced by Lucy wood now this looks at the flotsam and jetsam and the myths and legends along the coast in Cornwall and I just love this has Giants in it it has women who turned to stone it has women who go out into the ocean to search for their husbands you've been lured away by mermaids it's just everything fantastical fairytale I loved as a kid but written for the adult me and I relived it I did think of doing children's books my favorite children's books installation but I haven't by writing that as a separate video at some point any book though again I don't think I've taught that it's a really nice chance for me to kind of share about some books that maybe I've missed over the last few years this is mr. lover man by Bernardin Evaristo as soon as I say the title I have to try not to sing the song it's very very tempting but this tells all about Barrington Jedediah Walker who is a father a grandfather he came over from Jamaica he was younger he has all this going on but he also has a huge secret and that is that his best friend from his youth who also came over with him Morris is also his lover this book is so beautifully written and sometimes when I think about it too much this book makes you want to cry because it's just so emotive and it's so much about what it's like to be closeted and what it's like to not be fulfilling the life that you really wanted to but also looks at really cleverly all the people that are deceived by the shame and the covering up that Barrington does including his wife Carmel who's a fantastic character I would HIGHLY highly recommend eyes I think he's just wonderful and over making me like them to do a TV adaptation is because you think it would be brilliant so yeah highly highly highly recommend it and what all these are I've never said that I'll tell and I recommend it they're my favorite books I would then we have okay acting somebody might not be the K at concern that you would think because my very very favorite K at concern is the first ki concern I read much like Brandon at me and it is human croquet and this tells of the Fairfax family they had this huge manor house which was part of this huge wood the wood no longer exists there are these Street of trees and these avenues in there in a much smaller house and it focuses on one of the younger members of the family in the present is about who can slip in and out of time and whose mother's gone missing I won't say any more than that but it is this wonderful family saga with all these secrets and mysteries going on with a little sprinkling of magic and speculative anise which I really really loved huge book alert and this one is going to be one that some of you all think yes that's one of my favorite here and some of the other thing oh my god I hated that book with a passion it is a little life which is not so little but only Anika Hara which for those of you who've not read it and who wants a little bit more about it but possibly notice anyway it's about four friends Malcolm JB William and dude and initially it starts off looking at their friendship kind of as a group but then it focuses much much more in on dude in his situation how he's become the man he's become he has lots of did with disabilities and has lots of depression going on and he's constantly in pain and it looks at history now it is incredibly triggering it's incredibly difficult reading I disagree with people who say that they don't believe that so much could have happened to one person because I can think of several people I know who have been through horrific things and keep going through horrific things and but what I think is really powerful about this it's not only that it looks at male friendship and it looks at sexuality in a really really interesting a different way but it looks at pain which is somebody has a condition I have Turk ohms which it means that I can sometimes being debilitating constant pain this this kind of really really got to me because it was for somebody seeing that feeling expressed now I don't go I don't have it constantly like you to as I just have bits of it but also everything learning is incredibly powerful about is it looks at survival and how we do identify and why we should or shouldn't I like I said very triggering very mom I by do you think it is an incredible incredible novel don't from completely massive it's a very very tiny gems of like fictional wonderment in the form of the redemption of Galen Pike by Clarence Davis this is a short story collection this is one of the books I read when I judge fiction uncovered a few years ago which looked for orders you'd kind of gone under the rent already we shouldn't have and when I read this I was like give her all the money because these are short concise dark now I don't like to use the word twisting someone is about to say surprising short stories that will always take your places that you can't expect I don't want to say any more than that because even saying that means if you pick it up you're going to be expecting and expected which kind of defeats the whole point but these are set generally in the real world and not the fairy tale like but yet they have a sort of dark gothic nature that is sort of fairy tale in some ways so I really really love this case and I can't rave about it enough really loved her work then we have two books that I kind of feel I fit into one because they kind of cover a whole genre which I love which is sensation fiction and I have the woman in white spy Wilkie Collins which starts off with a man meeting a mysterious woman in white he then goes off to this massive house where he's there to teach a young woman and where he kind of becomes involved in all these mysteries though everything that doesn't feel like it should link starts to enter Lincoln is a fantastic fantastic villain called que las colinas who I adored as use his truffles and then here we have this lady oddly secret as you can guess from the title lately orderly has a secret and it's already dark one miss about Lucy Graham who is widowed she marries into a family and everything seems to be going well until the man called George turns up and then disappears and soon his cousin comes to find out just what the heck happened could it be to that lady oddly maybe I won't say well nope I do love sensation fiction because I love everything we tour it anyway and with sensation fiction it's always kind of like the most dramatic elements and the Ducks you all as murders multiple marriages but well become a parody I it's just so salacious wonderful love it right on to the top eight and so I have the proof of love by Katherine Hall which is a book that I love so much if I could give you one book Valentine's Day this would be at the proof of love natal is apt and because it's blinking brilliant this tells us Spencer little Hugh is a mathematician Cambridge we escaped to the Lake District in the summer of 1976 when there's a huge heat wave to go and work on the farms and just get away from all the people in the village that ends up in there a little bit wary of him although one in particular Whigs were right being alone for him he befriends a young girl called Alice and as it goes on secret starts to sort of unravel and it's just wonderful when I've got it had a secret saying and Sarah waters meet Stephanie tomorrow I was like oh really and it did actually wouldn't compare to either of the two because I think Catherine Eddowes got her own unique voice but it's just full of atmosphere and also what's great about it it's got gothic Sensibility even though it's in at the brightest of Sun in the absolute heat so wonderful book then one of my favorite books from the last few years which if you've been watching this channel since it began I think this is my first favorite book of the year on this channel it is the Essex set by Sara Perry this is about coracii burn she burns a core at Seaborn she's been widowed and she kind of has become a woman who's almost free after being widowed and which in between society is not common she has of this mythical beast a serpent that seems to be attacking the people of Essex in particular place called old winter says she heads there to go and find out more and in doing so she meets will who is the local vicar who is trying to stop people believing in this piece because obviously religiously it can't be real I mean if it is what does it mean about the guilt or the the shenanigans that go in an old winter and how does that affect on God's doors on the town there's so much in this book as well as it just being a really really brilliant story it's got that ROM feel but it's also looks at nature versus science he looks at nature versus religion it looks at love versus lust platonic love all things it's just wonderful and it's got a really really brilliant female needs fantastic oh I also like religious religious a book that was my book of the year a couple of years ago and I'm surprises has become such a fan favorite so quickly because sometimes I feel like books need to take a little while to become your favorite and I may well do a video on my future favorite books full time other books I think my end up joining this list or mixing this list up or kicking a few off in the future if you'd like to see that let me know the book is tangent aside and tinman by Sarah women which tells of Ellis and Michael and I don't really want to give myself why they become friends as boys and you follow that friendship and all the different nuances that there are of that friendship and all again a little bit like the way that this book comes it looks all the different forms of love and and again actually a little bit like the Bernardin Everest how it looks at people who can become embroiled in your secrets and but with the character earnest and in a really positive and very original and different way which I've really really admired it for so love that book then we have some nonfiction and I think one of the reasons that this is probably my favorite nonfiction book and just so well in this list is because it does read very much like fiction it's in cobweb by Truman Capote this is my grand old copy this tells of the real case of the murder of the clutter family which treatment goes out to Kansas to go and look into and he looks at the two culprits and all the two perpetrators and he becomes very interested not so much in Richard but definitely in Perry but what's so powerful about this book is as you're reading it you become more and more involved in both the the murderers lives which is kind of an odd way to feel but also really in the clutters lives and when it comes to the actual murder scene I wept for hours because I just found it so difficult to read and so harrowing but that's because human had so brilliantly written up and made the tension work separately but also just looks at why people end up doing things adieu I just think he's phenomenal so well these books and them before I feel like I should have done like a proper child countdown but I didn't and it's one of my favorite authors and this book hasn't been surpassed by any of her books yet for me a Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and this is half of a Yellow Sun which sort of in a way looks at three different characters so you have a guru who's a young boy and then you follow Alana who has left her rich family to go and live with a professor that she's having an affair with and then you also mean I'm gonna get this wrong I want to say Richard I feel like I said it is Richard Richard I thought those two marriages it becomes very kind of well you falls heavily for Alana's twin sister and then the bio football happens and it's what goes on there with all these characters lies how they become embroiled how they separate all things it is so incredible so powerful so vivid so wonderful book I don't tend to let books that are fantasy but I would actually say this is fantasy and it is wicked by Gregory Maguire now again as I mentioned with the scenes I think coverage this with the season all the season he'll hall it was Susan oh that part of the reason I also love the woman in black is because I love the play so much Paula reason I love this book I've read it before I saw the musical Wicked but musical Wicked is amazing that I even was a friend of house manager on Wicked Witch is was very lucky able to see a lot but this tells of the life through Gregory Maguire's eyes of what the Wicked Witch of the West alpha Bertha Greenwich what her history is and why she ended up becoming wicked and it's a brilliant riff on The Wizard of Oz which on my favorite favorite films attend if I mention this before but when I used to go home some of the days when my mom was at university I was about four and I would go home and make my grandma watch it with me every day religiously for six weeks sometimes twice that's how much I loved The Wizard World it takes you to university with her it gets you to me gelinda well it gets you to me all the characters in The Wizard of Oz but you're really really clever ways and just it's this incredible world building in a world that you think you know but you see in a very very different way really we loved it probably read all of the follow up ones don't know why number two which will always be my second favorite book I think what for now until I read something else but I can't imagine anything changing these two books partly because of the memories with them as well this is home the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle which is obviously Sherlock Holmes story this is all about the Baskerville family in Devonshire who are being hunted down and killed by a mysterious beast I'm a huge hound and is kind of Maura Watson focused story and also it's one of the chunkier of as Sherlock said well she looks tells but also Sir Arthur Conan does does before he write but but it's gothic its sinister it still creeps me out every time just the idea of the howling hound gets to me every single time gives me chills and also I've got a rid of touch monsters because my great uncle he sadly is no longer with us Derek he used to memorize Sherlock Holmes stories for when we went on walking holidays more like 10 miles a day and he remembered to to read me a time but once on one particular long walk he told me pretty much the hold of the hand of Baskerville and then gave me a copy so I could read it myself so real memories of that one same with my number one book which will be surprised to nobody it's his Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier I feel like I don't need to say masses about this this is about an unknown narrator who meets Maxim's wind saying that's Blanco and she goes back to Manderley this amazing wonderful house where Rebecca was his maxims first wife and haunts the house not as a ghost but just in the fact that people are so beside about but also found her so awful there's so many layers to Rebecca it's just incredible and obviously there's mrs. Danvers the housekeeper who is one of my favorite characters in fiction I love this book partly because it is a brilliant book but the reason it's my favorite of all time is without this book this channel probably wouldn't exist because it was being given a copy of this but my friend Polly when I was going to have an operation that after having not read books for I think five or six years I could not stop reading books after I read this I fell in love with reading again and started to become an absolute book addict and so it's all down to this book and my friend Polly said that's why I love this one so much - so those are my favorite books which of those have you read what did you make of them if you hated some of them like a little I've probably quite a lot we did let's have a chat about that in the comments but let's also talk about ones that you loved if you've not read them which ones you mean to get to don't forget they are links down below this video is one way longer than I meant it to so I'm going to go but let's have a chat in the comments down below I'll speak to you soon bye

Channel: SavidgeReads

Views: 13,809

Rating: 4.9540229 out of 5

Keywords: My Favourite Books, The Books I Love The Most, Savidge Reads, Booktube, Simon Savidge, Susan Hill, Bethan Roberts, Lucy Wood, Bernadine Evaristo, Kate Atkinson, Hanya Yanagihara, Carys Davies, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Catherine Hall, Sarah Perry, Sarah Winman, Truman Capote, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gregory Maguire, Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, Daphne Du Maurier

Id: __xAklek4KU

Length: 16min 47sec (1007 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 14 2019