The Books That Shaped Me | Reading Through My Decades | June 2021

hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi i'm doing hi and welcome to my channel i'm simon and today i'm back with a penultimate video of the five days of videos in a row to celebrate my well belatedly celebrating my fifth booktube birthday which was last friday and today i'm going to be doing the books that shaped me slash reading through the years and i nearly said tag video because it is a kind of unofficial tag video is what i'm going to say is that if you would like to have a go at this basically i'm going to go through each of the decades of my life and pick some books that have really really meant something to me you know this was initially inspired by a lovely man called dan who asked me if i could do a video on books that have sort of changed my life in any way like say um for example he's just recently read some books that have stopped him eating meat and i was looking back and thinking i don't think there's been anything like that necessarily but there are definitely books that have kind of built me as a person or that have meant to me a lot over the years and the sort of part of my i don't know what's the word being really certain books that receive they're not necessarily my favorite books of all time they're just books that um have meant a lot at certain points and so i thought i would have a chat about those and if you would like to do the same please do pick there's no rules as to how many per decade just uh pick which ones really stand out for you for example there's one deck where i only had three because i didn't read for most of that decade but we'll come back to that shocker later and so there we go it's a kind of unofficial tag if you want to have a go do do it and let me know by linking it in the comments down below because i would love love love to see lots of you do it right on with the book so it she knows always happens in my videos um i am going to start off obviously with my first decade so from when i was zero until i was at 10 and the first books that probably had the most lasting effect on me even though they might not have been the first books that i read were the books that my grandad made me so my grandad i didn't call granddad they called him bongi and this is the first of them the marvelous adventures of esmeralda marmalade and mitch and esmeralda was a witch marmalade was a cat and mitch was a mouse and eventually they have some duck friends and some chicken friends and they have a friend called simon and all of his friends and my granddad used to make these for me when i was living in newcastle with my mum while she was at university and they would arrive like once a week i'd get a new one and it was just so lovely and i've got a whole set of them on shelves over there that you can't see but these are also some of my most precious books but these definitely kind of really got me into reading and not in like you can't be egotistical at the age of three but like not just because i was in the books because i wasn't to begin with but just because they were so beautifully done and so nicely illustrated i mean look at that it's just very cute they're all on the bus and then they're making sand castles and oh anyway so yes these books definitely meant a lot to me when i was thinking about what the first book i can remember reading it's a very apt book and i was talking about this not long ago with my mum because really this book influenced my entire life in ways that i would not have expected at the time and that is elmer by david mckee and the reason that this book i think really sent to me was the bright colours i absolutely love bright colors if you've seen any pictures of my house on instagram and stuff you all know every room is a color um except for one room we have one white room in this house which is um chris's housekeeping room because chris when i met him had like a predominantly white and gray house until i arrived anyway um so yeah so the other thing about this whole book that i don't think i realized even until very recently was about kind of alma being different and wanting to be like everyone else and yet actually when he became like everyone else him just sort of fitting in with the mold and then being celebrated once they realized that he was back and his difference being celebrated so there's a lot of sort of stuff i guess you could say about acceptance and being different and obviously all the bright colors and i think it just turned me into who i am because right now you know i'm quite different from other people being part of the lgbtqia plus community plus just everyone's different anyway aren't they because you're you and and i really love a bright jumper and i think it all is deeply rooted in elmer i seriously seriously think that and i've got an elmer t-shirt on the way apparently which i'm very very excited about and we were and we'll be wearing in many many a video coming soon yeah this i just love i think it's such a joyous hopeful celebratory book about difference and uh it clearly resonated with me at the time in a way that i couldn't understand but now looking back i totally get it and there's obviously growing up being different i guess this was always in the back of my mind so we have that one anyway then moving on to uh i mentioned that in the books that my grandma bongi made me there was um a duck called rapunzel and there was various chicks because they were the pets that i had and that's because i was obsessed with a hand-me-down copy that i had of this from my mum and my aunts and uncles and which is rapunzel the ladybird well-loved tales edition this is actually a reprint to mark the 100th anniversary in 2015 but i was obsessed with this we had uh where i'm from my mouth bath we had a tower on while it was still there and there's a tower on the hill with only like one window and i literally thought rapunzel and the witch lived on the hill i was obsessed with it we had woods and foreign place to grow up and and yeah i just all the pictures stay with me forever like i really remember the walled garden with the um uh fresh green salad that the pregnant woman wanted so much and like climbing over and now i have a wall garden that doesn't look far off the one in here if i can find it now and so yeah so this book really really really resonated with me and i don't have a thousand cottages at the end i do have oh god um and i just loved it and i read it over and over and i remember this being the first book i could really read to myself and just yeah always turn into it always heading for it and hence why my first pet a pet dog she was amazing she's flooding my feet and everything was called rapunzel because of uh basically the images they just stay with you forever the witch climbing up her hair and also i will say tangled is one of my favorites um and my favorite disney films and speaking of disney i'm hopefully going to see cruella this evening as this goes live anyway and then on to i guess the next book up from that in terms of the series one one a series that i really really got into i'm not saying that you all have to have got into a series of books um if you decide that you want to give this a whirl at any point but um i absolutely loved the worst witch way before hp way before ed well any other sort of witchy books for me the worst witch or wizardy books and this was the original and the best and it tells of mildred hubble who is well she's the worst witch she's not very good at being a witch and it's how her and her cat tubby who again isn't like the other cows because they're all black cats and he's a tabby cat um it's all about how she kind of fails epically but saves the day in fact actually this could be like a how to fail for youths might i might mention that to elizabeth day and see what she thinks but i actually love this and again i really really love the illustrations the memories of those and i was thinking recently like maybe i could get like a mildred hubble tattoo or something or would that be possibly a little bit weird i don't know anyway um yeah i just i love these i read them and you know how could you not enjoy uh mildred and maude disappearing and ethel and this is hard broom who i think is like almost an original mrs danvers for me and so yeah mr danvers will come up later moving on to the next decade the next decade is the one between the ages of like 11 and 20 where i just sort of fell out of love with reading but i did have a couple of books that really really meant a lot to me the first of which is the hound of the baskerville the pardon me the hound of the baskervilles which um where's which which which um this uh sherlock holmes books and stories have become a real favorite in my life and are a real sort of if i'm feeling like really ill and really rough i'll turn to a sherlock sports short story i can't speak um if i'm feeling really rough already ill i will turn to a sherlock holmes short story and um it's a nostalgic thing it's the fact that i know i'm just going to enjoy it and even if i can sometimes remember the outcome it always still amazes me how we get there and how do the baskervilles is the first sort of big chunky novel now the reason that i've got into sherlock holmes and his short story is because my great uncle derek and who's suddenly no longer with us um he would memorize sherlock holmes stories under the rather conan doyle stories to be fair tales of mystery and unease um and he would remember memorized for um two a day when we went on walking holidays and that's because i would go with uh my gran my bongi my own great uncle derek and my great auntie pat and we would do this sort of um the dale's way or i'm trying for the ones that we do we did lots of different offers dyke um and they were like 11 miles a day-ish and so i would sort of flag before lunch and sort of flag this evening went on and that is when he would tell me these stories which he'd memorized word for word for me uncle derek was a legend um he although he did have one bad bookish habit which he would buy a secondhand book of a copy already had and he would tear the pages as he went and throw them away so that his packing got lighter i don't think that's the right way to do it but it's how he did it and he was a delight and i forgive him for that paper massacre anyway um yeah so he would memorize these stories and my gran always used to say that she and my auntie pat and bong would always try and catch up so they could hear the stories too and they didn't miss anything so they have always stayed with me and this i think also was my first taste particularly with baskerville's um of the real gothic and i just loved it right next i really wasn't taking longer doing this and i thought i would um but that's always the case with me because waffles tangents and the whole spanx a book that definitely made me in many many ways and i don't have the first one i don't know why but it's some tales of the city by armistead multan which tales of um san francisco and uh marianne singleton when she arrives being a bit of a country bumpkin getting there and sort of getting ending up living in this shared house with all these quirky amazing wonderful queer characters and these sort of adventures that surround them all the love stories that surround them all the tris the love triangles the tribulations the trials everything is in these and they're just wonderful they were a chronicle um in the newspaper in san francisco when they were originally written and people just got gripped with them very much actually like uh sherlock holmes um and yeah i i think this was the first time i realized that there were people out there in the world that were like me queer people and they were having happy lives and there it was brimming with friendships and all that kind of stuff and the postman is here i was rather apt actually the postman bringing me more books because i'm doing a video talking about all the books that share my life right i also found a bit ago and i got a little bit emotional talking about like my great uncle derek and bongi and graham because they're just not here anymore and it's really sad you know i'd love to share stories about books now with them anyway right moving on and so yeah tells the city really really um important book for me made me feel like i wasn't going to be alone as i grew up and which was kind of the narrative around gay men back in the sort of early 90s and i also should mention though a boy's own story by edmund white would also kind of be up there with this but i think nigel it wouldn't quite it was very important for me but i think that's why i turned to this one because this fall sophie is a book that feels like whenever i pick it up again and it's like i'm hanging out with friends and at some point i would like to read the entire story sorry the entire series again to get lost in all of their stories i should also say i've had the pleasure of hosting events with our miss dead at moorpan and um having dinner with him and he is an absolute delight which i think made me love the books even more because he is an embodiment of them anyway there we go so there's that and then the first book that my mum gave me is kind of my first grown-up book to read i guess is one that has really really made me in a lot of ways and again it's quite um gothic possibly an understatement it's a story of a murderer quite literally in the title and it's perfume by patrick suskind and um yeah i just became so um engrossed in this book and i couldn't quite believe that there could be even like having read sherlock holmes and stuff this is like next level of sort of thriller i guess or literary thriller in the fact that it's about a man who wants to create um a perfume that matches people's skin and how he goes about that is quite awful i don't really love the film i have to say but the book i think is phenomenal and this actually i think i must have read when i was about 14 15 is probably actually really one of the first books i read uh that was kind of my first grown-up book and yet actually was just before i stopped reading for a long long time so between the ages of 16 and i think it's about 23-24 i didn't pick up a book but that is a perfect segue and actually a gothic segue into my next decade so my 20s to my 30s and and the book that got me back into reading with a bang is well documented on this channel so i feel like i don't need to talk about it for too long and is daphne de maurier's rebecca which was one of three books that my friend polly who i've known since i was four gave me when i was going to have an operation and i hadn't read for years i was really put off by reading at school i had a really really really bad english teacher and yeah i just didn't care for it i also quit my a levels and decided to become a hairdresser and my a level's english literature and i just yeah i just wasn't fussed about it at all i thought it was elitist i didn't see the joy in it and i felt like it was like a task rather than something to do to relax etc until i had this operation now the other two books that she gave me which i should mention um are the surgeon by tess garrison which is about a psychopathic surgeon just when i was having an operation and the other one was the body in the library uh by agatha christie which i read after this and i think it was a combination of those three that really got me but it was definitely this that stole my heart um and yeah you all know the taylor rebecca i feel like i don't know so it's about a woman who marries uh she meets max and de winter in casablanca they go back to mandalay um his home where he lived with his first wife rebecca who died and there is mrs danvers who keeps the ghost very much alive of rebecca um and yeah it follows on from there and i think it's a gorgeous glorious gothic masterpiece and uh i put i have to say i don't know if it's my favorite definitely mario now which is interesting although i think you always remember your first oil but um i am for me this is a book that without this book i wouldn't be doing this channel i wouldn't read as much as i do it just wouldn't have happened i genuinely think this gave me such a kickstart and now going on to something quite different is um in cold blood by truman capote we're going back to my grand now and this is one of the several books that when i went to go and stay with her once in my sort of mid to late twenties um we got trapped by some really big storms and i hadn't brought any books with me or maybe i had brought one that i thought no wouldn't get much time to read but we were literally stuck in so i finished that book and i said oh i fancy reading something else and this was the first of the books of hers that she recommended me i've held it up for ages i think i've said this in cold blood by truman capote and this is um the first narrative non-fiction i read and the one book that kind of showed me that non-fiction wasn't academic and boring and instead was gripping and vivid and visceral and actually this made me cry when we get to the specific murder scene involved um so yeah i just thought this was amazing this is actually my gran's first edition that i inherited after she died so and it means a lot to me in that sense as well but this is the books that opened me up to um heading into non-fiction and trying books that i wouldn't normally have and and the other book that she gave me that week was uh maggio farrell's the vanishing act of esme lennox which is another absolute favorite mindset and maggie became one of my favorite authors now this book i remember um being my first introduction to the women's prize i think although it could have actually been on beauty by zadie smith which might not be the best introduction but this is the one where i sort of really started to learn about what the women's prize was so that was a joy to it and ironically i realized the other week that the person who bought me this was my mum and it was when i was living in london she'd come to visit it and i wasn't any masters say books was still a real treat and she kind of we went through foils i think it was and it might have been blackwell's it might even both actually know he knows um and she let me pick three books it must have been basically showing me book three through a little bit i'm getting so excited thinking about it she let me pick three books from each of those bookshops on sharing crosstalk back when black holes was on there and um i remember one of them was david mitchell's um cloud atlas which i didn't really really get on with but the one that i did get on with and the one that opened me up to i think something that's become a real favorite thing of mine in fiction and is discovering about parts of the world i don't know anything about but also parts of history there that i don't know anything about and the book is half of a yellow sun by chimamanda ngozi adichie now i know some people have certain thoughts on the author um i'm just telling you my honest journey through books so i didn't know any of that at the time this would have been when i was probably what 26 27 and so we are talking quite a long time ago because i'm quite old um and um yeah i just completely and utterly fell in love with this book and i think it was also a book that set me off on a path to read much more nigerian um fiction which is um you know it's not a genre of it but um i do love nigeria fiction and i think that love has come from this but also i've got those memories of it being the book that like i said first got me into the women's prize and which obviously i've become a huge fan of love doing all the videos with my mum and then i remembered it was my mum that got me it so what a lovely twist of fate or what a lovely circular something over there um so then on to my 30s to my 40s and i'm not 40 yet i'm 40 next year um but this selection of books is probably the biggest because it has seen the most growth in my reading and i mean i will say from reading rebecca onwards i started to buy books in ridiculous amounts we had a charity shop at the end of our road when i lived in london where it was five books for two pounds and that shop is actually partly responsible for mo well a lot of the books on those shelves for definite which have then carried around with me for over a decade since um so i was really really into reading but i do remember and i know this was after i was 30 because it was after me and my first husband split up um and i decided when i moved to manchester that um i'd kind of divorce is horrible and awful and but there is one weird thing about it which you sort of slowly realize and that is that you are free to do whatever you want and that life is yours and you can take it whatever direction you want to and i knew that i wanted to work more in books if i could and one of those things i really wanted to do was to run book events and so along with adam lowe who um was a friend of mine when i moved to one of the first friends i made when i moved to manchester um we decided to set up a literary salon called bookmarked i should mention here damien barr was so helpful he runs and damien bars history seller now um and and has done for all that time he's amazing um but he gave me loads of tips and was just wonderful and the first two guests we had were sj watson um to talk about before i go to sleep his debut which then went boom which is really exciting and an author who's become a favorite author of mine and also made me realize when i did the live the other day talking all sorts of things about being on booktube in the last five years um that i hadn't started reading them five years ago because i was thirty a lot longer than five years ago well four years longer than five years ago and and uh this author has become an absolute favorite one it's sarah women when god was a rabbit and what a pairing to get your first ever literary salon i mean it was bonkers and i remember being really worried that nobody's going to turn up mum visited and she was worried nobody was going to and we had over 100 people in the audience and it was just amazing and it was like i remember just feeling so like oh my god we made this happen we did this and i'd say waterstones in manchester were brilliant partners and everything so yeah it was just that is a real moment for my career it felt like even though back then i didn't think it would like books would be my career i didn't think that was possible and i certainly didn't in my 20s when i wasn't reading them anyway so there we go then on to um two books that made me change my opinion about um well no three books actually that made me change my opinion about genres or types of books that i read so first up um is after having reading code blood and really really loving that and kind of being open to narrative non-fiction that's what i binged on i didn't really try anything else however not that many years ago in my booktube history in fact so in the last five years um i have read the argonauts by maggie nelson which i think is one of the most incredible novels about queerness queer family gender bodies just everything acceptance all those things and it's the sort of book and i said this when i first read it where um it's almost like maggie nelson takes the top of your head off pours all these ideas in and then pops it the lid back on shakes it and says go away i'm gonna have a good think about that and you do i just think it's phenomenal it was also kind of the first time i really got into vignette writing and yeah i just thought i just thought i still think utterly incredible and sort of opened me up to how non-fiction not just in terms of narrative non-fiction but in this kind of vignette quirky different way can open your mind to so many more experiences than you know fiction can i think it's wonderful but i never felt like that about non-fiction it always felt to me like either i could read it and it was a really good story uh narrative non-fiction-wise or it was academic and i wasn't interested in this opened me up to the other almost endless possibilities of non-fiction which was fabulous and and then i find this quite interesting like looking back on my reading life again not an egotistical way but just in the fact that like clearly when i started reading as sort of a young teen before i then stopped for ages i was trying to find myself in fiction or reading fiction that had sort of mirroring or shades of myself in both to kind of put myself in context of the world i guess but also just in terms of finding myself um and also finding the fictional work for me and then once i've read all not all of that because you can't read all of that sort of fiction but also a lot of that sort of fiction i moved on to wanting to be in the um footsteps of other people and experiencing all different walks of life all over the world there were nothing like mine and i think that's why now i read less um queer fiction than i used to because i'm just a bit like well less gay male fiction than i used to because i'm just like well i kind of know quite a bit about that although admittedly not you know my i'm in a very privileged white space within that and there are lots of people who aren't and lots of stories i need to re read about those that i haven't but more possibly on that in a little bit um but what i realized that i was struggling with was poetry and the only other poetry collection i'd like before this one i'm going to mention is gargling with jelly by brian patton who else read this i mean i can still literally um say a word for what's the word i can literally read or i still have the poem pick a nose pick memorized in my brain i'm not going to do it now because it's a bit gross but that was also what was so brilliant about this poetry collection anyway that's about old me reading this or older or younger but older times reading and the collection that really got me back into poetry or has really gotten very interesting in the last five years is andrew mcmillan's physical and yes that doesn't mean i get to show you a cheeky little cheeky bottom cheek i will say this this poetry collection is just amazing it's about uh masculinity bodies but also the queer body and queer masculinity and toxic masculinity and all of those things involved sort of sort of uh rolled into one and i just think it is brilliant his latest collection actually pandemonium has just arrived so i'm very much which i bought from wallstones which i'm very much excited to read and but yeah i just think this is one of the best poetry collections i've ever read and can't recommend it enough i will link all of these books down below by the way um so yes that opened me up to poetry and i have to say i feel like with poetry i'm still on that journey where i'm reading a lot of queer poetry and i really get that and that's helping me to step to the next stuff which is a little bit more outside my comfort zone and so there we go speaking of comfort zones a book that um i ended up reading because i love australian fiction i've got a real thing about australia i feel like i'm when i finally go that i'm just going to feel at home i don't know where this has come from but is how i feel and it's very much how i feel about north wales although northwest i'm much more likely to actually move to australia i think i just like in my dream scenario i'd like to live there maybe four or five months a year north wales the rest anyway um i this book from australia um only very recently made me realize that um i don't know my taste as well as i think i do and i need to try more genres i haven't done very well since i've read it but it did make me feel of those things and that's kind of coming to the floor at the moment i've been talking about that a bit in other videos but it is from the wreck by jane rawson which also is the first book i ever got a cover quote on so it means it loads to me for that too but um that was after way after i'd read it so this is a book all about a man who's on a boat and where he sees this kind of woman who's really really drawn to there's a crash they're together and then when they get saved they're separated and she disappears and he searches for her and can't find it we realize it's because she's turned into a cat because she is kind of an alien life force and then it's how they sort of stay in touch without him knowing going forward it's so brilliantly done it's unlike anything i've ever read before and it's kind of historical fiction with a sci-fi twist basically and it has reminded me that i must try books outside my comfort zone much more often i haven't been as good at it although actually now i think i try a lot more books now and actually i did a whole video on this which i'll link down below i was like how do i know my reading tastes anymore or what kind of reader i am i feel like i've lost that a little bit and i think that's because i'm reading much more uh widely than i've ever done before penultimately a book that i only read very recently that reminded me of the power of fiction for us to walk in other people's shoes um or to walk or to experience the lives of others we might not and i think quite a lot of books i read tend to do that in history but not necessarily right now and this is a book that is about right now that everyone should be reading right now and it is d transition baby by tory peters this book has been talked about a lot this year it is brilliant now i have to say and i think this is the case with some of these books it's not the best book i've ever written written it's not the best book i've ever read or the best book ever written but what this does about giving you so much insight into what it's like to be trans and the trans community and queer families and all those things is just incredible and that is what i kind of want to keep reading going forward i want to find out even more about what it's like to be other people so that i can know more be a better ally and just have more awareness outside the sort of um you know i don't i i think i'm an ally this taught me that i could be a better ally that's what i mean and those are sort of books that i need so there's this one and last but not least and this is really hard because this only happened this weekend um i fell in love with this book um a year or two ago and it's on the red hill by mike parker and this book and i think this is probably what i'm wanting going forward a little bit more it's not going to be that easy because there's not many books that are written about a place that you can stay in because i did go and stay on the red hill this weekend just gone and there'll be a vlog of that coming in the next week or so um and this book is is about a couple mike and preds who inherited a house off another gay couple who had been together for decades before homosexuality was legalized in rural wales they were the first couple to get married and what gay couple to get married in wales and it looks at what it's like to be queer out in the rural sort of wilderness but also um about sort of well it's a whole history of a couple and their lives and all the things that happened um in history along the way plus this relationship between the two two couples and oh there's so much in here and then to actually go there and experience what a magical place it is which you feel in the book and feel the history there and everything it was just incredible i know this isn't going to be an experience that's going to happen again like often but um i would love more experiences like this we're going to be going back because i loved it so much and we're going to be going back in september um but yeah so that book and again that book's bubbled with me and then suddenly comes to the full with what's with with going there this weekend and everything and yeah i just yeah so there we go those are the books that have made me it's gonna be interesting to see maybe in like a decade if i'm still doing youtube videos then what what like the next decade is going to be full of hopefully more books like the ones particularly in the recent years that just kind of moved me on as a reader i guess if that makes sense so there we go please do have a go at this and link it below if you do it letting me you know know or sorry sharing with everyone but then let me know and the books that have made you over different decades i would just absolutely love to see that from more of you so uh yeah on that note this video is longer than i meant it to be so i'm gonna go but i will see you tomorrow for the final of my five days of videos to celebrate my fifth booktube birthday which is gonna be the 25 best books i have read in the last five years that was a tough decision and more on that tomorrow bye

Channel: SavidgeReads

Views: 3,809

Rating: 4.9114389 out of 5

Keywords: BookTube, Savidge Reads, Tag, Reading Through My Decades, The Books That Shaped Me, Brian Pattern, David McKee, Jill Murphy, Arthur Conan Doyle, Armistead Maupin, Patrick Suskind, Daphne Du Maurier, Truman Capote, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sarah Winman, SJ Watson, Maggie Nelson, Andrew McMillan, Jane Rawson, Torrey Peters, Mike Parker, Book Chat

Id: DFzAKe2PijU

Length: 31min 23sec (1883 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021