hi everyone, i'm here today to talk to you
about all of the books that i read in november, and i think there are 19 books
for me to talk to you about today, some of them are long, some of them are very very
short, i will list them all in the description box down below if you would like to go and
find out more. so where shall we begin... let us begin with this one which is a new
release that came out in november this is when the lights go out by carys bray, this is
one of these titles that's been pushed back constantly because of covid and i really
felt for carys in that respect and for anyone who has a book coming out this year
who had their book pushed back and then it still came out during a lockdown which is um very very
stressful, so this was supposed to come out in may i think and then it got pushed to june and then it
got pushed to november. this is her third novel, her fourth book because she also has a short story
collection out as well, and this is (as pretty much all of her books are) centred on one family,
the way that they interact with each other, and the intricacies of their relationship, and she
is so good at doing that. this is about chris, who is extremely panicked about the end of the world,
there's a lot of climate anxiety in this and he is prepping for climate crisis and his wife emma,
who's also extremely worried about those things, she goes on fracking marches etc, but she's also
contending with the emotional load and physical responsibilities of running and looking after
a family, so she is frustrated that chris is giving up so much of his job in order to go
and protest in the centre of town on his own, shouting into the void in the street about the
climate crisis, which she sees as valuable, but then he gets to come home and she's made him
a hot dinner and she's looked after their kids and she's taken them to swimming practice, and he sees
all of that as a massive distraction, so it's a discussion about climate anxiety but also about
the power dynamics and privileges surrounding that and so it's not saying that chris shouldn't
be doing those things but it's just he's losing sight of the things at home, and the now,
whereas emma and a lot of other people that chris encounters are using the things that as he
sees as distractions to distract themselves from the larger problems. both of these
things are true, so it's just examining that really closely. my favorite parts
of this book were definitely the miscommunication between family members, that gap in understanding,
i love spending time with the characters, i did think other aspects of this novel were quite messy
but i think maybe deliberately so, you're dealing with something as huge as the climate crisis,
there's no way of wrapping that up in a novel, so, yes, it's given me lots to think about. next
i read the confessions of frannie langdon by sara collins, this is a debut novel. i'm not going to
speak about it here because it's the book that i reviewed for toast last month, so if you would
like to know my thoughts i will link my review in the description box down below. this is really
heavy on intertextuality, so it was really fun to do a deep dive and if you have read this book i
would love to know your thoughts on it over in the comments section of the toast article, so head on
over to that link after you've watched this video and let me know what you thought. i then finished
reading this which is a lover's discourse by xiao guo, i spoke about this a little bit in a reading
vlog that i did where i was reading unsolicited review copies that had been sent to me, and this
was one of them, and deciding whether or not i wanted to keep them and this one intrigued me so
i decided to keep it, but unfortunately it was not a book that i enjoyed. this is one of those
instances where i can see what a book is doing and i appreciate it but i still don't love it. this
is narrated from the point of view of a chinese woman who's moved to london thinking she is going
to come to this really free place and it's going to be very exciting but pretty much as soon as she
arrives she sees one of the brexit buses that says 'vote leave' and 'take back control' et cetera and
she questions her move she's moved to study she's doing art history and one of the modules that
she's doing, and the paper that she's going to write, means that she goes back to china where
she wants to make a a short documentary about artists over there who do cheap reproductions of
really famous paintings and that is what this book is all about, it's about what is real and what
is a reproduction, and what are the lies that we tell to ourselves. this is also named after
roland barthe's book a lover's discourse and that is a series of fragments, so in a sense
this text is following in the footsteps of that: is it truly original? what new things is it
saying? she also meets someone who's moved over from germany and they strike up a relationship
and end up living on a houseboat together, and he is someone who creates landscapes, so
he creates lakes, his company digs out lakes, he does architecture within the landscape
and she finds that a bit ridiculous because he says he's creating art but she says 'but
you're destroying art in order to create fictional nature, i don't really get it' so all of
the discussions in this book, as i said, is about what is real what is not, is this love real? do we
actually love each other, or do we just love the idea of each other? this book jumps around a lot,
so it can cover a couple of months in one page and the characters travel from london to scotland, to
germany, italy, china, australia and new zealand and this is only a 200 page book. there are also
lots of really convenient things in it to try and make a point, for instance when she arrives in
london and she sees the brexit bus, similarly it felt a little heavy-handed when she's talking
about travel and she has to go up to scotland and she says 'and all of the train companies are
owned by lots of different companies who make lots of money which means that our tickets were really
expensive, and that's exploitation' and yeah, i know it is, i'm sure it could have been phrased
in a way that didn't feel as though she was kind of trying to ram certain points into the book and
squash them in there when they didn't particularly fit. because it had those moments of 'let me make
a point', and because it's darting around so much, even though i can see she's doing it in a
fragmented way to reflect barthes and the topics up for discussion within this book, it didn't
really make for a great reading experience for me and i didn't particularly enjoy it. a book i did
love though and i'm so glad i loved it because it was one of my most anticipated releases is rumaan
alam's book leave the world behind. i have not read any of his books before, this is a book about
a husband and wife called amanda and clay, they're leaving their very busy new york work lives and
they're going away for a week in the countryside. i think in my haul i said they left their two
teenage children behind, but that's incorrect, they bring their teenage son and daughter with
them and they go into the countryside, they go to a supermarket, they buy over-the-top expensive
food, it's all very elaborate and they are very smug and pleased with themselves about having
this well-earned break away from civilization. because the characters are so over the
top and smug and pleased with themselves, the writing reflects that. i didn't realize that
at first, at first i was slightly frustrated with the book because it felt very overwritten. it felt
like the author was trying to show off, you know sometimes you read a book and an author is using
really long words when they really don't need to and it doesn't particularly add anything to
the text and you can just see them behind their computer screen typing away thinking
'i am going to show off here'? i hate that, i really, really hate it. so at the beginning
when i was reading it i was thinking 'oh no, i am not sure about this book' but then
the more i got into it —and of course i don't know this for sure, because with author
intent we can never know— but it did start to feel as though he was doing that deliberately,
overwriting because these characters would do that, that's how they would describe
their own lives, because they want to feel important and they want to use those big words,
and after that it started to become easier to get to grips with because it felt more like he was
poking fun at them instead of trying to frustrate the reader. so let me give you an example of that
just in case you do pick it up and you're thinking i cannot with this writing everything okay back
at the office clay could never resist pronouncing the office with a twist of something it was
synecdoche for her profession which he largely but not entirely understood a spouse should have
her own life and amanda's was quite apart from his maybe that helped explain their happiness at least
half of the couples they knew were divorced it's fine one of her most reachful truisms was that
some percentage of jobs were indistinguishable from one another as they all involved the
sending of emails assessing the job itself a work day with several communiques about the
workday then underway some bureaucratic politics 70 minutes at lunch 20 minutes caroming around the
open plan 25 minutes drinking coffee sometimes her part in the charade felt silly and other times
it felt urgent so clay and amanda have driven off into the countryside they are telling themselves
they deserve this break because they earn lots of money this is their reward they've bought
their overpriced food and their specialized gin and they're pretending that they own this
house that they've only rented for the week because as i said this is their reward and then
halfway through their holiday in the middle of the night a couple called ruth ngh appear on
their doorstep and say hi we own this house we need to come in because something has happened
in the world we don't know what it is but we were driving home to new york and then we saw that the
power had gone out across the city and we couldn't go home to our flat because it's really high up
in a building the lift wouldn't work and plus we think a terrible awful thing has happened not
just a power outage we think something terrible has happened like a terror attack or a nuclear
bomb or our country is now at war with someone we just can't find out what's happened because the
um cell signal is out the internet is down and the tv is not working so will you please let us into
our holiday home which we've come to because we assumed that the electricity there still may
be working and can we hide out here until we can figure out what in the world is going on so
of course clay and amanda are surprised because this wasn't supposed to happen on their holiday
also they don't believe gh and ruth to begin with because they have nothing to back it up because as
they said the sell signal is down and the tv isn't working the internet's not working and they think
maybe these people have cut the wires or something and that the service is only out in their house
and that something terrible is going to happen also amanda and clay don't believe ruth and
gh because ruth and gh are black and they think well how can this black couple own this
beautiful house i mean we're white and we have lots of money and we don't know in this house
why should they own this house amanda and clay don't think that they're racist people they think
they're really good people they're clearly racist people it is the most unsettling book i have
read in so long and i could not stop reading it so i read it pretty much in one sitting uh
carminary machado said i have never been this profoundly unnerved since i read ishiguro's
never let me go and i wholeheartedly agree because it's just it's not horror and it's not a dystopian
novel it's not a post-apocalyptic novel it is this odd timeless novel where you just do not
know what is going on and you're focusing on the minute details the the tiny things that people
do when they're put in stressful situations as well as the huge things that they do but their
immediate gut responses and how awful that is and how it's highlighting bits of their character
that maybe they weren't even aware of not to say that other people around them weren't aware of
it but that they weren't aware of they're taking themselves by surprise it feels so primal and
as i said it's so tense so it's like a mystery but also and i don't want to say more
about it because i don't want to ruin it it's brilliant and i would really really
recommend it and as i said the language at the beginning feels very over the top i really
feel that's there for a reason so stick with it i'm just going to zoom past a couple of books here
i read reckless paper birds by john mccullar and i read and then she ate him by tom demby these are
both poetry collections which i spoke about in the poetry shelf book tour which i filmed a few
weeks ago and i did some close readings of some of the poems in there so if you want to find out
more i will link that video in the description box down below i also finished reading cunning folk
which is a brilliant magazine this is their first issue this is a magazine about the esoteric it's
about witchcraft herbal remedies it is about um elements and getting to grips with nature
but it also has ghost stories in here as well and poetry with beautiful illustrations i
will link their website in the description box down below i think that they're great i then
read i say read examined admired looked at beasts of india which is published by tara
books this is one of their handbound books where they are highlighting art from different
parts of india and they're showing how different artists draw the same animals so this is one
version of a tiger then we have another version of a tiger and then a third version too so there
are lots of different creatures in here um this one is one of my favorites i think i just love the
color scheme this is a deer so i really love tara books i've mentioned them a few times recently in
gift guides etc but i think that they're amazing they have a great video on their website where
they show how all of their hand but handbound books are made and that's well worth your
time so i'll link that in the description box down below i've pulled a chair over because i was
getting a lot of pins and needles sitting on the floor plus i've tried to talk about this book for
about half an hour the light has now gone because i've been talking about it so much and i've just
been getting a bit frustrated so i am going to try and sum up my thoughts more concisely because
the thought of trying to edit that half hour of me wrangling with my thoughts is is going to
be a challenge okay so let's try this again i read this which is you're not listening by kate
murphy this is a proof copy it came out last year and the blurb says at work we're taught to
lead the conversation on social media we shape our personal narratives at parties we
talk over one another so do our politicians we're not listening and no one is listening to
us so for context i've had this on my shelf um for about a year now and i've been meaning
to get to it but then something happened a few weeks ago where i thought i really would
like to read this now so i made a video um i can't even remember what the video is called
but it was a couple of weeks ago talking about the latest adaptation of the witches the new
film i wasn't speaking about the film itself but i was speaking about what had happened after
the release of that film where they had changed the depiction of the witches slightly so that they
also had ectrodactyly which is the condition that i have with missing fingers the witches also have
missing hair i have alopecia too and they have missing toes the hair and the toes aspects
they're they're in the book to begin with but not the missing fingers so this falls into a
literary trope which is the disfigurement equals villainy trope it is a recognized problem in the
film industry um so much so that the bfi no longer fund films where directors choose to show
a villain who has a disfigurement as a marker for their evil so it wasn't just
about this one film it feeds into a much wider picture and something that i've been talking
about anyway for ages so i had spoken about the latest version of the witches that posted gone
viral i was then on the radio tv various different news outlets along with other people who have limb
differences and we were talking about this and why it's not great and why we need to have this
conversation and why things need to change not just with regard to the witches film as i said in
general in the film industry and why this is not just a film the repercussions of media that
we constantly consume with messages like that how does it impact people who have visual
differences for instance the marketing campaign for the witches actively encouraged children to
go out and notice witches in real life they said to look out for these things missing fingers
missing hair etc it was ridiculous anyway because as this book says and as i'm sure we have all
noticed on social media in particular two sides of an argument can often just shout at each other
and there's not much room for nuance and it's an echo chamber and it's a case of people dumping
stuff and then running away from a conversation um and i'm going to get into that more in a second
i didn't really want that to be the case with my post about the witches because my post had gone
viral it had been taken out of context and it was shown on sky news and because of that loads of
people came over to me um and some of them were supportive but a lot of them were you know you're
ridiculous of course people are scared of people like you you're ugly that blah blah blah blah
blah disabled people are terrifying they should be the villains in films that trope is there for
a reason um and a lot of people saying it's just a film you know get over it all of that stuff
but i didn't want that to be just a shouting match online i made such an effort to try and
talk with as many people as possible and sometimes that worked a little bit mostly it didn't for
the reasons that i have just mentioned like the internet is not designed to be a place
where we have in-depth conversations on the whole but that is not always the case i think you
might be able to hear the parrots outside so that is why i wanted to read this book now i really
hoped this book would kind of take some of those topics not the personal ones that i've just been
talking about but the idea of we're not talking and communicating with each other properly like
how do we approach that how do we how do we fix that not just talking about online stuff but just
in life i was very much up for a deep dive into conversation theory but this is
an instance of a non-fiction book which tries to cover too much ground and therefore
hops from one subject to another that could still be fascinating but a lot of these topics are quite
sensitive and if you don't handle them properly at best it's baffling and at worst it's
really insensitive and i felt that in in places in this book it was quite insensitive
it's also a non-fiction book that very clearly takes the stance the internet is not good it
doesn't encourage conversation these companies they want to make us addicted to their platforms
so they make sure that we can only absorb short amounts of information and then they
bounce us around from different topics so that we don't really did you hear that i swear
every every day at sunset all the parrots are here um what was i saying it's not the internet
that's distracting me it's the parrots okay um wow that companies such as twitter they want us to
absorb or at least look at tiny fragments of information and then we mine for more information
on different topics and we kind of just lose ourselves and it means that everything is in
bits instead of spending a lot of time on one particular thing i agree with that i agree that
the people who make these sites are designing it in a specific way to make us behave like
that i believe that because it's addictive we buy into it as users but what i would like to
know is why we were so much better at conversing beforehand i would like to know data on that
was it so much better before or is this just highlighting problems that exist already in our
society and and what's the relationship between those two things so she never goes into detail
on that at all or even brush up against it she never examines also parts of the internet where
long-form conversation is there and where people can establish real connections with each other i
realize i'm coming at this from someone who spends so much time online and i have done that from a
very young age i was very into forums when i was younger so this is before social media when i was
a teenager i made true friendships with people on those forums that existed not just online but also
in some cases offline some of those people i am still friends with now of course i have a youtube
channel and i mean i know there's a lot of jokes in there in that i'm talking to myself right now
and i'm filming it and then i'm throwing it out online but we do have conversations as i'm sure
you're aware if you have been here a long time we have conversations in the comments and this
community exists offline too in real life events when i go on book tour or when i do events in
book shops about reading so it's not just a case always on the internet of people shouting at each
other there is room for genuine connection so she makes a point that some which i half agree with
that we can idealize people online and we don't view them as complex people and therefore real
life people become more um frustrating because we see all of their complexities that's true to
an extent online but it's not making room for the true connections that you have with people and
the true friendships that can come out of that where you do listen to each other and you talk
on the phone and via email and you're definitely communicating there is a lot of love to be found
online so i really didn't appreciate that kind of blanket internet bad no conversation
terrible we can only have conversations in real life it also happens to be frustrating
for a different reason too and that it comes across and i'm gonna contextualize this statement
don't worry it comes across quite ableist like you can only have true interactions with people
when you meet up physically with someone and i mean i'm not going to fault this book for the
fact that it was published in 2019 and it's not taking into account anything that's happening in
2020 it cannot see into the future but this year has highlighted how we have had to communicate
with people from afar and yes sometimes there is definitely a lack there and and we can come away
for instance from zoom meetings that are business meetings feeling so emotionally drained because
it is difficult sometimes to communicate via video your brain has to think in a different way you can
miss certain social cues is definitely not without its challenges but it's also not terrible and i
and i used the um phrase that came across as quite ableist because a lot of this book felt like that
a lot of this book felt like it was speaking to able-bodied straight white people let me explain
what i mean there are lots of instances in this book where she uses the word death as a synonym
for inattentive that if we're not listening to someone we are deaf to them we are speaking
a language of the deaf i know that that's an idiom but it's an old one and we shouldn't
really be using it anymore so there's a lot of dismissive language surrounding deafness and as
i said she kind of cherry-picks the topics she's going to talk about and doesn't go into detail
about them at all so i was hoping when she started talking about deafness that she was going to
talk about communication with regard to deafness um and explore that because this is a book
about listening and in all its different forms but the only thing she said was deaf
research on deaf and hearing impaired children has shown they have a diminished ability
to empathize and affiliate there is also extensive research on the detrimental emotional
cognitive and behavioral effects on those who have lost their hearing in later life helen
keller said i am just as deaf as i am blind deafness is a much worse misfortune for it means
a loss of the most vital stimulus the sound of the voice that brings language sets thoughts a stir
and keeps us in the intellectual company of men and then she moves on to a different topic this is
a quote that's been taken from someone who is deaf um but i also think it's been kind of shoehorned
in there and taken slightly out of context she's saying that deaf children can't assimilate
they don't understand emotions and can't communicate as well but that's putting the onus on
them i feel like the the conversation surrounding this should be how society is so dismissive of
disabled and deaf people and does not make space for them if a deaf child is struggling to
understand facial expressions and emotion is that not because society is i was going to say
ill-equipped but is refusing to equip and adapt to talk to people who are deaf that is something
that is missing in this book um when she's talking about um neurodivergent people etc people who
differ from her version of the norm and at no point in this book does she address that power
imbalance so she discusses how sometimes speakers invited to universities etc are told not to
come because they are there to talk on a subject that some students may find offensive and how
bad that is because we should always talk to people and engage with people who have different
opinions to us again i am not the opposite of that as i was saying before i think we do need
to have conversation and we do need to interact with people who have different views to us because
that is life and it's important to remember that that is what life is like but there is such a vast
difference between me or anybody else sitting down and having a conversation with someone who has
a differing view and me paying someone to come and talk about that specific subject that may have
a directly harmful impact on say minority groups whether they have that influence and that power
it's it's so different and i would love her to have talked about those different things but she
doesn't she just says canceling people is wrong and like i'm not talking about cancer culture
saying cancelling events etc and not listening to people i am not full cancer culture either i i
am as i said looking for the nuance within these conversations and not really finding them and
and feeling let down she also said in this book the only way to encourage people to listen to
you is to continually listen to them actively listen to them and again there is no discussion
on the imbalance there she says if someone has a different view to you and you're confident in
your view someone who's confident in their view never minds having their view challenged
because they relish the opportunity to reiterate why they believe in that thing that
may be true if we're talking about something that's very emotionally detached something
that's very academic but what if we're not talking about those things what if we're talking
about white supremacy what if we're talking about um homophobia what if we're talking about any
of those things and we're asking a gay person to sit down and have a conversation with someone
who thinks that they're a terrible person how are we supposed to encourage that kind of listening
if you are a queer person a person of color a disabled person a person with disfigurements
on the whole and i know this is quite a general thing to say but from my personal experience
and others who i know you're probably going to be someone who's very good at listening um and
you're very good at picking up on social cues and people's expressions navigating difficult
territory whereby people have constantly told you what they think of you and and who you should
be how you should behave and you've had to make room for that your whole life so then be told you
need to have an equal playing field with people who despise you and your role is someone who
should just constantly listen and make space when the other person is not doing that i fundamentally
disagree with that and i wish that she had talked about that given some space to the discussion of
the imbalance of power within those conversations and when it's appropriate to stop there is a
chapter right at the end of the book which is called when to stop listening and i thought here
it is we're going to get the answers now but not really she talks about people on an individual
basis if you're engaging talking to a jerk who's not listening to you continues not to listen it's
your prerogative to work out when to walk away from that conversation and yes that's true but
what about society as a whole what about these ongoing conversations where society has dismissed
a lot of people's voices um how do you walk away or disengage from that you you can't um or at
least you can as she said on an individual basis but it's something you know you're going to have
to go back to and back to i'm not saying i would never have difficult conversations with people i
have difficult conversations with people all the time i think what i mean is that she's saying
it's a choice to get into those conversations and really often it's not and she as i said leaves
no room to explore that anyway i'm going to stop talking about that book because i've spoken about
it so much it's just i've been thinking about it all the time all the time because i
am someone who is really fascinated about listening and conversations um i think
writers and this is a point that she makes in the book writers generally are good listeners we pay
attention to people we are observers because we examine the human condition like we want to
take it apart we want to understand how it works i would talk to you all day about the logistics of
linguistics i know that i'm talking to myself here i know i'm talking to you but in the moment i'm
speaking to a camera it's a one-sided conversation but in other areas of my my job i go into
schools i have to communicate with children establish relationships with them really quickly
through conversation i record podcasts and that's something she also speaks about in this book so i
am in a hopefully non-manipulative way trying to think of ways to get people to talk and go deeper
in conversations to create a really great podcast episode so i'm fascinated by these things i
just was not fascinated by the way this book handled them and i felt quite let down okay
because it's basically night time now let us quickly go through the other books i read i read
this which is absolutely delightful if you need a stocking filler a small gift for someone
this christmas i so recommend this it's by catherine rondell it's called why you should read
children's books even though you're old and wise so it's talking about how great children's
stories are and how we can learn things from them no matter what age we are honestly
made me want to cry a bit it was so lovely i'm so frustrated i just realized i could have
changed the lighting settings on this camera all right let's try that again uh this is
the dragon tea society isn't that better guys can you it's been a long day this is the
tea dragon society by katie o'neill this is a graphic novel and it is one of the most adorable
things i've ever read if you just need a feel good book in your life then this is it it's about a
young girl who finds this dragon here jasmine who has been not abandoned she has lost her way
so she takes her back to herona who is this guy here and the owner explains that he looks after
dragons and they all grow different kinds of tea out of their heads and so he cares for them
and then they can brew the tea and the tea has different magical powers so she decides that she
is going to become part of the tea dragon society and it has great queer up and disability rep
and as i said it's just like a warm hug it is so delightful and frankly just what i needed and
speaking of just what i needed i then read this which is another graphic novel of hers called
princess princess ever after by katie o'neill the art style is slightly different in here but
this is about princess sadie and princess amira amira rescues sadie or rather her unicorn celeste
does and then they ride off together and then they rescue this other prince here again feel good
warm fuzzies delightful love it i read a couple of picture books this is by mamoko abey this
is avocado asks it's an avocado who is having an identity crisis in the supermarket because he
doesn't know if he's a fruit or a vegetable and he's going around the supermarket trying to figure
out what he is and the tomato in particular has no something for the avocado at all it's really
lovely i did um always part of a campaign with book trust where children's authors were paired
up with authors and illustrators of color who were just emerging into the industry and um those
authors and illustrators took over our instagram accounts for the day so momoko had um photos
that were posted over on my instagram showing her fantastic work so if you haven't seen that
i'll link it in the description box down below i adore her style and i can't wait for
her new picture book which is coming out in march i also read the bandit queen by the
ohara sisters this is about the queen of a group of bandits and it made me laugh because we
just finished watching the queen's gambit and this sounds similar i wonder if this is boost for sales
at all by sounding slightly similar the end papers are amazing and i thought the illustrations
were absolutely fantastic i did enjoy the way that it's written it's very tongue twistery
you're supposed to fall over your words but the rhythm of it slightly threw me off and in
a way that didn't feel quite deliberate but this is how it begins the woods are full of horrible
sounds to make you quiver and quake the whale of a wolf a lonely owl's yowl the hiss of a slithery
snake but worse than the whale or the owl or the hiss the horridest sound in the woods sounds like
this i love the illustration so much and it is a lot of fun and then finally i read this silent
graphic novel which is called the wanderer it feels heavily inspired by sean tan's the arrival
it's about a paper boat this little paper boat here and all of the amazing adventures that it
goes on it's in black and white it travels the seas it encounters all of these strange creatures
it is the most stunning book i love it i think i may gift it quite a bit at christmas so those are
all the books that i wanted to speak about today good luck in the future to me editing this i would
love to know your thoughts in the comments section down below if you have read any of these books
let me know what you've been reading recently i hope you're all having a great start to the week
and i'll speak to you soon lots love bye you
