Hi everyone, today I'm here to talk about
some books i've read recently. i'm not going to
be doing monthly wrap-ups ,as I haven't
been doing them for the past few months,
but i do want to talk about books that
i've been reading that I don't
necessarily have enough to say in a full
review. so i thought every once in a
while I would just do a video talking
about some of my recent reads. if I cover
everything I read throughout the year
cool; if i don't, oh well. it's just a fun,
casual way to talk about books and to
interact with you guys. so let me just
get right into it. as i'm filming this it is
about two weeks into the new year, and i've
read five books so far. I think putting
a lower goodreads goal this year has
really helped me kind of take the
pressure off myself. in fact it's made me
want to read more, in a weird way. I'm
just not worried about keeping track of
how much i'm reading as much, and i'm
just reading when I would feel like it.
and I've been pretty productive so far.
I have four books here and then one audio
book that I listened to. so i'm going to talk about
those now.
first one i read was Kathleen Collins's
stories, "Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?"
This is a collection that was
recently published, and she passed away
quite a few years ago, like in the
eighties I think. she was young when she
died, and she was a film director. she had
written some stories that her daughter
possessed after her mother died, and they
were recently published, which I think
it's really cool that she got to be
published,
even after her death and that this
collection even exists.
it wasn't amazing, but there were three or
four that I really liked, and the rest
were ok. so i gave it about
three-and-a-half stars, but if you're
looking for interesting short
stories about race and sexuality and
gender and a lot of different topics-- she
covers a lot in these short stories-- then
i would definitely recommend this one.
there was one in particular that I
really liked called "Only Once" i think,
yeah, it's called "Only Once" and I like
this part of it. I'll read a short snippet.
"Later she will try to pinpoint the exact
secret reaching her in the fog. Later she
will try to pinpoint when laughter died.
Later she will try to pinpoint who threw
the insult and when and where it landed and
why it stuck to his skin. But she will
not be able to. It will thin out by
morning. Diluted to a tiny scab that
will not fall off." So she had some really
good moments in these stories. you know I
didn't love every single one;
you're never going to really like every
story in a collection, that's very rare.
but this was highly enjoyable. after that
I read "Heart of Glass" by Wendy Lawless.
I did do a whole book review on that,
so I will link it in the card or in
the description box. this is a memoir
about coming of age in her twenties in
nineteen eighties in New York City. and
she's trying to be an actress and deals
with the art world and pop culture, so if
that sounds interesting to you at all
then I think you'd really like this one.
it reads like a novel. it's wonderfully
engaging-- I didn't want to put it down.
I really like this one a lot and she has
another one that came out before this that
is about her childhood and that was
great too.
so definitely check these memoirs out,
and you can see more about what I
thought about it and what it's about in
the full review. next up i read "How to
Build a Girl" by Caitlin Moran, or Catlin Moran?
I hear it pronounced differently. Not sure.
but this is such a funny book.
oh my goodness. it's definitely very
mature, so i would not recommend this to
young readers, but oh my goodness i
laughed so much through this book. just thinking
about certain parts, like I can't believe
she went there, but I was glad she did
because she just went to places I
feel like stories about women don't go
often. but it's about a girl named
johanna who's growing up in the suburbs
of England in the nineties, and it's
about her wanting to reinvent herself.
she makes a fool of herself on a local
television station one day when she's
like 13 or 14, and after that she's just
mortified and wants to redo her whole
persona. and it's about her trying to do
that and what happens to her, how she
takes what happened to her and tries to
make a better life for herself and for
her family, who are very poor and are
government assistance. so it tackles
politics, it tackles sexuality and tackles
gender, her role in a very man's
world of music criticism as she tries to
become a journalist. I really like this
one. I was pleasantly surprised and I
heard it is the first in a trilogy that
she's planning, and i'm excited because i
will definitely read whatever else she
writes next. I know she has some
nonfiction stuff that i might read; I'm
not like super interested in the topic,
but her voice-- if it's anything like this--
I definitely enjoy. she's very in your
face and very upfront, but still super
like honest and funny. so if you've read
other stuff by her, i know it's mostly
nonfiction, and you think I'd enjoyed it
please let me know because i love this
book.
the next one I listened to was
"The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson. this is a
nonfiction book about psychopathy. it's
basically about him exploring not only
like Psychopaths but mental illness in
general. I thought the parts where he was
talking about mental illness and
labeling people and stigmas around that
was really interesting. i also really
like the chapters about the internet
culture of psychopathic tendencies, like
people who you want to just pinpoint as
a psychopath on the internet because of
how they behave. and I thought those
parts were really interesting, but the
whole first half of the book I felt
really disjointed. I didn't feel like I
knew where he was going.
each chapter just bounces around too
much that I couldn't
really follow like his logic and what he
was trying to get at.
but the last half of the book was really
interesting, so I gave us like two /
two-and-a-half stars because I enjoyed
listening to it. he is a great narrator and
there were some gems in there that I
really liked, like some parts that stood
out to me. but as a whole the book didn't
work for me. i would rather just listen
to like a podcast episode about this.
In fact he did do an episode of Criminal
podcast where he talked about the
psychopath test, which I listened to like
maybe four or five months ago. so i was
interested in hearing more, but really I
feel like the parts that I already heard
from the podcast episode where enough. if
you're really interested in this, maybe
check it out, but I didn't love it. i do
want to try another book from him
because I loved a previous book i read
which was "So You've Been Publicly Shamed".
this one not so much. so I'm curious if I
just really like the subject matter of
his previous book or if i do like him,
and this one just wasn't really that
great to me. and then the fifth book i've
read this year is John Irving's "A Prayer
for Owen Meany." before i say anything
about this book, people always ask me
what edition these are. they're Vintage
Canada editions. i think they sell them
at chapters indigo which is a bookstore
in canada. i got this off book outlet.
they are very beautiful. I have three or
four editions like this, and i love them.
anyway, the book itself is about a boy
named Johnny Wheelwright, who grows up in
1960's/70's New Hampshire and his
friendship with Owen Meany, who is a very
short and very loud person. he's very
eccentric and different. and they form a
friendship that lasts through many years.
and it's about some fatal accidents that
happened that kind of set the course for
the rest of their lives.
and it's about their growing up together
and how they deal with the highs and
lows of life. it is a very beautiful
story. the book itself is very smart.
it's very well written and executed, like
everything works together very well.
so as objectively as i can say,
I liked this book. I thought it was a good
book, but emotionally I didn't.... there were
only like a few times were I felt
emotionally invested. and overall I
thought i would be more
emotionally in tune with their
relationship and with the things that
were happening to them and that they
were doing. but I don't know, I just felt
like it was lacking a little bit for me.
so if i look at this from an
intellectual standpoint, I thought this
was a great book, especially the end-- like
the way he ties everything together was
brilliant.
it said a lot of interesting things
about American culture and politics,
which I wasn't expecting. but emotionally
I felt a little distance and I can't
really pinpoint why. I'm not going to do
a full review of this, I don't think,
because i don't have much more to say.
but if you're really interested in John
Irving, I mean this was the first book
I've ever read by him and I thought it
was a good one. and i'm interested in reading
more by him. i'm not sure if i can
recommend this to everyone.
it's very long, so I mean it was over 600
pages and I never felt like stopping, so
that says something about it, even though I
didn't love it as much as other people
do. but it was a good story and i'm glad
I finally read it because I've owned it for a
while and it's one that I'm just like I
feel proud to have finished. and I am
interested in reading more from him
because I can see that he's an amazing
storyteller.
I just didn't feel as emotionally
connected as I wanted to be.
these are some of the first books i read
this year. it seems to be off to a great
start, and I really enjoyed most of these
reads. let me know what you've been
enjoying reading lately. if you feel
similarly or differently about these
books than I do, please let me know. i love
talking about books, of course, in the
comments below. and I will see you in the
next video. bye!
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