Hey everybody! Welcome back to my channel. Today I'm going to be doing my August
reading wrap-up for you guys and I had another seventeen book month. So we're
just gonna hop right in and start talking about the books that I read this
past month. I'm gonna start with the books that I'm currently in the middle
of. I have two that I'm working on at the moment. The first of which is Winter by
Marissa Meyer. This is the fourth and final book in the Lunar Chronicles
series and I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm about 300 pages in out of 823 pages
and really enjoying it and hope to finish this in the month of September.
I'm also in the middle of a buddy read of It by Stephen King with Becky and
Michael. I am currently on chapter four. It's a really large book again. It's
about 1,100 pages. This copy's about 1,100 pages. It's long, but it's really
great. This is my first Stephen King and I'm really enjoying myself while reading it
and I'm happy that I'm reading it with two of my favorite bookish people. I will
leave a link to their channels down below so you guys can go and check them
out. I'm trying to figure out how I'd like to do this wrap up because I have
17 books that I want to get through. So I'm just gonna kind of wing it. Some of
these books I've already reviewed in my Reading Quest vlogs and I will reference
which reading quest vlog you can find the review in, but every other book in
this wrap-up I'm gonna try to get through fairly quickly. So I'm sorry if
these reviews aren't in-depth but I don't want this video to be a thousand
hours long. So I'm just gonna jump right in. The first books I want to talk about
are the Barefoot Gen graphic novel series. This is volume 1 and volume 2.
These are autobiographical graphic novels about the atomic bomb dropping on
Hiroshima. These are by Keiji Nakazawa who actually is a survivor of the atomic
bomb hitting Hiroshima and this is based on his life and his family's experience.
Vol 1 covers the kind of days leading up and months leading up to the atomic bomb
hitting and what it was like to live in wartime Japan and at the very end of
this book the atomic bomb is dropped and then in volume 2 you see kind of the
direct aftermath. Of course these are very hard to read.
They're very graphic. They are very sad but they are fantastic. They are so
informative. I feel like I learned so much while reading these and I gave them
both five stars. I talked a little bit more about this one cuz I read this
during The Reading Quest - the first week of The Reading Quest - so if you want to
go and check out that vlog you'll be able to see a little bit more of my
thoughts, but I thought these were fantastic. This is a ten part graphic
novel series so I still have eight volumes to go if I want to continue
reading all of them but I would definitely recommend if you're looking
to see kind of more of the citizen side of the atomic bombs being dropped on
Hiroshima. I guess I'll get into my buddy reads now. I had four planned buddy reads
that I completed in the month of August and I'll get into those now. The first
one I completed was Into the Water by Paula Hawkins. This was a buddy read with
Andie from It's a Reading Thing who I will link down below and this is about
women in a small English town who keep getting found dead in what they call the
drowning pool which is where they would back in like, the 1600s drown women who
are accused to be witches and so this follows the investigation of one, or two
really, women who are being found dead in this drowning pool. I feel like I have an
unpopular opinion about this book. I like this one less than The Girl on the Train.
I feel like Paula Hawkins - like, a lot of things in here were really convenient. There
were some twists that I was surprised by but not too many and most of the book
was pretty predictable for me. The strategy of a thriller to throw in like,
a thousand perspectives in order to confuse the reader I think is really
cheap and I don't - I don't like it. I feel like there are better ways to approach a
thriller and I feel like just throwing a bunch of perspectives in there kind of
is a cop-out in a way. So you do get a lot of perspectives in here so I was
frustrated by that, but I feel like overall, this is a pretty entertaining
read. Andie and I had a lot of fun reading it together which was fun, but overall I
gave this three stars and I would say The Girl in the Train is better, but I
think my opinion is unpopular in that department. Next up I had a buddy
read with Becky and we read Geekerella by Ashley Poston and I absolutely adored
this book. This is a geeky kind of loose modern-day retelling of Cinderella. So we
have two characters, it's told from two perspectives. It's told from Elle's
perspective and it's told from Darien's perspective. Elle is kind of our
"Cinderella" character. She lives with her stepmother and two stepsisters after her
father passes away. She's a big fan of this fictional kind of like Star Trek-y
show called Starfield and she's a blogger about Starfield and
she has quite a big following and she is kind of tracking the remake of Starfield.
And then our second perspective is Darien, who actually is the star of the
remake of Starfield. So eventually they find their way into each other's lives
and I just thought it was just the cutest, cutest romance and I really loved
it. There's actually a lot of like really great diversity in here and it's done in
a way that it integrates really well into the story.
I feel like Ashley Poston really integrated different sexualities and
different races really well as well as talking about issues like whitewashing
in Hollywood and like other diversity issues, but she does it in a way that it
just seems really natural and fits really well into the story and I think
she did a really great job with that and it seems like Ashley Poston like,
actually cares about diversity whereas when when an YA authors takes the
approach of more of like tokenism. Like kind of checking off like, "oh I have a
gay character and I have a character of color, and blah, blah, blah." She does it really
well and I really appreciated that. I love this book and this is totally a
book that I can reread and just revisit when I feel like I need a pick me up
and so I gave this five stars and I would highly recommend it.
I feel like a lot of people are reading it but it's not getting a ton of hype
which i think is a shame. I feel like this is a really wonderful YA
contemporary and I totally recommend people to check this out. The next buddy
read I had planned was The Way We Bared Our Souls by Willa Strayhorn. I buddy
read this with my friend Shannon and unfortunately we didn't really like
this one. I ended up giving this two stars and I believe Shannon did as well.
This is a book about five teenagers who are all living with some sort of burden.
We have a teenager that's living with MS. We have a teenager that is living with
grief because they lost their partner in a tragic car accident and just we have
like a couple of different characters who are suffering from different things
and they enter in this, I think it's supposed to be like a "Native American"
ceremony where they trade their burdens and then they have to live one week with
the burdens and I think it was a really interesting premise but I feel like it
was executed very poorly. This is a very short book. It's under 300 pages and that
does not give you enough time to get to know the characters, actually care about
the characters, and then kind of pack in the emotional impact of what something
like this would have on a person. It's really, really rushed. Like, the
introduction of every character takes about a hundred pages which makes sense
to me because you get to know them a little bit more but then the rest of the
plot is like, it's under 200 pages and I feel like there's so much that this
author could have done in order to make this a great book and it was really,
really unfortunate and I think if this book was a lot longer, Willa Strayhorn
could've done a lot more with this. So unfortunately I only gave it two stars.
It's a good idea in theory but just executed very poorly. And then my last
planned buddy read I actually read during The Reading Quest and you can find more
of my thoughts in the first week vlog of The Reading Quest, but we have Six of
Crows here by Leigh Bardugo. I buddy read this with Michael and I really, really
actually enjoyed this. This is the first book in the Six of Crows duology and I gave
it four stars and will definitely be continuing on with the duology. Again if
you'd like to hear more of my thoughts go check out my vlog for the first week
of The Reading Quest and you can see more of my thoughts there. Next up I
have a book that I have been working on since May and I finally finished it
early on this month and that is The DoG Stars by Peter Heller. I didn't really
like this book and I was pretty disappointed by it. It's about a man and
his dog and they are surviving after a big disease kind of
wipes out a bunch of the population. It's about his survival it's about his
relationship with his dog and like this one other guy who lives in a airplane
hangar with him and I thought I would like it. I like to read about
post-apocalyptic societies but this one... The writing style is really odd.
There's no quotation marks, there's no breaks that make sense, it's very kind of
confusing and hard to wrap your brain around and I just like, had a really
hard time getting through this book and I just - it wasn't an enjoyable reading
experience for me. And maybe I just didn't get it. Maybe I'm
just not smart enough to read a Peter Heller but I didn't really enjoy it and
so I gave this two stars. I read another graphic novel earlier this month and
that is Mooncop by Tom Gauld. It's already returned to the library but it
was really, really lovely and I just had such a great time reading it. Basically,
it's about this cop who lives on the moon and everybody who has populated the
moon has been making their way back to earth, so he's having less and less to
police and he's trying to get off the moon at some point because he's just
very lonely but then he makes a friend and it's actually really, really cute.
It's a really enjoyable read. I got through it in the matter of I think like
20 minutes. I kind of flipped through it in bed one morning and it was just like
a really enjoyable reading experience. So give it a shot if that sounds like
something that you're interested in. I thought it was really cute. There are two
audio books that I read on Audible this month. The first is The Unseen World by
Liz Moore and I really enjoyed this book. It's actually free for streaming on
Audible so if you don't feel like using a credit or buying the audiobook, you can
find it on audible under their collections and this book is about Ada.
She grows up with her father David and David eventually kind of succumbs to
Alzheimer's which is very unfortunate. As David falls deeper and deeper into
his Alzheimer's, Ada kind of figures out that he isn't necessarily who he says he
is and she goes on an investigation to try to find out who her father actually
is. I thought this book was extremely well-written. The narrator of this
audiobook was wonderful and she like, had me completely enthralled in the story
and I just really, really loved it. Liz Moore wrote
this book in a way that makes you care about Ada and David and it makes you
feel very protective of their father-daughter bond. When a writer can
make you feel that way about a character, I feel like that is just a sign of a
very successful writer and a very good book. So I gave this book four out of
five stars. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for in a book, but I still really
enjoyed it and would definitely recommend that you go and pick it up or
listen to it on audible. The next audiobook that I listened to on
audible this month was The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue. I kept hearing
that it was a wonderful audiobook and I would agree that it's a great audiobook.
I feel like if I didn't read this on audiobook I don't think I would have
enjoyed it at all. So this book is about Monty who goes on a tour of Europe with
his friend Percy and his sister Felicity and they are just kind of trying to tour
Europe and kind of have one last year of fun together before Monty has to
go over on his father's estate and Percy has to go to law school. However
something happens about a quarter of the way into this book that sends them on
this really giant adventure and it's not what they were expecting at all. I would
say that this book is pretty entertaining. However the way people are
talking about it makes it seem like it's the most entertaining YA novel of the
year and I disagree with that. There were parts of this book that definitely
dragged. There are parts of this book that I was just like "why is this
happening right now?" and I didn't totally love the main character Monty and it's
told from his perspective and if I don't like the main character and it's told in
the first person from that character it's really hard for me to connect with
the book when that happens. I did really love Felicity. I thought she was a really
great character and I loved Percy. He was the sweetest thing. But other than that I
didn't really care for this book that much and ultimately I gave it three
stars. It was pretty entertaining but it was it's kind of forgettable to be
honest. Next up I'm going to talk about my monthly goal reads. The first one of
my monthly goal reads that I finished was Colson Whitehead's The
Underground Railroad. This was my diverse pick for the month
of August. I loved this book and I gave it five stars. I talked about it a little
bit more on my 24 hour read-a-thon vlog which you can see down below. Go and
check that out if you want to hear more of my thoughts but just know I loved
this book I gave it 5 stars and would definitely recommend you pick it up.
Fair warning it is very graphic and very upsetting at times, but it's about
slavery so I feel like that's to be expected but I would totally recommend
this. This is a fantastic and very beautiful book. My next book was my TBR
jar pick and that was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I listened to the
majority of this on audiobook and I have to say I didn't really care for it that
much. I thought it was really boring. However I could totally see why children
would enjoy this book, especially children of this time period. It's just a
really interesting look into the lives of these four little girls who turn into
women and just kind of find their own definition of what it means to be a
woman. For the most part I found this really boring and I didn't really care
what happened which sounds really terrible but it's true and I ended up
giving this two stars. Sorry if I offended you and that's your favorite
book of all time but I didn't care about it that much. The next one I finished was
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. This was my classic pick for the
month of August and this was a book that I think I really liked as a child. I
think I remember like really, really enjoying it and it's kind of like your
typical like, "moral of the story" kind of thing for kids. It's just kind of a
collection of adventures that these animals go on. They all live in this like,
little community and our friends with one another but they all like, criticize
one another and each of the characters like, learns a lesson at the end of their
story. So it's just kind of like cute, really typical children's book and I can
see why I liked it so much as a child, Rereading it now I would give it 3 out
of 5 stars but definitely read this to your kids because it's something that I
feel like a kid would really, really like. And then the last goal pick that I had
for the month of August was my nonfiction and that was Mad Women by
Jane Maas and this is all about the women of the advertising industry in the
60s. Jane Maas worked in advertising at a
very typical "Mad Men"-esque agency. A few different agencies actually and she
talks about how the reality of working in advertising in the 60s, how it
compares to how it's depicted as in Mad Men. Being somebody who studied
advertising and being somebody who actually really enjoyed the show Mad Men
I really enjoyed this as well. There were parts that kind of dragged and that I
didn't really care about but for the most part I was really entertained by
this book and I feel like I learned a lot of what it was actually like to work
in the ad industry in the 60s. Overall I gave this three and a half out of five
stars and if you're interested in advertising I think you'd find this
really interesting as well. Also if you're interested in feminism and what
it was like to be a woman in the 60s and what like a typical woman would kind of
react to like the different kind of what we would see as injustice is now in 2017.
It's really, really interesting. Alright, three more books guys. Let's do this.
The last three books I all read during The Reading Quest so I'm going to whip
right through these and you can find more of my thoughts in the vlogs that I
completed these books in. The first of which is Fairest by Marissa Meyer. I read
this during my 24 hour read-a-thon. This is the novella between Cress and
Winter and this is Queen Levana's backstory and I really actually liked
this. I feel like a lot of people give it a lot of criticism but I enjoyed this
and I gave this four stars. I then read Throne of Glass by Sarah J
Maas. I unfortunately didn't really like this book at all. I was like kind of
entertained by it so I ended up giving it a 2 out of 5 stars but for the most
part I wouldn't recommend it. I know that isn't a very popular opinion on booktube
but I didn't really enjoy it. I read this during week two of The Reading Quest so
if you go and check out that vlog you'll see
my thoughts. And then I also read Release by Patrick Ness and I read this during
week three of The Reading Quest. The vlog for that will be coming out this
following week so stay tuned for my thoughts but I ended up actually really
enjoying this book. I really needed a contemporary and this was wonderful. This
is Patrick Ness's newest book and this is going to be coming out in the States
on the 17th of September I think. This is the UK edition so that's why I have it.
But I really enjoyed it and I gave it four and a half out of five stars. And
that is it! Those are all the books that I read in the month of August.
That's all 17. Aaaahh!
I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, please leave a big
thumbs up. Subscribe if you haven't already. I do try to make a new video
each and every week and I will see you guys again very soon. Bye!
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