Hi, YouTube, it's Kathy, and this is my March 2018 Reading Wrap Up.
If you're not already aware, I do weekly entertainment wrap ups of everything I read, watch, and
listen to, but recently I have started doing wrap ups of just the books, which is what
we're doing today.
I'm going to start with nerdy, hardcore stats and charts, and then work from my lowest
star rated book to my highest star rated book.
In March, I read 12 books, for a total of 4749 pages. That takes into account converting
audiobook minutes to pages, so 2255 of those pages were actually 86 hours of audiobook.
The age breakdown for these books was 6 adult books, and 6 YA books. Without meaning to,
I have had a 50/50 split the past couple of months.
This month I read mostly contemporary, at 58.3%, followed by 8.3%, or one book each,
of non-fiction, horror, historical fiction, science fiction, and fantasy. If you adjust
for amount of pages in each genre, horror gets a much bigger part of the pie because
Stephen King put 400 pages of originally cut content back in the edition of his book I
read this month.
75% of these books, no surprise, came from the library, where I work, but I borrowed
a couple and one was a gift.
I read four audiobooks, four paperback books, three hardcover books, and one uncorrected proof.
The majority of my books were in the 300-399 pages range, and about half of them were published
this year or last year. Most of these books were by female authors, and most of the protagonists
were also female. I read books set in the United States, United Kingdom, and other worlds.
In terms of diversity, all of my reads had some aspect of diversity, be it mental health,
race, queer rep, physical disability, or combinations therein.
This was a pretty good reading month if you go by star ratings. This month I read one
3 star book, three 3.5 star books, three 4 star books, two 4.5 star books, and three
5 star books.
Let's start with the lowest rated read and work our way to the highest, shall we?
My 3 star read this month was An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Although this
one had a lot of creativity, it boils down to basically slavery in space, and there's
a trope in science fiction I hate which is "we have this future society but we've regressed
to being super homophobic and racist" and all of the bad things that currently exist
have gotten worse in the future. I really hate this trope.
Although this book definitely had interesting things to say about gender and race, it was
hard to read them in this future where, one would hope, these issues would have been alleviated.
Our main character is on a generation ship that is run by a monarchy. That monarch is
dying. She has medical skills but she doesn't want to use it to help himm. In fact, right
now might be a really good time for a revolution.
My first 3.5 star read this month was Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire. This is the
third in the Wayward Children series. What I love most about this series is every
book seems to go into a different fantasy world, which is just so much fun. This one
went into a world where logic is very different than our own world, and I really liked that
we got to see some of the characters from previous books that aren't in our world, or
this weird, less logical world.
My next 3.5 star read was Kindred Spirits by Rainbow Rowell. I picked this up while
I was visiting St. Petersburg, and it's just an itty-bitty little book about people that
like Star Wars. It is a very tiny, little novella, and it's
Rainbow Rowell, so it's cute. And, obviously, also nerdy, which is a thing that
I enjoy. It basically follows some characters that are sitting outside the theatre, waiting
for The Force Awakens to open. Unlike in the 70's, you don't really need to do this, and
there's only a few of them doing it, and they feel weird about it, but also excited for
the movie. And it has a cute little twist at the end
that I really enjoyed.
My last 3.5 star read was It Looks Like This by Rafi Mittlefehldt. This is the one that
I got as a gift while I was in Florida. This one is a very tragic, queer YA, so if
you're not looking to have tragedy in your queer rep, this is not the book to read. In
some aspects it is a really sweet coming of age tale where this character does figure
out that he's queer, and has a crush on another boy, and it's adorable... but then tragedy
ensues. This book actually went to some places that
I haven't really seen in queer lit because I try to avoid the very tragic queer lit,
but our protagonist does spend some time at a conversion camp, of all places. So, obviously,
trigger warnings up the wazoo for this book. But if you feel like this is something you
can read, it was a very hard-hitting tale that I think you could get something out of.
My first 4 star read was Do Not Disturb by A.R. Torre, which is the second in the Deanna
Madden series. And obviously, being a second book, I'm not
going to talk too much about it, but it pretty much picks up where the last one left off.
It the last one, you follow a character who is a cam girl with murderous tenancies, so
you can just imagine where this next one might go.
It was still sexy, I still enjoyed the characters, and I will, eventually, read the third one
just to see who it all ties up.
My next 4 star read was the longest book that I have read in a very long time, and that
was The Stand by Stephen King. This was a 48 hour audiobook, and I read it in about
a week because I had to for a weekly wrap up. Whoops!
So The Stand is an epic dystopian novel following many characters before, during, and after
a super flu wipes out about 99% of the population. There's a lot of lines drawn in terms of good
and evil. Like I mentioned earlier in the video, originally this book was 400 pages
shorter because the accounting team made him make some cuts, and this was, like, a ten
year anniversary release where he was allowed to put back in 400 pages.
So it was long. That being said, though, King really knows
what he's doing with his writing, and writing characters. And this is basically a very large
collection of character studies, so it was very enjoyable from that aspect.
Also, being Stephen King, and also being published almost 30 years ago, there is some problematic
language, but at this point in his career, I think you know [that] if you're going into
a Stephen King, especially an older one, it's going to have those elements.
And because I don't know an differently about him, I assume that the characters he's included
have been attempts at including those types of characters as opposed to making fun of
those types of characters. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.
I do not, however, recommend listening to the entire audiobook in one week, because
it's way too much audiobook for one week. Even when you put it on double speed, it's
still 24 hours of audiobook in one week. Don't do this to yourself; learn from my mistakes.
My last 4 star read was Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal.
This audiobook is a much more reasonable length, at about ten and a half hours, and it follows
Nikki, who lives in London, and is the daughter of Indian immigrants who drops out of law
school, much to the chagrin of her parents, because she's not passionate about it.
While she's trying to figure out what she's passionate about, she sees a flyer indicating
that the local community centre needs a teacher for a creative writing class. She likes to
write, she likes empowering women - she figures this is a really good fit for her. When she
gets there, she realizes that the class is not exactly what she thought it was going
to be. And then, from there, it changes to something even more interesting.
I'm sure you can figure out where it goes based on the title of the book.
I really enjoyed reading this. I was intrigued by the culture of the women who were in the
class. It was interesting to see the perspective of immigrants, and then also the perspective
of their children. I also really enjoyed that Nikki's sister is much more traditional than
she is. So we see most of the things through Nikki's perspective. She's very feminist,
and liberal, and forward thinking, whereas her sister wants a traditional, arranged marriage.
It just feeds into the fact that people can be in a culture, and do things differently
than each other, but still be a part of the same culture.
My first 4.5 star read was This Adventure Ends by Emma Mills. This one was adorable.
I read this really early in the month, so although I remember some of the things I like
about it, I know that I've forgotten a bunch of it already because I read it before I went
on my trip, and I have been go, go, go ever since that trip started.
So our main character, Sloane, moves into a new town during her last year in high school
because - basically moving for her Dad's job... sort of.
Here Dad is a writer, but his last book kind of bombed, and he has a bunch of writers'
block, and they figure if they move to this new area, it might help him.
While Sloane is there, she meets a group of new friends, cool things ensue, and her Dad
gets into fanfiction and the writing thereof. And it's wonderful. There's all sorts of different
types of relationships in this book - familial relationships, friend relationships, romantic
relationships - and I really enjoyed how it all came together.
My other 4.5 star read was The Devil in White City by Erik Larson.
This is non-fiction about the creating of the Columbus World's Fair as well as H. H.
Holmes, who was a prolific serial killer during that time, and also before that time.
So I originally went into this knowing that I wanted to read about H. H. Holmes, because
I'd heard about him on Sherlock, of all places, and I wanted to know more about this serial
killer. A lot of this book is about the architects of the fair, so it is kind of a 50/50, which
I wasn't expecting, but I definitely still enjoyed.
So many things came out of the World's Fair that are still in use today, and I have so
many little tidbits in the back of my mind that I can just pull up in fun conversation
- which I never have 'cause I stay at home all the time.
So many things were invented for or premiered at the World's Fair. You know those squished
commemorative pennies? World's Fair. Also, spray paint, the Ferris Wheel... unfortunately
Pabst Blue Ribbon, which, ew. And then on the serial killer side of things,
we have this very complex man who created a hotel in which to kill people.
Both aspects of this book were extremely fascinating.
My first 5 star read this month was a reread of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky
Albertalli. I reread this as part of the Travel Simon project, and I did a video on it, so
I will link that in places.
Obviously, being a reread, I knew I was going to love it. I loved it again... duh.
And, at this point, if you don't know what Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda is, hi.
Uh, so, it's about this boy, who falls in love with another boy over email. But nobody
knows her's gay. And nobody knows the other boy is gay. And then somebody finds his emails
and blackmails him. It is about friendship, it's about family,
it's about coming out, and it should be about coming out on your own terms and not somebody
else's. And, oh yeah, they recently made a movie about it, which I watched last week
and loved.
My next 5 star read was The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee.
Yes, I'm late to the party on this one. I knew I was going to love it, but I also have
this weird aversion to doing the super popular thing at the same time as everyone else. And,
of course, the example I always use for this is I didn't read Harry Potter until 2013.
I'm glad I didn't wait as long in this case because this book is amazing, and I want the
sequel now, but let's go with this book. This is an adventure tale following Monty
and his best friend Percy and his sister Felicity as they embark on an European adventure that
goes sideways very quickly. Basically, this is the 18th century version
of a gap year, and they're supposed to drop Felicity off at this finishing school along
the way, but before that happens - spoilers. Basically, I don't even want to tell you,
because I got to what happened without having heard it before, and I'm so glad because I
hate going into something knowing too much of the plot. A lot of the things I pick up
because I hear just, kind of, the buzz words, and/or I like the cover, and I'm like, "I
will read this, please". This is a book that examines privilege in
a very interesting way, and I just loved it. I can't wait for the second one to come out
in October. I am so excited.
And my last 5 star read of the month of March was Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson. I...
loved this book. I started readings this book, firstly, and it starts exactly 50 years before
I was born, so that was cool. Then you get into this really interesting character, basically
finding out that she's going to go to this very cool school, for people that are too
smart to be in the schools that they're currently in, basically. Even though she has no money,
she's going tuition free. It's great. I fell in love with this character, and then we flash
forward to current times. I love the mysteries. I loved it so much. Our actual protagonist
is a girl that studies criminology and cold cases, and she has studied what happened when
this school opened, because there were some murders.
And basically, she doesn't want to say it out loud, but she's there to solve the murders.
This is the first in a series that I am definitely going to continue, and now I'm happy that
I've finally jumped into some Maureen Johnson, and I'm gonna read more things while I'm waiting
for the next one of these to come out. Because, hm, I like these characters so much.
If you want to hear me talk more about these books, or other books for that matter, the
playlist for all of my Weekly Entertainment Wrap Ups is always in the description below.
If you have read any of these, please let me know about it down in the comments below.
On the way down to the comments, if you hit that Subscribe button, that would be very
nice of you. You can like and share this as you see fit, and I will see you soon. Bye!
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