Hi, YouTube, it's Kathy, and this is my April 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 monthly 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 get into what books I read.
In April, I read 15 books, for a total of 5075 pages.
That takes into account converting audiobook minutes to pages, so 2079 of those pages were
actually 68 hours of audio.
The age breakdown for these books was 6 adult books, and 9 YA books, meaning 60% YA and
40% adult books.
This month I read mostly contemporary and fantasy, at 40% each, followed by 13.3% of
non-fiction, and 6.7% of historical fiction.
If you adjust for amount of pages in each genre, fantasy takes a bit more of the pie,
which is pretty usual for fantasy page counts.
Most of these books, no surprise, came from the library, but I read one new and one used
book as well.
I read five audiobooks, five paperback books, and five hardcover books, which is just so
tidy but was not intentional.
The majority of my books were in the 300-499 page range, and 66% of them were published
this year or last year.
Most of these books were by female authors, and most of my books had ensemble casts or
dual narrators that had different genders.
I read books set in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and other worlds.
In terms of diversity, I read a lot of queer content, and only one book didn't have any
distinguishable diversity.
This was a pretty good reading month if you go by star ratings.
This month I read one 2.5 star book, two 3 star books, one 3.5 star book, five 4 star
books, three 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 2.5 Star read for this month was The High School Life of a Fudanshi.
This was the first volume of a manga series and I picked this up originally because it
has a fandom element to it, and I love me some fandom reads.
A fudanshi is a male who reads manga that is classified as BL, or Boy Love; basically,
they ship male/male romances.
The reason I wasn't so into this is because some of gender and sexuality stuff was handled
really poorly, and also the plot was kind of meandering, so it just wasn't really my thing.
My first 3 star was another graphic novel, and that was The Wicked + The Divine Imperial Phase Part 2.
This is the 6th bind up in a wonderful series with beautiful art, but I think I'd forgotten
too much of what had been going on, so even though I read the page at the beginning reminding
me, like, who's died so far, et cetera, et cetera, it just didn't jump out to me.
I still enjoyed the experience; the art remains beautiful.
But I wasn't immediately compelled to pick up the next volume, which is good because
I don't think it's out yet.
My other 3 star read this month was Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett.
I read this with my local Nerdfighter book club.
And although this had a ton of humour to it, which I totally appreciated, I always found
my mind meandering when it was talking about things that weren't characters discussing
things on the page.
Wyrd Sisters is one of the Witches books in the Discworld series, and this one was basically
a satire of a bunch of different Shakespeare plays, which I found amusing.
I also found it very amusing when the witches went to see a play, and one of them didn't
understand what theatre was, so she thought that all of these people dying on stage were
actually dying, and then when they weren't dead, she was like, "what magic is this?!"
As with everything Terry Pratchett ever wrote, there's a lot of love in this, but it just
wasn't that great for me.
My 3.5 star read this month was Don't Cosplay with my Heart by Cecil Castellucci.
This is another fandom read that I picked up specifically for that purpose.
This book centres around a high school girl named Edan who has a lot of troubles at home
right now, and starts a cosplay club at school, basically to get her mind off of it.
And, also, hopefully, to win a trip to meet the cast of an upcoming movie that she is
obsessed with.
There was a ton of great fandom culture in this, but I felt like the character was much
younger than she was written on the page.
For example, she just gives out the information for her PayPal account, which, no!
No, no, no.
Don't do that.
But overall, I feel if people from the intended audience for this, and not an adult, read it,
they might get something out of it that would keep them safe in the future.
My first 4 star read was The Secret Loves of Geeks.
This one is a compilation of a bunch of different nerds just nerding out about what they love,
and I love me a good, nerdy anthology because no matter what you're passionate about, I
love to read about you being passionate about it, if that makes any sense.
I might not be in that fandom, but if you are excited about it, I like to see you being
excited about it.
My next 4 star read was another anthology, called All Out: The No Longer Secret Stories
of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages.
This is exactly what it sounds like.
This is a bunch of different queer stories taking place in different timeframes, different countries.
The one thing I'll say in terms of countries is it was mostly America and random places
in Europe, and I would have liked to see elsewhere.
But there was a decent amount of racial diversity, as well was tons of diversity in terms of
sexual orientation and identity.
My next 4 star read was Confessions by Kanae Minato.
This is and interesting book because it's split up into about six different sections,
and each sections is from a different point of view of a character that's within the book.
The first section starts out in second person, where this teacher is telling her class about
why she's not coming back to school the next year, because her daughter died, and also
telling them who in the classroom is responsible for her daughter's death.
This one had a really interesting style to it, and every time you switched to another
character, it took you a while to figure out whose perspective you were in, and then there
was just something that made you feel sympathy for that character, even if you knew you were
reading from the perspective of the murderer.
It was quite a compelling read with themes of revenge, and I just found it really intriguing.
My next 4 star read was Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston.
This is a fantasy novel that has various perspectives.
We have an orphan, her AI best friend, the shipmates that she has been with since she
was a small child, as well as basically royalty for this space-based location in which they live.
What I found most compelling about this is I read her other book, Geekerella, last year,
so when it opened with a girl narrator and a boy narrator, I was like, "okay, well, I
guess they're falling in love and that's just, kind of, the thing that she writes".
No, they don't fall in love.
They fall in love with others, and yes, there's queer content, and I love it.
I also really appreciated that even though I want to read the next book in the series,
when it comes out, it doesn't end of a super chiffhanger.
We know the status of each of the characters.
We know what they want to do next, but we don't see them in the middle of a battle,
not knowing if their best friends are alive.
We see them as they're about to regroup, to come back stronger for the next adventure.
My last 4 star read of the month was An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir.
This was technically on my TBR for next month, but I started early.
And that was simply because I was able to find an audiobook for this book, and figured
starting early couldn't hurt given all of the books that people recommended to me.
If you didn't see that video, I got BookTube to pick my TBR for May, and, uh, they left
me a lot of suggestions, so I'll leave that up there for you.
Anyway, this is the first in what I think is going to be a trilogy.
The third one comes out in June and this was is a dual narrative between a lower class
girl and a higher class boy.
They are on opposing side politically and she ends up in a position where she needs
to spy on the empire, and he wants to leave the empire because he hates what he's been
trained to do all his life, which is basically kill people.
He finds himself caught up in needing to stay in order to figure out how to get true freedom.
I just finished this one, so I'm still processing my thoughts on it, but it will be in my next
weekly wrap up.
My first 4.5 star read this month was Reign of the Fallen by Sarah Glenn Marsh.
This was great.
It's about necromancers, which, I don't think I've ever read a book I liked about necromancers before.
Basically, this ruling family has been in power for centuries.
In fact, the king has been king for over 200 years.
That's because when he died, necromancers brought him back, and every so often they
kill him and bring him back to make sure that he doesn't turn into something that's called a shade.
Basically a dead person can become a shade one of two ways.
Their flesh is exposed, or they've been walking amongst the living for just too long and they
start to go a little hazy and become more evil.
Al least that's the feeling that I got from it.
Our protagonist is a necromancer for the royal family and I just love the world building
and how it works to bring people back.
To bring back somebody from the land of the dead, you actually have to take an offering
from their family tree.
You have to take somebody from their family with you into the land of the dead, and then
that person could lose some form of fertility.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they will never bare children, but maybe they'll never
be able to plant plants and have them grow again - that type of thing.
It's intricate and it varies person to person.
This book had a lot of moving parts, and again, I really wanted to read the next book but
this is another book that didn't leave you in the middle of action, which - thank you so much.
My next 4.5 star read was Adnan's Story by Rabia Chaudry.
If you are familiar with the first season of Serial, this is about that case.
Adnan Syed was convicted of murdering his high school girlfriend Hae Min Lee back in
2000, and has been fighting since then to have this overturned because a lot went wrong
with his case.
Again, if you've heard of or listened to Serial, you know a lot of the questions that one has.
This book goes more into depth.
Rabia Chaudry is a family friend who has known Syed since way before his conviction, and is a lawyer.
Since she's been working on the case much longer than Serial had been, obviously there
are way more details within this book than were in that podcast.
Additionally, as of March, it was announced that Adnan will have a new trial because of
the ineffective counsel that he received during his 2000 trial.
If you enjoy true crime or true life stories, this is a book to pick up for sure.
It is very well written and thoroughly researched.
My last 4.5 star read was Tash Hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ormshee.
This is a book about a girl who makes a webseries with her friends, and suddenly somebody big
on the internet mentions it and they go from a few hundred subscribers to thousands overnight.
It goes so far that her webseries is actually nominated for an award, so she finds herself
flying across the country to possibly win an award for something that she's just been
doing with her friends.
Not to mention, she can also meet that cute boy she's been flirting with face to face
because they've only ever talked on the internet and by text.
The only hesitation there is Tash is asexual and hasn't told him yet.
I absolutely adored this book.
There are tons of different characters with different personalities, and so many different
things were discussed.
For example, she lives in a family where her father is Christian and her mother is Buddhist,
and she's somewhere in between.
Toss in tons of family and friend dynamics, as well as wrangling talent to get a webseries done.
If you've ever had to adhere to a filming schedule, this book will speak to you.
And on to my 5 star reads,
the first one being The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza by Shaun David Hutchinson.
This was an absolute delight.
Elena Mendoza's the product of virgin birth and for as long as she can remember, she's
heard voices.
One day, those voices tell her to heal someone who has just been shot, and low and behold,
she can actually do it.
This starts an apocalypse.
There is a ton to love about this book.
There's wonderful queer rep, amazing friendships, a really hard home situation where Elena takes
no sh*t from her stepdad.
This book tackles indecision and morality and "what if I do the wrong thing?"
I loved it.
It's wonderful, and if you haven't picked it up already, you definitely should.
My next 5 star read was Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli.
I absolutely loved this.
It's the second in the Creekwood series, so a direct sequal to Simon vs the Homo Sapiens
Agenda, but we are now following Leah, which is great, because I always wanted to know
what Leah's deal was during that book.
I absolutely devoured this book and actually made a video just about it, as well as gushed
about it in my last weekly wrap up.
It's so great to see characters we already know and love and see them grow.
And the romance that happens in this book made me so happy.
I know it basically goes without saying that if I've given something 5 stars, I think you
should pick this up, but I think you should pick this up.
I'm going to say it.
I laughed so hard throughout this book.
I laughed twice on the first page.
If you like comedy, you like contemporary, you like any form of romance - pick this book up.
And my final 5 star book of the month, and the book that I think everyone needs to pick
up and read immediately if you haven't already is done so The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
This is the badass, bisexual book that I have always wanted and needed.
Monique is a journalist who is called in, specially requested, to do an interview with
Evelyn Hugo, a starlet who is world renounced and hasn't done interviews for years.
When she gets there, she finds out that Evelyn actually wants her to write her biography.
One of the biggest things that Evelyn is known for is having had seven husbands, so Monique
leads with the question of "who was the love of our life?" and it turns out it wasn't one
of those husbands.
Evelyn Hugo was crafty, and interesting, and business-minded, and there were so many tears
during this book.
And there's absolutely no surprise that I feel in love with this story.
If you want to hear me talk more about these books, or other books for that matter, the
playlist for 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 very soon.
Bye!
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