Hi everyone. I'm Rincey and this is Rincey Reads.
Today I'm going to be doing
my March wrap up. March was a really
productive month for me. I ended up
making a lot of videos as well as
reading a lot, which usually it's one or
the other. But for whatever reason in
March I was able to do both. So the two
videos that I made that were not like
wrap ups or book reviews were my
unboxing video, which I posted at the
beginning of the month. If you haven't
checked that out already, I'm giving away
a copy of Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.
There is a link to both of
those giveaways in that description of
that video. I believe it closes at the
end of the month so only if you're
watching this on Friday will you still
be able to enter. But if you're
interested in that, check out that video.
And then the other non-book review
technically that I posted was my
discussion videos that I posted last was
talking about disliking important books.
It was technically a video talking about
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparatha,
which I had read at the
beginning of the month and I didn't
enjoy it for a variety of reasons. And I
talked about that in that discussion video.
You guys have responded really
positively to it. I'm working on going
through all of the responses because I
went away on vacation so I didn't have
time to look through all of that. But I'm
slowly going through all of the comments
and there's some really great comments
there. So thank you so much for watching
and responding to that. So like I said,
I read a lot of books this month. And
instead of talking about them all here,
what I'm going to do is I'm going to point
you guys to the videos where I talked
about the vast majority of these and
then talk about the handful that I
haven't talked about yet. So there was an
impromptu readathon that happened at the
beginning of the month and I
participated in that. And I ended up
finishing off Linden Hills by Gloria
Naylor, which I really enjoyed. I gave this four
out of five stars. And I read The Scapegoat
by Sophia Nikolaidou, which I also
really enjoyed. And then I also read
The Refugees by Viet Thahn Nyguen, which I did
not enjoy. So if you are interested in my
thoughts on any of those three books, you
can check out my readathon wrap up which
has my full thoughts on that. During that
week I also read Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
and I absolutely adored this book.
I ended up doing a separate review video
on this one because I enjoyed it so much
and I wanted to talk about it. I highly
recommend picking it up. It is absolutely
fantastic. I can almost guarantee that
it's going to be one of the best books
that I read all year.
And then I put up two other book reviews this
month. The first one was for The Hate U
Give by Angie Thomas. This is a new young
adult release that has been getting a
lot of buzz because it deals with the
black lives matter movement. I gave it a
4 out of 5 stars. I really enjoyed it. And
again, I did a full review on it so you
can hear all about it in that review. And
then the other one was All Grown Up by
Jami Attenberg. I had read Saint Mazie
like two years ago, whenever it came out,
and I really enjoyed it. But this one was
just like phenomenal. You can definitely
tell that Jami Attenberg has just like
stepped up in terms of the quality of
her writing. It's so, so well done. I gave
this one a 4 out of 5 stars as well. And
again there's a full review so you can
hear all about it because I have a lot
of thoughts on all of those books.
So that's why I did separate reviews on them.
So there are three other books that I
want to talk about. The first one I'm
just going to touch on very quickly and
that is The Sport of Kings by C. E. Morgan.
I actually DNF'd this book and I generally
don't talk about DNFs but I got
pretty far into it. I left my bookmark.
I don't even know if you can tell but I
had like a quarter of the book left.
But I just couldn't get through it and I
decided to just DNF it. It's sort
of like a family saga about this man
named Henry Forge. He lives in Kentucky.
He ends up inheriting his father's like
corn farm and he ends turning it into a
horse raising farm sort of thing. Like he
breeds horses for racing and it's
about his daughter Henrietta. This book
is written in a very Victorian style.
It's very difficult to get your head around
the time period that this book takes
place because it's basically modern day. I mean,
it starts in like the 40s and 50s when
Henry was a little boy and it moves
forward through time. And by the time
you're in like present day it's like
the '90s and 2000s. So it's
modern day but it all feels like it
takes listen like the 1800s. The way
everyone like acts and talks feels very
archaic except for like one character.
And it felt like there were so much like
dissonance in terms of what was
happening and the time period that it
set in. Originally I was really, really
into the story, like the beginning was
really great. But the middle was just so
weird. There's only one female character
in this entire book and that's Henrietta and
the way that she is portrayed is just
not great. I mean there is another female
character and I liked her a lot, but
she's like very, very minimal. Yeah the
story is very Victoria,
which is not necessarily my jam.
I felt like the book was overwritten which
is part of the reason why I DNF'd it
because it felt like such a hassle to
get through it sometimes. And there just came a
point where I just wasn't excited to
pick up this book anymore as I was when
I first picked it up. So yeah, DNF'd it.
I don't want to necessarily
discourage people from picking up this
book because I just think that this is a
book that's not for me. If you like sort
of victorian style writing then I think
that you'll like this book. I think that
it's just a little bit too like
overdramatic and overwritten for my
taste. So I ended up DNF-ing it
because I didn't feel like reading the
last like hundred or so pages.
Another book I finished this month was
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by
Kathleen Rooney. This is a book that I got
from the book of the month as you can
tell by the big symbol on there. You are
following this woman named Lillian Boxfish.
It takes place on New Year's Eve
in the 1980s. And she is in her 80s I
believe and she decides to just like
take a walk through New York City before
her like new years eve plans. And she's
reflecting on her life and the city.
You flash back in time and you get to see
her growing up. She worked as an
advertising writer for the Macy's
corporation and she talks about you know
being one of the few females in the
field and breaking a bunch of barriers
and being a terrific writer. I like this
book but I didn't really love it.
The story flases back and forth in time between
like modern-day when she's taking her
walk and back in the day, her life
growing up. And the modern day stuff gets
really repetitive. Because this the way
the chapters are structured it's
basically she's taking a walk and she
walks through like some neighborhood or
some store and se encounters some New
Yorker who seems like really rough. Then
Lillian Boxfish talks to them and ends up
breaking down their sort of hard
exterior and seeing the goodness inside of them
and stuff like that. It just has a very
specific type of story that she's
telling and 200 pages of that is a
little bit much. I like the flashback
scenes a little bit more just because
you're seeing different parts of her
life, either as a young woman living in
New York City or when she first falls in
love and gets married and when she first
has a kid. And it talks about things like
postpartum depression even a little bit,
different mental health issues and how
that was dealt with back in the day.
So all of that stuff I really
enjoyed, the modern day stuff not as much.
But yeah it's like a quaint little book.
It's nice to sort of see stories told
from an older woman's perspective, especially
an older women who doesn't follow
necessarily like the stereotypes of women.
So yeah, I gave it a 3 out of 5 stars.
I liked it. It wasn't like groundbreaking.
It didn't blow me away but it wasn't a
bad read either. So if you have been
debating about picking this one up,
I think that is worth reading. And it's a
relatively short book so it won't take
you very long but it wasn't like the
best book I've ever read or anything
like that. And then the final book I read
this month was You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott.
This is sort of like a thriller.
I don't want to say mystery thriller
because I feel like the mystery aspect
of the story is pretty obvious, like in
terms of what has gone down. In the story
you are mainly following this family.
There is this girl named Devon who is in
high school and she is basically like an
olympic hopeful for the gymnastic, for
gymnastics. And then there are her two
parent, Katie and Eric. And so Katie
and Eric are willing to do almost
anything to be able to give Devon the
opportunities that she needs to
become an olympic hopeful. But then
something terrible happens and they all
might be connected, might not be
connected. You sort of like follow them
as well as some of the other people who
are part of the same gym. And so it's
sort of a mystery in terms of figuring
out what actually happened with this
tragedy and how different people may
have played a part in it. This is my
first Megan Abbott book. I had heard
like really good things about her.
Her books tend to be more like psychological
thriller sort of. It's more about the
individual characters and their thought
process and the darkness that's like
sort of inside of these characters, which
is something that I really appreciated.
I knew reading this book that it wasn't
really about the mystery. It's more about
the characters which I'm totally okay with.
Megan Abbott does a really
fantastic job of looking at sort of the
dark side of like both like suburban
family life as well as these sort of
over achieving or these types of
families that have almost prodigy like
children and the extremes that they're
willing to go to to be able to provide
for them. I will say I followed it to
drag just a little bit. I don't know if
it's just because I knew or I was able
to figure out sort of how different
people had come into play in terms of
the tragedy. I'm trying to be vague about
this so I'm not spoiling anything. But I
feel like I was able to figure out some
stuff relatively early on
and it felt like it took a while for them to
actually reveal it in the book. Which
is a thing that always bothers me because
I feel like I'm someone who never sees
mysteries coming. I don't know if it's just
because I'm reading more of them that
I'm starting to see the pattern or what.
But I feel like it was pretty obvious
like which characters were involved and how,
not necessarily like down to the
detail but I had a general idea pretty
early on and it felt like it just took a
while to reveal it all actually. So it did
feel like the ending dragged just a little bit.
But I think that overall this is a
pretty good book. I would give this like
a three and a half out of five stars.
I thought the beginning was totally
gripping and I don't know if it's just
because it talks about the Olympics and
gymnastics, which I really enjoy, but I
really, really liked this book. So yeah if
you've read this book definitely let me
know what your thoughts were down
below. And also if you've read any other Megan Abbott
books I'd like to know how this one
compares to those. So yeah that was my March.
Like I said, read a lot, made a lot.
If you have any questions about any of
the books that I've talked about here,
definitely leave a comment down below.
And definitely check out those other
videos for more thoughts on the rest of
those books. I'm definitely going to be
dropping back down to one video a week
starting in April. there were just like a
bunch of books that I wanted to do
individual book reviews for so I kind of
bumped myself up to two videos a week just
so that way I could make all of the
content that I wanted to make this month.
But moving forward in April I will be
back down to one video a week. So every
Friday, look out for that. So yeah, that's
all I have for now and thanks for watching.
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