Hi, YouTube, it's Kathy, and this is my February 2018 Reading Wrap Up.
If you're not already aware, I do a weekly wrap up of everything I read, watch, and
listen to on this channel, 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 the hardcore, nerdy stats and charts, and then work from my lowest
star rating books to my highest star rating books.
All of these stats, by the way, are from a spreadsheet that I found online by Brock Roberts,
whose channel I will link down below.
He put it out into the world for anyone to use for free.
In February, I read 21 books and DNF'd 1 other book, for a total of 6981 pages.
This takes into account converting audiobook minutes to pages, so 1830 of those pages were
actually about 53 hours of audio.
The age breakdown for these books was 11 adult books, and 11 YA books.
This month I read mostly contemporary, at 63.6%, followed by mystery/thriller at 13.6%,
9.1% fantasy, 9.1% for science fiction, and 4.5% for [poetry].
When you adjust for amount of pages in each genre, it doesn't change much.
Unlike last month.
77% of these books, no surprise, came from the library, where I work, but I managed to
work some books I already owned into my Contemporaryathon TBR, and read my most recent BookBathBox book.
I read five audiobooks, six paperback books, and eleven hardcover books.
The majority of my books were in the 200-299 pages range,
and about half of them were published last year.
Most of the books were by female authors, and most of the protagonists were also female.
I mostly read books set in the United States, but also sneaked in some books set in Australia,
the UK, Canada, and other worlds.
In terms of diversity, most of my reads had some aspect of diversity, be it mental health,
race, queer rep, or physical disability.
This was a pretty good reading month if you go by star ratings.
This month I read one 2 star book, two 3 star books, five 3.5 star books, two 4 star books,
six 4.5 star books, and six 5 star books.
So let's talk about them.
My 2 star read this month was the book I DNF'd, and that is The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte
Wood. This book takes place in the Australian desert and follows women who have been in
the news for sex scandals or rape accusations, and they find themselves on this compound
where they have a couple of guards, and they can't leave, and they don't know how they got there.
I was initially compelled by the synopsis, but I didn't really get on with the writing,
and I DNF'd this at page 122.
Because I DNF'd the book, I don't really have much else to say about it.
My first 3 star book of the month was The Visitors by Catherine Burns.
This books has a middle aged, female protagonist who lives at her family home with her brother,
both of their parents have died.
And some weird things happen there.
She's been fairly isolated all her life, and occasionally her brother has visitors that
stay down in the basement and you know from the get go that he is weird and that there's
probably something super shady going on.
I read this as my dark or taboo contemporary for ContemporaryAThon, and it was a pretty good read.
Slowly, over time, you come to understand that what you had assumed was going on was
a little bit different.
And I like when a book can slowly reveal to the reader that what they've assumed is incorrect,
and things are still horrible, but in different ways.
My other 3 star read this month was also for ContemporaryAThon, and it was The Devil's
Panties, Volume 3 by Jennie Breeden.
This volume is about a decade old now so there is a little bit of dated language to it, but
it's a product of its time.
Basically, Jennie is a webcomic artist, you can actually find all of these comics online,
which is how I originally read them, and then I happened to get a volume from a friend.
Or maybe I bought this one through the website.
It's been a while, so I don't remember.
In any case, in this specific volume, she is going to different conventions in the states,
in the UK, and in Canada, and you get to see some of her family dynamic, as well as the
dynamic with the boyfriend she had at the time.
My first 3.5 star read of the month was True Letters from a Fiction Life by Kenneth Logan.
This book centres around James, who is a star athlete at his school and has a secret sexuality.
He also gets through his frustrations by writing letters to people that he never sends.
He just puts them in a desk drawer.
Which is obviously where we get the title.
This one had some really cute flirtations as well as some friends that were, just, great
examples of what everyone should be if somebody happens to come out to them.
There's a little bit of mystery and intrigue around what was happening with these letters,
and overall I found it pretty cute.
My next 3.5 star read was Pilot X by Tom Merritt.
This is a time travel book, so it takes your brain a little bit to wrap yourself around
where in space and time he is.
In this society, your first name changes based on your rank, so Pilot X goes from that to
different names and then sometimes back to Pilot X, and the fact that his career isn't
linear is really fun because obviously the plot isn't linear either.
This is the book I got in my final Book Bath Box, so if you would like to see me unbox
it, I will link that down below.
My next 3.5 star read was The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.
This is the book that had actually been on my Goodreads To Read shelf for the longest.
I put it there in January of 2013, and just finally got around to it, because my local
Nerdfighter book club decided that this was the read for this month.
As I mentioned in my weekly wrap up, I listened to this one, and I felt that with this particular
book, it would be a better idea to read it because this one also jumps around a little
bit in time and location, and being able to just flip through the pages and see where
you are is a little easier than just listening to the narrator and then, kind of, having
to ignore what year it happens to be 'cause you're not going to remember.
That being said, though, I did really enjoy this book.
I really enjoyed picturing what this circus would look like.
I enjoyed the twists and turns that you found out about The Challenge, and there were a
lot of characters that I really came to cherish.
My next 3.5 star read was Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin.
This one is in an interesting format, and that's something I didn't know going into
it, and part of me is really excited that I didn't know, but also I feel like you guys
should know because it's cool.
So instead of starting out with chapters from the titular character, you get the point of
view of her mother, and then you get her point of view, and then you get someone else's point
of view told in pen pal letters, and then you get another point of view in a Choose
Your Own Adventure style.
And what I liked most about this changing format is the story does change depending
on whose perspective you're coming from.
That's true of all stories.
For example, my story currently has a little bit of frustration because there's a murder
of crows outside that won't shut up.
They're probably having a great time.
They are highly impacting my life, and I have nothing to do with their lives right now.
"Highly" was a little bit dramatic, but they are annoying me.
I guess I should actually tell you what this book is about instead of just raving about the format.
This book is about a girl who has an affair with a married congressman, and the fall out
after that is discovered.
My last 3.5 star read this month was Bonfire by Krysten Ritter.
Yes, that Krysten Ritter.
She wrote a book.
This book is about a young lawyer who goes back to her home town after not being there
for ten years to try to solve what's going on with an environmental factor of the town.
While she's there, it is a small town, and she drudges up a lot of small town crap that
she went through as a child.
And a mystery that she's tried to forget about for her entire adult life kind of floods back
into her senses and she can't get it out of her mind.
What I particularly liked about this book is the narrator became quite unreliable over
time, so you doubted the pieces of the puzzle that she was collecting.
And then when it wraps up, you come to find out why she's become so unreliable, and it
all, sort of, makes sense.
Besides her trusting a character near the end that I was like, "yeah, no, I can see
exactly how the rest of this novel is gonna go down," it was full of twists and turns
that I really appreciated.
My first 4 star book of the month was Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.
This is a surprise to me that it was a 4 star book because the only other Agatha Christie
book I've read I did not enjoy.
But that one was a Miss Marple, and I have problems with her as a character because she
doesn't do her own detective work, and I grew up on Nancy Drews, whereas Poirot was the
main character of this one and I think that changed things for me.
Unfortunately, the end of this book was spoiled for me, so I went through reading this book,
mostly just not really caring about the clues because I knew where they were leading, and
that sucked, to be quite honest.
I talked about this before, but when you're trying to wrap up a book, you don't go,
"you know, the one where-" and spoil the ending.
You go "[you] know, the one where a bunch of people are on a train and a murder happens".
That's how you should talk about this book.
Anyway, this is a book about a bunch of people on a train and a murder happens.
And since Poirot is there on board, and they're stuck in the snow anyway, one of the board
members of the company who is also traveling on the train asks Poirot to solve the mystery
so that when they get to the authorities, they can just hand it to them and it will
make it much easier to continue on their journey.
If you are going to read this book, I highly recommend reading the audiobook version with
Kenneth Branagh [if you are able].
Because his accents are just great.
He made me love certain characters, hate certain characters - it was wonderful.
He did a very good job.
My other 4 star read this month was Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill.
This book takes place in Toronto and follows a woman named Jean who owns a bookstore.
Two of her clients come in and say that they've seen someone else who looks exactly like her,
and then weird things start happening with those patrons.
Unfortunately, this is one of those books where so many things happen that that's really
the only synopsis I can give you because things get twisted quite quickly, and all of those
twists are potential spoilers for you.
And this was another book where the narrator became unreliable, and you didn't know which
parts of the narration were true.
Through no fault of the protagonist, by the way.
This protagonist has thoughts that I used to have as a kid, and I think that they might
be kind of universal thoughts that everyone just thinks that they're the only one that
thinks that and it's weird and maybe they should just not tell anybody.
This book really boils down to what's real, and what isn't, and that's kind of a universal
question about life.
All right, the next 12 books were either 4.5 star reads or 5 star reads, so, like I said,
this was a great reading month.
The first 4.5 star read this month was One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus.
This book follows a group of students who all get detention one day because a teacher
found cellphones in their backpacks, but none of those cellphones where actually their cellphones,
so it seems like a trumped up charge, and they shouldn't have to be there.
However, before detention ends, one of those students is dead.
You spend the rest of the book cycling through the four other students as narrators to try
to figure out who killed the other student.
I really loved this format.
You really get to know each of these characters and by the end, you have no idea which one
of them could possibly be lying.
And I love a book that can keep you guessing, so this was that.
My next 4.5 star read was The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black.
This takes place in a world where vampires are a thing.
And in order to contain what the world has basically decided is a disease, there are
these places called Coldtowns.
Coldtowns are where vampires live and when they quarantines were set up, if you happened
to be in the town at that time, sorry, you have to live there now.
Which mostly means that you are prey for vampires.
Because these cities are set up as quarantines, if you're bitten on the outside, you're supposed
to go to quarantine.
In addition to that, there are some people that just want to become vampires, so they
say that they've been bitten so they can get in, to hopefully be bitten.
You know, instead of being killed, because vampires.
This book follows a protagonist who wakes up after a very big party to find out that
everyone at the party has been murdered by vampires.
Well, almost everyone.
I really enjoyed the world building in this.
I really enjoyed how vampirism was talked about and the solutions that people would
come up with, and the fact that they weren't perfect, because they wouldn't be.
And how the protagonist just wants to do what's right throughout the book, and how that keeps
screwing her over.
My next 4.5 star read was Renegades by Marissa Meyer.
I went into this thinking this was a stand alone, and it's the first in a duology, so know that.
There will be a cliffhanger at the end, because of course.
This is about a society that had an anarchy revolution, and then a bunch of people came
in and messed up the anarchy, and then a bunch more people came in and kicked the anarchy
out, and blamed all the problems of those twenty years on the anarchy, even though it
was just, like, violent gangs were the biggest problem.
And the people that ended the age of anarchy happen to have super powers.
In fact, super powers are pretty common in this world.
I think it was, like, 10%.
And you can be born with them or you can acquire them, like super powers in comic books, to be honest.
Those are pretty much the ways you get them.
This is a dual narrative between two people on different sides of society.
One of them being from the age of anarchy, and one of the them being the kid of super heroes.
This is another book where I just really enjoyed all of the characters.
I really enjoyed the super powers, and how they acquired them, if they acquired them.
And what their powers could be used for.
There were tons of themes throughout this, like corruption of the "good" guys, and the
idea of family vs. found family, and I just really enjoyed it.
So if you like super powers, this is a good book to pick up.
My next 4.5 star book is very different, and it was American Queen by Sierra Simone.
This is some smutty, smut, smut.
What you find out int he very beginning is out main character, Greer, is marrying the
President of the Unites States, but also has something going on with the Vice President
of the United States, who is also the best man.
This is called the New Camelot Trilogy, because it bases some of the characters and a couple
of things happening on the Camelot myth, which I found interesting because Greer is a middle ages professor.
So even though the main purpose of this book is smutty, smutty, sexy times, there was a
lot of plot in it, which I appreciate, because I can read smut, but I don't need it to be
sex on every page.
There was one sort of questionable consent thing near the beginning, but other than that,
everything that they do is consensual, and, just, it was great smut.
I think I'm going to ignore the epilogue because from what I've heard, the next two books in
the series aren't the greatest, and there are plot points that I know will come up based
on what happened in the epilogue and I don't want to see them.
But overall, if you are looking for the smut, this is very good smut.
I read this for Chelsea and Julie's book club, by the way, and I'll link down below the live
show where we all talked about it.
My next 4.5 star read was I Hate Everyone But You by Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin.
I think there might be a wood chipper outside.
That's... that's great.
Murder of crows, wood chipper.
Whatever.
I'm just trying to shoot a video.
This is another dual point of view novel between Ava and Gen, who are college students on opposite
sides of the country, but best friends.
This one is told in email and text format, and I really enjoyed it.
One of the criticisms I've seen people have is this is basically fanfiction for Gaby Dunn
and Allison Raskin because if you know anything about their personalities, you can tell who
wrote who, and who is basically who but in younger form, but I really didn't have a problem
with this. I mean, you're told to write what you know, and then when people do that, other
people get upset about it.
It's weird to me.
So I found this a really cute story of two friends going through a very stressful time,
and if that is something that appeals to you, give this one a try.
It's quite easy to read because it goes by really quickly.
My last 4.5 star read was Adulthood is a Myth by Sarah Andersen.
If you have spent any amount of time on Facebook or Twitter, you have seen a comic by Sarah Andersen.
I am quite sure of it.
These comics are snippets of quotidian happenings, and they're so relatable to me because the
artist is obviously an introvert and obviously and awkward human, and it me.
And on to the 5 star reads, the first one being The Princess Saves Herself in This One
by Amanda Lovelace.
I loved this.
I read this in my bathtub, because I read a lot in my bathtub.
Every Wednesday at least.
And I think that something automatically gets a 5 star rating if I want a tattoo from it
while I'm reading it.
That tattoo, by the way, would read, "a bookmad girl never dies".
So now I need to come up with a good design for that.
Anyway, this is a poetry collection about Amanda Lovelace's life, her childhood, growing up.
There are trigger warnings for many things.
In fact, the beginning of the book has a whole page of the trigger warnings, so be sure to
check that out if that is a consideration for you.
But if you find that this is something you can read, this was just an extremely well
put together poetry collection.
My next 5 star read was Draw the Line by Laurent Linn.
This is a very fandom-y read, and maybe that's why it got 5 stars, because it's fandom-y
and it's also queer, and I like these things.
This is about a boy who spends his spare time drawing this kind of web comic.
He sort of updates every once in a while.
His friends know he's gay but he's not out at school because he doesn't want to be the
victim of hate crime.
And then, of course, later in the book he witnesses some hate crimes against a fellow
gay student.
He wants to get justice for this, and he doesn't really know how, and he turns to his art to do it.
My next 5 star read was Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu.
I read this as my hyped book for the ContemporaryAThon, and it deserves the hype.
It's pretty great.
Vivian lives in a small town where dudes get away with so much crap in her high school,
and girls are treated quite badly.
And she starts a feminist revolution.
She finds this box from her mom's past in her mom's closet that has all of these zines,
and I remember making zines with my friends because I'm cool and old.
And she decides to make her own zines and spread them around the school, and it's just great.
Like, I may be old, but I'm not old enough to forget the type of crap that I put up with
in high school that is still going on, obviously, because people are writing about it.
It's relatable, it's feminist, it's fantastic.
You should read it.
My next 5 star read was Dress Codes for Small Towns by Courtney Stevens.
This book is about a group of friends called the Hexagon, and there is just so much to
love about this.
There are characters questioning their sexuality.
There are characters that assume other people's sexualities, and just don't actually know.
There's a bunch of small town shenanigans, and people being labeled as things by their neighbours.
And the ramifications of doing that.
Sometimes you feel like you know your neighbours when you live in a small town, but that's
really just because you've made assumptions about them.
The friendships and relationships in this book are just so well done, and I just wanted
to hug every single character, basically.
And my last two reads of the month were both rereads, and obviously they were rereads because
I loved them so much that I wanted to read them again.
Hence, obviously, they were 5 star reads.
I don't know about you, but I don't think that if I gave something, like, a 3 star rating,
I'd want to read it again.
But that might just be me.
I'm also not a really big rereader anyway.
There are so many books in the world to read, that why would i do that?
I don't know.
Anyway, the first of the two was Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowly, which was my favourite
book of last year.
This is an Australian contemporary following Rachel, who moved away from the town that
she lived in all her life, a few years ago, and is coming back, and Henry, the boy she
confessed her love to when she moved away, and didn't hear anything back about it.
This book is just a stunning study of grief and friendship, and relationships, and feelings,
and I just absolutely adore it.
I will link some videos down below where I go on in detail about how much I love this book.
And the other reread of this month I picked up because I found it as an audiobook through
my library, and I figured it would be interesting to read it in this other format, and that
was Radio Silence by Alice Oseman.
This was also in my top books of last year list and I am so glad I found this book because
this was a cover buy for me.
I saw it one day, and went, "I don't know what this is, but it's beautiful and I want
it" and it is SO GOOD.
And so right up my alley.
This book is about Francis, who has basically two forms of herself: school Francis, who
tries to get all the A's so she can get into Cambridge, and then home Francis, who really,
nobody knows, except for her Mom, who, like, wears cool leggings and meme shirts and draws
fan art for this really cool podcast she's obsessed with.
One day, she is contacted by the creator of the podcast - and nobody knows who it is,
by the way, because it's a secret - asking if she wants to do art for the podcast.
Which, if you've ever been somebody who is a huge fan fan of something, obviously this
is a huge deal.
This is a book about friendship, and fandom, and sexuality, and learning when to lean on
other people, and it's just so great.
And I keep seeing other people are picking it up recently, and I'm just really excited
for all of them to read it.
And there we have it.
Those are the 22 books I read this month.
I also wanted to make a side note about the amount that I read this month.
If it wasn't for doing BookTube, I wouldn't read as much as I do.
I basically read all of the time and don't go out very often because I'm super introverted
and I'm happy with that being my existence.
Also, this month, I hurt my back, and I wasn't allowed to go to work, so I had to basically
lay in bed reading, so there was that.
And then when I got a doctor's note saying that I could go back to work because my back
was fine, I picked up a cold, so there was more reading time I had based on the fact
that, again, I was just in bed, and all I could do was read.
And I wanted to mention this for two reasons.
One is I've seen people feel kind of upset at themselves that they don't read as much
as other people on BookTube, and don't be upset.
Honestly, you are doing other things with your time that are just as valid.
The other reason I wanted to mention this I'm sure that my March wrap up will have way
less books because I'm spending about a third of March in Florida visiting friends.
Originally, I was just planning a trip to go visit my friends Paige and Sarah from the
Princess and the Scrivener, but then our friend Rowan decided she wanted to do a huge Disney
trip and include a bunch of people, so I will also see Rowan.
I'll also see my friend Annie.
I will also see other people from the YouTubes.
And I am very excited, but will be reading much less, except for, like, the plane rides
there, and the plane rides home, probably.
And, also, on Wednesdays, in Sarah's bath tub.
She's so nice.
She's already bought me a bath bomb for my bath on Wednesday, and I'm just, like...
I love that one of the things people know about me is on Wednesdays I need to have a bath.
And she's already prepared for this to happen.
In any case, that sums up February.
This video is probably going to be very long.
It's gonna take a while to edit it.
But I am pretty excited about it.
I kind of like this format.
I hope you guys are also liking this format.
It seemed like you liked this format.
I know it's new to my channel, but I'm going to keep doing the weekly wrap ups, and the
monthly wrap ups for those who just want only books.
Don't care about the tv shows I'm watching.
Although, you should, because they're amazing.
If you want to hear me talk more about these books, and other books for that matter, the
playlist for all of my Weekly Entertainment Wrap Ups is always down 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 next time.
Bye!
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