Hi, YouTube, it's Kathy, and this is my July 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 once a month I do a monthly wrap up of just the books.
I'm going to start with nerdy, hardcore stats and charts, and then get into what I read.
Firstly, I do not understand how I read this much in one month, and if I didn't take
meticulous notes of all of my reading, I would not believe these numbers, but my spreadsheet
just doesn't lie.
In July, I read 26 books, for a total of 8113 pages.
That takes into account converting audiobook minutes to pages, so 2228 of those pages were
actually 61 hours of audiobook.
The age breakdown for these books was 14 YA books, 9 adult books, 2 middle grade books,
and 1 kids book.
I read 22 novels, 2 graphic novels, 1 short story, and 1 anthology [and 1 novella].
This month I read a little bit of everything, with contemporary and fantasy taking up the
majority of the pie, followed by sci-fi, historical fiction, horror and non-fiction.
If you adjust for amount of pages in each genre, the non-fiction gets way smaller because
that was the one kids book I read.
Most of these books, no surprise, came from the library, but I got a couple from a friend.
I read 12 hardcovers, 8 audiobooks, 4 paperbacks, 1 ebook, and 1 uncorrected proof.
Most of my books were in the 200-499 page range, and half of them were published this year or last year.
Most of these books were by female authors, and the gender of the authors mimicks the
genders of the protagonists rather closely.
I read books set in mostly the United States and other worlds, but also touched on Canada,
the United Kingdom, and France.
In terms of diversity, it's no surprise that the biggest slice of that pie is queer
content, but I also had reads regarding race, feminism, disabilities, and mental health.
It is also important to point out that not all of the books I read had diverse aspects.
In terms of star ratings, this month I had one 2.5 read, three 3 star reads, six 3.5
star reads, six 4 star reads, two 4.5 star reads, and eight 5 star reads.
Let's start with the lowest rated read and work our way to the highest, shall we?
I just wanted to mention that I did three readathons this month, which, I guess, helped
with how many books I read.
The first was the Read-EH-Thon, which focused on reading Canadian authors.
The second was the 24in48, which was trying to read 24 hours in a 48 hour period.
And the third is BookTube-A-Thon, which is currently still going on, and I'm using up
valuable reading time to do this video [laughs].
My 2.5 Star read this month was called Walt.
This is a book about a man who works in a grocery store and spends his spare time stalking people.
It was billed to me as a thriller but it's an incredibly slow burn thriller, if that's even a thing.
And although there were some interesting mystery aspects to it, it just kind of kept going
along, and you didn't really get a lot of answers.
Moving on to 3 Star reads, my first one was World War Z.
I feel like if I had read this when ti first came out, before zombies were such a big part
of pop culture, I might have enjoyed it better.
Also, if I'd read it when it first came out, it would have been closer to my theatre days,
and I would have enjoyed the monologue aspect of this book a lot better as well.
I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy this book, but I would have preferred if these stories
were interconnected in a better way thank just "a journalist talked to a bunch of people
about the aftermath of a zombie outbreak".
My next 3 star read was We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
This one is about two sisters and their uncle, who live in this house on the outskirts of
town, and everybody in the town hates them.
And when you start out the book, you have no idea why.
You just know that the protagonist really hates going into town to do the grocery shopping,
and people are very mean to her while she's there.
Throughout the novel, you find out why people have animosity towards the sisters, and there's
a mystery aspect that's opened up.
This one does get a little dark and creepy at times, so I really enjoyed that aspect of it.
My last 3 star read was The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains.
This one is a very short story.
This one I actually listened to as an audiobook and that was interesting because it was read
by the author and it had original music backing the mood of what was going on it the story.
So when the characters where like, running and frolicking, it was running and frolicking
music, and when things were getting dark and serious, it was dark and serious music.
So it's definitely worth it to consume it in that medium if that's something that appeals to you.
This is just a very short adventure tale and basically saying anything about it will give
it away because it's only about and hour long audiobook.
But if you read Norse Mythology, and you enjoyed that, this is just basically another one of
those tales, except for not in that mythology.
The first 3.5 star read was A School For Unusual Girls.
This one was interesting, and I say that because it took the protagonist about 100 pages to
understand what was going on, and I kind of figured that out within at least 30 pages.
Basically, the protagonist is sent to this school for unusual girls because her parents
think it will reform her.
She's very interested in science, and one of her experiments caught her family barn
on fire, so they're not to happy and they basically want this, like, willfullness beaten out of her.
That's not what this school does.
The school is way more interesting than that.
Going into this, I didn't know it was the first in a series.
I don't know if I'm ever going to continue the series, but it was good enough as a stand
alone novel, if that makes any sense.
My next 3.5 star read was definitely something for the Read -EH-Thon, and it was Eh? To Zed.
This was the kids book I read.
Each page had a letter of the alphabet and listed 4 different Canadian things that started with that letter.
And there was a lot in this book that I did not know about, and some that I had just forgotten.
For example, there are dinosaurs named after the province of Alberta - Albertasaurus - and
the city of Edmonton - Edmontosaurus.
It also had a glossary in the back so you could read about each of the things that were
pictured, which was nice.
My next 3.5 star read was Honestly Ben.
This is the follow up to Openly Straight, and instead of following Raf, this one follows Ben.
If you haven't read Openly Straight, that makes absolutely no sense to you.
Basically, without too many spoilers, there was a relationship in the first book and that
relationship ends, and this book kind of picks up right after that's happened.
And it's all about Ben trying to figure out his sexuality.
Normally, I would rate this higher, but there was a lot of biphobia in it, which I did not
appreciate, which is why it got a lower rating.
It is a cute and fluffy contemporary, although it does bring up things like privilege, which
is something I really do like to see in books.
My next 3.5 star read was Love, Hate, & Other Filters.
This one is interesting because I'd seen a lot of people talk about it, but they always
start talking about it with a plot point that happens, like, at least halfway through the book.
And isn't the main focus of the book, by any stretch of the imagination.
So, it was weird for me to go into it with that in mind.
Basically, the main character in Muslim, she's not allowed to be dating, and she also has
applied and been accepted to film school and not told her parents.
They want her to be a lawyer or a doctor.
She does not want either of these things.
Essentially, her existence gets very complicated and a lot of stress happens all at the same
time, and this is a book about her dealing with all of these things being thrown at her.
My next 3.5 star read was A Head Full of Ghost.
This one is about a girl named Merry who was a child when her family participated in a
reality tv show called The Possession, because everyone thought that her older sister was,
in fact, possessed.
This one jumps back and forth in time, so sometimes it's 8 year old Merry as things
are going on, and somethings it's 23 year old Merry talking to a journalist who is writing a book about her.
Occasionally, it's also interspersed with blog posts about Possession, the tv show.
Somebody is writing about it 15 years on.
This one has a lot of references to classic horror, and the sister is downright creepy
at times, and I do love a creepy tale like that.
My last 3.5 star read was an anthology called Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time.
This is an anthology of indigenous LGBTQ+ writers, writing short science fiction stories.
Like most anthologies, I really like some of the stories.
Others I was apathetic toward, but I thought it was important to pick this up to get another
perspective on the queer community.
There were a lot of characters who identified as Two Spirit, and I got to learn a little
bit more about that because it's not something within my own culture.
On to the 4 Star reads, the first one being Bandette.
This one is a really cute graphic novel about a master thief named Bandette.
She lives in France.
she steals things for fun, but she also steals things, basically, to help out the police.
She's kind of like BatMan, but she steals things.
She also has a rival in town who is also really good at stealing things and they kid of team
up at one point.
I am going to continue reading these graphic novels because this was a lot of fun.
My next 4 star read was Alanna the First Adventure.
This one is the first in a quartet, and the first in a giant universe of cool fantasy stuff.
This one is old school YA, before YA was even a thing, because this was published in 1983,
which is even older than I am.
Basically, it follows twins, Alanna and Thom.
Alanna is being sent off to become a lady and Thom is being sent off to become a knight,
and neither one of them wants to do those things.
So Alanna disguises herself as a boy and goes off to become a knight while Thom goes off to study magic.
This takes places over about 3 or 4 years, and follows Alanna - obviously; based on the
title, you probably guessed that - as she's learning to become a knight.
And I really am enjoying it, and I think now I have to read the entire universe.
The next 4 star read was The Marvels.
This book is interesting because about the first half of it is pencil drawings that tell
a story, and then after that is a narrative story written in words.
The first half is a story about brothers who are shipwrecked and one dies.
The other one goes to work in theatre, and then it's this whole cycle of "he gets a wife,
he has a son, that son also works in the theatre, gets a wife, has a son" - and it just continues like that.
On the flip side, the written portion is about a boy who's run away from boarding school
to meet and uncle that's he's never met before.
Basically, he needs help finding a childhood friend who was at the boarding school and
his parents took him away.
And he stumbles into finding out that his uncle is kind of a weird dude, but in an actually delightful way.
I really enjoyed how this as told.
I really enoyed that I read it while I was waiting to watch a Shakespeare play because
there are tons of Shakespeare references in this book.
And now I'm just gonna have to pick up all the other stand alone books like this, because this was cool.
My next 4 star read was The Darkest Minds.
I picked this one up because I saw the trailer while I was at VidCon, and went "that looks
amazing, what is it? Oh, it's based on a book? I need to read the book".
And the movie, I'm pretty sure, is coming out this week, so that is a thing that you
could go to if you wanted.
This one is a YA dystopian where all the kids basically get superpowers, and all the adults
freak out and go, "yeah, no that's not cool".
The super powers range.
Some people have telekinesis.
Some people can control other people's minds.
And some people are just good at math.
Which, I would be mad... about that.
If that was my only superpower.
But then again, you're not the kind of superpower that just gets killed off by the government.
So maybe that's good?
I really enjoyed the pacing of this book.
I didn't realize it's the first in a trilogy that also has little spin off books, so I
haven't read the whole series.
And just from what I saw of the trailer, it looks like they've changed a lot of things,
so I don't know if the movie is going to combine all of the books, or it's jut going to be the first book.
I have not idea, but either way, I really enjoyed all of the characters.
My next 4 star read was Long Way Down.
This one is told in poetry, and it's about a boy whose brother has recently been killed
in a drive-by shooting, and it's about the cycle of violence, basically.
Someone killed his brother, now he has to kill that person.
Somebody will probably kill him in return, and it just goes back and forth like that.
So he finds his brother's gun, gets in the elevator, starts going down to the lobby,
and the elevator stops at every floor, and at every floor, a ghost from his past comes into the elevator.
This was a really interesting concept, and I think that at some point I'm going to have
to also listen to it because it's narrated by the author, and I think that it would be
really interesting to listen to it.
The subject matter is rather intense, but with so few words, it quickly brought me into
this world that I do not know.
My last 4 stat read was A Tale for the Time Being.
This one is interesting.
It takes place in Canada and Japan, and one of the most interesting aspects about it is
the protagonist is named Ruth, and she is a writer, and she lives in Canada, and she's
sounding a lot like the author of the actual book.
One day, she's walking down the beach on her island, and she finds this bag of what she
assumes is garbage, and she's going to go throw it out in the actual garbage instead
of just letting it go back into the ocean, but when it's opened up, she finds a diary
of a school girl in Japan.
She starts reading the diary and is immediately hooked into it and wants to know if this girl
is okay, because she is the subject of some very harsh bullying.
This is one of those books that there's so much in the writing that I feel like I will
have to read it again, and I will see different things that I missed the first time.
But also, I'd be more than happy to read it again because it was just written in this intense way.
It really captured these two characters in intriguing ways, and it would be interesting to revisit.
My first 4.5 star read was Weave a Circle Round.
This one is about a girl who lives with her sister, and her step-brother, and sort of
her parents, but they never are around.
And she lives her entire life trying to fly under the radar, trying not to be picked on at school.
Any thing like that.
Until some extremely strange neighbours show up one day.
The strangers are a boy and woman, and they're renting this strange house around the corner.
And the boy ends up being in the same grade at the protagonist.
And is so weird at school.
Like, he's trying to get kicked out and trying to get beat up.
And just, speaks very strangely.
And even with them being such weirdos, I thought that this was going to be a contemporary novel
until something happens that makes it definitely a fantasy novel.
What I really enjoyed about this novel is that the protagonist learn up, because when
the book started, I did not like her at all.
For one, she was incredibly mean to her step brother, who is Deaf, and I was just not here for it.
This one took some very interesting twist and turns, and if you're at all a fan of extremely
strange characters, these are the ones to read.
This woman and boy are opposite sides of the same coin an they are fascinating to read on the page.
My other 4.5 star read was Undead Girl Gang.
This one is about a protagonist whose best friend has just died.
They shared a passion for magic and she uses a spell to try to get some answers as to why
her best friend is dead, and then suddenly her best friend and two other girls that died
recently spring up out of the grave for a week.
They can't remember the details of their deaths, so they can't just say, "oh, this is how we died".
But with their help, she starts piecing together a conspiracy of why these people are dead.
At the same time, she is still harbouring a really big crush on her dead best-friend's
brother, which her best friend never knew about when she was alive, and she doesn't
really want her to know about it now that she's dead, either.
This one was a lot of fun, with some unexpected turns, and I high recommend it.
In fact, I obviously recommend everything from her forward, because now we're moving
into my 5 star reads.
My first 5 stars read was The Prince and the Dressmaker.
This is a graphic novel. It's absolutely adorable.
It's about a prince who likes to wear dresses, and hires a dressmaker so he can have some dresses.
She makes gorgeous gowns, taking inspiration from all over the place, and then he goes
out in them as his alter ego.
This book is about friendship, and being accepted for who you are, and I really enjoyed it,
and you should read it.
My next 5 star read was Girl Made of Stars.
This one is about a girl whose twin brother is accused of raping his girlfriend.
So, obviously, so many trigger warnings.
The thing is, the protagonist is also friends with his girlfriend, and knows that she's
not lying, even though he says nothing really happened.
This one is about family and accountability, and friendship, and so many things, and I
can't recommend it highly enough.
Obviously, take care of yourself if you choose to read this because, yes, trigger warnings.
My next 5 star read was Dear Martin.
This one is about a boy named Justyce, who is a black student in a predominately white school.
He's a scholarship student there, so his classmates are rather upper class.
And one night, which trying to help a friend, he finds himself the victim of police brutality and profiling.
After that, he starts a project, writing to Martin Luther King Jr, and trying to be more like Martin.
This one is about race and privilege, and if you can consume audiobooks, I highly suggest
the audiobook because Dion Graham's voice acting was stunning.
There was a rather intense moment about halfway through the book, and I had to stand at the
bus stop trying not to cry in public when it happened.
My only criticism is that I wanted this book to be longer.
My next 5 star read was How to Make a Wish.
Yes, that's two different 5 star reads by Ashley Herring Blake on this list this month.
It was a good month.
This one starts with the protagonist just getting back from two weeks away where she
was studying music in Boston.
Upon getting back, she finds out that her Mom has moved them in with a boyfriend that
she had never met before, and things spiral from there.
You quickly learn that her Mom is not a reliable person.
Her Mom definitely needs some help.
And her Mom is just all around not a great Mother, but she is the only parent the protagonist has.
Upon getting back to her town, she also meets a girl who is new in town.
The girl is new in town because her Mother recently died, and the protagonist's best
friend's Mother is now her legal guardian.
Obviously, this new girl is going through some very emotional times where the protagonist
is also on this roller coaster that just never stops with her Mother.
And a relationship forms between them.
I read this basically in one sitting during the 24in48, and I feel like I should read
it again and again, because there were just so many examples of heartbreak and strife,
and people trying to live with the lot that they have, and people realizing that they
need to move on from toxic relationships.
If you want a love story with a lot of power behind it, definitely pick this one up.
My next 5 star read was Brightly Burning.
This is Jane Eyre, but in space. And I absolutely adored it.
I've never actually read Jane Eyre, but I do enjoy Jane Eyre retellings, and this one is fantastic.
Stella is an engineer on a low class ship and then she gets a job as a governess on
a luxury ship that's orbiting the moon.
It was really fun to see the balance between people living in space and regency era clothing,
especially when she was on the luxury ship and then high class people came to visit,
and they had fancy dinners and things.
I really enjoyed the characters.
I really enjoyed the relationships that formed.
I just, I just really enjoyed it. Obviously. It's on my 5 star list.
My next 5 star read is Little & Lion.
This one is about step siblings, one named Little - actually, her name is Suzette, but
she's called Little by her brother - one named Lion, or Lionel.
Suzette is basically just returned from a year in boarding school, and when we start
out, we don't know why she was sent there.
We know that she didn't do anything wrong, but we know that something has happened with
her brother, and she was sent away, basically, so he could heal.
While she was at boarding school, she found out that she likes girls.
In fact, she had been sleeping with her roommate.
So upon coming home, she comes to terms with probably having to come out as being bisexual
while she's also heartbroken because she left that relationship in a very weird way.
Additonally, this boy that she's grown up with has gotten real hot over the last year,
so she's kind of crushing on him, but also kind of crushing on this girl that she met at a party.
She ends up working with that girl, and that crush does not go away, which is really unfortunate,
because her brother also has a crush on her, and starts dating her.
This is a book about love and family, but then it's also a book about being a mixed
race family, because she is black and he is white.
And then it's also about her coming out in terms of sexuality, as well as her religion,
because she converted to Judaism as a child.
That is a very big part of her life, and she didn't feel like explaining it to the people
that she was at boarding school with because they were just not very nice people.
There are so many different dynamics to this book, and it touches on so many different things.
My next 5 star read was Record of a Spaceborn Few.
This is the third in the Wayfairer series, and... it's so good.
Each of the books in this series is a little bit different.
So we had never met any of these characters before, although one of them is related to
the captain in the first book.
This book has several different perspectives and at the beginning, these different characters
don't know each other, and then their paths start to overlap.
We see different characters very happy with that they do, we see other characters wanting
to explore the universe.
And because we have so many different perspectives, when other people outside of these stories
judge these stories, I felt very fiercely about the bad things they were saying about these characters.
I will continue to read this series for as long as Becky Chambers keeps writing it, because... yes.
I also just always adore that there are queer characters and it's never a point of strife,
and nobody looks down on these characters, and it's just so great.
Speaking of queer characters, we're getting onto my final 5 star read of the month, and
that's What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera.
This book is not out yet.
I read this one as an eARC, and oh my goodness, it's so cute, you guys!
This book is about two boys in New York City.
One who lives there and is going to Summer school, much to his chagrin, and the other
one, who is interning at his Mom's law firm for the Summer because she's there on a big case.
They meet outside a post office, but something prevents them from exchanging numbers, and
they can't get each other out of their minds, and it's a book about them finding each other again.
The relationship that forms in this book is not easy, but it's very touching at times.
Characters discuss privilege, and how they treat each other and different respect levels.
There's also an example of extremely healthy communication during sexual acts.
And I love that each character has definite influences from the writers.
For example, Adam Silvera went to Summer school 3 times, so he knows Summer school.
He also knows what it's like to be a Latinx person with lighter skin, and have people
ignore that part of your identity.
And the Becky Albertalli is obviously a huge musical fan, and that definitely comes up in this book.
It's adorable, it's got some sad parts, I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but
I am very excited for it to come out so we can all talk about it.
I am low-key impressed that I managed to get this done before the Sun went down, because
26 books, guys.
26 books?!
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 always listed down in the description.
If you've 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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