Hello, I'm Kendra Winchester welcome back to my channel. And today we're gonna be
talking about the second half of my September wrap-up. I ended up splitting
my wrap up into graphic novels and comics and novels, so this is the novel
portion slash, well, there's some memoirs here. I guess prose books....? I don't know.
The first one I have is one I read for my around-the-world book club,
and that is a THREE DOG LIFE by Abigail Thomas. This is not about dogs, which I'm
very thankful for because when it came in Sam was like, "Don't read that please."
Don't read that because he knows I just fall apart when I read those dog dies in
the end of books. I've ranted about this before, but this is not about the
dogs. This is about the author Abigail and her husband had an accident, and he
had a severe brain injury. And He was just never the same, and he has been
living care from the accident forward. It's just her experiencing life as a
caregiver as someone who is caring for someone who went through such a
difficult thing and how she related to that and her feelings around that. I feel
like we don't give caregivers enough credit. You know when you are a family
member caring for another family member or a friend, or however that works out;
it's just a lot of emotion because you are emotionally connected to this person,
but you also have to care for them but you also want your own life. And you feel
like you're a horrible person because you say well I don't want to care for
that person right now. I need some me time. And as, you know, a sick person
who has a caregiver, and who has had several caregivers—you know what—I want
people to understand how difficult it is and how much I admire the caregivers in
my own life. And how it's important that we give caregivers the space they need
to be selfish, but not selfish. To be well aware and just take care of
themselves because they're not only watching someone they love be sick; they
have to care for that person and they have mixed feelings about it because
sometimes we can be—I'm just gonna say for sick people—we can be a bit much.
You know, so I really appreciate that memoir. I'm actually gonna send a copy to
my mom, and I'm hoping she's behind on my videos so she doesn't know that this is
coming in the mail, but yeah, I because I think
it's something that we need to talk more about, and here's a beautiful memoir. It's
actually like blurbed by Stephen King and says that this is one of his . . . what is
this? Here, it says, "The best memoir I've ever read. This book is a punch
to the heart. Read it." Nice, Stephen. That's great. The next book I have is
also a memoir, and that is WHEN THEY CALL YOU A TERRORIST: A Black Lives Matter
Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bendele with a foreword by Angela Davis.
This is by one of the cofounders of the black lives matter movement, and if
you're like me, you know about the current status of the black lives
matter movement. Like, you know, you've seen it in the news and other things,
but I didn't really know where it came from or who the founders were. I just
knew it was a thing, and I knew why the black lives matter movement started. But
there's just a lot of fog around that, and I feel like this is a beautiful
memoir and look at what the co-founders about her life. And really where her
activism comes from her perspective and how the black lives matter movement was
stirring long before it was founded. And why it's needed, and I think she did
a great job of illustrating her own perspective, so if you have questions
about the black lives matter movement or wondering, you know, kind of who founded
it or where it came from or why it's so important, I would definitely recommend
reading this memoir. This is out from St. Martin's, and I got it on Book Outlet. Not
sure if it's still there, but it is so beautifully made. Like, those end papers
are just gorgeous, and you all know I'm a sucker for a good end papers. So yeah,
definitely check out this one. Sachi from @SachiReads reviews it on one of the
episodes of Reading Women. I will link that down below so you go check it out.
Also check her out on Instagram @SachiReads. She also has a corgi, so I
see no reason why you shouldn't go follow her. [Laughs] So the next book I want to
tell you about is CRUDO by Olivia Laing. I'm gonna hold this up here. The light is
not friendly, but this is up from Norton here in the U.S. And I really love this
type of book. It's a stylized autofiction
and it's more about how she's
telling the story about this protagonist that's sort of her, but sort of not. I will
link down to an interview with Olivia Laing down below
where you can see she talks about the process of how she wrote this book,
how the rules she created for herself, and just a lot of different
behind-the-scenes things that are very interesting if you love this type of
book. This book is definitely a Kendra book. I love this type of stylized
writing and the vein of, like, British women authors doing this type of thing.
You guys know I love Ali Smith and different authors like that so this is
what that is, and I found it very interesting because it is autofiction.
And it's there's no plot really. It's just set during this little segment of
time and her experience and her thoughts and her feelings about contemporary
politics and events going on. I don't think this book will age very well
because you have to kind of be living in the moment this is a great commentary on
the now from a British perspective—a certain type of British perspective, I
should say. At the same time I felt that she was trying to be very very very very
clever and trying to say, "Look how look how meaningful I am! Look how clever I am!"
And I'm like, yes you are profound. Yes, you are clever, but why are you telling
me I'm profound and I'm clever? You don't need to do that. Your book speaks for
itself. So sometimes I found that very frustrating because I felt like she was
trying so hard to be intelligent and to write a smart book, which she did, but um
I shouldn't see the woman behind the curtain when she does that.
So I think this is a good representation of this type of book, but it does have
some flaws. I don't think she entirely carries it off, but I still would
recommend it if you like a very stylized type of autofiction like this. I think
it's the perfect kind of book for you if that is your style. So yeah, which I found
very interesting. The next book I read is MR. FLOOD'S LAST RESORT by Jess Kidd. This
book is called THE HOARDER in the U.K. I don't know why. I don't know why. Now I
will say, this book is very easy to spoil, so I'm going to tell you very little
about it. And I can't really even review it much without spoilers and that's
because Jess Kidd writes mystery books with a supernatural elements. And that
supernatural element is always a surprise, or at least it should be. And
so, I loved HIMSELF by Jess Kidd, and it's a mystery book is actually historical and
set in Ireland this one set in England and it's also a mystery.
It's about Maude, who works for, like, a caregiving kind of company, and she is
assigned to Mr. Flood, who has a house and he is a hoarder, and she uncovers
mysteries while she's got cleaning out the house. It's just a really delightful
fall book, and then you add the supernatural element on top of that and
it's just really interesting and surprisingly complex in places. And it
feels like the perfect balance of sinister and spooky but delightful at
the same time, So unfortunately I came across the review that did spoil the
supernatural element in this book, and I felt like that definitely didn't help
the reading experience very much. I remember being very delighted when I was
reading HIMSELF, and I just came across this thing that happened, and I was like,
"Oh that's so cool!" It was so surprising, and this supernatural element is
different and would have been equally surprising if I had read it in the book first.
So so be very careful wandering around the internet if you haven't read this
book yet. There could be spoilers because it's incredibly easy to spoil and many
people probably don't even know they're spoiling the book because it is that
kind of book. So I'm not gonna say anything else about this book besides
the fact it's the perfect fall read and you should probably go read it if you
haven't already. Also check out HIMSELF, which is also amazing.
The last book I have to talk to you about is THREE THINGS ABOUT ELSIE by Joanna Cannon.
And this is the author of THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEP, which came out two years
ago. I think this is about Florence and she's 83 or 84 years old living in what
we would call an assisted living facility here in the U.S. But she's living
over in England. I'm not really sure how their system works, so I think that's
comparable. But her best friend is a woman named Elsie. And so Florence has fallen
on the floor, and we are going through flashbacks that she's telling you while
we're kind of all stuck on the floor here with her. And you understand there's
a mystery behind that and how she ended up on the floor and there's a
lot of details of her life that she goes through while telling you this story. And
then we flashed to like the present, and it gives us like a timestamp of how long
she's been on the floor and different things. I really appreciated how Joanna
Cannon tackles the ageism in this book. You know, I love the characters in
this book. Florence, in particular, is just delightful to read about. I feel like
in Western culture we are so disrespectful to the elderly. We treat
them like children, and we don't respect their wisdom or honor them for the life
that they lived. And that's something that really bothers me. I've had
grandparents live with me on different occasions. Or, I should say, my family. My parents
have taken care of more than one of my grandparents, and watching my
grandparents and living in close proximity to them has really given me a
great respect for older people. And my parents used to volunteer as leaders of
the senior citizens group, and I as a kid would go on these vacations with bunch
of senior citizens, and it was like having so many amazing grandma and
grandpa's around. Being the only kid of course I was very spoiled,
but as a ten year old that's great. [Laughs] So I really love and respect older
people, and I don't understand why we are the way we are and why ageism is such a
huge problem. Except society tells us young and beautiful is best,
which is not actually true. There's a lot of wisdom that we're missing. That
aside, I didn't think that this book was executed as well as THE TROUBLE WITH
GOATS AND SHEEP. There's a twist at the end that I saw from almost page one, and I
buddy read this with Jaclyn Masters, and she also saw it. I'll put her review
up above my head and down below. so you can go check it out.
But I just don't think the execution of this book was as good as THE TROUBLE
WITH GOATS AND SHEEP. I found it kind of predictable and kind of too sentimental
and sappy. Well, I want that book to be like that. I want this book to be
like that because that's the kind of book. It is it just was kind of over the
top this time for me. So while I love the characters more in this book than
THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEP, I don't think the execution was as well done.
I still want to read what she writes next, so I mean it really depends on you if
you think that this is a book that you will enjoy and want to try reading or if
this is a book that you would rather skip or wait to hear more reviews about
it. It really depends on you, I think. So that's is THREE THINGS ABOUT ELSIE by Joanna
Cannon, and those are the books that I read in September. Thank you so much for
watching this video. I greatly appreciate it. If you have read any of these books
definitely let me know your thoughts down in the comments down below.
And I guess I will see you in the next one—bye, guys!
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