right let's go i don't know how much
battery have i don't know how much
memory i have
i don't know how much memory i have uh
let's do it
hello welcome to dead good book reviews
i'm judith and today i'm bringing you
another chatty monthly reading wrap-up
yeah we're gonna sit i have a cup of tea
in case you're wondering it's bonfire
toffee tea and it is
amazing and it has oat milk and it is
amazing
uh i don't know why you would care but
there you go i read 29 books total in
july which is pretty damn impressive i
mean uh
to go from what 33 last month to 29 this
month
pretty good there were some short books
in here there's a fair few audio books
it was a lot of mood reading
but i did manage to finish my tbr so
hello
me from my tbr video you actually don't
need to read three of those books
i like the idea that i would be i would
suddenly have amnesia and i'd be like
what do i need to read this month
apparently according to goodreads the
first book i finished in july was the
poppy war
now i picked up the poppy war on
audiobook because i knew i would be
reading the burning god
in july and i wanted to reread and i did
actually manage to finish
the poppy war the dragon republic and
the burning god this month so i'm going
to talk about them all in one
uh the only one i have that i can hold
up for you is this arc copy of the
dragon republic from last year
um but i'm not going to hold it up
because that's a bit of an arm workout
i had a good time rereading these
actually i did the poppy war by
audiobook i did
dragon republic in its physical form and
i did
the burning god via e arc so
we've got every format you could
possibly have it in and i don't know
whether that had any bearing on how it
went to be honest
because i enjoyed the dragon republic
most of all three of them
interestingly i would have thought the
poppy war would have it because it has
that structure that i enjoy
but dragon republic had the emotions and
the character
development and all of the good stuff
and i think rin is most
she has her biggest highs and some of
her lowest lows in the dragon republic
so i liked it most
um i don't know whether to film a
dedicated review for the burning god
like i did for empire of gold
having not reviewed the other two i
think partly because i didn't
take in as much of the burning god as i
did
the empire of gold i don't know if
that's to do with how quickly i read it
but having said that i read empire of
gold in a day so
i don't know let me know if you would
like to hear my thoughts on that
it may be that thing if i have to write
the review and then from that
pull out the stuff for the video that
might be what i need to do
i think that's on my to do list for
today actually yes the poppy world
trilogy
well worth reading absolutely read it
and the burning god has
some really good stuff in it i think the
ending will be
not divisive in the sense of some people
are going to be like this is terrible
cancelled cancelled
i think just in terms of it won't be
what everyone wants
and i think i was spoiled by the empire
of gold and i basically got exactly the
ending that i wanted
and i don't know why i assumed that
would happen with this trilogy that has
done nothing but break my heart since
the beginning
but would i recommend reading all three
of them absolutely and if you've read
them before and you want to read the
burning god
a hundred percent no ifs ands or buts
reread uh and i would actually say if
you are
not the kind of person who takes in
names and spellings of names very easily
me i do that i don't do it very well
don't do all of them by audiobook if
you're then going to read the third one
do all of them in the same either
written or listening
format you know what i mean that's
everything i wanted to say
on those so those were actually spilled
out throughout the month but
uh talking about series in order seems
like a sensible idea
and speaking of which would it have been
in july
i think it must have been right at the
end of june uh we went and had a
socially distance time with asha and
justine and various
spooces  justine was very kind enough to
lend me all of the murderbot diaries
novellas sorry if the kettle is on in
the background now katie is making a tea
these are not in the right order all
systems red is definitely the first one
and then
i'm not sure what order these go in but
artificial condition
rogue protocol exit strategy um
oh they make such a horrible noise i
don't read a huge amount of sci-fi
that which i do read and enjoy tends to
be the kind of becky chambersy stuff
which i think murderbot does a little um
basically to get to the point because
otherwise we will be sat here all day
and while you all
quite happily watched a 30-minute
wrap-up last month you might not watch
that again
i really enjoyed it i wasn't completely
mad about it but i think that might be
because i had too high expectations
based off how people in my life have
enjoyed it
is that enough i think the second and
third ones were my favorites
the third one made me genuinely very sad
at points in
a good kind of this book is well written
way maybe on a reread they would be
better now that i know what to expect
because i think i was expecting more
i don't know what i was expecting i
don't i don't know books are hard
she says on her channel where she talks
about books i did read all of them and i
did have a good time doing it
i finished hero the fall by alwyn
hamilton and i couldn't remember reading
this
just now because i had it on audiobook i
was going through
my library's ebook service and they
happened to have hero at the fall
and then i had sun stroke from the
day in the park
so i picked this up yes i read this when
it first came out like this was my
pre-order copy
and i remember enjoying it hugely having
a great time
um i haven't read this series since then
and i think this would have come out in
2017
oh 2018 okay i haven't read it since
then um
i think it would have been better if i'd
gone back and read the previous two
it's not too hard to pick it back up
again it's y a you kind of know what the
character beats are doing but i still
had a good time i thought the audiobook
was good i wasn't as obsessed with the
narrator as i have been for other things
even though
i think it was the same narrator who did
this as did
a kingdom of copper i said kingdom of
copper i meant city of brass and that
whole series
but yeah i wasn't as into this as i
wanted to be i think this was the point
in the month where i was feeling really
burned out from my book a day challenge
from last month
and just anything i think i would have
felt fairly eh about
uh case in point murderbot diaries it's
good like djinn
powers stuff i want to reread the whole
series it's that trilogy problem of you
need
to have fallen in love with the
characters to fully go through the arc
with them
and picking up just the final book when
you can't quite remember what happened
in the first two
not the best plan carrying on with that
audiobook kind of
train i listened to a lot of audiobooks
this month i'll say that from the off um
i listened to it was a dramatization
but it was marked as an audiobook so i'm
counting it of fahrenheit 451 by ray
bradbury which i'd wanted to read for a
very long time and i still do want to
read
the actual book because i or listen
to a non-dramatized version
um because i think it would be really
interesting and it's a important piece
of literature i guess
um but i enjoyed the story
and i thought it was well done i now
know the story i think that's what i
wanted i wanted to know what the story
was because all i knew about it was
book burning i didn't know anything else
about it and now i do
if at some point a copy of the book
happens to cross my path i will pick it
up
but it is good to have it ticked off my
like mental
these are books i would like to one day
have read next first arc of the month
i finished hg parry's a declaration of
the rights of magicians
i've said that title wrong every time
and now i can't remember which one is
actually wrong anyway that that one this
one was an interesting
adventure it took a long time to read i
ended up enjoying reading it it is a
well-written
story i think it is problematic is a
loaded word
i think there are bits of it that i
love to hear own voices perspectives on
so we're in an alternate world
where magic is possible
uh but we're also in the
the age of enlightenment 17th to 19th
century so the book focuses on three
areas there's the haitian revolution
there's robespierre in france and the
french revolution
and william wilberforce in england and
the abolition of the slave trade in
england all things are quite difficult
to write anyway if you are not a person
of color
in those communities affected by the
slave trade in those three places
but when you add a fantasy element on
top of it
i think it just makes it more
complicated and overall i think it's a
well-written story
but there's have i think have the
stories been told enough
in a non-fantastical setting that we're
now
able to confidently turn them to fantasy
with everyone still understanding the
original stuff behind it i think it's
where i come from and i don't know that
they have been
so yes not sure not sure about that one
i'll be interested to hear more reviews
about it
at some point but it's such a shame
because i loved the unlikely escape of
uriah heap
unabashedly and i think i will still
love that book but i'm not going to be
rushing out and buying a copy
of this one moving to that onto
something that i did love unabashedly
it's mayday by josie jeffrey
usual disclaimer i know josie personally
but this is such good fun i don't read
really any paranormal stuff it's not my
jam
urban fantasy again not my jam this kind
of it's in a real city
i'm i'm not that fussed i don't
typically read things with vampires
but josie's books are my exception i'm
just shading myself from the
non-existent sun josie's books are my
exception this is
so much fun this is set in the same
universe as her other vampire books if
you love them already or if you want to
just throw yourself into a world that
spans decades
centuries even i really enjoyed this
bisexual vampire detective
snarky love triangle question mark
um murder mystery it's like everything i
wanted it's like if you took
all those good oxford detective programs
and you just went
yeah but what if it was gayer and
angstier and yeah this is the product and
it's really really good i had a hugely
good time reading this i thought it was
fabulous
uh i need book two immediately this was
definitely for me and i'm excited for
more from josie in this
world and this series next i read
cinderella is dead by kalynn bayron
this has a full dedicated review up on
my channel now you can go and watch it
it has a beautiful rainbow in the corner
i can't remember which corner has
doobly-doobs but it will be in that
corner but let me just say
i really really love this book i thought
it was great y a fairy tale dystopian
which is a genre that i did not know i
needed but i
i need it for everything now i i would
happily read 100 more books set in this
kind of
post fairy tale world i think it's
really interesting but yeah it's sapphic
it's wonderful it's so good just go
watch my review
you will have a great time in fact pause
this video go watch that review
consider it part of this wrap up and
then come back um i don't know why i
assume you have 45 minutes free
and then from a big high on to a less
great book i read american gods by neil
gaiman and i was hugely disappointed by
it worth saying i was reading
the new version i don't know when it
switched and if any copies of the old
version
are still out there i'm not sure what
the publishing journey has been for that
book and i don't
don't really care to find out so yeah
big big big book i don't have it anymore
because i took it to the book bank
because i didn't want it in my life
anymore
um i don't like the way that neil gaiman
certainly in these books which were
2005 or before um i don't like the way
neil gaiman writes women i don't
necessarily think it's like oh how
heinous he has them just in boob armour
walking around but i don't relate to any
of the characters and i don't
i just don't think the women the female
characters are very enjoyable they tend
to be very
archetypal and kind of boring
and i need that to enjoy a book i just i
just do i need well-written women to
enjoy a book i wasn't overly fussed
about the main character
the plot felt complicated which i know
some people really love
and you could see what he was trying to
do uh
just basically this just wasn't my cup
of tea i don't want to talk about
american gods anymore can we put it
behind us and move on with our lives
thank you
so then another audiobook finished i
finished the red pyramid by rick riordan
which is the first book in the
carter and sadie kane series which is
the one where it's
gods are real but it's the egyptian ones
and to be honest my
knowledge of egyptian mythology beyond
well probably
ra is the god of the sun is very
limited so i'm wondering if that was why
i didn't engage with this quite as much
as i engaged with the greek mythology
ones which i knew back to front
so i picked up a lot more of the
references and i'm wondering if you were
an egyptian mythology nerd kid
you would enjoy them a bit more um i did
have a good time with it i thought the
plot was interesting
uh obviously i don't know what the order
of publishing was but
the as soon as you got out of percy
jackson really
things began to get quite formulaic in
how it worked
um but in that there's the and we meet
this character and they're probably
going to betray them at some point and
oh look they did the thing and yeah
i don't want to spoil it for you in case
you want to read these um i'd say
worth reading and every library in the
world probably has them
so do them that way rather than
buying them for yourself unless you're a
collector of that series
i did think that carter and sadie were
really good characters and i liked
them very much uh sadie in particular i
thought was fab but i'm not desperate
now to read the rest of the books i
would
i still think i need to go back and read
the roman ones
because that's the i actually studied
roman
history and archaeology much more than i
did greek so maybe that will be
interesting i'm losing my voice i'm just so
passionate about mythology
next i finished it was a marathon to do
so but i finished seven devils by
elizabeth may and laura lam
i enjoyed this pretty well i think now
thinking back on it as a whole
i did really enjoy the plot the
characters they had some of my favorite
things that happened in it
it was certainly gay enough all of that
good stuff was there
actually reading it was not that much of
an enjoyable experience and i think it
was down to the format i think it was
partly because the formatting on the
e-arc was terrible which i can't hold
against the book but does affect your
reading experience which affects your
opinion of the book
but also it's a much longer book than i
thought it was going to be and i think
if you had a physical copy
you'd be able to sense how much of the
book you had left whereas i constantly
felt like i was just like
reading and reading reading and then you
look at it be like two percent more than
last time which is very frustrating
so yes all that stuff i always say about
the circumstances in which you read
affect your reading and affect your
opinion of the book but now thinking
back on it the actual book was good i
had a good time with it
oh this is the problem with chatty
wrap-ups i don't have notes
feminism space um bunch of women
joining revolution it's good fun it's
like a good romp that has some very good
emotional moments
it felt like something that people are
really gonna love next i finished
phoenix extravagant and
if i get this video up
i'm not sure of the scheduling basically
i have a phoenix extravagant review
that is coming out on the monday after
i'm filming this so i'm filming this on
a saturday
so i think by the time i get this edited
and up either it will be coming out
tomorrow or it will already be up so if
it is
out in any way shape or form i will link
you to it i loved phoenix extravagant
so much uh i think my only problem with
it was it's too short and i wanted
more of it um it's so so good uh the
historical context of it is so amazing
uh go read phoenix extravagant but also
watch my review it's spoiler free
do the thing next i finished alix E
harrow's  the once and future witches
which again i really really enjoyed i
have another dedicated review coming out
for this
but that's not out till next week next
monday so all i will say about it now
for the wrap up
is it is good witchiness it's inclusive
witchiness which i liked
and i thought the story had a really
good rise and fall and catharsis and
the actual like storytelling of it is
really good
which isn't something i say for a lot of
books like the actual
flow of everything felt really good yeah
i would actually really recommend it i
think it's good from
and  from a high to a low i read calamity
and i talked about this in my vlog i
really didn't like this
i thought this was such a waste of the
end of a trilogy the end of a trilogy
especially a brandon sanderson one
i expect to be really clever and really
twisty turny
and just good good stuff and this was
kind of just more of the same
and less interesting of a setting it's
set in so the first one
you have a city made of steel the second
one is like underwater new york which is
pretty cool
and this one is just like it's a salt
city but you don't really get to explore
what that means
uh and you don't get as much of kind of
like what the people who live here are
like in the same ways you do get in the
other books
so yeah it was just felt like a kind of
waste of time i didn't like david as a
character so
i don't know what i was expecting was
I thinking i would care about him
suddenly in book three
not really yeah i just thought it was
kind of eh i'm probably gonna unhaul
the series at the end of the year i
think
probably uh i liked steelheart steel
heart was a good book
this is not living up to that if a
series is meant to get better as it goes
along this series did not achieve that
another audiobook i told you i smashed
it  this month
and i listened to you it's not okay to
feel blue and other lies
which is a collection of essays on
mental health and i thought it was
pretty good i don't have a huge amount
to say on this i don't read a lot of
like self-improvement i guess books um
i think it would be a book that if you
wanted to read it
or buy it for someone else then you
would just have it in your house and dip
in and out
whereas i listened to it all in one go on
an audio book format and i don't think
that that's necessarily the best way
although it is quite nice because some
of the people who wrote the things in
the book then recorded their audio but
not all of them
if you're interested in it seek it out
if not you're not missing out if you
don't read it
unless you have zero knowledge of any
mental health
awareness at all then i finished daisy
jones and the six which was on my tbr
even though
in my brain i seem to think it wasn't it
was i adored daisy jones and the six i
thought it was
so amazing i read most of it quite late
at night and it was just one of those
books where i did not want to stop
flicking the page it was so so good um
it's told
as it feels like the transcript of a
documentary
it's not it's a transcript of interviews
and apparently the audiobook is recorded
with a full cast so will be seeking
that out as soon as i can
about the history of this band that made
one amazing album and then broke up
and it's just it's so real
so realistic very human just fantastic
absolutely go and read it the hype is
real go and read daisy jones and the six
uh more audiobooks i listened to uglies
and pretties by scott westerfeld
and uh this was just a nostalgic they
were
i think uglies was in the library and
pretties was scribd and i just sort of
went
why not and listen to them uglies holds
up it's pretty good
still it's like a nostalgic interesting
time tapping into the mindset i had
at like 11 where i was like i just want
to be beautiful somebody
make these decisions for me pretties i
liked less so
partly because it used the r-slur which
just like
i don't know if uglies had been redone
to take it out
and i just had a new version of pretty
older version of pretties not sure
that wouldn't surprise me yeah could
have done without that and i'll say the
story is a bit eh
i think i thought there was more to it
than there is but it's a very quick
ending
i'm probably going to do specials
because that's the one i don't think i
actually read
so that will be exciting finding out how
the trilogy ends after 12 years or
whatever it's been
nostalgic YA time part of me wants to
go back and reread
slash read for the first time all of the
kind of like
around the same time as hunger games was
coming out and also do hunger games at
the same time those like y a dystopian
things that nobody talks about anymore
like uglies
is it delirium uh where love is banned
whether
it's like the same plot uh and maybe
like crowd source some more i think that
would be really fun
um because i think ya as a 'genre'
has come on so far from then um and it's
entertaining to look back and it's
interesting to look back let me know in
the comments if you would like
that series i say knowing full well that
i started
filming an animorphs series and i've made
eight videos
in a year after that i finished the mask
of troy by david gibbins i
don't recommend this unless you're
really into like
airport fiction this is the kind of book
where you buy in an airport
you take it to your holiday home or
wherever you're staying and then you
leave it there
which is unsurprisingly where i bought
it from was the back of a church in an
area with a lot of holiday homes
archaeology wish fulfillment pretend to
be indiana jones
pretty boring plot because it takes out
all of the fun of indiana jones and just
puts in loads of archaeological detail
about troy
neft goodbye i can now get the book out
of my life
another audiobook i know i haven't
counted how many there were there were
too many audio books
i listened to seraphina by rachel
hartman which i've been talking about a
lot lately
i hadn't read it in years i really love
seraphina i think it's really good it's
not going to be for everyone it's quite
a
religion-focused book i think which
won't appeal to all
but as somebody with a background in a
lot of religion i find it quite
interesting
dragons it's some cool stuff it's kind
of a murder mystery
uh there's a handsome prince like it's
good stuff i
need to listen to shadow scale cause they're
very very different books and that's
quite
cool i think i think seraphina is in my
weirdest books video
but i now feel like i can talk about it
with a bit more insight
i loved it i loved it it was good time
we're getting on to the last few books
of the month
i read fly by night by frances hardinge i
like this a lot
less than the first time i read it but
the first time i read it i was much more
focused
so i think that that was why but i still
thought this was really good fun
mosca is still a really good character
i just definitely need to pick up the
sequel
i love francis hardinge's writing i love
her world building i love the way her
mind works
um this just isn't my favorite of her
books menacing and goose
then i finished anansi boys by neil
gaiman which i probably should have
talked about when i talked about
american gods because these are
kind of a series companion
books i liked this more than i liked
american gods
it is still in my home it is still on my
shelf i still think that the women are
kind of
bleh in this like what none of them
um yeah no um that's all i can say but i
liked the plot a lot more in this one i
thought that was really interesting
i liked the character dynamic there are
fewer characters which helps
it's much shorter which helps um yeah had
a pretty good time with this
it read much faster than i thought it
was going to again probably because i
was
remembering american gods and how much i
had to power through that pretty good
wouldn't
recommend it to anyone i wouldn't be
like oh yeah you have to read anansi boys in the same way as i would
probably say
neverwhere is a really good read now
we're getting into books i've just read
this week i was determined i had three
rereads left on my tbr and i was like
i can do that i can make that happen so
first i read the graces by laure eve this
was a reread
i like this a lot the second time around
i've talked about it in my vlog which
will also probably be up by the time
this is up
um this is a really good take on
what it feels like to really want to be
friends with the popular kids at school
i think
that's the main kind of theme of this
book along with some really good
somewhat spooky stuff um
you have to read this book and find out
for yourself that's it's one of those
books you just need to go in with as
little knowledge as possible
and just give it a read but i recommend
then i finished v e schwab's our dark
duet this one
i'd say if you're planning on rereading
this series i have not reread it since
2017
probably do them in order um i would say
now
it took me a while to get back into this
world and remember who was who and what
was happening
uh and it's a duology just read the
first one don't don't be me
but i did think it was pretty good uh i
remember the ending feeling somewhat
unsatisfying
and it kind of is but i think that's
really intentional it's not a badly
written ending it's just again
similarly to the poppy war it's not the
ending i would want but that's because
i'm a
person who enjoys a type of ending uh
i've realized i'm gonna spoil it for you
if i talk anymore uh let's just move on
i finished sorcery of thorns by margaret
rodgerson and
i had a really good time rereading this
i'd forgotten how much fun this book is
like grimoire's her last name is
scrivener which i find
just entertaining uh hot magician
romance fantasy it's like fun it reminds
me a lot of the paper magician series
which i'm here for anything that reminds
me of the paper magician series because
that's one of the most comfort reading
fantasy you can possibly have
it's really really good i would hugely
recommend this i didn't like enchantment
of ravens which was her first book
but i really really liked this and i'm
so glad i did i'm so glad it held up on
a reread that is everything that i read
and listened to
in the month of july it was an up and
down month in terms of reading i had
some moments where i thought i'm never
going to finish this tbr
i've switched completely to mood reading
i i'm going to be left with
50 books left to read in august i don't
know why i thought the number would go
up
but there we go towards the end of the
month i really found some energy for
reading yeah i think it's a testament to
being in the right mood to read you can
really get through some stuff
uh and i only read four books less than
i read in a month where i was
deliberately attempting to read as much
as possible so
thank you for joining me in this chatty
wrap up my tea is almost cold but also
almost finished which always feels like
an achievement in a video where you talk
a lot
um uh do go and watch my august tbr
video to find out what i'll be reading
next there is a little bit of overlap
with this one i didn't believe
in myself enough but uh do go watch that
that will be linked
somewhere you can also follow me on all
of my social media
because that's where i talk about things
as they are happening you can also
like you can comment below if you've
read any of these how was your reading
month
do you find this thing of you read a lot
of books and then you don't read any i
know that seems really basic but
let me know about it you can also
subscribe ooh i need to put my tea down
for this you can also subscribe it makes
me feel loved and appreciated
and i will see you in the next one
there's gonna be some bloopers now
yeah i'm gonna sit i'm gonna have my tea
and we're gonna go through everything
i've lost my phone now
this dress is too big i genuinely i had
it a minute ago i don't know where it's
gone
oh it's there but like very specific
amnesia where i remember that i have
read the books
but not when anyway i just must have
picked up a reread really early in the
month no i remember what happened
it's a transcript of inter in interviews
spill tea on myself i've had to switch
memory cards which is a sign that i need
to pick up the pace
it is much less longer much less long
much shorter that's what i'm looking for
