Hey there, Kazen here, and
welcome back to Always Doing.
[♪♪]
While you're going through your
TBR have you ever thought,
'oh, my friend so-and-so recommended me
that book. I should really be reading that.'
'Oh, so-and-so really loved
that book, I should give it a try'
and so on down the line without
ever actually picking it up?
That's me.
I have so many of these books that
I want to do something about it.
And I'm not gonna call it a project, and I'm
definitely not calling it a TBR because if
you've been around here for a while
you know that I don't do TBRs.
But let's just, yeah, let's call it a Pile of
Possibilities of books that friends have
recommended to me
that I haven't read yet.
So I went through my bookshelves, I went through
my ereader, I went through Goodreads and I found
all of those books where I look at the cover and I say,
oh yeah, so-and-so recommended it to me!
And I started making a list and
I had to stop when I reached
20 names of people that recommended me stuff
because I had to draw the line somewhere.
So this is the list of 26 books recommended to me
by 20 different Booktubers, all of whom I love.
And everything will be linked down below -
all of the books and all the Booktubers.
Because if maybe you've read some of these
books and you love them too you might want
to check out that Booktuber while you're at it.
And they're all my friends and I love them all so much.
Some of these books were recommended to me on
a personal level, others I just saw on their channel,
but these first two I have no excuse not to read
because the person in question gave me the book.
There's really no excuse. And the first of those I actually
got on camera. There's proof of it right up here.
But Shawn the Book Maniac gave me
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra.
I don't know much about it other than it's
one of Shawn's favorite books of all time.
So of course I have to read it.
Last year I was so lucky in that Nashwa S was able
to come over to Japan and we were able to meet.
And she was kind enough to bring me
a copy of Writing Pakistan by Mushtaq Bilal
Conversations on Identity, Nationhood, and Fiction.
Nashwa and I are planning to buddy read this
at some point and I'm excited because it sounds
like it's conversations with, and like interviews with
Pakistani writers about the literature of the country.
And I have memories wrapped up in this.
I mean the bookmark that I have is from
Tenryuuji which I visited with Nashwa when she
was here. It's a beautiful, beautiful temple in Kyoto.
And I'm kind of afraid to use this now. I don't
want to take it out of the plastic 'cause there's
so many memories wrapped- this is why I use business
cards [laugh] for bookmarks. It's too much stress.
Alba at Seriela lives in Puerto Rico, so when
she talked about Aftershocks of Disaster:
Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm and said
how amazing it was I knew I had to pick it up.
I have two books from Amy at Amy Gets Lit
and they could not be more different.
First, American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey
Into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer.
Exactly what it says on the tin.
She said this is amazing and I have been wanting
to read about police and prisons and everything
just with all of Black Lives Matter and everything
else going on. This dovetails in perfectly.
And the other book is The Squared Circle: Life, Death,
and Professional Wrestling by David Shoemaker.
I don't know that much about professional wrestling.
Most of the things I know I've learned
by being friends with Amy
and talking about it with her.
So I want to dive into the world a little bit more
and learn about the storytelling behind it and
she said this is a great book,
a great place to start.
For Cynthia at Book Whimsy I had to work
really hard to limit myself to two books,
because I didn't want to go over
two books for any one person and
there's just so much stuff that she talks about
that sounds like it's exactly my kind of thing.
But the two I ended up going with, the first is
The Autobiography of Malcolm X which has
low-key been on my backlist
radar for a really long time.
It's that 'oh yeah, I should probably read that'.
And she's the person who said
'no, you REALLY need to read that'.
And if you don't know Cynthia she is a history professor
and she teaches such amazing-sounding classes,
the likes of which they never had at MY university.
But one of the classes was called Big History,
about looking at history on a extremely long
time scale and she talked about the book
Big History: From the Big Bang to
the Present by Cynthia Stokes Brown
and she said it was a good
overview, a good place to start.
Two books from Meonicorn over at The Bookish Land.
The first is Cat Country by Lao She.
I think this was written in the 1930s and it's
science fiction where a traveler from China
somehow crash lands on Mars, and when
he gets there it's all filled with cat people.
And it's supposed to be a satire
of the society in China at the time.
The second book is also a Chinese classic.
It is Half a Lifelong Romance by 張愛玲
known in English as Eileen Chang.
We have two people who really want to be together
but through circumstances in society cannot.
But they're always a hoping to get back together.
From Kamari at Surviving My 40s there's
Not a Day Goes By E. Lynn Harris.
And I have no idea how I had not learned about
Harris because he is a Black bisexual man
writing about Black bisexual men.
And it sounds- I don't know if it's quite exactly romance.
It sounds like it is? But I have to check this out.
Laura at Book Bubbler recommended
The Edge of Impropriety in one of her wrap ups.
It's by Pam Rosenthal and it sounded like
a really fun historical romance.
And something I wanted to do as I was pulling together
this list is to make sure that I had a lot of variety,
and I do. There is a lot of nonfiction
but it's not ALL sad- I don't think it's all
sad nonfiction, but there's also fantasy
and science fiction and romance,
just the whole gamut.
Speaking of fantasy here's two
from Adri at Perpetual Pages.
The first is Reverie by Ryan La Sala and this sounds like
a very dreamy kind of world, actually worlds (plural)
because people can switch between them, I think.
But more than the story even, I was interested
in the atmosphere because this may just be
a setting-driven fantasy and I am all about those.
The second book is In Other Lands
by Sarah Rees Brennan
and this is about a boy who can travel to a fantasy land.
Yeah, there's definitely a theme going on here.
And Adri actually did a complete video on why you
should read this book so I'll link that down below.
Rachel at Kalanadi doesn't do spiders but she still
liked Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
This is a book about the rise of an *arachnid civilization
- science fiction obviously - as humanity starts to fall.
So the fact that even though she doesn't
do spiders she loved this? I gotta try it.
Kay the Reader blew my mind when she talked
about Geneva Holliday because she wrote
a series of books that starts with Groove.
It's African-American romance/erotica.
That's not what blew my mind. What blew my
mind is that Geneva Holliday is a pen name
for Bernice L. McFadden!
I have been meaning to read
Bernice L. McFadden forever
and is there really a better place than romance for me?
No. No, this is it. This is where I'm startin'.
Jocelyn at Yogi with a Book recommended
The Silence Between Us by Allison Gervais.
It is about a girl who is late-deafened but
she ends up- her family moves and she goes
from a Deaf school to a hearing school
where she's working with an interpreter.
And it's a bit of a shock, a lot of adjustment.
But while she's at that school
one of the guys in her class starts learning ASL to
communicate with her and things go from there.
The author is hard of hearing herself
and I've seen bunches of deaf
- small d deaf/large D Deaf - own voices
reviews for this that say it's great.
From Spencer at Intentionally Bookish
we have Mister O by Lauren Blakely.
I tried to read a Blakely book earlier this year
and the couple wasn't working out for me
so I ended up DNFing it, and I do want to try
Blakely again so when I saw that Spencer
recommends this book highly
I decided this is the one.
If you ever want to learn about leftist theory and thought
you have to check out Brianna over at Brianna's Library.
In a recent video they talked about
Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon.
I had his, what is it, The Wretched of
the Earth on my TBR for a long time,
but they said that this is a better place to
start so that immediately went on the list.
I knew I needed at least one medical book
on this list and I am that weird person
who can read about pandemics during pandemics
so we have The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
recommended by Doris over at All D Books.
And actually, I think Doris read this,
buddy read this, with Heidi from My Reading
Life so we'll just add her on there, too.
Yvette at Book Cave is another person I have a ton of
recommendations *from that I had to narrow myself
down to two, but I ended up going with
The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie.
This is a pirate fantasy that
includes sea monsters.
So yes.
And the other one is The Wolf
at the Door by Charlie Adhara
and this is an m/m romantic suspense that has shifters.
I don't know if it's werewolves or not, but it's shifters.
It's the beginning of the series and if I remember
correctly the series follows the same couple throughout,
which is something I like to see
every now and then instead of
every book having a new couple.
So, interested in this one.
Have you ever been watching a Booktuber and they
talk about the synopsis of a book and you go
oh, no thank you. Not a "me" book.
But then as they talk about it more they're
so passionate and eloquent about it
that it just makes you want to read it anyway?
That's what happened to me with Jen over from
*Jen the Librarian (channel name changed)
when they talked about Swimming
in the Dark by Tomas Jedrowski.
And it's about two men in 1980s Poland who
end up falling in love and they end up being
on different sides of a political divide.
It sounds like it's going to be heartbreaking
and I'm gonna cry, but it also sounds like
the language is beautiful and that it's
an incredible experience as a read.
Only two more people, three more books.
Next is Priscilla at Bookie Charm and we
have a lot of overlap in our reading taste,
but for some reason here I gravitated
to poetry that she's talked about.
First is American Sonnets for my Past
and Future Assassin by Terrence Hayes.
These are actual sonnets in poetry form.
And we never really studied sonnets in school
so I would like to like get a feel for them here.
Also, I believe that the American
sonnet is a slightly different form
from a traditional sonnet.
I want to dive into that.
And the second book is Citizen Illegal by José Olivarez
and this is just something else timely.
It's sitting on my ereader right now that I need to get to.
The last book I saw recommended by Alyssa over
at The Read Head. ("read" sounds like "red") Get it?
And it is Into That Darkness: An Examination
of Conscience by Gitta Sereny.
It is about the man who was
in charge of the largest Nazi,
not concentration camp,
but extermination camp.
The author did extensive interviews with him
and it's supposed to be confronting and interesting.
Something to really make you think. And yeah.
Again, not an easy read but I think it'll
be a valuable, interesting read.
That's 26 books recommended
by 20 different Booktubers
and you may be wondering what I'm
actually going to do with this list now.
And what I think I'm gonna do is
I will use it to mood read from.
That at least once a month I will visit this
list and treat it like a Pile of Possibilities.
From here what's most interesting
me the most right now.
If I could read on average one book
a month I think that would be great.
And then when the list starts getting
a bit smaller I can definitely,
there's always more books to add
to it and I can refresh it that way.
And I don't want to- I don't like lists
that I need to feel completest about.
It makes me jumpy and I don't want
to read anything from the list.
So I'm really trying to treat it
like a Pile of Possibilities.
If you have read and loved any of these books
and think that I should push them up in my list
in priority let me know
down in the comments below.
And don't forget to look in the description box
because I love all of these Booktubers
and you should definitely check them out, especially if
they've recommended one of the books that YOU love,
you know that there's already a connection
there. So thank you for watching,
subscribe if you're new, and I'll
see you in the next video. Bye!
[♪♪]
Thanks for watching!
I'm so happy there's a book by
and about D/deaf folx on this list!
If you know of any more own voices books
please tell me, I want to read more 🧏‍♀️💕📚
