When I first started this YouTube channel
I had plans to do quarterly reading wrap ups.
In the booktube community a lot of people
do monthly reading wrap ups, but uh, I'm never
gonna read enough books in a single month
to do a monthly wrap up, so I thought quarterly
would be a good solution. But then uh, something
happened to all of us at the end of the first
quarter of this year and time ceased to have
the small amount of meaning that it previously
had. So today we're just gonna talk about
the books that I've read up until this part
of the year, whatever proportion of the year
that might be. The first book I read out of
this year, I actually started on Christmas
because it was a gift from my partner, and
that book is Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?
by Caitlin Doughty. If you don't know about
Caitlin you need to. She has a channel here
on YouTube called Ask A Mortician, and this
is her third book. Watching her videos and
reading her work has taught me a lot about
death and has also helped me mourn a couple
of losses from my childhood that I never really
dealt with. And she has also made me the person
who is constantly pressuring my loved ones
to make sure that their end of life planning
is completed. Dad! This book answers questions
that she's received from children in her audience
and has fantastic illustrations by Diane Ruz
and I actually have not finished it yet because
the question and answer format makes it really
easy to read in like, bite sized pieces, but
I'm almost done, and I definitely would recommend
it for people of all ages because Caitlin
does a really good job balancing simplifying
information and respecting her audience's
intelligence. And if you haven't subscribed
to her YouTube channel yet, please go watch
her videos and subscribe to her and read her
other books. She's awesome.
The first book I actually finished this year
was The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It's
700 pages and the last book I finished reading
before this book I finished in July of last
year so reading a 700 page book after not
reading a book for five months was definitely
a choice. The only reason I was really able
to get through it is because it was my second
time reading this book. I read it for the
first time when I was in like 8th grade. And
the book takes place in multiple time periods
so it was actually really cool because the
first time I read it I was about the same
age as the main character in kind of the primary
time period, and this time I was the same
age as the main character's parents are in
a different set of time period events. So
it was really interesting feeling the shift
in who I identified with. The book has a lot
to do with research and being in school, the
main character's parents are graduate students
during the part of the book when they're the
age that I am now, and it really kinda made
me question my own decision to drop out of
school. I was like, researching the schools
near me and stuff because I really miss that.
I miss the academic lifestyle, but also fuck
that, you know? I liked this book decently
well but definitely not as much as the first
time I read it. It's a teeny bit of a slog
at times, and also some of the things that
happen so absurdly convenient that it was
distracting.
The next book I finished was Lullaby by Chuck
Palahniuk. I've read a ton of Chuck P and
for a long time I said that he was my favorite
author. But it's also been a long time since
I last read any of his work. So I decided
that I should read and re-read all of his
work and see how I feel about him now. See
if I like him as much as I thought I did,
or as much as I used to. And I'm actually
going to be making and in depth video about
that, so I'm not gonna say much about Lullaby
here except that I really enjoyed it. And
Lullaby actually has some overlapping themes
with The Historian. They both have like, a
forbidden knowledge situation, a thing about
information being dangerous and needing to
be careful who you share it with. And they
both also involve research and writing about
your research and traveling and all that kind
of thing.
So after Lullaby I read Ring by Koji Suzuki.
And this was also a re-read, and I was prompted
to re-read this book because the American
movie The Ring is on Netflix now and I'd never
seen it before, and I read Ring and watched
Ringu like four years ago? So I wanted to
re-read Ring before I watched The Ring. As
soon as I started reading it, I felt like
I had just finished reading it yesterday.
Everything came back to me in really vivid
detail so I bailed on it like 20 pages in.
But after I finished Lullaby and realized
that it and The Historian had those overlapping
themes, I had to go back and finish Ring because
it has those themes too. And I just thought
it was a wild coincidence that I unintentionally
picked out three books to read in a row that
concern research and dangerous information
and who you should share that information
with and traveling as a part of your research.
It was a really interesting cluster of books
to read and so it was easier to finish re-reading
Ring with that comparison in mind. But I was
actually kind of bummed out by it. It is from
Japan and it is from the 90's so there is
like, a double cultural gap between me now
and the climate the book was written in, but
it sort of hasn't aged great, there's some
not very good sexual assault stuff in it,
and it made me feel kinda yucky. It's actually
a pretty cool book because it's not really
like an American horror novel. It's scary
but it's structured more like a mystery than
a horror, but it's not like American mysteries
either, really. The approach to the search
for answers, how the characters think and
the relationships they form, and where the
fear comes from is all really interesting
as an American reader who has mostly read
American and British work, and I do kind of
want to give Koji Suzuki more chances, but
I just can't recommend that anybody read Ring
because of the sexual assault stuff.
Then I read Diary by Chuck Palahniuk and it
was fine. You'll see more about what I thought
about it in that other video.
The next book that I finished was The Silent
Patient by Alex Michaelides and I decided
to read this book based on the recommendations
of several people on booktube and uh, so did
the rest of the world, apparently, because
when I put it on hold at my local library,
all 30 copies were checked out and there were
30 people in line ahead of me. And then on
the day that I picked the book up there were
45 people in line behind me. At the time of
filming my library has been closed for like
two months, so they only have ebooks and audiobooks
up on the catalog right now, so I can't see
how many people have it on hold currently,
but everybody is reading this book apparently.
And I was actually worried that that would
put too much pressure on the book, that it
was like, absolutely gonna disappoint me because
it couldn't live up to the hype. But luckily
that did not happen. This was the first book
I've read in a long time that felt like it
grabbed me and wouldn't let go until I was
done. I hated almost every character from
the moment they were introduced, but I still
clung to the story and spent my entire day
doing nothing but reading it. And I knew there
would be a plot twist, obviously, because
it's a thriller, but I did not see the plot
twist coming until I was like, a couple of
paragraphs away from the reveal. I fell for
the author's tricks hook, line, and sinker.
And there are definitely things about the
book I could complain about. It's not a masterpiece
of literature or anything, and it kind of
discourages people from getting psychiatric
help, which I hate, but I think a good thriller
should kind of chew you up and spit you out
very quickly, and The Silent Patient did that.
After The Silent Patient I read Bunny by Mona
Awad. This was also a suggestion I got from
multiple booktube videos. And I don't know
how to feel about this book to be honest.
It wasn't what I expected at all. I knew it
was kind of a surreal horror from other people's
descriptions of it, but it doesn't start that
way. In my notes it says "ummmmm??? Hard turn
into the surreal. keep thinking 'how much
longer can this book be?'" I wasn't feeling
that way because the book was dense or difficult
to read, it was just because once it took
the turn into the surreal, I had no idea where
it was going, or how it could possibly get
there in the number of pages that I had left.
I also felt like the setting was kind of strange.
It takes place at a prestigious grad school
which definitely does serve the plot, but
none of the characters felt to me like people
who would be students at a prestigious grad
school. Maybe that's my own projections but
they seem a little bit more like people I
knew my freshman year of college who took
themselves really seriously but also hadn't
really let go of high school yet than they
seem like people in their mid to late 20's
who are committed to an additional degree.
I don't know. I don't know how to talk about
this book.
The last book I attempted to read this year
is Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. This book is
about a writer's retreat where a large group
of people are locked in a building together,
but they're all horrible people and they're
all handling being locked inside very poorly,
and some of them need medical attention but
they're stuck inside this building... Um,
I started reading this book in the middle
of March and I was only able to make it through
about 100 pages before I had to stop reading
it for obvious reasons. My library has extended
its due date several times, right now it's
not due back until June 30th so I may still
finish it, but I don't know if I'm ready yet.
I haven't read anything else since I bailed
on Haunted but at the beginning of the shut
down, when the library closed, I did buy a
couple of books online that I'm excited about.
I got two more Chuck Palahniuk books, Damned
and Adjustment Day, and I also got Devil in
the White City by Erik Larson which is about
HH Holmes and the Chicago World's Fair of
1893, and The Man from the Train by Bill James
and Rachel McCarthy James, which is a book
about a whole bunch of unsolved crimes from
the late 19th and early 20th century, possibly
being committed all by the same man, including
the Axman Murders of New Orleans. And the
theory is that they couldn't catch him because
he would come into town on a train, commit
some crimes, and then bail right back on another
train, and they suggested this book on My
Favorite Murder, and I was really intrigued,
so I'm pretty excited to read that, eventually,
at some point in the future.
If I manage to read any of these books or
any other books anytime soon, I'll let you
know whenever I upload another "quarterly"
wrap up. Subscribe for inconsistently scheduled
videos about lifestyle and media consumption,
and I'll see you guys later. Bye!
