Hi guys, it's Olivia here from Olivia's
Catastrophe and today I'm so excited to
give you my 3k celebration video. Thank
you so much for 3000 subscribers. I'm so
thankful for all of you here. For all of
you who watch, who comment and who
interact with me or have shouted me out
recently.
I really really appreciate the support. Yes, we do need to acknowledge that a lot
of you guys started to find me after you
were supporting black creators due to
the murder of George Floyd and the
celebration is a little bit tinged with
some sadness because of this. Because it
took that to be able to grow my channel.
I sailed past 2k when I wasn't really in
the mood to film something to
celebrate and then into 3k after that. But I'm still thankful and I still
wanted to celebrate with you guys. And I
thought that a great way to do that
would be by making a video. And I put on
Twitter
thank you message and asked what you
would like to see and Ola from Ola Magick
replied recommending that I recommend
books based on my favourite things which
could be a great way to get to know me a
little bit better.
I do have an old video up with 50 facts
about me which is not actually that long
despite it being 50 facts, so I'll link
that down below if you would like to get
to know me, personally, better, if you're
new here. But if you want some book
recommendations as well, let's talk about
a few of my favourite things.
I've got ten books to recommend here and
ten favourite things. The first one that
I'm going to do is my favourite animal. And this did transform over time. It used
to be dolphins and now my favourite
animals are owls. So for owls I decided
to go with the book that kept me up at
night. And for that I'm going to be
recommending the Legend trilogy by Marie Lu.
So I had this book with me when I was
babysitting and it was really late at
night. I was starting to feel really
tired and the parents just would not
home yet. And I needed something that
would keep me up. I started reading
Legend and I got like, halfway through
very very quickly. I raced through this
and then I came home. Even though it was
like, the middle of the night and I was
exhausted, I read the whole book. I stayed
up even later, even though my eyes were
literally closing while I was
babysitting. Then the next day I read all
of the second book and the day after
that I read all of the third book. So I
literally raced through this series. It
is one that will keep you up. I don't
think it's the best series overall. I
think I rated it, the first one, three
stars and then the second one five and
then three. Which matches my ratings for
the Hunger Games, funnily enough. But I
just feel like the dystopian young adult...
there's something that can be so
addictive, so thrilling that just
keeps you turning pages all the way
through. I haven't even told you what this
book is about yet. So you follow Day
and June. It's set in this dystopian world
and Day's kind of the Robin Hood of this
world. And June works for the authorities
in this world. And when June's
brother is murdered, Day becomes the
prime suspect. And she decides she's
going to hunt him down. However, in this
game of cat and mouse, maybe not
everything is as it seems.
It was a really really good book and I
think the second book is the best one in
this series. Literally blew my mind. But I
am looking forward to reading the
continuation series, Rebel, by Marie Lu,
hopefully soon. Then we have my favourite
colour and for my favourite colour... well, my
favourite colour is orange. Specifically
sunset orange. I love those tones. The sky
is like a moving work of art. How do
people not spend their time watching sunrises
and sunsets every single day of their
lives? Ao I really love sunsets and for that I
chose a book that has the best series
ending because the sunset is the end of
a day. And for that I chose Light by
Michael Grant.
When I was doing this recommendation
video I didn't want to choose loads of
books so that I'd already recommended but
this is literally the best series ending
ever. Ever! I feel like series endings are
so hard to get right but this one does
it so well. It shows you where all the
characters ends up, it closes the plot, it
is very realistic, it shows you a bit of
what happens after the plot is all
finished up so you can see how it's
still affecting the characters a little
bit later down the line. It literally
gave me everything I wanted and more. And
I literally like, raced through this and
then screamed once I finished. So the
first book in the series is Gone. It follows
this area, Peridido Beach, where there are
loads of kids. And what happens is in a
flash, poof! All the adults disappear.
Everyone over the age of 15 disappears. A
dome falls over the city and all of the
children start -- well not all of them -- some
of the children start to develop
superpowers. And loads of things happen
from there. It is a crazy wild ride. Next
up we have my favourite instrument and my
favourite instruments is the harp. Not
many people on booktube or like, on my
bookish online world know that I play
the harp. I love the harp. However, I haven't
played in quite a while because I'm
lending out my harp to someone while I'm
at uni because it's just too big for me
to bring from the Netherlands to the UK
for a couple months while I'm there and
then I come back... and it's a whole deal. A
harp is a big instrument. But I do play
the harp. I don't mention it too much
because I like to have a hobby that's
just for me. And so I wanted to choose a
book which features music in it. And for
that I've chosen Ecstasy by Mary Sharratt. Ecstasy follows the story about Alma
Mahler and is actually fiction. Historical
fiction that's based off of her true
diary. And Alma Mahler is the person who
marries Gustav Mahler who was a very
famous composer. However, what people
don't know is that she also composed her
own works and music was very much her
passion. However, her husband wanted her
to give it up. And she does try to do so. And this is her story about how she
struggles with stifling her creative
passion so that she could please her
husband. And what that leads to and the
impact that it has on her mental health
and her entire life. So this one is like
one of those slow-paced, slow magic books.
The ones where like, not a lot is
happening but you're really following a
character and their emotions. And while I feel like Alma does yield a
lot to what Gustav Mahler wants, you can
see the detrimental effect it has on her
mental health, on her whole life and her
whole being and how it's really seeping
into everything she does. And I feel like
it's a very good book about how we
should not give up what we love to do
for other people. I really enjoyed
reading it and I love seeing how music
was just infused with this book all the
way through. It made me go and listen to
the music afterwards because the way it
was described... so so beautiful. Then the
next one is my favourite drink and no
one's gonna be surprised here when I say
that tea is one of my favourite drinks.
And I decided a book that goes well with
tea is literally any book. I always drink
tea while I'm reading. But I feel like
I'm going to choose a non-fiction book
because tea is something you digest, you
let it sink into you, let it heat you up
and like, reach all the areas of your
body. And that's exactly what we need to
do with nonfiction. We need to absorb it, we
need to understand it and we need to let
it reflect how it's gonna affect our
lives and what we're gonna change. So
that we can better incorporate this in
our lives. And I'm gonna choose a book
that I read back in January which was
Your Silence Will Not Protect You by
Audre Lorde. Audre Lorde is my favourite
essayist. The way she words things, the
way she says things, she is just
down-to-earth and she's gonna tell it to
you in a simple straight and effective
manner. If she uses a metaphor to
describe what she's talking about she's
got the perfect one for you to
understand. And she was a black female
lesbian. And her essays are very
intersectional. She's talking about what
it means to be a black woman. She's
talking about what it means to be a
lesbian and how people perceive her
because of that. And she also makes sure
that she's including other people's
narratives and saying how it reflects on
other marginalized communities. And it's
just so good. Please go read her essays
and learn from them. She's got so much to
say. She's so wise. At the end of the book
there is also some of her poetry and her
poetry is absolutely fantastic. I can't
stress enough how great this collection
is. The next thing we're going to talk
about is my favourite season and my
favourite season is summer.
I'm literally living right now. I love
the sunshine, I love the heat, I love the
long days, I love light. So
digging the summer. And I decided to
choose a book that reminds me of summer
when I think of summer I always think of
the beach. And if we're thinking of the
beach I think of We Are Okay by Nina
LaCour. So We Are Okay is what I would call
a slice-of-life book. Again, another slow
magic one. It's a quiet book. It's a
contemporary that is very
character-driven.
And although there's some plot in this
one I wouldn't say that the plot grand
reveal is the main point. I think the
point is the emotions and the character
and everything that she's going through. So not to spoil anything I'll just give
a brief synopsis. So in this one we
follow Marin and one day she just
packed up and left everything of her old
life behind her once she discovers
something that literally shocks her to
the core. And makes her feel like she
needs to isolate herself from everyone. So she's gone off to university to kind
of be alone and recover and process her
emotions. And her best friend Mabel from
her old town where she used to come from has
decided she's going to come visit her at
University. And Mabel brings up all these
old memories and makes her confront what
happened. This book was really good for
how it described loneliness and grief. I
feel like it did those two topics very
very well. The writing is beautiful. It
makes me think of summer. And I love
books that have summer in them. And as well as
that it's got some like sapphic tones in
here as well. So definitely read that one
for this too. And I believe this one is
own voices. Favourite non bookish
hobby and for that I have to say yoga. I
love yoga equally as much as reading.
It's something that really has changed
my life and really helped me for the
better. I even have an Instagram that's
completely dedicated to yoga and cooking
and food because I also like that. So
there'll be a link to that down below.
But yes, yoga is really something that
calms me, it grounds me,
it keeps me like fit because I use it as
exercise as well. And it just makes me so
happy and gives me all those positive
emotions. So for that I wanted to choose
a book that makes me happy, that makes me
feel calm. And if I had to choose any
book like that I have to go with an
Alexis Hall romance book. Alexis Hall is
a new adult author who writes mainly m/m
romances as far as what I've read of him
so far. It's own voices, I'm gonna
recommend Waiting for the Flood by
Alexis Hall. This one I read when I just
needed something calming. It's a novella
so it's not very long. It doesn't take
too much dedication. It's also got no
explicit scenes. Often Alexis Hall's books
do have explicit scenes in them but in
Waiting for the Flood there are none. And
it's just about these two characters who
live in England. He writes British
romance. It's very British. It's brilliant.
And the... one of the men has gone through
a breakup a couple years ago and he's
just still not over it. He's very grumpy,
he lives alone, he isolates himself. And
when he is preparing for his town to
flood because in England we sometimes
get a lot of floods in certain places. The like... flood control people come in
and start helping the people to prepare
their houses for flooding. And one of
them is this ginger, very extroverted,
very funny, very happy guy. And he starts
helping the grumpy guy protect his house
and they start a romance. And it's
adorable and it's lovely and it was
everything you need to smile by the end
of the book. Then I'm gonna talk about my
favourite flower. I love white roses. I
think they are so pure but they are so
painful as well because they've also got
thorns and all of that. And I think
purity plus the like, thorny aspect of
them just make them absolutely gorgeous
flowers. So I chose a book that is
painful but so pure at the same time. And
I talked about this a lot because this
is a middle grade book that literally
blew my mind last year and that is The
Space We're In by Katya Balen. And it's
illustrated by Laura Carlin. So this book
follows Frank and Max. Frank as ten and
Max is five and Max is his autistic
brother. Max struggles with colours, with
certain flavors, with sudden movements,
with anything that breaks out of his
usual daily routine. So the family are
kind of very orientated around looking
after Max and supporting Max. However,
Frank, being a 10 year old boy, does need
some love and attention too. So we kind
of follow that dynamic. We also have the
parents. The dad who's always at work and
the mum who has
to stay at home and look after Max and
Frank and is very stressed by doing this
all of the time. So yeah, that's the setup.
And then tragedy strikes the family and
they have to adapt and get used to it
and process it. This book gave me so many
emotions and it's really really good. I
love what it said about siblings, about
how love manifests. It was very
coming-of-age even though it's not like
the teenager coming of age. It's a
childhood coming-of-age.
Frank is really learning about himself,
about Max and how him and Max fit
together as brothers. I loved seeing
Frank and his friends interact. I loved
seeing how we get to see adults as human
people who are their own entities, who
have their own problems and who are
perfect in their imperfections. It was
just overall such a hit for me. While
it's not own voices for the autistic
rep the author is someone who works for
a nonprofit organization which is
catered towards supporting autistic
people in their creative journeys. Three
more to go!
So the next thing I want to recommend a
book about is by my favourite bookish
quote. So choosing a favourite bookish
quote is severely hard for me because
there are so many great quotes in so
many books. But I've decided to just go
with one of the ones that I heard in my
childhood which has always stuck with me.
And that's the Dr. Seuss quote: today is
your day. You're off to great places.
You're off and away. It's motivating,
it brings sunshine and it reminds me
that every day is a brand new start to
do what you want to do better, or to just
live your life and see where it's gonna
take you. And for that I want to
recommend a book that made me want to go
somewhere. And I was actually supposed to
go there this year but with the pandemic
my plans were cancelled. So I read Patron
Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay last
year and this is the arc copy. Yhe final
cover looks like this which is absolutely stunning. And this is a book
about Jay. He lives in the US and he
finds out that his cousin who he used to
be close to, Jun, has died in the
Philippines.
However, nobody's being specific about
what happened in the Philippines that
led to his death. And Jay decides he's
going to go to the Philippines, to his
family over there, and find out for
himself. I felt like this did two things
very very well. Well it did everything
exceptionally well
but there were two things that I
especially took away from this novel. The
first one was a different perspective on
grief. A lot of the books that focus on
grief focus on a relationship that is
close to you. But the grieving process
can be very deep but also look a
little bit different when it's someone
that you used to know, who you're not
close with anymore. And I don't see that
kind of grief represented much in books. So it's kind of refreshing to read it
and hear and see how the author handled
that. And as well as that this was the
first book, I believe, I read set in the
Philippines. And it just taught me so
much because it does focus on the
political situation happening over there
under a certain president, and how
violent it is. And it was very shocking
and eye-opening to me because this was a
situation I knew nothing about previous
to reading this book. And then I did a
lot of research and it just opened my
mind to a new situation. It reminds me of
how much I'm always reading when
learning and how important it is to read
across the grid as much as I possibly
can because I can just keep learning
about so many situations that are
important and affect people worldwide. The next thing I'm going to talk about
is my favourite superhero. I'm not that
big on superheroes. However, my youngest
sister is which means by default I've
learned a lot about superheroes. And I do
have my favourite. My favourite superhero of
all time is Batman. He wears a lot of
black. I love black. He doesn't have a
super power that comes from something
supernatural. He's just a human trying to
do the best that he can. I really support
the idea of somebody who doesn't have
superpowers trying to do the best they
can for people. That's fantastic. It's
also set in Gotham which is this really
dark city. There's a lot more to Batman
that I love that I could get into, but
we're here for the book recommendations
not for me to just talk about
superheroes. But Batman -- I wanted to
choose a book that was very dark in a
way, or was just not what I expected. I
expected to not like it and then I ended
up loving it. And for this I'm going with
This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz.
So This is How You Lose Her is a short
story collection. However, all of the
short stories interlink. They interlink
because they're following the same
character. But they are distinctly short
stories following different parts or
times in his life. They're all
interconnected but they're all separate.
And I think that was a masterful way of
handling the short story collection. And
it's basically about cheating. And I hate books on cheating. It's just
something I don't really enjoy reading
about. So in each short story there's
something to do with cheating or about how
you lose your girlfriend by doing
something terrible. Or just you lose a
relationship by doing something awful
that you shouldn't have done. And it just
it made me feel all of things because we
do follow this main character throughout
them and we get to see why they are the
way they are. What situations they've
grown up in to lead to that. However,
they're not using the background as an
excuse for everything. But it's just
giving you some guidance into how he
thinks about relationships and what his
perspective on relationships are. We can
see when he makes mistakes. We can see
when he's choosing not to correct those
mistakes and we get to see a lot about
his culture. The writing was absolutely
fantastic and very very beautiful.
However, I want to be mindful about the
author when we go into this book. So
Junot Diaz has been accused of sexual
assault by some women. However, research
was done into it, apparently, and the
results came up inconclusive. And it
seems a bit shady to me. I'll let you
look into that yourself and make up your
own mind. I didn't know this when I read the
book and I didn't buy the book as I was
borrowing them for them from a friend,
but... And then last but not least Ola also
mentioned favourite place and my favourite
place in the world is home. And to me
home is where my best friends are my
family are. Especially where my family
are. This is why I use the word home
interchangeably for the Netherlands and the
UK because I've got my sister's in the
UK and I've got my parents and one
sister in the Netherlands. So I just use
it interchangeably because I see both
places as home. So if I'm choosing a book
based on home I decided to choose one
where the sister relationship is really
really good. And for that I've got a
series I've recently read and recommended
and that is the chocolate box girl
series by Cathy Cassidy. I really really
love these books. It's basically about
these two families that become one
family. As the parents have their own
children and are coming together in one
family. We've got Paddy and Cherry, a
father/daughter duo. And in the other
family we've got a mother and her four
children: Honey, Skye, Summer and Coco. And the two families come
together and it's a struggle because
they have to get used to each other, they
have to get to know each other, and the
bonds that they form and the way that
they talk about siblings in this book...
it's not distinctly just about that. It
just it hits home with me. I'm also from
a big family. I've got three sisters. Six
people's a big family I guess? And yeah,
the way that the sisters interacted... Like,
having maybe one sister they talked to
about one thing, and one sister they felt
more comfortable talking about another
thing with but loving them all equally.
Abd maybe spending time with the one who is closer to  your own age but still loving
the other two... I just... the love that
families have or the love that you can
have for people who are equivalent to
your family in your life... it's just so
hard to name or word or pinpoint. But I
felt like these books did a very good
job of showing it. Truthfully, what it's
about is each of these girls have a
different struggle during their book. And
they focus on that in their book. There's one that
has to do with -- well one of them's to do
with like, blending into the family,
moving in. One's got to do with an
eating disorder. One's got to do with
animal abuse. And they all focus on
something different. So you are getting
different themes but running across it
is the blending of these two families.
And also facing divorce as the
mother in this family was previously
married and has had a divorce. Phew! So that
was a lot of book recommendations. This video's
a bit longer than I expected but I hope
that you pick up some of these. Let me
know in the comment section down below
if you read of these if you want to
read any of these. And let me know your
favourite instrument. I'm curious to see
what the answers will be. Thank you so
much for subscribing and I'm just... I'm so
happy to have you guys here with me
talking books. Please give this video a
thumbs up if you enjoyed it, hit the
subscribe button if you want to see more
and don't you forget to hit that
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time I have a new video. And you know
what they say: onwards and upwards.
Excelsior!
