This is definitely a hazard of some sort. As of
the day I'm filming this, March 27th, I've
read 20 books this month. I've already
made videos on about nine of them, so if
you're interested in my thoughts on
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi
Coates or Human Acts by Han Kang, I
recommend my Bodies and Singularity video.
Both very different, but important
stories with powerful voices that I
recommend. And then for a bunch of YA
contemporaries I read this month,
including If I Was Your Girl by Meredith
Russo, The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola
Yoon, We Are Okay by Nina Lacour, The Hate U
Give by Angie Thomas, Under Rose-Tainted
Skies by Louise Gornall or Radio Silence
by Alice Oseman, go check out my previous
video. I loved all of these in very
different ways and I talked about them
there. And of course my review of Strange
the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. Now, onto
the rest. I read two new releases about
the refugee experience this month the
first one was The Refugees by Viet Thahn
Nguyen. This is a collection of short
stories about self identity in
Vietnamese American refugees. I really
liked the story The Other Man, which is
the story of a young man coming over to
America during the Vietnam War and
coming to live in an apartment in San
Francisco with a gay couple. It's a story
of him grappling this his identity as a
refugee, as well as his identity as a gay
man. Other than that, I kind of agree with
a lot of the reviews I've seen that this
was not a super memorable collection of
short stories. I know that Nguyen wrote
The Sympathiser and won the Pulitzer
for it last year so maybe stick to that
because it sounds like a much more
engaging story than I found this
collection of short stories to be, but
that's just me. The other book I read
about refugees this month is one that's
being talked about quite a bit on
booktube because I believe it's in
the Book of the Month Club box this
month and it is Exit West by Mohsin
Hamid. This is story of Nadia and Saeed.
Nadia is very independent and strong
willed and makes choices that she really
sticks to. Saeed falls for Nadia in one of
their classes and they come together in
a very unique way to escape their
war-torn country that they love as it
falls apart. They escaped using these
doors that lead to other countries where
they become refugees and ultimately
explores how so many people around the
world are refugees and what it means to
be one and become one. I really like the
magical realism of the doors themselves
because as Hamid has said, it isn't about
the journey for the refugees, it's about
their identity before and after they
make that journey to a new place. I just
thought that was a great tool to explore
that and it's something that I found
really engaging throughout the story.
There was a brief moment of self-harm
and it mentioned
suicide, so I just wanted to mention that.
Overall, I really liked the story and if
you're looking for a book about the
refugee experience I highly recommend
this one. Speaking of doors, let's talk
about Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan
McGuire. Great segue, I know. Every Heart a
Doorway is a story of a home for people
who have fallen down rabbit holes, gone
through the backs of wardrobes, and
entered doors to other worlds before
somehow, for some reason, then ending up
back in the real world. They don't know
how to accept their new old lives and so
they come to this home until they reacclimatise
or find their old doors again.
This book dismantles all sorts of
stereotypes and calls out loads of
different problematic cultures without
ever feeling preachy or forced. It
dismantles toxic masculinity and
homophobia and transphobia, it explores
gender expression and asexuality and
loads of other issues in a regrettably
too short novel. Because of the length, I
didn't feel like I connected with the
story or the characters very much. I
really liked the idea and the characters
but I just didn't feel like I got enough
of any of that to feel invested in it. I
feel like if the book had omitted the
murder mystery aspect that it actually
has in it, it would have given more time
to explore all these other things and
would have worked better for me
personally. I liked it and I will be
picking up the second book when it comes
out this summer, but ultimately I just
wanted more. next I read a novella called
The Melody of You and Me by M Hollis
because I want to read more books with
pansexual main characters, but I actually
really did not enjoy it. It's a very
short novella, I read it on eBook in
under an hour and it's basically just a
meet-cute between these two girls, one of
them is pansexual, and one of them is a
lesbian and it's the start of their
relationship but it just felt so
two-dimensional to me. Nothing about
these people felt real, the writing was
incredibly forced, the dialogue didn't
sound like how people talk at all. There
was this one point where one of the
characters is looking for her girlfriend
at a university that she's never been to
and she's looking for the ballet studio
and what she says is something along the
lines of, "I am looking for a class to
meet my friend Josie there" and it's like
that's not- if you were going into a
place you've never been, you just go up
to someone and say, like, "hey do you know where
the ballet studio is?" You wouldn't be
like, I am looking for a class because I
know a person in the class, like that's
just not how people talk. I really like
the sex positivity of it all and the
normalization of things like female
masturbation but ultimately it just was
not for me at
all. I did not appreciate the writing. I'm
really happy other people seem to like
it, though. I hope I can find more books
with pansexual representation that
speaks a bit more to me and feels a bit
more real. After that, I listened to the
audiobook of Unfiltered: No Regrets, No
Shame, Just Me by Lily Collins. I
absolutely love lily collins, I've always
loved Lily Collins, I've loved here for
years, so I knew as soon as i saw this
book was coming out that i had to either
read or listen to it. It was, you know, a
young celebrities memoir, but i did
still love reading it and learning a bit
more about her experiences in the
business having grown up in it because
her father is, of course, Phil Collins. She
writes about her experiences with
abusive relationships and eating
disorders and it all felt very real and
raw while also being optimistic and
hopeful. I love Lily, so it was really fun
for me and I recommend it if you're also
interested in Lily. Next was the
Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, which was a
fantastic exploration primarily on
motherhood and queer identity. It does
reference a lot of literary criticism
and high literary culture that was
essentially lost on me having not
studied English or philosophy or
anything like that. I think perhaps it
could have benefited from maybe
footnotes or something like that I don't
know but it was a fascinating look into
Nelson's life and she was very honest
about her experiences in a way that I
found super educational and honest and
refreshing. Next I read The Vegetarian by
Han Kang which I believe was also
translated by Deborah Smith, just like
Human Acts. Having loved Human Acts and
finding it such a interesting and
different and unique, powerful read, I was
expecting to really like this other work
from Han Kang, especially as I believe it won the translated Man Booker Prize last
year and won tons of other awards. The
Vegetarian is the story of a woman who
has become a vegetarian very suddenly
after having an incredibly vivid dreams.
The novel is split into three sections,
the first one narrated by her husband,
and then her brother-in-law and then her
sister and essentially it just explores
how this change really alters her life
as well as the lives of those around her,
especially in a culture that does not
really have vegetarians generally. I'm
going to be honest while Human Acts do
not have enjoyable content, I loved
reading experience because I felt like I
was being told a story that I'd never
been told before. But this was a much
less enjoyable experience, it was strange
and uncomfortable and often not in a way
that I personally found was earned. I
don't know. I'm sure there's loads that
can be said on it. I bet it'd be really
interesting to break
down in an academic setting and study it,
but I just really did not enjoy my
reading experience of it. Also huge
trigger warning for self-harm and
especially sexual assault and rape and I-
it was just not good for me. After that, I
moved on to The Unseen World by Liz Moore.
I heard loads about the story at the end
of last year and I've been really
excited to get my hands on it and it was-
I lived up to the expectations. The
Unseen World is a nonlinear narrative
telling the story of Ava and her father
David. David raised Ava by himself in a
computer science lab where he was
essentially developing AI. When David
starts to lose his memory, Ava begins to
put pieces of his life together to
figure out his full story and full past. I
love Ava and the rest of the cast of
characters and all their different
dynamics throughout, throughout the time
of this novel which takes place
throughout a lot of Ava's life. Moore's
writing is beautiful, but not
necessarily in a lyrical way just in a
way that she puts all the perfect words
together, if that makes sense, like it
just clicked so well. It's a story about
family and identity and had a really
mysterious quality that made me unable
to put it down throughout the entire
reading experience. I'm going to put an
interview with Liz Moore down below that I
really liked especially when she talks
about artificial intelligence, but be
aware there are spoilers in that video, so
maybe read the book first and then watch
the interview. The next book is Wing
Jones by Katherine Webber. Wing Jones is the
story of a Chinese African-American
teenager called Wing, whose brother is
kind of the all-American boy on track to
get a football scholarship while she just
quietly goes through high school. Then
one night her brother gets into a car
accident while driving drunk and two
people end up dead. This is the story of
how that event changes the lives of the
entire family and all of his friends and
how she takes up running as a way of
coping with the grief and anger she's
experiencing. Wing's family is the
sweetest thing ever especially her
grandmother's Granny Dee and Lao Lao who
constantly get into different arguments
especially because of their cultural
differences as Granny Dee is black and
Lao Lao is Chinese. it is worth noting that
Webber is not Chinese African-American,
but she did live in China for years and
she's married to a Chinese man, I believe,
and she also worked with a ton of
sensitivity readers to ensure that she
didn't misrepresent cultures. I met her
at a signing here in London and she
talked a lot about how she really did
not want to hurt her readers by
misrepresenting certain cultures and so
she made a concentrated effort to not do
that and to work to make sure that she
gave it the best representation possible,
which I thought was really great, so it's
not ownvoices but as
an outsider I think she did a really
great job with both cultures. Symptoms of
Being Human by Jeff Garvin is the story
of gender fluid Riley who is trying to
come out to their parents right at the
start of their fathers re-election to
the Senate, as well as starting a new
school. Riley is advised by their
therapist who is only person who knows
about their identity to start an
anonymous blog. The blog gets super
popular when Riley advises a trans girl
to come out to her parents and she ends
up getting beaten by her father and it
takes-it's gets picked up by national
news. I appreciate the depiction of
anxiety in this book and I do love that
there's some gender fluidity in the YA
world, but I didn't feel like the story
was entirely natural. The story felt like
a lot of Riley telling the reader what
gender fluidity is rather than it coming
out naturally in conversations. I'm not
gender-fluid and neither is the author
from what it can find so I'm not sure if
this was 100% the best representation.
Again, I like this book and I am happy
that exists it just felt a little forced
to me. I also just haven't done enough
reading on it to say if it's adequate
representation, but if you have read it
let me know down below yourself. And the
final book I have to talk to you about
today does not come out until July
13th, but it is Juniper Lemon's
Happiness Index by Julie Israel. After
her sister dies, Juniper is just a mess.
She uses a happiness index to chronicle
all the positive parts of her day, which
she started doing while her sister was
still alive. Then she finds a love letter
that her sister had written to a
mysterious "You" and also loses one of her
happiness index cards that conveys a
secret that she never wants to tell
anyone. The story then follows Juniper as
she tries to find the missing index card
as well as mysterious "You" that her
sister was dating and along the way she
finds herself with this kind of group of
unconventional friends that help remind
her that there is more to life than her
grief. This is a debut novel and I think
that Israel's is a great job of
subverting your expectations of more
generic characters by putting different
twists on all of them. It was a quick
read, but it was really sweet and smart
and funny and heartwarming and I did
really love these characters. I'd love to
read actually another book- I don't often
say this with contemporaries- but I'd
love to read another book about the
characters in this story. This is an ARC
copy and i just realized what they wrote
in Kayley's happiness index, oh, I have to
fill that up! How sweet. And that's
everything! I tried to make videos along
the way so that the
end of the month wrap-up wouldn't be
this long, but here we are, life goes on.
Let me know if you've read any of these
books in the comments or if you have any
thoughts on them and let me know what you
read this month, as well. I'll see you all
next time. Bye!
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