Hey guys, it's Kirsti. Welcome back Michelle and welcome to my quarter 2 Global
Reads video. For those of you don't know, Global Reads is the, kind of, segment I
do regularly on my channel where I talk about the books that I have read and
loved that are set in a variety of places around the world - basically,
anywhere outside of the US, the UK, and, like, fantasy or sci-fi worlds. So I have
12 books to recommend from this past quarter that are set elsewhere in the
world. To start off with, I have 3 books to recommend that are set in Australia. The
first of these is Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty. I'm sure you all know at
least something about the plot of this book by now, thanks to the HBO series -
which, incidentally, I watched on the plane on the way to London and it's
fucking amazing, so definitely watch that. But the book, in contrast to the series,
is set in Sydney and it is phenomenal. It does such an amazing job of capturing
the dynamic of a parent cohort at a primary school. It just does it so well
and it definitely kept me guessing through until the end. It's very very
funny at times - like, it's incredibly black humour but it is very funny - while
also dealing with incredibly serious issues. Trigger warnings for rape and
domestic violence where this book is concerned, but it is phenomenal. Next up
is Begin End Begin: A #LoveOzYA anthology, edited by Danielle Binks. First of all, how
fucking pretty is this book? I cannot even deal with how gorgeous this is.
This one is actually set in, like, a bunch of different places. There are a couple
of stories set outside Australia. There's one in particular that I can
think of that's set on Mars, but the bulk of the stories in this one are set in
Australia and they're all by Australian young adult authors and this book was
just so good. All of the stories are phenomenal. I think I gave all of them
4 or 5 stars. Like, I just... I just loved this book and this collection and
I'm not a big fan of short stories so the fact that I loved this as much as I
did is saying something about how good a collection of short stories it is. It is
just phenomenal and none of the stories feel incomplete. Like, I would have been
happy for any of them to be full-length novels, but at the same time I wasn't
left feeling like I've missed out on anything by these stories being so
short, they all feel like complete entities in their own right. And the
third book set in Australia that I want to recommend is Words in Deep Blue by
Cath Crowley, which has basically just come out in the US, appropriately
enough. This one is a young adult contemporary book that is predominantly
set at a bookstore somewhere in Melbourne's, like, south western suburbs, I think? It
follows the story of two teenagers who have just finished high school and one
of them is mourning the death of her brother and the fact that she's had to
move back to Melbourne again and the other one just kind of doesn't know what
to do with his life and the fact that this girl he was best friends with has
come back into his life again. So I adored this book. The characters are great,
the story is great. But what I loved most about it is that it's set in a
secondhand bookshop and that the bookshop is essentially a character in the
story in its own right and it was phenomenal. Moving slightly further away,
I want to recommend one book set in Antarctica, and that is Out of the Ice by
Ann Turner. This one is a thriller. I thought it was actually going to be, like, an
environmental thriller but no. It's just a straight-up thriller. Essentially, this
woman who's been working in Antarctica as a scientist is sent to this other
location in Antarctica to investigate an old whaling town that was set up by
Norwegian whalers in I think the '50s? So she's sent to investigate this town and
explore the possibility of it being opened to tourists in Antarctica and so
she goes there and weird shit starts happening. This one... I was kind of
hesitant going into it because, like, it just sounded a little bit weird and the
main character in the initial stages of the book, I was like "I don't know if I
like you or not..." But I ended up really really loving this book. It definitely
kept me guessing until the end and I totally did not anticipate at all what
the big plot twist thing was going to be, so definitely check this one out as well.
Next up I have 5 books to recommend that are set in Asia. The first of these is Six Four by
Hideo Yokoyama and, like, seriously? These pages are amazing and I love it.
This one is translated from Japanese, it's set in Japan and basically, like, 15
years or 20 years or something prior to the beginning of the book, a school
girl was abducted in Tokyo, there was a ransom demand made but something went
wrong and she was found dead. And now, like, 20 years later or whatever, this
police detective who used to be in the murder squad and is now working in
the press corps or whatever, he has been charged with making some kind of big
announcement to do with the case and he starts looking into the case and starts
to realise that something somewhere along the way went horribly horribly
wrong. It is quite slow-paced and you sort of
feel like you're not actually getting to the point before realising like 200
pages in that "Oh shit, I'm actually here and it's actually all happening, it's
just not happening in this, like, one big catastrophic moment."
Speaking of Japanese crime novels, The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino.
This one was mind-blowing. It's the story of a woman and her teenage daughter.
The woman's abusive ex-husband I think he is?? comes over one night and he
somehow winds up dead and they end up that they have to hide the body. So it's
equal parts them, like, freaking out and the police investigating and you, like,
you know from the get-go who committed the murder but what you
don't know is are they going to catch the person who committed the murder. So
it definitely was an intriguing story. I absolutely sped through this book. It was
so compelling, it was so, like, just fascinating to see how the story played
out and I really really loved this book. Next up, Every Falling Star by Sungju Lee.
I read this one for the AroundtheWorldAThon. It is set in North Korea
and it is billed as the first young adult biography that deals with North
Korea or something along those lines. So basically, the author grew up in North
Korea. When he was like 11 or... 10 or 11, I think, he and his parents were basically
exiled from Pyongyang and he has no idea why and then one day his father says "I'm
going to go across the border into China, and I will be back in a week" and he
doesn't return. And sometime later the mother says "I'm going to go to the
nearest town where you're, you know, aunt or something lives, I'll be back
in a week" and she never returns. So he ends up that from the age of 11, he's
essentially living on the street. And it's his story through until he
eventually escaped from North Korea at the age of, like, 16 or 17 or something. It was
such a powerful story. It is, obviously, own voices and it's an autobiography and
it was just such an incredible story. Next up is Warrior by Zoe Archer. This
one is a steampunk/fantasy book that is set
in Mongolia and it's completely ridiculous. It is the first book in the Blades
of the Rose series, which I have absolutely loved as I've worked my way through it.
And it's set in Mongolia in the, like, 1850s, 1860s, something like that. And
basically, this soldier ends up that he's in Mongolia for some reason or other. He ends up he
falls into contact with this woman and her father and they basically end up
that they go on this sort of, like, expedition to find this ancient artefact
that is going to save the world. There is a lot of romance in the story
but I ended up I really really loved this one and I love the fact that it's set in
Mongolia and that Mongolia was so critical to the story. It's not just like
she took a story that could have been set anywhere in the world and went "I'll put it there"
for the hell of it, it actually, like, Mongolia itself served a purpose and the
people of Mongolia served a purpose. So I really really enjoyed this book and, like,
how many, like, steampunk fantasy books are set in Mongolia?? And the final one I
have to recommend set in Asia is Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. It's a family
saga that starts out in Korea at the beginning of the 20th century
and it follows the story of one Korean family through the 20th century as they
are forced to move to Japan and then how they're treated in Japan and then how
they deal with war. It was an astonishing piece of writing. It's incredibly long, I
think it's about 750 pages, certainly on Kindle, so it took me quite a while to
read it but it's such an incredible story about a part of the world and a
period of history that I knew very very little about. So it was just fascinating
reading. I loved the characters, I loved the writing, I loved the themes that flowed
through the story and how, like, certain things kept happening to certain
characters in certain generations, you sort of had this sort of cycular [cyclical] effect
through the generations and it was just an amazing book. I have one book to recommend to
you from South America and that is The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel
Vasquez. I loved this book. It's kind of a noir novel about this guy who meets a
former pilot and then the former pilot is gunned down in the street and he
starts kind of investigating his life and finds out that there was a whole lot
more going on than he ever knew. So it's really really interesting, it's very
well-written, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. Like, it was definitely not what I
was expecting it to be and I just really really loved it and I
can't even really explain why I loved it so much, but it's just great. And finally,
I have three books to recommend to you that are set in Europe or kind of...well,
one of them is the border of Europe and Asia but we'll call it Europe for the
sake of this. The first one is one that I'm sure you've heard about a bunch of
times before and that is All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This one is
set during the Second World War and it tells the story of a blind teenage girl
and a German orphan boy who is recruited into the Hitler Youth, and it tells the
story of their childhood and then as they grow up and become teenagers, their
stories become closer and closer together until they finally meet. So half of
the book is set in Germany and half of the book is set in France. It won a
Pulitzer Prize from memory? Or the Booker Prize? Or some kind of, like, big
illustrious prize. I think it was the Pulitzer last year. It's incredibly
compelling. The chapters are very very short so even though it's a long literary
fiction book, it's very easy to get through. I absolutely loved this story
and these characters and it was just wonderful. Then I've got Why Did You Lie
by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, which I'm again pronouncing wrong, I'm sure. This
one is set in Iceland and it's basically three mysteries woven into one and it
was so dark and atmospheric and creepy and mysterious and it kept me guessing
throughout the story. I had no idea what was going to happen and it was just
absolutely wonderful. And the final book I have to recommend this quarter is And
I Darken by Kiersten White, which is set in what is now Romania and Turkey
basically. So this one is a retelling of Vlad the Impaler story except that Vlad
is now Lada and is a girl and it was so fascinating. I absolutely loved this book.
The characters are great, it's a split narrative between Lada and her younger
brother, who's a perfect little cinnamon roll and I love him. And the story was
just so so compelling and I loved seeing, like, the Ottoman Empire and Transylvania
and all of that kind of stuff represented in fiction because you hardly ever get that.
So there you have it, friends. That is all the books that I have to recommend from
various places around the world this quarter. If you have read any of these
and have thoughts on them, please let me know down the comments. I would love to talk
about them with you. Thank you guys so much for watching. I love all your faces and
I'll see you on Friday. Bye guys.
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