Hi everyone it's Lauren and these are the reviews for the books that I read in the
second half of January. If you'd like to see what I read in the first half of
January I will link my January wrap-up part 1 in the corner up there.Tthe
first book that I have as part of this wrap-up is a poetry collection and that
is On Balance by Sinead Morrissey. The poems in this collection focus on kind
of engineering but those are both natural features of engineering, so like
landscapes and also human feats of engineering. This whole collection didn't
wow me really, I felt quite underwhelmed by it. I did read it because it was
shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award and similarly I read Inside the Wave by
Helen Dunmore, which was shortlisted which it won the poetry category for
Costa and the Costa Book of the Year award and I was quite underwhelmed by
that as well, and coming away from both of these two
collections in quite a short space of time I just feel like poetry is
something where I don't feel comfortable with it as a reader. I don't feel like I
know what I'm doing when I'm reading poems and I seem to give up on poems
quite quickly, so if there's something I don't like I very quickly go oh I don't
like this and I don't sort tend to give it a chance. Some of the things that
happen in this book is she's not just playing with words, she's also playing
with form on the page which some people might like. I find quite annoying, and
when poems are written like this or like this for example I just...this, this
poem really annoyed me I just like, why? There's no reason for it to be done like
that. When I read poems in that form a part of me and not a small part of me
jumps back and feels like it's very pretentious very quickly and I just
think, oh no well I don't like you then. So I think for me I need poetry to be
very much about the language and it needs to be quite visceral and evocative
those are the poems that I've found, in the small amount of collections that
I've read, that I really identify with. So for me this this wasn't for me, but I do
come away from it feeling like I just haven't got it and I haven't got
something and so I'm not sure whether I'm going to continue reading different
poetry collections or if I should just go, do you know what it's not a genre for
me. I'll see how I feel. I'd love to hear from you if you've got any
recommendations, if you're into poetry or not, if you liked this
collection? I kind of feel out my depth with it so I would like a bit of
direction I think. Next I read Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell and I read this
because Lucy Powrie on her channel said that North and South I think was one of
her favorite books of last year and I've not read any Elizabeth Gaskell, I've
heard so many good things about her I've had Cranford and North and South I think
downloaded on my Kindle for ages so I thought I'd start with the shorter one
and see how I like her writing, and this book was just pure delight for me really
I think there's something about this kind of cozy 19th century writing which
is very comforting and just nice and you can just kind of slip into the
characters and it's all fun and games and I just really liked it. This book is
about a village called Cranford and it's about the inhabitants of that village we
get most of the narration from an outsider called Mary who kind of learns
about what's happening in Cranford through letters or through her various
visits and it's really about an older lady in the village Miss Matty and her
past and her family, but really it's about all of the ladies in Cranford and
just about their various goings on. I felt like the characters were really
well observed and I say that as someone who's not from the 19th century so I
don't really know what people would have been like I suppose, but it's that kind
of domestic humour where people are just very slightly eccentric and so therefore
they are quite funny and I just I really enjoyed it. So I'm definitely going to be
picking up North and South later this year as well. Next I read The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho and this was a pick for my book club and I just I don't know
with this book. I don't you know what to say, it's very very short and this is
about a young shepherd in Spain who kind of meets this magical King person who
tells him you've got to follow your dream and go to Egypt and find some
treasure and so he goes on this quest you fulfill his personal destiny and
throughout that he meets various characters who have lots of moral
things to tell him about the world. It's not a very long book at all, it did feel
like an extended Aesop's fable and it felt like a fable crossed with a parable
crossed with a fairy tale it's one of those kind of adventure
stories when nobody really has a name and they just continue and they learn
lots of things about themselves and the world along the way. I personally felt
like this book was like laughing at me but by the end of the book I just kind
of thought what was the point of this? The last line of the book might as well
have been 'maybe the real Alchemist was the friends who made along the way' like
I just felt like what, why am I reading this? Although I will say at the
beginning of the book while I was reading it, it was all about kind of
fulfilling your dreams and doing stuff and leaving your day-to-day life behind
and seeing the world and at first while I was reading it I was thinking of wow
this is pretty inspiring, but you know it did feel like a book full of platitudes
and full of ideas but nothing really concrete enough so. And I finished off
the month reading the Book of Dust by Philip Pullman, the first part of the
Book of Dust trilogy I think it's going to be La Belle Sauvage. I have mixed
feelings about this book, I absolutely loved the His Dark Materials trilogy
they were such a staple of my childhood. I reread them a couple of years ago and
still really loved them this book is a prequel to the Northern Lights and Lyra
the main character from that trilogy is a baby in this book so we follow a young
boy who works in a pub called Malcolm and his friend Alice as they get
involved in all of the various dark and friendly forces at work within Oxford.
Some people are trying to protect Lyra, some people are trying to take her away
and there's also this big flood which happens and they go on a bit of an
adventure. My experience with this book was quite odd I started reading it way
before Christmas but I was just reading it as and when and a little bit at
nighttime because it did feel like sort of curling up with an old friend and
getting back into that world which I really really enjoyed, so I wanted to
take my time with it. I do kind of now think that reading it that way probably
wasn't the best way to read it because the whole first heart of the book really
felt like it was scene setting. There were lots of different characters that came
into the book and as is quite reminiscent of the Northern Lights
trilogy, a lot of these characters are very scientific or political and for me
I kept forgetting new people where there's all these kind of adults
in the world who kept being introduced and I couldn't remember kind of what
their role was within the society, but that could well have been because I
wasn't reading it kind of in one go. And then the second half of the book or the
second like, the third third of the book really, it kind of felt like a lot
of scene setting was happening and then we got into the kind of real
adventure side of the story and that bit I just absolutely whizzed through and I
got so sucked in and I read kind of half a book over the course of a day
or two I think, so I feel like to me the pacing in this book feels off but that
could be because of the way I read it. I find it difficult to be objective about
this book because I loved his art materials so much I felt like as I was
reading it partly I was loving it because we're back in that universe and
then part of me was also thinking oh I don't know if I love it as much as the
Northern Lights but then that's something that I read when I was a child
so it's very difficult to kind of compare the reading experiences in that
way and I will say that although this is a prequel and I feel like Philip
Pullman has said you can kind of...I don't I don't think he said you have to read
His Dark Materials before reading this but I would really recommend that you do
because I feel like that eases you into this universe a lot better than this
book does. I also found it very dark in places and there was some fantastical
elements in here which I felt like came a little bit out of the blue and I think
without the context of his what materials this would feel a little bit
weird, I imagine for kind of a novice reader to the universe.
I'll also reserve my judgment until the other books in this series come out
because and to be fair with something like the Northern Lights although it's
the beginning of a trilogy it can kind of be read standalone to a certain
extent whereas this book didn't feel like it was meant to be standalone at all
this feels like the beginning of a very long extended book and I've just stopped
at a certain point. So as always I would love to hear from you if you've read any
of these books, I'd love to hear your opinions on them. What else have you been
reading in January and how glad are you that January is over? I was so happy this
morning on the first of February, it was sunny outside and I was like yes we're
out of it it's nearly time for Christmas now!
so I hope you are well and I will see you in my next video, bye!
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