Hey Y'all! My name is Priscilla and welcome back to my channel.
Today I'm gonna do a... well today I'm gonna talk about books that I have recently DNF'd.
I have started to DNF books a lot more regularly now and I feel like a lot of
that is because I've been picking up books on whims now.
I've been utilizing my library a lot more and I've been going to the library and picking things
off shelves a lot more as well. But sometimes the books that I pick are not
working for me for one reason or another. So I thought that I'd share some of
those that I've started to compile a list of and talk about why I started to
DNF them or why I have DNF'd them. If you're friends with me on Goodreads you
may think like wow she gives away a lot of four-star ratings. And I do but I feel
like it's because of the books that I've been DNFing and a lot of those books
at best I think would have been a three star read for me.
So I thought that I'd go ahead and share some of those books with you today. Small disclaimer I hope
that I don't offend anyone if I mention a book that is one of your favorites or one of your best reads of the year.
These are my opinions and my opinions alone. Just get that out the way.
So I picked up an audiobook called Black Panther The Young Prince by Ronald L. Smith
around the time when the movie Black anther came out.
I had never read the comics and I really had no exposure to the character outside of the MCU.
The narrator in the audiobook, which I listened to in part, is really amazing
He's... his voice it transports you to Wakanda and you follow T'Challa as a child in Wakanda.
And eventually there's some threats on the kingdom...on T'Challa. His father is currently the
black panther and his father, being a protective father and knowing that
T'Challa will have to be the next Black Panther, sends him to the United States
in a guise of...um... escaping or exploring? I... see that's the
part why this is... this is in part why i DNF'd it because I didn't quite
understand the whole purpose of sending T'Challa to Chicago.
And he's posing as an African exchange student and pretty much it turns into a contemporary middle
grade [novel] of a middle school child with his best friend M'Baku. And there's not
really any black panther storyline once they exit Wakanda.
Which was really disappointing because the first part, that I really loved, was in Wakanda.
We hear about the Dora Milaje, about the lush surroundings, and of... you know
the kingdom and the pressures on T'challa. And those all... all those dynamics were
what I signed up for and I didn't sign up to read a middle-grade novel....
a contemporary novel about middle grade/ middle school issues. And that's kind of
what it turned out being as far as I got into it. So I quickly lost interest and I DNF'd it.
Next... so I picked up... Bird Box by Josh Malerman.
And if you've been following my channel you probably realize, or you will now, that I don't read thrillers.
I don't like feeling like I'm on the edge of my seat and like I can't control my heart palpitations.
Um... that's not a fun feeling for me.
I don't like scary movies I don't like going to haunted houses. Don't know why I picked up the book.
I guess just thought a lot of people had been talking about it and I felt
like it was one of those well-received, cross appealing books that everyone seemed to really enjoy.
And it had the movie rights sold or whatever so I'm the kind person likes to read movies... books
before the movies come out. So I bit the bullet. I put it on hold and it finally came in.
And this book... I'm a scaredy cat
didn't like it. I didn't enjoy... I read a lot at night. I read a lot in my bed.
I didn't like... feeling scared before I went to sleep.
I would hear creaks in my house and my house was settling or whatever and I would jump.
And I don't like feeling that way... that's... I'm not about feeling like
that as I'm reading a book. So um... didn't get very far into it. I mean there wasn't
really anything else about it that I didn't like. But yeah. It wasn't for me.
So the next book I am kind of scared to mention because I know a lot of people
really love this book. But I DNF'd Autoboyography by Christina Lauren.
And this is a YA contemporary that follows a boy in Utah who has to go back
in the closet because of the Mormon religious super conservative community
he has been moved back to. And he is in this senior high school class that
requires writing their own biographies, writing a book. And I also listened to this one on audio, in part.
And I didn't like it. *chuckle* I mean it was okay but again this is
a book that I feel like at best would have been a 3-star read for me.
There wasn't really anything that was gripping me and that was making me excited to go back to it.
I felt like the narrator was terrible. He was so dull. Like he gave no life to the story.
And I feel like in audiobooks a huge part of the narration
is the performance it's not just simply reading the text. It has a lot to do with
the performance value that the production value that has been enhanced
that enhances the literature, right? So I felt like this narrator he reminded me a
lot of the narrator from um... The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Which I listened to last year.
And that narrator was so dull but that... I really liked that story so I could push through it
but his stomach is growling in parts of it! And while, his stomach was... this guy [narrator]
they're not the same person, I don't think.
but while the narrator of Autoboyography didn't have like weird sounds going on in the background,
it just it was dull. It was boring. And I wasn't excited to get back to it. So I DNF'd it.
So I was browsing in my library looking for Asian American Pacific Islander books
for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month. Very last minute
because I put my TBR together at the last minute.
And I found two books that I ended up sadly DNFing.
So one of them was Sorry Please Thank You Stories by Charles Yu.
And this is a short story collection...
I've got to stop picking up short story collections I've just have not been having a lot of luck with them lately.
But this one sounded really interesting because it was supposed to be sort of
um... a bunch of stories that had sci-fi /speculative fiction kind of elements to them.
There's a story... the first story was amazing and it had to deal with this company that had
innovated [created] this technology that allowed employees to extract grief and emotion
from people so they don't have to experience it. But they employ workers
that have to experience these grief-stricken emotional moments for them.
So, for instance, someone has to go to a funeral and instead of feeling that
emotion themselves an employee jumps into their psyche and experiences all
the grief and the uncomfortable and unease that they
person would have otherwise experienced during this time frame.
There's parts where some of the employees have to experience the death of a child which is apparently very
expensive and etc. So that story was really good. But as I started reading
more and more of these short stories I realized that the male character in each
the male main character in each of these stories was the same exact character.
He a... he's a John Doe. He's a filler kind of guy. He doesn't have much personality to him.
He's rather boring. He's the nice guy. He cares about others more than he cares for himself
but no one seems to care enough about him. He never wins the girl. They never notice him.
They never take him seriously. And after a couple stories I was just like nah.
I'm not in the mood for this. I'm just... I can't I can't do it. And I DNF'd it.
The second book I picked up that I ended up DNFing was Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang.
And this is another short story collection. These are actually more lengthy.
I think there's only like six or seven in this story. But she is a Chinese author that writes
about Chinese immigrant experiences. And, while it is fiction, in part I felt like
a lot of it was inspired by some her real life experiences. But I don't know.
These stories just were not working for me. The first one was okay.
But I felt like she was using this sort of intense tragedy to form a connection with the reader.
But I wasn't really feeling it. And I felt like it was almost pushing it
too far to get a... get some sort of reaction from you. And I didn't appreciate that.
For instance, there's a part where she's going on and on about
how poor her family is and how her parents are struggling to feed not only
themselves but their children. And they have to sleep on mattresses on the floor
with rats and cockroaches and they can barely make rent. And she gets pneumonia.
And her father... she... she ends up throwing up all the food that she's eating and
her father gives her his food his portion and he ends up eating her vomit.
And... okay. I don't think that that is completely far-fetched but at the same
time I don't like that sort of tragedy... in fiction, I guess. It just... it wasn't working.
It just wasn't working. And it didn't help that all of her writing in these short stories
like... I don't think she believes in page breaks *awkard chuckle* or periods
at times... like there would be paragraphs and pages that continued on to the next
page without a single punctuation, without a single period, without a single
page break. And I was like oh no! I can't. I can't do these run-ons. I just can't do this thing. No. DNF!
So I'm actually really sad to talk about the next book because it was gifted to me.
And I started it but I I'm having trouble to finish it. And I'm having trouble getting much farther in it
because I just... I'm not really liking it.
And that book is 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border by Juan Felipe Herrera.
And this is a book that my sister actually bought for me for my birthday.
It is a part of her [my] birthday unboxing
that I did a video of that... if you want to see that. But um. I don't know.
Like this book is mixed media in a way. There's poems and there's journal like...
journal entries and there's like pictures and um newspaper articles and things.
And... I've been reading a little bit more poetry here and there.
And this poetry I just... don't really like. Like there are literally just lists in here.
Like there is a poem called 187 reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border and then there's the remix.
This is the remix. And it's literally just a list of...
*reading* Because Lou Dobbs has been misusing the subjunctive again.
Because we dig a tunnel to Seattle.
Because it's Indians land stolen from our mothers.
Because Latin America petrochemical juice flows first.
Like it literally goes on like that... for several pages. I don't know if... and then there's another poem
that's very similar to that. (Followed that.) So I got about 50 pages in
and I don't know. I'm gonna give it another shot when I have the mental space and
the clarity to jump back into it. But if it doesn't work for me again the second
time I may end up on hauling it. Unfortunately.
So I think that that's a good amount of books to talk about in this video.
I'm... I would like to know if you like watching these kind of videos.
I don't really talk a lot about the books that I don't like on this channel.
But I thought I'd challenge myself to do a different sort of video. Let me know what you think
if you've read in these books I would be really interested in hearing from you in the comments -
what you thought about them. If you've read any of them and you think that I should give them a second shot
I would also like to hear them in the comment[s]. That's all I have for this video.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you in the next one! Bye!
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét