Hi, it's Maija here with my wrap-up of books 16 to 20 that I've read this year.
(I am very behind on my wrap-ups.) But this is a bit of an unusual wrap-up for me,
because I'm only going to be talking about one science fiction book and one
fantasy comic, and then the rest of the things that I'm gonna talk about are two
non-fiction books and one play. As always, I will leave timestamps to the separate
reviews in the description so you can click on the ones that you are the most
interested in. So first I'm gonna talk about a science fiction novel, and that
was Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, which I read from the library. And this, as you
may know, tells about an expedition of four scientist women into Area X, which
is this place where nature has gotten pretty weird. And they are the 12th
expedition to enter and something bad has happened to pretty much all of the
previous expeditions. So I didn't think that this book would be for me, so this
was a huge surprise by how much I really loved this book. So this book has been on
my radar, I knew about this series, but I wasn't that interested in it, because I'm
not big into New Weird or stuff like that. But when I heard that there was a
movie coming out, I thought I'd try it out - and it was very short, so let's just
try it out - and I was so surprised. I was completely captivated by this, I read the
first half in one sitting, which is quite rare for me. In the end I
finished the book in three sittings, and I think the best thing for me would
have been to finish it in two, because I read the last chunk of it on the bus,
and then I wasn't really that into that part, the ending part that I read, so I think
that if I had read it in two sittings, I would have been completely captivated by
the atmosphere without any pauses to break my concentration, and I would have
really liked the end part more. I think the part that I loved, that really got me,
was the writing style - for some reason I just couldn't stop reading it and I wanted
to know what would happen, and this was a pretty big surprise. So I already have
the second book, Authority, from the library, but I was very pleased that the
first book completely works as a standalone: it is basically a standalone
book, but there are two more in the series. I gave Annihilation 4.5 stars,
I really liked how not much was answered and how weird everything was. I did see
the movie later on and it is pretty much completely different from the book, apart
from the setting and the main premise, so if you have seen the movie, you can still
read the book and get a completely new experience. I personally preferred the
book more. Now moving on to the non-fiction, first I'm gonna talk about
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte
Cristo by Tom Reiss. This is a fascinating story about General Alex Dumas who was
the father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas. And Alex Dumas was an aristocratic
black man rising through the military ranks and commanding armies in
historical France. He was the son of a white French nobleman and a black slave
woman. He was born in Saint Domingue and later traveled to France with his father and
joined the army. And this is also the story of the French Revolution and the rise of
Napoleon and the racial policies of late 1800s - early 1900s France. I think the
reason why this takes a pretty wide look into the history of France and the
French Revolution is because the author might not have a ton of material
on Alex Dumas. I did learn a lot while reading this, and he did find some
completely new material locked in a safe. So most importantly of course I learned
about the existence of General Alex Dumas himself, but also some very
interesting facts about race in historical France, like the existence of
the National Colonial Institute which was an interracial elite secondary
school in 1790s Paris and was later shut down under Napoleon. I also learned about
many instances of racism that have modern counterparts, for example France
was big on being "the land of the free", there being no slaves on French soil -
their ships and the colonies were another story.
So when slaves escaped from the colonies and came to France, a lot of them were set
free in these freedom trials. Of course there were people who weren't big into
this, and were like: "Oh, the freedom principle was always meant to be just
for white people", but this would lead to some people in charge coming up with
these depots, essentially prisons, in French harbors - and they were not
considered to be on French soil, so they were extraterritorial. And when people
would come to the harbor they would just put them into these depots and then
they would be free to deport them back into the colonies. I gave this one 4.5
stars, this was on my five star prediction video, so I did pretty
well with that, and the reason why I took the .5 stars off was that I got
a bit bogged down with some military campaigns in the middle of the book, and
also I would have liked for there to be pictures in this book, because the author
talks about some paintings and portraits and statues about Alex Dumas and I would
have liked to see what the author is describing - even though I
found some of that stuff online - but I would've liked for them to be in the book. I
also learned that there was a statue of Alex Dumas near the statue of his son in
Paris, but it was taken down by the Nazis and a new one was never erected. And I
would highly recommend this book to everyone. As a little aside, Goodreads says
that this book has 414 pages, but this
essentially ends on page 340, so it's not that long, the rest of the book are citations and
stuff like that. The second non-fiction book that I read
was How to Be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman, which I read together
with Rachel from Kalanadi and Kelsey from The Fancy Hat Lady reads, and this
is a fun and informational look into the everyday lives of Victorians. It goes
through their day, that is the way that the book is organized, so it starts with
chapters like Getting Up and Getting Dressed, and ends with chapters like A
Bath Before Bed and Behind the Bedroom Door. So the best thing about this book,
apart from the very large amount of interesting topics that it covers, is
that it doesn't focus on any one class, so it compares and contrasts these
things between different classes, and I think it might even- the focus might be a
bit on the lower-class side, which I found to be refreshing. So, for example,
the hair-styling chapters might be more from the upper-class perspective, and
then the food chapters might be from a lower-class perspective. And if you want
to know about things like beard styles through
the Victorian era, or how Victorians did their laundry, or where they worked, read this
book. A lot of the focus I have to say is on London, but we also take a look at
farmers and fishers and miners in different parts of the country. I'm gonna
say that this could be a useful read to people who think that women in Victorian
times just stayed at home looking after the kids and didn't work. I'm just gonna
give out a little example of a factory working family: so, for example, the mother and
father would be working in the factory and the oldest boy would be looking
after his siblings, until the point where he got old enough to get
more money from his wages at the factory than the mother, and then the
mother would stay at home to look at the kids and the young boy would go to work.
So I gave this one four stars, I learned some very interesting tidbits and it was
fun all the way. The play that I read was Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, and
this is the play that the movie My Fair Lady is based on. So it tells about Henry
Higgins and his friend who take upon themselves to turn Eliza, who is this
flower girl from the streets, into a lady, and pass her off as a member of high
society at a party, and they don't really consider Eliza's feelings or what she
would do after this bet is over. I decided to read this because Libby
Stephenson posted a video called "Pygmalion, My Fair Lady, and how Hollywood
ruined feminism", and I thought: I'm gonna read the play first, and then I'm gonna
watch the video- which I still haven't watched, but I will! I really liked how
Shaw was very against a Higgins-Eliza relationship, and also how the readers'
sympathy is always on Eliza's side. And I find this to be very much worth a read,
I gave it four stars. And finally, the fantasy comic that I read was Another Castle:
Grimoire, by Andrew Wheeler and Paulina Ganucheau, which is a comic aimed at
younger readers, from about 10 up or something like that. And this tells about
Princess Misty of Beldora, who is kidnapped by the evil ruler of the
neighboring kingdom called Grimoire. So she is expected to marry him, but she has
a chance to escape, and then she decides to stay and help overthrow the villain
because of the way that he treats his monster citizens. I picked this comic up
because of Paulina Ganucheau's gorgeous pastel-colored art and great
character designs, like this gargoyle jailer who bakes, or this lady with
snakes for hair. The story on the other hand was was very abrupt, especially the
beginning was very ham-fisted: I was like oh-oh, what's gonna happen... It got a bit better,
there were some interesting story beats, but the plot, the story, was very thin. But
the art and the monster designs were so very pretty that I gave this one 3 stars -
the art totally raised it up from, like, two stars or something like that.
So those were all the books that I'm gonna talk about in this wrap-up, I read these
books all the way back in February. But let me know in the comments if you have
read any of these and let's talk more there, and I will see you in my next video.
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