still reading I guess

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Hello. Hi. Welcome. This is a book video. Um, here's the books I'm reading.

[00:00:06]They'll also be in the description just in case you don't want any spoilers. And the thumbnail, right? Who is that, Angela? Who Who is that? That's not the thumbnail. Um, there we go. That's me. That's my personality shining through my glorious fat face. Perfect. Um, so I honestly I feel like I'm having such a dog [ __ ] reading here. I've only read like 20 books and it's it's it's June practically. It's practically June.

[00:00:36]We're halfway through. That's that's probably that like I think I'm on track to have like my lowest not I mean 20 books is so many books, right? I I know that my expectations for myself as like a reader, as like someone who reads all the time, I I think I should read be reading more, but like I just I it hasn't been hitting this year. I don't know. Like, you know, when you get sad and your hobbies feel bad. That's where I'm at. Uh I also I just feel like I haven't hit on like a really good book since like January, right? When did I read The Antiimedics Division? I really liked that. I haven't hit on like a fun exciting like stick in your brain book since um in my quest to find physical media. Don't let me accidentally show my address on these things. I of course I've been reading a lot of magazines. I read the Bitter Southerner. I read the um what do I read? Where do I do my crossword? What?

[00:01:46]Oh my god, I forgot the name of The New Yorker. I just Googled the magazine with the cartoons. So that's devastating.

[00:01:56]Yeah, I read The New Yorker. I get that like once a week, once every three weeks, once every two weeks or something. I've also been reading, let me hide my address. I subscribe to the New York Review of Books and these come every two weeks, once a month maybe. And these are really like it's just fun to read like articles not on the internet that are just written by human beings. Um, yeah, like there's a lot of stuff in here about books, but also like excerpts from books or like things about books.

[00:02:29]I've really been enjoying that. I also got the LA book review and this this was like all bangers. I don't know if it's usually this good. This is a um what does it say? This is the 15th anniversary anthology and so I don't know if LB is always this good. This was like 90% really good articles and I don't I don't know I wouldn't say that NYB is like 90% good articles. They had one interview with Andy Weir that was just exhausting. And also LB and NYRB, they've been doing a lot of like how we're going to deal with AI. And it's like, babe, we don't need to. We don't need to read the books that people write with AI. I'm certainly not going to. We don't need to treat it as legitimate.

[00:03:21]It's gross. Come on now. Um, but yeah, I guess like my lower book count might be because I'm reading a lot of physical media and like these don't count as books, right? I guess. I don't know, man. It's fine. Let's get into it. I'm going to try to go without spoilers. So, the first book I read since last time is an anthology of short stories called Safe as Houses by Marie Helen Bertino.

[00:03:52]And I there there was a lot of good stuff in here. I think I am not the biggest fan of short story collections. I think it's really hard to do a short story and it's harder even to do a bunch of short stories like combined together. I did do the thing where I just read one and then I waited a couple weeks and I read the next one. So I didn't like read them back toback. Um there were quite a few good ones in here. So, she is also the author of a book I read two years ago, last year, called Beauty Land that I liked about a woman who was an alien and she was like faxing her home world. And uh that short story was good. I will say all of these short stories felt very like overwritten. This woman is like very successful. I think she like does, you know, all the big writers like workshops like in Iowa and stuff and I feel like you could tell that that all of these had been workshopped. Um, some of them were very funny, which I think is hard to do. Um, overall I would say I liked it. I would say she's talented. I would not read this again, but I would by her future novels. Um, yeah, that's that's all I have to say. I mean, the standout ones are probably the one she turned into a novel. There's an interesting one where she takes Bob Dylan back to Thanksgiving dinner.

[00:05:16]There's one where someone's house catches on fire and like the smell follows them throughout the story that I thought was really interesting. Um, if if that sounds interesting to you, follow your heart. I think I'm gonna donate this. Uh, I would not read it again, but I would read more from Mary Helen Bertino. The next book is a pre-order, which I read I read in the same year I received it. I think the same calendar year, maybe. Um, I'm on track. Like, right now, I don't have any pre-orders that I haven't read yet.

[00:05:47]That's really exciting. I have more coming in June, but I'm reading the books I pre-order and I'm not pre-ordering as much because I'm thinking like, well, that book will still be there. I can still get it.

[00:05:58]Anyway, please clap. I read my pre-order. I read Half his Age by Janette Mccertie. I want to talk about the book, but then I want to talk about the discourse. So, the book I thought was fine. I think Janette Mccertie is a good writer and I think she is only improving and I will read the next thing that comes out. Uh her first book was more of a memoir and I that's what I took away from it. I really enjoyed her writing. I I enjoyed her way of telling stories and you could really see that in this book. She's really good at characters. She's really good at small details. I just I didn't buy the character and so I couldn't get into the book. So this is a story of a high school student who like gets infatuated with her teacher and you know statutory rape happens and like it was fine. I I I didn't I don't think I got anything out of it. I I will keep reading Janette Mccertie and I will donate this book.

[00:06:54]Um, I think I gave it three out of five stars, but I will say I have unfollowed like four separate booktubers based on their reactions to this book. There was like a lot of clickbait of like this book disgusted me and I just immediate unfollow. I'm sure I do clickbait without realizing it. I really try not to. Like sometimes people sometimes people will call this clickbait. Like I made a video about how a movie is bad and titled it this movie is bad and they're like that's clickbait. And it's like well no it's a video where I describe why I think the movie is bad.

[00:07:32]That's not clickbait. But if you make a thumbnail that's like and it's like disgusting and then you talk about how much you loved the book but the the actions of the characters were disgusting. Like to me that's clickbait because you're trying to trick people into thinking you found the book disgusting instead of finding the content of the book. You do you nobody cares. I mean we all unfollow people for different reasons and it's so fine. I just like a lot of people who I had followed for like a long time on book. I was just like what are you doing here?

[00:08:06]And then there were also people who actually found it disgusting, which like there were people who were like, "This book is about a high school teacher having a relationship with a student and that's disgusting and so I would never read this book. Like gross. This book shouldn't exist." And it's like, well, the the book condemns that behavior.

[00:08:27]Imagine reading The Stranger and being like, that book condones murder. It's about a murder. And it's like, well, no, textually, it's very much not condoning the murder. And what do you mean? It's shocking to realize that someone is talking about a book and that they didn't understand the book. And it's also humiliating for me personally cuz I'm like, have I ever done that? Have I ever been like, here's what this book is about, and completely missed it? Like I guess books are up for interpretation and you take whatever you want out of them, but like I mortified mortified if I held this book up and it was like ew. High school teachers shouldn't have sex with their students. Like yeah, the book says that that's bad. That's the point of the book. Like oh that was rough. Um yeah, that that's that book. I I thought the book was fine. And I mean, I think if I was in a different age range, like if I read that when I was 20, I might have got more out of it because I would have been like, "Oh, I haven't thought about this yet about power differences and age gaps and things." But like as a fully grown ass adult woman, I was just like, "Well, yeah, baby girl needs an adult in her life to slap that man, probably." Okay, so the next book I read is Glaciers, a novel by Alexis M. Smith.

[00:09:50]And I bought this purely because the cover is beautiful. I love a small book.

[00:09:55]This is a book that takes place in one day. It's about a woman, a librarian working in Portland, Portland, Oregon, I think. And she kind of starts a relationship one day, a one day journey, a real Ulisses situation. Uh people always call those Ulisses, and it's like I wouldn't I wouldn't say this is a Ulisses. Um, so overall, I don't know how to feel about this book. There were a lot of really good onelines in it. I really liked the main character. I thought she was an interesting character. There's an element in this book and also in the short story collection that it's about men who like joined the army and went to Iraq. And I just I find that difficult.

[00:10:46]I don't know. I find that a difficult topic to read about and not really empathize with. It's just like I know so many people in real life who have lived that story and I find that often when people write about it, it doesn't feel true to life to me based on the people who had that experience in real life. Um, I did like this though. I would definitely read another book by her and I I think I'm gonna keep this.

[00:11:18]Um, and I would recommend it to a specific type of person.

[00:11:23]Yeah.

[00:11:25]Yeah. Should I tell you who that specific type of person is? I don't know. I I would recommend this to someone who wants like a real life version of a manic pixie dream girl because that doesn't exist, right?

[00:11:37]Someone who like has these interesting quirks but is also a real character.

[00:11:41]That's what I found interesting about our main character in this book. So, if you're into that, Glaciers, I did. I liked it. Okay, the next book I read is called The Three of Us by Aura Agabaj Williams.

[00:11:56]And I I like this cover. I like the font a lot. I bought this at a used bookstore slashcopy shopbar called I think it's I think it's called The Book Barn in Sandusky, Ohio. If you're ever at Cedar Points or like Eerie or something, I really liked this place. The owner was really nice. They had like a coloring table. I went during the day, got a coffee, and they had like really reasonably priced used books. I think this was like $3 and uh $4. Yeah, screaming deal for a used book. And I really liked it. So, you know, shout out.

[00:12:34]I hope it's called The Book Barn. I'm going to look it up. There will be a picture right here. And if I was way off on what it's called, I'll do a voice over.

[00:12:41]>> The place is called The Sanduski Book Bar. Okay, I do recommend it. It was cool. It was a cool place. Sorry. Sorry.

[00:12:50]Sorry to them. Okay, bye. Uh, this is a book about Oh, I'm going to put it down so I don't hold it up. So, the three of us is about a like subculture of British upper class people that I wasn't aware of that are like Nigerian British immigrants, like third or fourth generation from Nigeria and they're wealthy. They're successful and they do see I I don't know anything about England, so this was all new to me. So, these Nigerian people like push or the stereotype of them that's presented in this book, they like push their kids to be super successful. They go to like the private schools and they like demand that they get like these really highpaying tech careers and like you're only successful to me if you're the barristister that makes the most money and you also have four beautiful children that I can see every day. And I wasn't aware of this subculture, but this book follows three now adults who like are in this culture and grew up with parents like that. And so obviously they're they're kind of messed up because their parents have been pushing them and pushing them and pushing them and now they're kind of adults and they're like, "Well, what do I do with this?" And uh it was interesting to learn about and I really I liked this book. It uh is a story in three parts told about three people. So each person has a version of events and I want to compare it to what it's that play by I think it's Edward Albby called Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf where it's a dinner and everyone's being polite and doing like hospitality conversations but there's something in the background that like keeps kind of pushing through the surface and like it all comes to a head that's very similar to this uh book where these characters are kind of having dinner and then like you feel this huge tension the whole time that's only building. I thought it was really interesting and yeah I don't I don't want to spoil it so I don't want to say anything else but you can kind of see how that like upbringing and having your parents determining every little step you make would kind of [ __ ] you up as an adult. Like maybe you're like 32 and suddenly you're like whoa I make my own decisions. This is crazy. I don't know. I I found it a really interesting like insight into this group of people I had no idea existed because I don't know anything about England. I will tell you they talked a lot about going back to Nigeria for Christmas and it sounded amazing. Like let me in on Nigerian Christmas. That sounded really cool. And also the amount of drinking British people drink so much. I will be watching like a Vlogmas and a British a British lady will be like just gonna get a cheeky drink after work and she'll have three cocktails before 700 p.m. and then get dinner and then go to work the next day. That's insane. If I'm going to have three cocktails, that's like a premeditated decision to ruin the next two two and a half days of my life. Like British people drink so much. Like this takes place again in like a evening and they're drinking bottles and three people bottles and bottles of wine.

[00:16:03]Insane amount of drinking. Oh, I liked this. I would recommend this if it sounds interesting to you and I would read another by this author. I think it was really told really well and because it's like the three different characters telling the story, you I also got the sense that it was narrated by different people which I think is hard to do. I mean, when you're writing to like have the voice change, I don't know. I liked it. This is printed like really badly.

[00:16:34]Why do I care so much about books? I was going to make a video about print on demand books and it's just that like nobody else cares. I'm the only one that cares. Well, I know I'm not the only one, but like I want to say one in 20 people care about print on demand books and book quality. And when I complain about it with the veracity that I feel, I just I seem like a crazy person. I seem like a psycho. I'm like, "Aren't you mad about this? Look at how shitty this is.

[00:17:06]Look at it. This is an This is not a print on demand book." The quality of the book itself is really good. I just like the uh this seems like it was blown up in a way that makes the image not look great when you look at it closely.

[00:17:19]Like, it's fine. Nobody cares about this. Why? Why am I like this? Okay, I read Inner Mezo by Sally Rooney. This was my first Sally Rooney. And I read it mostly because in this book or in this anthology of LB there were two separate okay one of these was called everyone's a critic interrogating the contemporary critical hatchet job by Richard Joseph and it was originally published in 2022 and it talked about how people are so shitty towards Sally Rooney and previously in this book there was a very negative review of a Sally Rooney book by a person I would say is just jealous based on reading their books. And I just I was thinking, why do I only hear critiques of Sally Rooney? They must be jealous. And I was like, I have a Sally Rooney book. This is the only one I have. I'm going to read it. And uh yeah, I would say they're just jealous. People are rude to Sally Rooney. I mean, maybe because she's like an outspoken political activist. like I I I will have to look up the story to make sure it's true, but but the UK passed like a an anti-free speech law that was like if you critique Israel that's the same as anti-semitism.

[00:18:38]And so if you were to say like factually Israel is committing a genocide in Palestine and hor horrendous war crimes like the HEG for the people in Israel responsible in the UK that's like a hate crime. And Sally Rooney from Ireland took a hard stance and was like absolutely no I will continue to speak out about this. And she was like I'll lose all my money. I don't give a [ __ ] Very impressive. like very courageous. I appreciate her doing this. Right. And I think so so people are either jealous of her writing skills or they're mad at her for being an activist. I guess that is what I understand now after having read a Sally Rooney book, which I think people say this is their least favorite.

[00:19:24]So that's the only one I read. Um now I get it. I think people are just jealous of Sally Rooney. They're jealous that she writes, I think. Um, anyway, I don't know if any of that made sense or if any of that's going to make the video, but I will say I enjoyed this book. This is a book about two brothers that are separated by about a decade. Their father dies and they kind of attempt to repair their relationship. Uh, they interact with women in different ways and it like all comes to a head and I liked it. I really enjoyed the writing.

[00:19:55]I really enjoyed the characters. I I feel like Sally Rooney is a really descriptive writer and she does that really well with like scenes, but also her characters emotions. There was a character in this book that I would describe as awkward, but also maybe coded as like not neurotypical, I guess. And I thought she did a great job describing the way he was feeling when he was interacting with strangers or interacting with his family members and kind of his mindset as he's like overanalyzing things and walking away from them. I I wouldn't call this like a new favorite or anything. I'm definitely going to check out more Sally Rooney. I just I didn't get a lot out of the relationship in the same way.

[00:20:36]I guess like when I watch Field of Dreams, I don't have the same feelings that often like a man who never hugged his father has. And so I just I also don't know if I was very satisfied with the ending. The ending, I think it was intended to feel like, oh, this is a resolution of their struggles as a family. And I was just like, this is not the end of this story.

[00:21:02]These people haven't solved it. But also, that means it was a good book, right? Because I felt that those were real people. And I felt like, oh, I would love to find out what happens to these people like 15 years after this book because I bet there were so many fights. Do you know what I mean? I I overall I really enjoyed this. I will definitely read another Sally Rooney.

[00:21:23]Which which one? Should it be Normal People? People really like Normal People, right? Was that made into a movie or something? I'm not I don't know. I'm not up on that. So, the next book I read last night, actually, is Kappa by Rayuna Suk Akuragawa.

[00:21:38]And I love this cover. Also, this is New Directions, the publishing house. As someone who cares about what books look like and how they feel in your hands, 10 out of 10. I recommend this specific publisher. Yeah, they do a lot of stuff that you will see at bookstores actually. So, I mean, people probably know about New Directions publishing, but this is a good one. Okay, I love the cover art, too. So, this is a book written in 1927 by like one of the most famous, I think, or at least at the time, Japanese authors. It's about a man who is climbing a mountain and falls into like the world of the Kappas, which is a mythological creature in Japan, kind of like a frog with a beak. Like they're short little guys. and uh he lives with them and it's it's a kind of Alice and Wonder No, it's a kind of like Guliver's travels type story where he learns about their culture and by explaining their culture, the author critiques his own and the main character is telling the story from a psychiatric hospital where we learn as readers that probably this didn't happen. And I can't believe this was written nearly 100 years ago. It was great. I loved it. It was really interesting.

[00:22:57]I guess it's really interesting to read a hundred years later a critique of a culture that you know nothing about because like I don't know anything about Japan in the 1920s. How interesting. Uh, I loved learning about the Kappas and it it does feel very modern like they critique work life balance and philosophy and art and economic systems and like abortion rights and like family structure and the role of men versus women in the household. Uh, it was it was really good and it's really it's really tight. I think one of the things on the back says, "A novel of exquisite precision and that's a wonderful descriptor because like it's so short and it does so much. I would really recommend reading this. I really enjoyed it. I also I thought it was really well done.

[00:23:47]I just I thought it was really well done, especially the element of the psychiatric hospital. There's a moment where because it's the psychiatrist telling this story, our our our main character, the the narrator kind of the narrator, the guy who went to see the cabus is getting he's like so and then I came back and I had this business venture failure and the the story kind of stops and the psychiatrist is like every time he starts talking about this business venture he goes on for hours and gets angry and starts throwing things and throws a fit. So, we're gonna push him on to keep talking about the kappas. And uh you could you could kind of see that like, okay, this man is in the psychiatric hospital. He's having this psychotic break and imagining these kappas because of whatever happened in this business thing, whatever happened in his life, like this horrible event, this business ruined like now he's in a psychiatric hospital and like it doesn't give you any details on that and you're just like, "Huh? Okay, this is the story." I just you're telling me a hundred years ago people were having the same like work life balance conversation like that's crazy to me. It's just it's crazy to me to imagine that in the year like 1100 there was some guy named George and he was like a sheep herder or something and he he was going on the journey to shear the sheep and it was going to take days cuz they didn't have electric razors and he would go home and he would look at his wife and he would be like, "Man, is this my life? I'm just going to shear sheep every day until I die." Like, how have humans been the same for thousands of years? Except the sheep shearer would have got more days off because in the winter you couldn't work the fields, could you? But the [ __ ] computer works in the winter, doesn't it? We work the whole time, don't we? God damn it.

[00:25:37]Yeah, those are the books I read. Um, I liked them. I liked them fine. It was fine. It was a fine reading month. Uh, what I'm reading now, I couldn't find my copy of it. I don't know where my Elena Ferrante is. Um, which is fine because I'm listening to the audio book and the narrator is not my favorite, but she's doing I think why she was chosen is she's doing the correct Italian dialect, but also the Italian like would you call it proper? I don't know in the story. Um, so it's really nice to hear the names and the places and the food things pronounced the way they would be. So, it's My Brilliant Friend, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm like 10% of the way through. I like it. I can see why people really like it. I don't know if I'll continue. It depends on how satisfying the ending of this first book is. I don't I'm not the biggest fan of series, so we'll see. But I'm enjoying it. I'm glad I finally picked it up. And I I also want to reread in June my Emily Wilson, the Odyssey.

[00:26:42]Uh, and then I'll watch the Christopher Nolan movie. I I like Christopher Nolan fine. He's like I really like Interstellar. I'm a big Batman guy and I really like the first Batman movie. That's like a a perfect movie. I love that movie. Um but the other ones like if I'm not as into the story, his movies just feel long. And I didn't watch Oenheimer because I just wasn't interested. I don't I don't care about that. like crazy. The physicist, I already know that story, actually. I don't need to see it dramatized. Um, but I I really like the Odyssey. I think true of all nerds, as children, we just latched on to the great epics. And I've read this quite a few times. Well, not I've read the Emily Wilson one once, but I've read different translations of the Odyssey quite a few times, and I just want to reread it before I watch the movie. So, I'll finish Elena Ferrante and I will also read this probably. And honestly, that might be the only two books I read in June. So, yeah, maybe I got to read more weird stuff because I did really like Katha. I don't know. Anyway, I guess.

[00:28:01]Yeah.

[00:28:02]Oh, I did I did a book club, Patreon live stream book club with the left hand of darkness. I think it went really well. So, I was going to pick like five books and have a poll on my Patreon to see what book we should read next. So, I have to do that, too. And I'm just staring. Most of these are books I've already read, though. So, yeah. Okay.

[00:28:24]Well Well, that's that's it then. Okay. See you later. All right. Everything's solid. Okay. Lie.