Hey there, it's Olivia-Savannah here from Olivia's Catastrophe. And today I'm here
to recommend books to you based on my bookmark collection.
So I have done quite a few videos like this before now. And one where I
recommend books to you based on my mug collection. And I've done one
where I recommend booktube based on my favourite things. And this probably won't
be the last of them because I'm actually enjoying
doing these recommendation videos. So for now I've got eight bookmarks. And I'm
here to tell you about those bookmarks show them to you. And then recommend you
some books. So the first two bookmarks come from The
Seasonal Pages which is a black owned stationery and bookmark shop.
She has some really cool things for sale up there so if you want to support
a black small business I definitely will recommend you to The Seasonal Pages.
I have an affiliate link down below and if you use the code OLIVIA10
you get a 10% discount and you will also be supporting
not only The Seasonal Pages, but you'll also be supporting me.
Now I've got two of their bookmarks here so first of all let's go with the first
one. And that is this beautiful bookmark. We've got a
black girl on the bookmark and she's reading a book.
And she looks really cosy in this little location. It reminds me of
a coffee shop. So for this bookmark I'm going to be recommending you
My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braith-Waite.
And I know that a serial killer is not the most cosy thing
but I feel like this was my expression when I was reading this book.
Because I thoroughly enjoyed it all the way through. So My Sister the Serial
Killer is about these two women who live in Africa, I think they live in Lagos. And
they're sisters. And one of them is a serial killer. She ends up killing a lot
of her boyfriends and their sister kind of helps with that
when it comes to disguising the bodies and kind of pretending that she doesn't
know too much. And it's all about the sister dynamic
and sister relationship in this one. But also
about what it means to aid a serial killer in
their serial killing. So this one has been pitched as a thriller and I just
want to be a bit wary of saying that because I feel like it's so different
from other thrillers that I've read in the genre.
It's a much more quiet story and a lot of the themes are kind of
embedded deep into the writing. You kind of want to think about it to really pull
them out. But I did really love this. It talks a
lot about femininity and beauty as well as race and also education.
And as well as that it has the family dynamic which is very very complex. And
you get to hear a bit about their background
and how their upbringing might have led them to what they became
in the this present day. Really recommended. It was a very good book.
Next bookmark I have from The Seasonal Pages is also this one which looks a bit
like a very cosy. reading nook. We've got books on the
shelves in the background and whenever I see this I somehow think of reading
books for uni. And reading them in different locations
across the university grounds. And just finding little cosy places
where I can read. Especially as we have a book cafe called Curiositea.
Which is just so cosy. There's books everywhere, there's games everywhere and
it's got like, vegan cakes, great coffee and tea. I miss Curiositea.
I'm going back there soon. But this made me think of my uni texts
and I wanted to recommend one of my Black uni texts. So we've got here
A Question of Power by Bessie Head. Now I don't think A Question of Power is going
to be a read for everyone because it's very
abstract. And if you don't like abstract, if you don't like feeling confused then
you're not really going to like this one. But I thought it was a very very good
book. It follows this woman who has a son and she's moving from one country in
Africa to another country in Africa. And while she's getting settled there
she's talking about the displacement that she feels
and having moved in, being able to see the similarities in the culture in this
new country but also seeing it as irrevocably different from
the country that she came from. And at the same time she's being haunted
by these demons in her mind. So it is focused on mental health.
And these demons speak to her and impact her living. And she's just trying to care
for her son. Now, I think it did a very good job with
the themes of like, mental health, of motherhood and trying to balance both
of those at the same time. As well as moving into displacement
between cultures. I thought all of that was done very well and it was very very
interesting. I just had to get comfortable with being
confused through quite a bit of the book because it's very hard to tell and
distinguish between reality and what's just happening in her mind. Which
again, just added so much to thinking about this one.
It's one of those books that I finished but I was still thinking about a whole
year later because there's so much to process.
And there's so much to unpack with this book. So the other six bookmarks that I'm
here to show you are all from Sabine from Sabine's Book Nook.
She has an Etsy shop and she gifted me some of her bookmarks. And i think
they're absolutely brilliant. so i'm gonna be showing them to you and
recommending books based on those. And I'll leave a link to her
channel and also her Etsy down below. So first of all we've got this little
night sky one. And you can see the silhouette of a palace or a castle
in the background. So I had to choose a book with a royal
family in it. And I had to choose one that I recently read and really enjoyed.
And that's going to be The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty.
So this one is a desert fantasy and it set Egypt, in Cairo.
And it follows Nahri who is just this girl who's a thief. And she's just trying
to get by and live her life. And to make money she decides to do this
ritual where she calls upon these djinn. And well, maybe it goes a bit
too well. And she gets swept away into this world that she never knew
existed. I think this book did a lot of things very well for being the first
book in a series. I think it introduced us to a lot of
characters. And I really liked that the characters were very morally grey. No
one was very bad, but no one was very good or
entirely good either. And you can see all of the nuances
between them. We've got Nahri., who's got a lot of developing to do. She's got a
whole new world to break into and she's definitely trying to process all of this.
And I enjoyed being with her on that journey. And I also really liked
the world.The world building was fantastic. It was creative. It was
different from what I've seen before in fantasy.
And I'm just very much looking forward to getting to the second book. Because
the way this one ended had me wanting a lot more. Up next
we've got Sabine's bookmark that says professional book lover on this one. And
when I was trying to think of a book for this I was thinking like, what book would
a professional book lover read? And then I thought there's nothing.
There's no book that makes you a professional or a better reader
than anybody else. So I decided to go for a graphic book just because I feel like
a lot of the time people think comics -- reading comics or graphics
is not actually reading. When it is. You can read them as an adult,
you can read them as a child. You just read what you want to read,
basically. So I'm going to be recommending you The Authoritative
Calvin and Hobbes. And this is just a collection of loads and loads of the
Calvin and Hobbes comics. I was gifted this for my birthday...
it's got a note here. From my friend. So when I turned 17
my American friend got this for me because of the fact that he loved Calvin
and Hobbes and I'd never ever read any Calvin and Hobbes.
I think it's just -- it wasn't something that I grew up with and he really wanted
me to experience it because it's one of his favourite things.
And I had a lot of fun reading through these comics. They're just light-hearted
ones for children. And Calvin gets up to a lot of trouble. He
brings Hobbes along with him. He's got attitude. He wants to do things
his own way. He's got a vast imagination and they're just
very fun. That's all I can really say about them. Then we've got
these gorgeous bookmarks from her. And these bookmarks have like, a person
reading on the cover and there's plants exploding out of
them. And on this one it says insects. And I chose a book that
just felt very calmin. I don't know. When I
look at this bookmark it makes me think of nature, it makes me
think of reading outside in summer and I find it very calming.
And I chose a book that was blue also to match the bookmark. And that book is The
Other Bennet Sister by Janice Harlow. So this is inspired by Pride and
Prejudice but it's kind of... it's not really a Pride and Prejudice
retelling but as a Pride and Prejudice extension.
So by the end of pride and prejudice a lot of romances have happened but
there's one character in it who hasn't had a romance. Well, there's...
there's more characters in it who haven't had their romance yet.
But one of them is Mary Bennet and so this is Mary Bennet's story of after
everything that's happened in Pride and Prejudice.
And her kind of navigating her own romantic life.
I really did enjoy this one. It is a big. It's a big book and I don't think it
needed to be this big. But that aside I really liked Mary
Bennet's character. I felt like I could relate to her in a lot of ways.
And it was just a quiet story about her finding her way. Finding
not only what she wants to have in a romantic relationship, but she also finds
herself and her own identity. She has been told
for a lot of her life what she should be like
and maybe that's not her. But now she's discovering what she wants to be like
and who she is. And it was really nice going on this
transforming journey with her. Okay, up next we've got this night sky
bookmark. It's got some planets on it. It's got
the moon on it and the stars. So I guess it's actually a galaxy bookmark and not
just a night sky bookmark. And I was thinking of books that do with
night and I immediately thought of No Friend But the Mountain by Behrouz
Boochani. This is a non-fiction book but there's a scene in this where they
are traveling throughout the night and that scene is just burned into my
brain. The descriptions of it and the way that he describes everything
that's happening and all the people around him...
it was chilling. And it chilled me to the core. And it's at the very beginning of
this book. So I should really tell you what this
whole book is about before I just -- I just gave you a big description of like, a
scene that was memorable rather than the book.
So the book is a non-fiction book. It's a memoir and we're following Behrouz
Boochani as he tries to enter in Australia
and gain refuge there as an immigrant. But yeah, we're following Behrouz
and he's trying to enter into Australia. However, he gets detained and detained on
Manus island. And then it's all about what happens on this island, how he's
treated, how other people are treated, what people are driven to,
what people are like there. And it was very a very eye-opening experience to
what the detainment prisons can truly be like. This whole book was written on a
phone. A smuggled in phone to the detainment
prison. And he sent it via text message to a translator. This
is not originally written in English. It just blows my mind that he wrote all
of this on a phone smuggled in secret to get this
story out there. And to tell the truth about what it's
really like there. It's got some poetry interspersed in the
prose and I think it will work very very well. And it's a very important story.
Then we have another one of these bookmarks again with the plants coming
out of the head of the person. And this book,
it says insects on it. So you can see the like, silhouette of the body on this
bookmark and as soon as I saw the silhouette of the body I also thought
about this book. It's Not Me It's You by Mhairi
McFarlane. And that is because it has that kind of
that body thing going on as well. So I just had to
recommend this one because I really love MacFarlane's books.
I think she does a very good job with the comedy and the humour.
But also it being about real people and real people's struggle while also making
it funny and creative. That's brilliant. It's Not
Me It's You is about this girl who decides its finally time to propose to her
boyfriend. And as she does so she finds out that
her boyfriend has been cheating on her. However, that's not the end of the story.
Her boyfriend wants her back. And now she's suddenly realising that
maybe she isn't to blame for the fact that he cheated and he did all of these
things. And maybe the problem is not her. It
might be him. So this is really her finding her
own way and navigating a newly single life and the fact that
her boyfriend cheated on her. The fact that she still loves him. The
fact that he cheated but also I really like that it's about her identity and
her discovering herself. The main character in this one writes a
comic and she kind of -- the comic is her alter ego. And through
that comic she manages to explore and find herself a lot more. And there are
pages of the comic included in this book which I thought was a really nice touch.
The main character is someone who's funny but she's also really going
through a lot of difficult emotions at the time
that this book is happening. And I just thought it was a fantastic read.
I've only read... I've read a few mcFarlane books but I've never been disappointed
by one yet. And then last but not least we have this bookmark
that says: I like big books and I cannot lie. But the 'not' is crossed out so it
says I like big books and I can lie because
big books scare me. And I love this bookmark
because I relate! I found it very interesting when I was
talking to Sydney Stories because she was like: Oh, I can't get on your level;
you read so many classics. And I'm like: I can't get on your level;
you read so many big fantasy books! So different things intimidate different
people. But big books really do intimidate me when they're not classics.
However, I wanted to recommend a big book that I really really enjoyed and really
love. And I feel like I don't talk about my love for this book that much. And that
is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I absolutely devoured this book. The fact
that I finished it within the same month of starting it and it's a big book,
really goes to show how much I enjoyed this one. So in this one we follow
Theo. And Theo is this young child who's in it. Who
goes to the museum with his mum but there is a terrorist attack at the
museum. And he manages to take this painting from the museum
while trying to escape. And that painting is The Goldfinch. So
the events that happen during this terrorist attack mark Theo
for life and they stay in his mind. And it's about him and his journey across
life but still how the trauma that he suffered as a
child affects him throughout this life. And how the painting is kind of with him
throughout his life, more or less. And it sounds a bit, you know, not very
detailed. But there's not really much I can tell you
without spoiling it. Please be aware that this is a very character-driven book.
There's not really much of a plot other than going through his life and all of
the experiences that he's been through. So if you like a lot of character
development and you like following a character,
then you should definitely read this one. Because I loved it.
Theo is a little disaster. There were so many times when I was face palming
and shaking my head but he just kept making the decisions that he made and he
was on a journey of transformation all the way through. I really loved the
writing. Donna Tartt's writing is just amazing. Her descriptions *sighs contendedly* So yes,
definitely recommend this one. Really really worth your time even if
it's a lot of time. It's worth your time. And there you have
it. Those are some books that I recommend based on these wonderful bookmarks. Don't
forget to check out The Seasonal Pages and Sabine's Book Nook.
Please let me know in the comment section down below: do you also collect
bookmarks? And do you use bookmarks when you're reading?
Or do you just throw in whatever you possibly can?
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onwards and upwards. Excelsior!
you