hi! My name is Penny and as usual I'm here to talk about some bookish things
specifically today we're going to talk about the last 1,000 pages of
contemporary books that I've read. This is a series I do where every time I read
a thousand pages of a particular genre then I tell you what I thought about
them, what I liked, what I didn't like, and whether I would recommend them and this
time we're talking about contemporary books... which is weird because I don't
read a lot of contemporary so I think it's probably important that you know
that going into this. Mostly I like fantasy and science fiction so these
things aren't my normal jam but I did find some things that I liked in them. So
as usual I'm going to talk about them from worst to best although I still
haven't decided what order that is. There are three books that I'm going to talk
about and the first one is Before I Die by Jenny Downham. I only gave this to
stars although I will freely admit that I am NOT the target market for this. This
is a young adult book. It is about this young girl named Tessa who has leukemia
and she has put together this list of things she wants to do before she dies.
Although one thing I will say about this is there were several things that this
book tried to make a thing but it didn't really refer to them enough I think to
make them the thing that it was trying to make them. For example when she first
writes that she was very uncommitted to this list and for a big part of the book
she even gives up on the list entirely and even though she does work through
that list, it wasn't really the focus that this book pretended it was going to be.
So I think they just set up some false expectations.
There's also another part in the book where she started writing things she
wanted on the wall above her bed but she really only did that like once, maybe
twice, and then all her family acted like this was a thing she was doing all the
time but it was never really set up that that's what she was doing. So of course
this book was incredibly sad. It made me cry. Like you know right from the start
that she is going to die and there's never really any doubt about that and a
story there in an emphasis on and it goes right up until the point where she
dies so it was very heart-wrenching and I feel bad adding a but... BUT I didn't
feel like the characters any of the characters were particularly well
developed. I also didn't think that the symptoms of leukaemia were very well
represented. That said, I don't have leukaemia, I don't really know anyone from
has suffered from leukaemia, but a lot of the time she didn't really seem to be
bothered by any symptoms and considering how close she was to the end, like there
was a point where she started getting very sick and then it was included in
the story a lot but before that I felt like her actual illness was not having
much of an effect at all which seems strange to me because from having a non
fatal chronic illness I would have expected it to be having more of an
effect on her. But maybe I'm wrong. I just would have liked to have gotten a bit
more information about what it's like to be sick,
not just this knowledge that you're going to die. Again maybe that's because
of my own personal experience with illness, that's something I was looking
for, never anything that the book promised me. Also a significant piece of
this book is a romance and you know I don't really like romance. I especially
don't really like sixteen-year-old romances that aren't really based on much. I
mean this relationship was probably more realistic than some other relationships
that I have read about sixteen year olds having. Probably more realistic than
any of the relationships I pretended to have when I was actually 16 myself. So it
wasn't that bad but I do think this book could have been a lot better than it was
and I guess that's just what it came down to is that I was a bit disappointed.
I think that a sixteen-year-old who went into this would probably appreciate it a
lot more. I know I did get given this by my sister and she said when she was
younger she read it a lot of times and it meant a lot more to her so maybe this
is a book that it would be worth giving to younger people if you think it might
be useful for them to face their own mortality. Oh but no. I've just checked my
notes. I don't recommend that at all because
there were also some really weird phrases in here that were so fatphobic. Like
there's one part where this nurse comes around to check on her and her father
offers the nurse some muffins or cupcakes or something and she says "ugh
she said yes even though she's already chubby enough" and I did not appreciate
that. And I do remember there were a few other statements about people being
overweight that we just thrown out and never really addressed and yeah, really
didn't appreciate that. So I take back anything I said about recommending this.
Definitely only a two star. There were some good aspects to it, it's not a
completely awful book but it could have been better. It could have been a lot
better and I think if you're going to approach such a sensitive topic you need
to do better. Ok so let's talk about the next two
books. I'm trying to decide which order I should put them in because the next
two books are firstly Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and I know that
if I don't put this as the best book some people are going to be quite put
out. The other book that I have to talk about is Emergency Contact by Mary HK
Choi and I know a lot of people didn't like that. So if I put that up the top
some people are going to be quite put out. However if I'm honest to my heart
about how I enjoyed the actual reading experience then the next best book would
be Pride and Prejudice and Emergency Contact will be the best book of these
three. So let's explain that. Pride and Prejudice, obviously a really well-known
story about a girl named Elizabeth Bennet who is in this family with quite
a lot of unmarried daughters and basically their mother is trying to
marry them off. There are a bunch of different men that come along is
potential suitors and Elizabeth can be quite judgmental about some of these
people, especially mr. Darcy who is the main love interest who gets himself into
quite a lot of trouble, comes across is quite a snob, probably is quite a snob
but he's very misunderstood. So this story I listened to the audiobook. I will
I will admit I listened to the audiobook all in one morning so that was a bit of
a rush. But also just the writing style. This is a classic like when was this
written? 1813 this was written. So it's written in a writing style that I just
really struggle with. There's a lot of like gossip and talking and
judgmental-ness that I just don't really enjoy. I think I do quite like the actual
story in Pride and Prejudice. I have seen several other adaptions especially the
Lizzie Bennet Diaries web series but I also watched the movie because I read
this during Reading Rush and I quite like those retellings. I think they
did a much better job or like it's probably just that I don't live in 1813
and so I don't really have an interest in that kind of life. I'm also, you know,
not into contemporary, not into romance, not into classics, so there was never
really much chance that I would love this. I do think there are some great
lines. It's kind of a fun story but at the same time if I hadn't watched any of
those adaptations of this, I would not have been able to follow what was going
on at all. Did I take any notes about this? No, that was after after I got slack. So I
don't have much more to say about this. I can definitely see why some people might
like it if you like romance and you like classics, especially if you like Jane
Austen you're probably gonna love this. But I don't like those things that much
So I mean I gave us three stars, I still thought it was okay, it was a lot
of fun, I can see why people liked it. I liked the Lizzie Bennet + Mr. Darcy kind
of romance going on and all the misunderstandings are quite well-written.
I thought all the different plot threads all fit together really well.
I just really struggle with the writing style so I think for me any future
Jane Austen explorations will have to be done through adaptations. Which is fine
because I also watched the Emma Approved webseries and quite liked that so maybe
at some point I'll try and read some more modern adaptations of Jane Austen
stuff. Okay so then lastly let's talk about Emergency Contact by Mary HK Choi.
In full transparency, the only reason I picked this book up is that the main
character's name was Penny. My name is Penny. I'm always excited to read about
characters called Penny, but I always kind of hope that they'll be really
awesome and the Penny in Emergency Contact is not really really awesome. I
do have some things in common with her. She's very introverted. She wants to be a
writer but she's also very judgmental of people who are different from her and
part of the story is about her learning not to be so judgmental and to realize
that these other people that act differently from her are still good
people. I think part of the problem is this book just tries to deal with too
many things. So Penny starts at a new college and she has a roommate and her
roommate has this kind of uncle who is about the same age called Sam. They meet
each other through the roommate but don't really connect until later when
Penny runs across Sam when he's having some problems and they decide to swap
numbers so they can be each other's emergency contact. And from there they
start texting each other and building a relationship. So the story is also
telling you about Sam's perspective of things and I did like Sam a lot more
than I liked Penny. And I thought their relationship was actually quite well
told. I thought they built a very honest and
true connection and the miscommunications and issues that
happened between them seemed quite realistic and like something that would
actually happen. But penny is just not a very likable character and I think
because the book tried to address so many different issues it kind of did a
terrible job at addressing all of them. Also Penny is
this short story about that couple in China that had a baby in second life and
a baby in real life and their baby in real life ended up dying because they
were spending too much time with the second life baby so she's Penny is
writing this short story about that and there were large chunks of that included
and although it was kind of part of the story of how Penny was learning
different things it really it wasn't justified to have to read that much of
the story. And I think that's just the problem, there was just big parts of the
story that weren't really necessary and weren't really address properly. That's
probably why a lot of people didn't like it.
Now I listened to the audiobook which does mean it was quite low effort to
get through it and so I didn't mind it too much. Now I did give this three stars.
I found it enjoyable enough. I did like Sam and Penny as a couple. I thought that
Penny, even though she is a very unlikable character, she did improve
throughout the book and she learned a lot of things but I just don't think
that the book really wrapped up most of the things that it tried to include and
Penny didn't really redeem herself enough throughout the book. I think that
if you relate to a lot of the problems that Penny has in this book then you
might really like it but it's really had to tell you about all those things
upfront because there were so many random things.
I mean I'm tempted to say that if you have a really hard time relating to
other people and you're really judgmental about other people that you might like
this book and then it might be a good book for you to read but like who's
going to admit that they're really judgmental?
Maybe you will to yourself and maybe you'll think about reading this book but
then again as I said, I don't think Penny redeems herself enough so maybe
this book won't help you if it's what you're like. As always, disclaimers. I don't
really like romance or contemporary so this wasn't ever gonna be a five star
book for me but I was disappointed that Penny wasn't more awesome. So those are
the last 1,000 pages of contemporary that I read.
Do let me know if you've read any of these books - what did you think
about them? Did you think the same as me or different? Or otherwise are these
books that you are interested in picking up? Otherwise thank you so much for
watching. I hope you're having a wonderful day and I will see you next
time :)