[classical music plays]
Hello, everyone, my name is Olivia, and welcome to a week in the life vlog. I have been wanting to do
this type of a video for a while now to kind of give you an insight into my everyday life,
show you some of my weekend adventures, show you some of the books that I'm currently reading this
week, as well as some of the movies that I've been watching this week. So one book that I did
finish this week was Outline by Rachel Cusk. This took me a while to get into because it's
a very meditative, very introspective type of read, even though the protagonist doesn't play
a large role in her own story. This novel is split into 10 parts following 10 different conversations
that this protagonist has while she is teaching a writing course in Athens. So, in every chapter,
she's speaking to someone else and they are telling her about her, their life they are telling
her about their past and their issues and she's just kind of a passive observer in her own story.
She offers no real insight into her own life, and I feel like we don't actually get connected to
the protagonist of this story. Instead we are focused on the people that are speaking to her,
but they never seem to actually listen to her own life, nor does she ever actually offer any
insight into her own life. So while I really enjoyed the beautiful prose, I felt like I
was missing something and that something was a connection to the main character.
I felt like the main character was a fly on the wall to her own life and she didn't have any
actual substance, and I just wanted more from her because, while these conversations were insightful
and interesting to read about, she offered no actual insight into her own life, so it felt
like people were just talking to her instead of having a full conversation with her so it felt
very one-sided and I felt very off, and I feel like I was just missing something and it was that
substance that a main character usually offers to a story. So I did enjoy Outline, but I don't think
I would continue with the series because I'm just not interested in continuing with it, but
I am really glad that I finally finished Outline because I have always mentioned that I wanted to
read this book because the cover is beautiful so many people say it's such a wonderful novel, but,
while the writing was beautiful, it did not blow me away and the story itself did not blow me away.
Then a movie that I saw this week was King Richard because I'm trying to see as many Oscar nominated
movies before the actual Oscars, even though I think that this year's Oscars are incredibly dry
and just underwhelming with all their nominations, but I did see King Richard because I received a
box with the King Richard Bluray as well as Will's memoir from Warner Brothers Studios,
and it was amazing and really cool and such a cool opportunity. So my family and I decided to
watch King Richard one night this week and it was absolutely amazing. It was just so full of heart,
so full of love, and it really showed how much Richard believed in Serena and Venus,
even before their birth, that they would become such big athletes, and if you do not know what
this movie is about, it follows Richard, who is the father of Venus and Serena Williams
as he trains them and tries to make them the best athletes of all time. So it very much follows
Richard's story, not really Venus or Serena. They play kind of a background character to this story,
so we follow Richard as he is just going head-on in trying to have these two girls known by the
tennis world and they are growing bigger and bigger, and they're getting more opportunities,
but Richard is a very quirky type of person in the way that he acts, in the way that he
treats his daughters. He loves them very much, but he's also very protective of them, so we see that
throughout this movie, and we see the different battles that he has to face while he is trying to
make his two daughters incredibly famous, but he's also grappling with the fact that he wants them to
still be children. So I really enjoyed this story. I think it was just beautiful to see a father
believe so much in his daughters because you don't tend to see that in movies, and you don't tend to
see that relationship. And, while his relationship is somewhat toxic and sometimes he acts out in
ways that you wouldn't really want him to, I think it was just such a beautiful story. It made you
appreciate Venus and Serena's journey so much more and it made you appreciate this family because his
family was so close-knit and they just believed in each other and supported each other and you just
get to see that journey from Serena and Venus playing in the park in Compton in California
and going to Florida and competing in such big tournaments, and it's just such a cool journey,
and I'm not usually one to like sports movies. I'm usually one to avoid them, and I feel like
I learned so much from this film, and I think it was beautiful. I thought Will's performance was
fantastic and the two actresses who played Venus and Serena were also phenomenal because they had
to learn how to play tennis and they had to learn how to do it the way that Venus and Serena did,
and it was just such a fantastic movie, and I just had a great time with it. So at the
beginning of this week my family and I went up to Hyde Park, New York to visit the Vanderbilt museum
and National Historical site, and it was such a beautiful trip. It was beautiful, expansive,
but not too opulent, but the one thing is that we couldn't see the second floor of the building
because they were redoing all the rugs up there, so we want to definitely go back when it's warmer,
when flowers are blooming and trees have actual leaves on them, and I really enjoyed touring the
Vanderbilt museum because I have been a National Park nerd since I have been a kid. We always try
and go to as many as we can in our area, so being able to tour that beautiful building was just
amazing, and then afterwards we went to an antique store, and I found one really cool
thing to add to a growing collection that I have and it is a Life Magazine of Princess Diana.
This is from 1982. It was originally two dollars, but I got it for twenty dollars, and I am never
going to take it out of this plastic because it seems so fragile and it seems so precious,
and I just don't want to ruin it in any way, but I did want to add it to my collection because I have
been slowly collecting a lot of Life Magazines for people in history who I'm greatly interested in,
and I was looking through all the Life Magazines in the antique store and I stumbled upon this one
and I knew I had to add it to my collection because I recently read the Princess Diana
nonfiction that I mentioned any previous Books and Brews, and, once I stumbled upon this, I knew
I had to add it to my collection. Now it is still kind of snowy outside, and I am going to be seeing
friends tonight because it's one of my friend's birthdays and we are going to Dave and Buster's
to have like a game night, and I'm very excited because I have not been to Dave and Buster since
high school. We had this thing called Senior Week where, for the last week of school, I believe,
we had field trips every single day, and one of them was going to Dave and Buster's to play in the
arcade all day. It was such a fantastic day, and I have not been back to Dave and Buster's since,
so I'm excited to go back to play with friends and just hang out because I have not seen this
friend group since last month, so it's going to be very fun, but for now I am going to try and read
more of my current read which is I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys. This is one of my most
anticipated books of 2022– Are we in 2022? Yes. Oh my God, but this is a historical fiction novel
following Romania during the 1980s. We follow our main character, Cristian, who is forced to become
an informant for the secret police in Romania because they are under a dictatorship, and
he has to betray all of those around him in order to save all of those around him, and I'm not that
deep into the book yet. I'm only 70 pages in, and it's definitely taken a lot of turns that I did
not expect so far, and I'm excited to see where it's going to head next. I think this is a little
bit more info-dumpy than her previous novels. I feel like she's rushing to tell a story, and I'm
wondering what she's rushing towards because she has dropped so much information within the first
70 pages, and I'm wondering what she's kind of building up to and why she's in such a rush or
maybe that's just her style of telling the story. I'm not really sure. I'm still trying to figure
out whether or not I like the pace or whether or not it will slow down and kind of smooth out.
[classical music plays]
You can't hate Christmas!
Is it really a vlog if I don't finish my video in this setting? I wanted to close out this week in
my life vlog with a couple of updates because you saw me hanging out with my friends and we saw a
lot of movies, and I also finished I Must Betray You, so I want to tell you about the movies that
we saw. We had a really cozy Saturday together where we saw a lot of movies and a lot of shows
and we saw two movies. One was the Cube or just Cube, and then we saw The Ritual. Cube is a very
terrible 90s movie. It’s about a group of people who wake up in a cube and have to escape it.
It is dramatic. It is problematic. It is terribly filmed. It is terribly written,
and it was hilarious to watch. Sometimes you just need to watch a bad movie with your friends to
laugh and to make jokes and just to giggle the entire time, and that's exactly what we did. It
was a perfect pick-me-up and we had a lot of fun with it, even though it was absolutely terrible,
and I would not recommend it. Then we watched The Ritual. I have seen a lot of people talk about
The Ritual on TikTok, and a couple of times on Instagram, and it is a movie about a group of men
who go hiking in Sweden, and, in order to get back to their truck and in order to leave
their hiking trip, they decide to take a shortcut through the woods
and once they go into the woods, they are lost and unable to escape and a bunch of bad things happen,
and the best way that I like to describe the movie is Midsommar meets The Blair Witch Project. It is
a mixture of both of those films with the cultural aspects of Midsommar mixed with
the horrifying aspect of Blair Witch where people are stuck in the woods and they don't
know which direction they're going in and they seem to just get even more lost and more lost.
It was an absolutely fantastic movie. I think if you like The Blair Witch, I think you would
greatly enjoy The Ritual. It's 10 times better. I feel like the writing is so much better. It's
so much more realistic and less frustrating because the characters motivations and the
decisions that they make are very understandable and it's not that convoluted and it's incredibly
creepy. It's so anxiety inducing and leaves you on the edge of your seat. I was literally
sitting on the edge of my seat, like this, just watching the movie because it was just so
action-packed. It was just so well written, so well produced, and I just had so much fun with it.
It was such a good movie. It's not one that would re-watch again because there are certain horror
movies that I just would not rewatch for the fun of it, but it is a movie that, if you love those
types of scary aspects of being lost in the woods, you would greatly enjoy it because it was just–
it was just a fantastic movie. And now let me wrap up I Must Betray You. I Must Betray You was one of
my most anticipated reads of 2022. I always forget to say that, and it was actually a disappointment
for me. I am just very lukewarm about the story, and I just wish there was so much more detail.
I feel like we were just thrust into the action and thrust into the story following
our main character, Cristian, who has to become an informant for the secret police in order to
protect those he loves, but he's also betraying those he loves, and I just wish that there was
more detail. I wish there was more description. I wish there was more characterization because
I didn't feel connected to any of the characters. They felt very one-dimensional,
very flat for me, and the connections that they have with one another just didn't feel believable,
like the romance in the story and the connection with his family. I feel like it was very lacking,
and I just didn't feel any sort of connection to any of the characters or their relationships,
and as far as the plot, it was just very rushed. I was wondering why Ruta was rushing towards, and
she just kind of rushed through the whole entire story. The beginning was rushed to the middle,
rose, rushed, and the ending was greatly rushed, and I just wish that she took her time with it.
I feel like the story was very much a tell versus show type of scenario where she was just
telling you things that were happening and she wasn't really painting the scene
and dropping us into this story. It just felt like she was just telling us things
and things kept happening and you were just kind of like rushing alongside her. This is probably
one of my least favorite books by Ruta Sepetys, which I'm really sad to say because she's one of
my favorite authors, but that to say, this is a very informative story. I did not know anything
about the history of Romania in the 80s, when they were under a communist regime,
and I felt like this story really opened my eyes to that piece of history, made me interested in
it, made me want to read more about it, so I am grateful for that aspect. I'm really grateful
that Ruta highlighted a piece of history that not a lot of people would know about,
but I'm also very disappointed in the way that she did it, so I don't know. If you are a fan
of Ruta Sepetys, if you want to read another book by her, I would definitely pick it up,
but I wouldn't go into it expecting it to be as good as Salt to the Sea or Between Shades of Gray.
I feel like those two books were just absolutely fantastic and this one fell a little short for me.
That is the end of the week in my life vlog. I had a lot of fun filming this. It's a very casual type
of video that I had a lot of fun filming, and I hope you enjoyed it. So if you want to see any
more week in my life or weekends in my life vlogs, you want to see specific things in these vlogs, do
let me know because I definitely want to do them more in the future, but I had a lot of fun filming
this. If you want to connect with me anywhere else on social media, all my links will be down below.
If you want to join my Patreon, you can do that as well, and I just hope you enjoyed this video.
Thank you for spending your time with me, and I will see you in another video very soon. bye~