Hello, welcome back to my channel. My name is Kat and today I am doing my September wrap-up.
In September I was going through a huge reading slump so I actually only read 13 books, 10 that are
of my regular wrap-up and three that are romances. So I'm not gonna do a separate romance video.
I'm just gonna get them out of the way really quick at the beginning of this video. So the first one
I want to talk about is Fix Me by Mia Monroe. This was the second in a series. I was blown
away by the first one but this one left a lot to be desired. I gave this three stars. The next one
I want to talk about is Kamari's by Sammi Cee. This one I also gave three stars. It was an average
brother's best friend romance. So the last romance I read was Deal with the Dragon
by Blanchard and this one I gave three and a half stars. It was okay. I thought it would be similar to
Radiance by Grace Draven. It was not. So I should just read the second after Radiance. Okay so now
let's get into the 10 novels that I read. So this wrap up actually has a huge assortment of stars.
It goes from two stars all the way up to four and a half stars and some of these I was highly
anticipating and they completely let me down and some I had no anticipation for and they were
absolute stellar novels. So without further ado, let's get started with the bottom of the pile.
This is A Legend of the Future by Agustin de Rojas. This is following a crew who is in
a spaceship traveling to one of Saturn's moons and back. On their way home, they meet with catastrophe
and it follows the crew's mental health as the remaining members decide how they are going to get
home to earth now. This immediately intrigued me because I love a good spacefaring novel.
However, this book is so uniquely formatted--in a bad way-- that I hated reading this. I hated reading this.
One of my problems with this is that there are no definitive breaks when there is a character change.
Not only is it not paragraph or chapter character change, but even within paragraphs, one sentence
could be one character and one sentence could be a different character and you don't know. It is so
confusing. You are never sure who's talking and you can't differentiate between the characters.
As well as, all internal dialogue is formatted the same way as spoken dialogue so, again, you're
never sure if a character is actually speaking or thinking and also what character is doing that.
So I read a review when I was halfway through that said "Make it to the end. The end is worth the suffering."
And I disagree because while the ending was cool, I do not think it makes up for
the entire rest of this poorly formatted and such a confusing novel. That all being said, I gave this
book two stars and I don't recommend it to anyone and I will be immediately donating it to my local
street library the next time I do a donation run. Next up is a book that I have heard nothing but
good things about from everyone and I'm very confused. This is Real Life by Brandon Taylor.
This was a buddy read that I did with Siân from PaSTORY Time and we just both suffered through
this together. Okay this is following Wallace who is a black graduate student in a midwestern town.
And so when I heard about this novel, I thought it was going to be an exploration of
race issues and microaggressions and it was that but also so much less than that.
It's more an exploration of just this really toxic friend group and this really violent
and aggressive relationship Wallace has with someone in that friendship group.
And I just really didn't like it, I really didn't like it and Siân didn't either. I think she
gave it a two. So I gave it a two and a half so I must have liked it a little better, but I am
going to be I guess the odd person out here and say I really didn't like this novel and I don't
recommend it. Next up is a novel I did have high hopes for. This is 77 by Guillermo Saccomanno, who
is an Argentinean writer. So this is following a gay university professor of literature during 1977
as he is living his life and people are just disappearing from the streets. The reason why
I gave this book two and a half stars is because there were huge sections in here where it is just
political deluge. It would just go on and on and on and it was just being like flooded with
names and places and I had no real reference of how that was impacting the main character.
For me, it was way more politically heavy than I anticipated. I thought it was going to be almost a
slice of life of a gay man during this time but it's more a political examination of that time
as he flashes back. I don't think it was for me, but I think someone like my husband per se might
get more out of it. So do with that what you will. So next up is a very easy three star. This is
Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell, drawn by Faith Erin Hicks. So this is just very fall-themed
and lovely. It's following a pair of really close friends who have worked at this pumpkin Halloween
fall season pumpkin patch for years while they're going through high school. And this is their last
time together because after this they're gonna go to university. And he has always had this crush on
a girl and his friend is going to help him finally like confess to her basically. And then they start
off on an adventure. This was sweet and also a bit in my opinion too sweet and a little bit cliche
but again I got this at my street library for the sweet price of nothing. I exchanged a book
that I owned and this will be going straight back to the street library. So no harm, no foul.
It was really cute for Halloween season and yeah now I'm going to donate it back. So funny enough,
the next three books are all books I read for my non-binary mini burst. So I was not reading any
non-binary authors and I knew that I needed to do a spotlight on it so that I could
actively address my inadequacies, I guess you could say. So the first one I want to talk about
here is Milk Teeth by Rae White. This is a poetry collection. Rae White is a non-binary Australian
poet and this is a collection of poems focusing on what it's like to be non-binary, discussion of body,
and also plants, house plants oddly enough. I really enjoyed this collection and I have some
new favorite poems. The first poem was my favorite. I wish that I could read a whole book based off of
that one poem. So if you're looking for a poetry collection which you know you've never heard of,
and you're looking for something different, this would be one to check out. It did win
the 2017 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize in Australia, so it's a pretty good one if you are going to try
something new. So the next one is When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore who identifies
as a non-binary author. This is following two main characters, Miel who is a young woman who grows
flowers out of one of her wrists and a young trans boy named Sam who is her best friend.
Some people think that the flowers growing out of her wrist are a curse, some people think they
could use it to their benefit, and people in the town want to use those flowers for their own gain
and are threatening Sam's identity in order to make Miel do what they want. So I found this story
very lyrical and very beautiful in the ideas and in the history and I loved the characters.
Anna-Marie McLemore does a beautiful job creating characters. The downfall for me though, and why it
gets three and a half stars, is the repetitious language. So certain scenes or memories are
replayed two or three times throughout the book and I just found it kind of repetitious and
also some of the plot points are I think a little predictable and a little cliche.
However, this is for a YA audience so maybe I'm just too old and that's why I think it's a bit obvious.
But I'm really glad that I finally read an Anna-Marie McLemore. I just don't think that the
over-flowery language is for me, pun intended. The last book that I'm going to talk about
that was in the non-binary mini burst is The Deep by Rivers Solomon, who is a non-binary
black American author. So this one is following a group of sea-dwelling African descendants
who were thrown overboard during the slave trade and have created this community underwater.
And our main character is the historian, which means that she holds all of the painful memories of the
centuries of abuse of these people. And every year for a few days, everyone relives the memories, and
the rest of the year, the historian holds them and it's so painful. Right before the next gathering,
she decides to flee and that's where the story goes from there. The reason that it gets three
and a half stars is really because I loved the ocean setting. I loved the creation of this whole
world. I think Rivers Solomon is absolutely an amazing storyteller and world creator.
However, certain elements of the formatting were very confusing. So a little bit of the ways through,
we switch point of view and it switches from she/her to they/them and I wasn't aware that
there was a second character and that we had gone back in time. It took me so long to figure that out
because I wasn't sure if our main character had decided to transition to they/them pronouns
or if we were following a completely different person. So I was very confused. And then also this
again uses a cyclic storytelling structure where certain things are just said repeatedly.
I do know that some reviewers think that this book was originally created to be told in the oral
storytelling tradition, which would make sense because then the cyclical nature is reminding
viewers and listeners of what you're talking about, if maybe they have just joined or they've forgotten.
However, because I read it as a novel, that's what I'm going to judge it as. And so I
gave it three and a half stars. We are to my top three books of the month. And the first one I want
to talk about here is The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera, who is a Mexican writer.
This is small but it packs such a punch and I finished it in two sittings at the end of the month.
And I was blown away. So we are following two feuding crime families in an unnamed Mexican city that has
recently had mosquito-borne plague breakout so everyone is terrified to go out on the streets.
But our main character, the Redeemer, is called and there is a problem because both of the feuding
drug families have one of the children of the other family and the problem is they're both dead.
So before both families kick off and a huge battle goes down on this city that's already deep
in plague time, he has to figure out a way to talk them down from violence and exchange the bodies peacefully.
I thought that this was brilliant and I gave it four stars. I will absolutely be reading
his other one, which people say are even better um I think it's Signs Preceding the End of the World.
So if you have read that one let me know what you think because everyone on the reviews was like
this is his second best and the other one is even better. So I cannot wait to get my hands on it.
I hope our library is open soon because I know that my local library has it
and I cannot wait. My second favorite book of the month is Almond by Won-Pyung Sohn
and this was a buddy read I did with Alicia from Alicia Reads and this was my first time reading
this Korean author and it definitely won't be my last because I found this book very engrossing,
hard to put down, and I just was really captivated by the characters. Speaking of
the characters, we are following Yunjae who is a young boy who has alexithymia which means
he can't really fathom or understand most emotions, nor does he show them. So he has a really hard time
understanding people in general and when this devastating catastrophe happens and his family is
ripped away from him, he has to find a new way to live and function. So this follows not only Yunjae
but also the people who act kind of as satellites and kind of friends or protectors around him
during this time. So they include a young boy his own age who is known as a troublemaker and
the owner of the bakery on the floor above his family's bookstore that he is still running.
This was really interesting because Sohn's writing style is very sparse so there isn't a lot of extra
to go off of. What is said is pretty much exactly how it is and I think it's a great demonstration
of how Yunjae's mind would have worked. There were a few sticking points where Alicia
and I wondered if someone with alexithymia might actually be able to understand or express himself
in that way. But of course, we're not sure. Neither of us have that condition. We would absolutely love
a review from someone who has alexithymia. This was a high four star for me and yeah I just can't
wait to read more and I'm always glad to find new authors that I love. That goes for both this one
and this one so I'm so, so happy. And my favorite book of the month came out of absolutely
nowhere and it hurt me so bad. This is Dog Boy by Eva Hornung, who is an Australian author.
Wow this one hurts me, it hurts me, it hurts me, it hurts me, it hurts me. And it is absolutely on
my top 10 books of the year. So this is set in a city in Russia and we are following a young
four-year-old boy named Romochka who is abandoned by his parents and his uncle to fend for himself.
He wakes up in an apartment one day and they are just no longer there. The only thing that's there
is like the bedding and some food scraps and once he gets hungry, and there's no more food, he has to
venture outside. And he's only four so he sees a little dog and he follows her to her lair and she
takes him in as one of her own puppies.This is absolutely brutal because you're following the
young boy as he is growing and as he's adapting. And he's kind of in this halfway zone between
people and dogs. He gets a lot of characteristics and understanding of the world through the dogs,
yet he knows that he can also help the dogs and get food for his family if he acts
human in certain areas in certain circumstances. And as he grows older and older, things just get so
heartwarming and also bleak at the same time... like that's the only way I can put it because it's very
clear that in the area where he is, children freeze in the snow banks, they're thrown out unwanted, and
they freeze to death, or they are tortured, or they're sent away, or they're experimented on.
And so his life with the dogs who care for him and protect him and make sure he's well fed and warm,
is actually not as bad and is way better than a lot of the situation of the children nearby,
which is explained throughout the book. Devastating. So, so devastating.
A lot more happens in this book than just that, a lot more. And the end of this just ruined my faith
in humanity completely. I really... this isn't real. It was inspired by other dog stories of
children being raised by packs of dogs but this specific story is not real. But I was so
furious at the end. I was like... I'm starting to get mad about it now. Like the end of this
really just ruined my whole day and it made me so sad so deep in my heart. And I really recommend
this if you're looking for a novel which is so focused on sensory experiences
and family bonding in a really unique way and looking at the goodness of animals. Because
like the basic message of this book is we don't deserve dogs and humans are trash.
It's basically like how I felt after I read this book, but I loved it and I highly recommend it.
I gave this four and a half stars so that finishes up my wrap-up. I think that I had a very varied...
*very varied* September reading and I cannot wait to get into October because that is where all of my
spooky Halloween reads are coming. So I've just been having a fabulous reading time and I hope
that you are too. And I look forward to talking to you in another video soon. Lots of love, bye~