Hi, I hope you're all having a good day today. It's the Easter weekend for me
I had an amazing reading day yesterday
and I finally
finished enough young adult books that I
Figured I could put them all together in a video and that's what I want to talk about today
I think I'm just gonna go straight into it and I'm going to start with this beautiful book Out of Heart
It's written by Irfan Master. It's shiny on the back too, and don't think you can see this, but this is a
Connect-the-dots drawing of what can only be a heart actually got introduced to this
Book quite a while ago when I went to an event at Waterstones
And this author was on a panel talking about diversity in contemporary British writing and about writing from specific
perspectives and things like that and I loved hearing him talk and so when I was looking
for a book to pick up for a trip yesterday
I grabbed this off my shelves. One of the reasons was that it was quite a short one
Because I wanted to see if I could read it in a day
And I did I read this on the trip to a castle that I went to which is called Arundel
And I read it on the train there and the train back and then in the evening. So a really quick read
And I think it's quite a special reading
experience if you get to read a book in a day. I think you get a very different relationship with it than when you
Read a book over a month, which I do very often. The book starts off
With a boy called Adam who has just lost his granddad, and he's trying to come to terms with this.
His family isn't really coming to terms with it yet,
He has to go to the funeral and learn about the traditions around the funeral and then one day this man called William
shows up on their front step
And he says that he received a donor heart that the heart belonged to Adam's granddad
Obviously everyone's a little bit weirded out by it, and they slowly start developing this relationship
It's interesting as well that in this family Adams dad isn't in the picture he left?
Or was kicked out about three years ago, and there's more to that story as well
Yeah, you get to see a little bit of Adam
And how he's dealing with it and then William incorporating in the family
It's mostly from Adam's point of view
But sometimes there will be a couple of pages where it slowly shifts in to the point of view of
one of the other characters and what I think I liked most about this book is the tone and the
Atmosphere and the writing. I thought it was beautifully written
I think sometimes it could do with a little bit more clarification on the characters for example
I thought was about like 25 years younger then the character actually ended up being because I only found out on like page
150 Suddenly I was like oh, okay
totally different age than I thought. There's other moments where like certain things are kind of skipped over that I thought needed maybe a little
Bit more explanation, but in general. I think the writing is really beautiful
It feels like a warm hug
Even though there's lots of sadness in the book as well. Another thing that I loved was that
There's these little drawings and the chapter openings is this one too. Which is related to the sign language that's used by one of the characters
It's really really nice in the back that I wanted to show. I do't know if it's too much of a spoiler
It's not a spoiler for the story, but it has this connect-the-dots drawing
that's related to the story there were different poems and phrases used throughout the books and different themes and
Sometimes it can feel a bit heavy-handed, but I really liked it as a piece it really reminded me of the style of
Aristotle and Dante in case you've read that. I feel like the characters felt a bit like that and the
Atmosphere felt like that I didn't actually read what it says on the cover
Your heart is not red, your heart is the size of your clenched fists. A bigger heart is not a better heart
The Greeks believed the heart was the seat of the Spirit
There's lots of facts about hearts in here as well
The next one is actually an e-book that I read on my phone
I still had the manuscript
On my phone from when I worked at hot key books and we often got to read the books in advance
When we were working on it, and this is one that I actually hadn't read yet
And is called the quietness so I've always known that I like historical fiction
But I actually don't end up reading that much of it
I am NOT crazy about the sort of high fantasy historical fiction
And I'm not that interested in sort of the War of the Roses and the stuff based on kings and queens
Particularly I'd like having a specific time frame, and then just having a more sort of normal story
Set in that time frame
and I was really in the mood for something like that The Quietness is the story of Queenie and Ellen it is set in a
Victorian setting the Queenie is part of a really poor family has to beg for money a lot of the time her dad is
Drunk very often and disappears and her mom has to find means to make money and take care of the kids
And then there's Ellen who is
isolated and losing this very well-off family
But doesn't have any freedom these are things that obviously
Have been seen in stories lots before it switches between the two characters chapter to chapter and what happens is that
Queenie at some point finds this job where she is taking care of babies
And this is all to do with baby farmers and that really dark sort of
Story based on a real life story and things that really happened
But these two characters somewhere in the middle meet each other and sort of get involved in each other's story
I quite like dark topics anyway, so this was a nice mix of something being really dark
But really like quick to read and like quite an exciting
plotline. Sometimes I thought it was like a little bit superficial and it moved like quite fast
but I I loved reading it, and if you have any more YA
Historical recommendations like that I'd love to hear about them reminded me a lot of fingersmith
So if you've read that or seen the BBC adaptation and you liked it
Then you might enjoyed this book as well and also I don't want to tell you too much about baby farmers in case you don't
Know about it, and it will spoil the book a little bit
But I'll put a link to Wikipedia article in the description the last book that I finally read
Is Turtles all the way down by John Green
If you've been following my channel for quite a while you might know that I've talked about
Pretty much all of John Green's books in the past. I really love his books. I have some of my personal favourites. I wrote my
translation dissertation about The Fault in Our Stars
I've made many videos about The Fault in Our Stars
Actually one about how to pronounce all the Dutch names in it, I still want to do a Fault in Our Stars tour of Amsterdam
I have footage for it and I've just never like properly gotten all my stuff together basically
I started reading this when it came out then put it down for awhile and didn't get back to it for
Quite a few months, and then recently picked up again and finally finished it you've probably heard the pitch for this book
I'll just do it again in case you haven't it's about Aza
Who's a teenage girl and her best friend Daisy and when they hear about a
fugitive billionaire and the price that is put on his head
And they realized that Aza actually knows the son of this billionaire they decide to get in touch and go
Deep into this mystery
And then of course I quickly discovered that this boy is a real person with real feelings and his dad is missing so they can't
Just go chasing after this money, but the other side of the story as well
is that Aza struggles a lot with thought spirals and OCD, and you really get like a
Close-up inside look on what that is like and how her thoughts kind of work, and how she's struggling with it
And she's going to therapy so I thought in a way this book was partly
Quite an uncomfortable read because some of the things that are being described are often not very pleasant to read about so there were
Certain times where I sort of had to put it down for vent and take a little breather because it basically feels like quite
Claustrophobic, and you get such a good idea of the thought spirals that yeah that can feel a bit claustrophobic
But at the same time there's also lots of things that you would expect from a John Green book which is like beautiful quotes
really funny scenes like
Interesting characters funny habits that they have and then lots of friendship moments whether it's like good ones or sometimes bad ones the one thing
I wasn't as fond of were one of the characters does these sort of online
Journal entries which are quotes in the commentary that is something that I usually don't enjoy reading as much about in a book
But them the rest of the book like the other writing itself
I thought had so many
Like lovely paragraphs to read and I want to have a look and see which quotes people have put on Goodreads I think with any John
Green book that I've read every time. I've read it
I sort of enjoy it more
So I reread books quite a lot actually and a lot of John's books because they've come out like quite a bit ago
I've read plenty of times
And I really look forward to rereading this one as well the other thing about this book
is that once you get to know so much about an author like you listen to his podcast you watch his videos I find the
reading experience of that really funny like you get to see certain things that they
Talk about a lot or the things that interest them
And you get to pick up on that in the book which very often when I read a book by an author
I won't really know anything about them. I'm curious if you read this book. I'd love to hear if you like follow
John Green online or if you don't and if somehow that made you like pick up on different things in this book okay?
I think that is it for the books so far
I wanted to also bring us something that I thought was quite interesting and that recently after reading
quite a few way books that I've either finished, but really didn't enjoy or I
Sort of gotten halfway through and have been abandoned and very often
I will go on Goodreads and read some of the reviews sometimes when I'm halfway through I find it helpful to sort of see what
People on Goodreads think and if I'm already not enjoying it and then a lot of the reviews are really negative than sometimes
I will abandon it from there
But I have found that I very often don't agree with a lot of reviews on Goodreads so
Some of the books that have the highest ratings and are getting loads of five-star reviews
It could be one that I've really struggled with I really don't enjoy and then those ones were I go look at the reviews
I'm like oh the star ratings are okay
But not that great, there are a lot of three star reviews
And I actually end up absolutely loving it so also we'd love to hear what you think about that and if that happens to you
Quite a lot alright that is it for me
I'll put links to all of these books in the description as always if you want to keep up with what I'm reading
And be like a little bit ahead of the curve because very often
I don't like talk about books and videos until I've collected a couple together so if you want to know what I'm reading right now
You can go to Goodreads.com/booksandquills
or follow me on Instagram and Instagram stories. I talk a lot about books over there
And that's it for now. Thank you so much for watching. Doei!