okay so i was having a nice day i was
minding my business
i was eating a fajita life was pretty
sweet until
out of the corner of my eye i noticed a
movement i take a closer look
it's a mouse a freaking mouse in my
frickin flat
so um i'm gonna be moving out it's not
my flat anymore it's the mouse's flat
this is now the mickey mouse clubhouse
and i might burn it down i might do a
miley cyrus and just get naked
on a wrecking ball and knock the whole
thing down because i can't do this
i'm only half joking by the way so uh
hello everyone
and welcome back to my channel so funny
story
um it's it's not that funny just got a
naughty little text
uh from the nhs making my hotline bling
and it said
that i have to isolate because of this
pesky virus
so the week in my life in london vlog
that i had planned
uh will postpone to another day and
instead we're going to improvise
and basically uh this morning i watched
this awesome video by one of my favorite
booktubers uh the book leo where she
basically looked at her phone screen
time from the previous week and then
swapped it for time spent reading and
you know what i've got a big pile of
books that i want to get through
so i feel like maybe this could be quite
productive use of my
isolation period and that's what we're
going to do this week i'm going to
tackle this part of books by swapping
the time i normally would have spent on
my phone
scrolling through the void and use that
time to read some good books
so let's go so hello welcome to
day one of isolating with my new pet
mouse we've got a lot of uh trust issues
to get through together so um i'm sure
we're gonna get very close in this time
hopefully not uh too close
i've been looking at my average screen
time spent on my phone per day
and usually i spend four hours and
32 minutes on my phone each day which
you know is about 32 hours spent on this
thing
every week and if i could convert that
into time spent reading
that will be a success one reason
are you kidding me one reason i will be
using my phone is to use plum who have
very kindly sponsored today's video if
your spending habits are
a little bit chaotic as an example
here's the massive pile of books that i
bought last week
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because it's a free app that helps you
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september and so i've started putting
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money while i'm there to spend on
experiences and plum
is helping me do that because it links
to your bank account analyzes how much
you spend and then
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you and so far i've put aside 32 pounds
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and save a little bit or beast mode
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thank you plum for sponsoring the video
and also helping me put aside some money
okay
so i've spent the day reading this book
before the coffee gets cold and also
cancelling all of my plans that i have
for this week but i absolutely
loved this it was exquisite this is a
five star recommendation from me before
the coffee gets cold
is a japanese best seller set in a
coffee shop in this coffee shop there is
a particular seat at a particular table
that you can sit at that will help you
travel back in time
there's a lot of caveats and
technicalities about this for example it
has to be someone who has previously
visited the coffee shop you cannot
impact the future so nothing that you do
will impact the present day you have to
stay sitting in that seat the whole time
and
you can only stay for as long as your
coffee stays warm so rules aside the
book basically tells you
four stories of four different scenarios
of why you may want to go back to the
past so we have a woman who goes back to
have one last conversation with her
husband before he gets
alzheimer's disease and forgets her we
have a young girl who never got to meet
her mother because her mother died in
childbirth and she goes back in time to
visit her before she was born and so i'm
sure you're getting the vibe that these
stories are
gut-wrenching and there's so many twists
and moral dilemmas
a real mix of moments that are both
heartbreaking and heartwarming sometimes
even at the same time and the writing
can we talk about the writing and let me
just say things like sci-fi and fantasy
are really not my
cup of tea or my cup of coffee but this
book was my whole kettle because it's
what's called
magical realism which is quite common in
japanese literature like murakami for
example is a big fan of this style so
it's basically quite a normal
mundane sort of scenario with an element
of something that is a bit more abstract
and bizarre and i think what i really
enjoyed about this book is that we have
that kind of scenario and this
world set up and then we get to explore
four different ways that that could be
used and it kind of got me thinking
about this book they both died at the
end which is a book about
people who find out that they're going
to die 24 hours before it happens
and in this book we only explore one
scenario where that would happen and
it's two teenage boys and what i found
devastating about this book is that
there are so
many interesting scenarios that you
could use this story world that you've
created
um to explore which is exactly what
before the coffee gets called did so i
am a certified fan of this book i mean
at the beginning it's quite slow because
it's introducing a lot of different
characters but it's so worth it in the
end and these characters live sort of
intertwine and collide
and i just loved it so that was a
success i very much enjoyed reading that
and
i will see you tomorrow bye bye
so i'm trying to read when i first wake
up because this is the time that i would
normally
sit and scroll on my phone and also on
my lunch break from work because
normally this is a time where i would be
scrolling away and instead i'm reading
oh no
hello everyone i hope you're doing well
i am losing my mind
and because i am mourning the fact that
i can't go out
to the shop i read a book about one
today so this is convenience store woman
by
sayaka morata it's a book about a 36
year old woman who has been working in a
convenience store
for about 18 years and so her life has
become very stagnant and everyone in her
life is quite worried about her they're
always asking her how she's going to
move on with her career or get married
and those are kind of two binary options
like you can't have both
and so this book grapples with the dual
ideas of
exchanging your time and your labor for
money or exchanging your identity and
your autonomy
for a relationship and marriage
specifically as a woman so it's in equal
parts about capitalism as it is about
feminism it's a novella because it's
quite short um it's under 200 pages and
it is an allegory for women's roles in
society
in japan specifically but also wider
society i guess too
and the deeply entrenched expectations
people have of women both in terms of
their careers
and their relationships and i could not
put this down it is haunting it is
compelling
especially because the central
protagonist is crafted and depicted in
such an
understated way who simultaneously
recognizes the standards that she's
expected to conform to whilst also just
not understanding the logic behind them
at all so i enjoyed it a lot it's a
fast-paced quick read and it's a book i
think that i'll find myself
referencing and referring to a lot and
my ultimate conclusion here is that i
just love
japanese literature i'm obsessed with
the way that japanese authors
take mundane or quite ordinary
experiences and put them under a
microscope and really deep dive
and take everything one step further and
it's exhilarating to read
so yeah a very kind of precise memorable
and witty book which i enjoyed reading
so
that was a good that was a good use of
my time because i basically exchanged
a three hour tick tick-tock binge for
reading a book and now
every part of me wants to check
instagram but you know what i'm not
gonna do that because
in the words of duolipper in new rules
rule one don't pick up the phone
instead read a book she didn't say that
bit but like i'm sure that's kind of
what she
was hinting at
hello friends so this whole
self-isolation thing is forcing me to
get
a little bit creative because here's the
thing right so when
i found out that i had to isolate i did
a big online food shop i delivered a
bunch of food to my flats that i was
covered
but i was very much thinking in the
sense of like self-care
so what i ordered was mostly like sorbet
chocolate
and crisps not actual kind of meals so
we're now kind of working
with what i do have in the house and
i've realized i have the ingredients to
make toad in the hole which i've never
made for myself before even though it's
literally my favorite ever dinner if
you're not
aware of her work toad in the hole is
basically a
dish crafted by the gods it is sausages
in a bed of yorkshire pudding and it's
just wonderful
so i'm gonna try and cook that for
myself now last week i got invited to
this
zoom cook along thing to celebrate the
launch of disney pixar's lucca and it
was a really cool idea like we were all
gonna make our own pasta
however slight technical difficulty my
lack of culinary prowess i literally was
still finishing step one
when everyone else had finished and
they're showing off these beautiful
pasta dishes and i'm still there like
rolling mine out but you know what it's
a marathon not a sprint and we're gonna
chuck these
sausages into the oven and then your
pudding batter is pretty much just eggs
and flour and then you whip
are you kidding me have i just broken
the whisk i'm not gonna lie i don't
think that's what it's meant to look
like maybe i'm missing it
milk it's eggs flour and milk okay i
think that this
is more like what it's meant to look
like okay it's not the worst tone in the
hole it's not the best tone in the whole
but
an attempt was made and you know what
it's the taking part that counts now
just imagine this with like potatoes and
some veg you know
the stuff i don't have and a metric
ton of gravy did i eat both
portions of that toad in the hole in one
sitting
yes i did did i also finish a book today
yes i bloody well did
today i wrapped up this book by kylie
reed it's called such a fun age and this
was
such a cracking book a certified banger
i loved it this was a master class in
writing it was so great and it's a book
about
privilege and discrimination and the
nuances of
those issues the situations that it
grapples with are so
complex in the sense that there's no
person who is 100 in the right and
there's no person who's 100 in the wrong
that's kind of this weird
middle ground where both people make
mistakes and basically to give you a bit
of an insight into the plot it's about a
black woman who is babysitting
a white child they're in a supermarket
and they get stopped by the supermarket
security guard who basically accuses the
babysitter
of abducting the child and that's just
one of many different situations that
this book depicts and then unpacks you
also have discussion of fetishization of
black people
the issue of never actually being able
to get inside someone's head and truly
understand the intention that they had
and it's one of those books that is
written so well and the descriptions are
so vivid that you forget that
you're sitting there with a book and a
piece of paper with words on it because
you feel like you're there i was
literally visualizing every single scene
and imagining how i would react in that
situation and
what i would understand by what was
going on big fan of this book could not
put it down this has been a very
successful week so far and now
i'm gonna dream of more good fiction and
good food
good morning today i am working working
from home and i work in publishing as a
research
assistant to basically researching for
someone else's book so today i am in
fact dolly parson because i'm working
nine to five
these are my new stationery products
this is a to-do list pad and also a desk
planner and these are available at ink
outside the box dot co
uk baby but big news i got a text from
the nhs this morning and i've actually
tested
negative for kovitz so that is cracking
news i do however
still have to isolate so it is what it
is and now i
am going to get back to work here we go
first meeting of the day okay
so quite a lot of time has passed but i
am still at the desk today i've been
reading this book it's called diary of
an oxygen thief and i was very intrigued
to read this because it's quite hard to
come by and i found it in a charity shop
and so i was buzzing however
that buzzing-ness was misplaced because
this is not good i'm not enjoying it at
all i am
80 pages in out of 150 and i'm very
close to
dnfing it and dnf stands for
did not finish and i think i might nf
this because
i don't want to eff it it's basically
giving me
lolita energy in the sense that it's
written about a kind of sexual predator
um someone who preys on young women but
it's not as good as lolita lolita is
this disgusting disturbing
mind-boggling book this is just uncomfy
someone on the back called richard nash
describes it as f scott fitzgerald for
the ipad generation and
f scott fitzgerald i'm so sorry i can't
believe they would do you dirty like
that
yeah it's basically a 150 page diatribe
of this one
bloke being angry at the world and kind
of misogynistic
actually very misogynistic and i'm
getting a bit sick of it i like the
title though
i'm very conflicted because i'm usually
against dnfing books because i'm such a
firm believer that you can learn
so much from books that you don't like
and you should always challenge yourself
on why you're not enjoying it like is it
the way that characters are written is
it the way that the story is being told
and the narrator is telling it and i
think you become a better kind of
literary critic that way
but um that sounds very pretentious but
i honestly just
kind of hate this so oh it's going down
the side of the bed now i guess i
i guess i'll have to leave it okay so
it's day seven it is the final day of
the challenge and i'm gonna check
what my screen time has been on average
this week oh it feels like results day
okay oh 52 minutes per day that's pretty
good
from four and a half hours daily average
to 52 minutes that's pretty good going
in my books
obviously i still have to use my phone
for things like slack and whatsapp for
work but credit where credit's due i
actually think i did okay there i didn't
go on twitter for the whole week so i
spent just under seven hours in total on
my phone this week
and 35 hours reading and this was the
final book that i managed to get to
i have been wanting to read this for the
longest time mostly because i think that
is book cover porn i really love it and
that is what drew me to reading this
book but
the book itself was fantastic it's about
a woman who after graduating from
university he moves from dublin to hong
kong
to start teaching english and it's one
of those books where nothing happens
like
nothing happens but you stay for the
writing because it's so sharp and witty
there's these really smart kind of
cultural and social commentaries
on things like language class sexuality
the private school system
relationships so many just great
observations about the world that we
inhabit
it's a very modern take on the love
story and um i think if you're a fan of
sally rooney's conversations with
friends you'll really enjoy this book so
articulate so irreverent
this is a winner in my books i love this
so this has been
a corker of a reading week i've got
through a surprising number of books
just using the time that i normally
would have spent on my phone and it's
really making me start to question
everything so maybe give this challenge
a go for yourself even if it's just for
one day or a couple of days or even a
whole week
trust me you'll be surprised how much
time actually adds up when you're just
using your phone
a massive shout out of course to well
firstly the nhs for telling me to
self-isolate because
they kind of made this video happen but
also to our wonderful sponsor plum
if you want to start saving money don't
forget to click the link down below in
the description box
and get started give the video a like if
you liked it if you like and subscribe
for more
reading content from me all the best
stay in touch have a lovely day
bye bye