Hoi!
My main issue was reading is that I love starting new books.
I read like 80 pages.
And then I get excited about another book and I move on to the next one.
It's not like I'm DNF-ing it.
Like, I want to finish these books.
Something else catches my attention.
And then I move on and there's just so many half read books.
So I thought today I'd run you through some of the books.
I'm halfway through that I started in this year's in the last few months but haven't
continued yet,
for some reason or another,
are some of these DNFs.
Maybe, only time can tell.
I think this will be quite an interesting one to start with.
And it is the Sea of Tranquillity.
By Emily St John Mandel
It is an extremely shiny proof copy that I'm very happy I
got my hands on.
It is coming out in two weeks from when I'm filming this.
By the time this is up,
it's probably already out,
so I need to finish this before it comes out.
How far into it am I?
Only that far in, I'm only 35 pages in this is the author of Station 11,
By the way,
which I'm assuming a lot of you will know. This is a book that set across multiple time periods.
The pacing and the writing of the beginning of kind of surprised me.
It's quite simple and quite fast.
I have a Red Station 11 in a long time,
but in my head it was like a little bit more lyrical than
this is.
But maybe that's just me misremembering.
Anyway,
I should be able to finish this and fast,
and I should do it.
I should tell you that it is set on a moon colony and in
1912,
maybe in some other places,
too.
I've just done the historical bit so far,
and then it's It's,
I think we're going to the moon next.
And this is quite interesting one as we're gonna start a book club that I am part of,
and it's called Matrix by Lauren Groff.
I've kind of seen it around once or twice,
but then it wasn't until the Book club picked it,
but I thought,
Okay,
I took a closer look at it,
and I got very interested.
So this is the author of Fates and Furies,
But this is something quite different.
There's all these literary authors writing medieval stories,
and I kind of want to read them all and do like a combined video about it and talk about my
theories as to why this is happening right now.
This is about nuns.
In what year are we?
It's 1158.
It's about a young woman who gets sent to be the priory of
a nunnery,
and it kind of goes through her life at quite a fast
pace.
The writing is very interesting.
I keep describing this as, just the writing,
not what it's about.
Sally Rooney meets The Virgin Suicides,
so there's less punctuation,
kind of certain run on sentences.
But it's very dreamlike at the same time.
A little bit of bodily grossness and some weird stuff and quite raw
stuff.
The descriptions are great:
"lushly textured and uniquely vivid".
The author quotes on the cover are very clearly meant to set the scene because it's Brit Bennett,
Sarah Collins and Sarah Waters.
Interesting combo.
So I'm at Part three,
which I think is the last part.
I think I'm pretty sure things are about to kick off,
then a book that I just spent 15 minutes searching for and I can't freaking find it.
I was reading this just before I moved.
If I haven't put up any videos about moving yet,
I have moved and I live in St Albans,
which is still pretty close to London,
but with a significantly more space.
I have filmed a moving vlog that is still in progress about moving books and stuff like that,
which is to come.
But I just realised that maybe I haven't talked about moving it in any of the videos that are
so now.
You know,
I was reading that book right before moving,
and I cannot find it.
It's on a stack somewhere.
The Then Thousand Doors of January. Again read this for a book club,
not really getting on with the writing style like it's a little too flowery, like
fantastical for me,
I say,
as someone who loves fantasy,
might DNF.
Not sure yet. Another book that I can't find Pride and Prejudice by Jane
Austen.
So I'm just gonna show Emma.
This is the edition that I have.
I'm doing pretty well with this book.
This is my last.
Austen.
I'm also listening to audio, which is going great and this is definitely not taken
me years.
And that's what I mentioned in my 2022 TBR video
but I haven't read any of it since that video.
I've literally read five pages,
so I feel like it's not a book.
I'm in the middle of, it's Anna Karenina
I'm gonna leave it at that.
Okay,
let's go to some audio books because even audiobooks cannot escape the halfway
reading and then going on to something else.
What do we have?
This is actually one I DNFed
The Fell by Sarah Moss.
I've always wanted to read some stuff by Sarah Moss.
I have one of her historical novels.
The Fell is like a pandemic novel about a woman who goes for a walk during lockdown when
she's not supposed to be out and she has to get rescued.
This book just made me really angry.
It's only four hours,
and I listened to half an hour while I was cooking,
and I just had to just delete was not enjoying it.
Some of these are from the library,
by the way,
so it's very easy to just try a bit and then just return.
It just made me angry.
And as much as I love pandemic novels,
I do not like Covid novels I have discovered.
Then there is Savage
Her Reply by Deirdre Sullivan.
I read the Perfectly Preventable Deaths duology by her,
which I really enjoyed and Savage.
Her Reply is a dark feminist retelling of the Children of Lir,
which is an Irish fairy tale.
I listen to a little bit,
and I just wasn't in the mood for it.
Then I realised that Borrow Box,
just the library app I used to listen to audio books had suddenly added,
like so many books from the Grisha verse
And I recently read Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom for the
first time and loved,
loved,
loved them.
So I went through and downloaded what I could.
And so Shadow and Bone,
which is the first and the first trilogy,
was unavailable.
And so I thought,
maybe I'll start listening to King of Scars
Which is the duology that comes after the Six of Crows duology, they're
also in the same universe of the Grisha verse
And there's character overlap,
and I don't mind spoilers that much have already watched Season one of Shadow and Bone anyway.
So I listened to two hours of King of Scars and then suddenly whoever had shadow and Boom
returned it,
So I immediately download that.
So I'm just going to make my way through the first trilogy now and then.
I shall return to King of Scars because I was enjoying it so far very,
very fun,
greatly enjoying that world.
I remember going to a publishing marketing presentation where the
team that works on the Grisha verse was talking about,
like social media and newsletters and stuff they do to promote Leigh Bardugo.
And I didn't know anything about the universe at that point,
so I basically had no idea what they were talking about.
But now,
now I know.
OK,
I think there's one more go to my other audiobook app.
So the Obelisk Gate,
the second in the Fifth Season trilogy,
which is called the Broken Earth trilogy.
I am 22% in.
I started it once,
listen to like,
7% and then waited months and months and months,
and then I went back to it we started from the beginning.
I think about a month ago.
I do love reading lots of books at the same time.
I don't really mind going back and forth,
so that's everything.
I'm halfway through reading.
I have,
in fact,
also finished nine books so far this year.
That's about it for the reading year.
So far.
Not too bad.
Not the best ever.
But I'm really enjoying all the books I'm working with,
the ones I'm about to read,
the ones I'm currently reading.
Yeah,
that's my little update.
Hopefully,
I will see you soon and also around on Instagram and I make some tiktok's now
occasionally at @booksandquills
That's it for me.
Thanks for watching,
Doei!