Hey guys and welcome back. Today I
thought we would talk through everything
that I read in the month of March, which
wasn't a whole lot but I am happy to say
that I finally got my reading groove
back. I did only read two books in March,
but I at least am reading again and i
want to read again and i think that's a
massive victory. So I think I'm just
going to go in order of how I read these
books, starting off of course with The
Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.
Side note: I'm having massive allergies
today, so if I am a little bit less clear
than usual, that's what's going on. I first
picked this one up back in January for
the DiverseAThon readathon and just
didn't end up finishing it during
January or February and I think that was
because it's just a little bit too
relevant to today. Don't get me wrong,
Mohsin Hamid's writing is incredibly
easy to read and I just sped through it
once I did pick it up and there were
several really beautiful passages that I
just was really, really impressed by, but
I think what happened was that I was
reading this during the whole Muslim ban
travel ban... extravaganza? Incident? Ongoing
drama? So because this is the experiences
of a young a Pakistani man living in
America post 9-11 I think it was just a
little bit too relevant. I don't know I
couldn't bring myself to watch the news
and then pick this up at night, so I
think that's what took me so long. But
like I said, I really did enjoy this,
there were some real pearls in there,
some real gems of wisdom and if you
would like to see my full thoughts on
this I would highly suggest you go check
out the very long review and discussion
video that I did on this and on its film
adaptation. And I guess I should mention
I did end up giving this one four
stars. Then the other book I completed in
March was an audiobook and that was
Post-Mortem by Patricia Cornwell, which
is the first book in her Kay Scarpetta
mystery/crime series. The character of
Kay Scarpetta is a medical examiner who
lives in Richmond, Virginia and I believe
she's the chief medical examiner for her
district. In Post-Mortem, you get dropped
right into the middle of an ongoing
investigation of several women, all of
whom seem to have been killed by the
same perpetrator. Now, of course it is up
to Dr. Scarpetta to use the physical
evidence of these women's bodies to
solve the crime and she teams up, of
course, with the local police department
and especially one Detective Moreno. Add
to this the fact that her young yet
brilliant niece is staying with her for a
while and the fact that somebody is
trying to discredit the whole medical
examiner's office, and Dr. Scarpetta is
starting to wonder if she's ever going
to find this killer. Now, the reason I
picked up Post-Mortem was because I was
wanting some kind of a mystery and I
have owned this copy of The Scarpetta
Factor by Patricia Cornwell for a couple
of years now, but I know that this is
later down the line in the Scarpetta
series so I wanted to start off with the
first one in the series which, of course,
Post-Mortem is. That was very, very bad grammar,
children, do not copy that. Like I
mentioned, I did listen to this one on
audiobook and honestly for the first, I
would say, hour so I was not very
impressed. I kind of felt like it didn't
really work to go right into the middle
of the investigation because you weren't
provided much context and you were
immediately introduced to quite a few
different characters who I found a
little hard to distinguish at first and
even towards the end of the audiobook, I
wasn't incredibly sure which male
character, especially, was talking when.
However, I would say that if you like
slow burn mysteries or slow burn
detective fiction I would highly suggest
that you listen to this because it did
gradually get better. And honestly, the
last like half an hour of the audiobook
was so incredibly tense and so very well
written that I will definitely
definitely be continuing with the series.
Something I really did like about
Post-Mortem is that Kay Scarpetta is an
established professional and she doesn't
get her power by being this like young
hotshot, really sexy woman
in a man's field, but she is just a very
intelligent, very stubborn, very
determined female professional and I
just really liked that. And it was
probably unfair of me to compare this to
the Women's Murder Club books by James
Patterson, but I couldn't help but
thinking that this was everything that
those books were not and I really liked
that. Basically the Women's Murder Club
books are very dramatic, like there's a
lot of personal drama going on. It's less
about the crime, I would say, and more
about how these women's personal lives
affects their crime fighting. In Kay Scarpetta
yes, life was going on
around her and, yes, she talked about you
know being distressed by her situation,
being distressed by her personal
relationships, and yet she didn't let
that stand in the way of her work. So she
was very much not a hysterical woman and,
again, I just, I love that I found it very,
very good. And I think it safe to say
this was a solid three star book and, yes,
I will be continuing on with the series,
though they are quite chunky in, you
know, in actual physical form so I might
stick with the audiobooks for now. So
those are the books that I managed to
complete during the month of March and
then I did start one more book just last
week and that is Great Expectations by
Charles Dickens. Now, I have never read
this before and I'm actually really,
really enjoying it, surprisingly so, and
this is actually kind of the book I
would say that has got me back into
wanting to read. So who knew that Dickens
would be a slump saver? So far, the
main character Pip is still a young boy
and I think what I'm enjoying about it
so far is that it is giving me real kind
of Huck Finn but set in England vibes so
I'm really enjoying that and I will
definitely report back to you guys
once I have finished it. I'm basically
reading it so that I can watch the Not
So Hypothetical Victorian Literature
course video that Katie from Books and Things put up at the beginning of the
month. So that is what I read in the
month of March and what I'm currently
reading, and I would love to hear your
thoughts on any of these books if you
have read them before.
Yeah, that's kind of all I have for today. So
thank you guys so much for watching, I
hope you're having a fantabulous day
wherever you are, and I will see you next
time. Bye!