Okay, so today i am going to be talking to you about the five star predictions that i made near
the end of the year last year. I said the final quarter of the year i'm gonna read these five
books, i'm gonna expect that they're all be five stars and we're gonna see how i did. Now we're
gonna see how i did with those five books and we're gonna make new predictions, but before we
get into that a shout out today sponsored Disney Book Group and specifically talking about Lore by
Alexandra Bracken which is now out in hardcover, audio, and ebook. Drawing on greek heritage,
Bracken drew from her childhood love of greek mythology as well as her own greek heritage
and the stories of her immigrant grandparents, to dream up a secret network of ancient families,
descendants of greek heroes battling for immortality and dominance. This is a feminist
take on greek mythology, reclaiming the hero's journey and revisiting our ideas about heroes and
monsters. There's also a good emphasis on romance for this book where Lore discovers that Castor,
the childhood friend that she believed was dead actually ascended as the new apollos seven years
ago. Apparently this is gonna be a slow burn "will they, won't they" kind of romance which
is typically the kind of romance that i end up enjoying. But you will also see more of this later
on in the video when we get into my predictions, but first all all the books... how'd i do? Uh
okay, so the first book... i'll i'll start with this one because it's closest to me. 11-22-63.
So Stephen King, i want to love him because the first King book i read was Pet Cemetery
but i have not connected with a book of his since Pet Cemetery. That's not true. I enjoyed Misery,
but i haven't loved a book of his since Pet Cemetery. So 11-22-63, time travel,
he goes back in time to change a point in history to make the world better and i
really loved the beginning of this because King is so good at setup and at building environment.
I don't always connect with his pacing and this is definitely an example of that um we spend a lot of
time taking a break from the plot of the book to focus on our main character falling in love and
on his new career as a teacher and the school plays that he puts on and also just reading an
entire friggin school play. And i don't need it! I understand, i understand that he's trying to
establish that our character is established. He's fallen in love with the world, he's fallen in love
with people, he loves everything about living here so that we understand the real sacrifice
that the character is making. I get it. I didn't need half of the book to be it. It was so long,
it was so long of just establishing that he is established and i just didn't need it and i don't
like the way King writes romances. I never connect with the romances that he writes so i didn't,
i didn't care for a good chunk of this book. Then we got to the ending and i loved the ending, but
it was very rushed and not all the threads actually really tied up all that well. I
feel like with King a lot of times, a lot of times his setup is so good and the payoff i'm just like,
i need more payoff. You know, this is an 800 page book. Isn't it? Is it 800 pages? 842 page book,
so i would like a little bit more payoff for that much buildup. So it's not that i disliked this
book. I definitely didn't, but it was a book where i didn't like some things and i did like other
things so it kind of just landed in the middle for me uh so not a five star. I failed. Next we have
The Mothers, which i actually didn't read. I still have every intention to read. It was actually,
it was a buddy read for the patreon server, but right before the buddy read started somebody
else had read it and she mentioned to me that there were some pretty heavy themes in the book,
so i went ahead and looked up what the themes were. At that time i was not doing well mental
health-wise and i knew that this was the wrong time for me to read this book. So i still plan
to read it, i still have every intention to read it, i still think i'm gonna love it,
but i'm not ready yet and i'm just waiting for the right time to read it and it's not now, so
i didn't, i haven't read it yet. The Deal of A Lifetime by uh Fredrik Backman. This is a
reasonable, of course i'm going to love this book. It's Fredrik Backman! And i did. I really enjoyed
it. I gave it four stars. It was a very short story about a man who who has to make this really
difficult decision. He has spent his life focused on himself, building his own career, making a
name for himself, he has sacrificed family, he's sacrificed people, he sacrificed his own morality
to just get up in life. And um he now has to face this decision of giving, potentially
giving up his life for someone else and uh it was great. It was so good. I enjoyed it so
much. Backman has this ability to tackle these difficult subjects in such raw and real ways and
and facilitate these amazing discussions and we read this over on my patreon and we had such
great discussions out of it. I had a great time reading this, but it wasn't five stars. It was,
it was definitely one of Backman's weaker stories in my opinion, but still fantastic. I'm still
really glad i read it. Descender. I don't know why i chose this. A volume one is very rarely
five stars because it's establishing things and this is volume one in a comic or graphic novel,
i still don't really know the difference between the two, and i really enjoyed it. I
gave it four stars. I had a great time with it. It's probably one of my favorite "volume ones"
that i've read of any graphic novel, comic, manga. And i had a great time! I mean i know
this one's not manga, i'm just saying... in this kind of sphere of literature i had a great time. I
enjoyed it a lot, but it wasn't five stars. Fail. The final book on this list, i don't know why i'm
holding some of them up and not holding other ones up... final book on this list is uh Shogun,
which i'm currently reading at the time that i'm filming this. I'll have it done by the time
you see this, so future Merphy with thoughts on Shogun. Hi, hello. Future Merphy here to tell you
my thoughts on Shogun and unfortunately i don't have a lot to tell you because
i grossly underestimated the amount of time that it would take me to get through this brick.
So this book so far i'm a hundred pages into. Yeah, and i thought i'd be done by now
um which was dumb, really, if you think about it. But long story short i'm not reading as much right
now uh because i'm just like binge watching this gaming channel that i'm really into right now.
I foresee myself enjoying this. So far the first hundred pages i'm enjoying it a lot, but it's also
a book that i don't want to power through, try to read quickly. I mean i'm not a fast reader anyway,
but i kind of want to just take my time with this and just kind of enjoy the journey unless
it captures me and i have to read it really really fast because i can't put it down, but
i'm not reading as much right now because of that gaming channel. I'll try to break the addiction,
i'll try to read better but um i i imagine that book's gonna take me at least another month to
finish because it's quite dense in certain areas. Sometimes it's a breeze to read and then sometimes
it's it's very dense um but i'm enjoying it, so i'm gonna keep reading it, but i don't know if it,
i don't know if it's gonna get five stars or not. I don't know how future Merphy felt about shogun
but i do know that i'm clearly bad at this. I'm clearly bad at predicting five stars,
what what i'm going to give five stars. So now that we've established that, let's have
some more predictions. This time i changed it up a little bit so my goal is to have all
five of these five star predictions done in the first half of the year and the way i did it this
time is i intentionally picked books that i think i'm gonna love, but that i would normally never
pick up. So it's not books that i think i'm gonna love and i want to read soon, it's books that i'm
really challenging myself to pick something up that's far outside of my comfort zone. So first
book on the list, oh. First book on this list is going to be Lore. This is a YA urban fantasy
which is not a genre that i read ever. Also greek mythology doesn't really interest me. I've been
reading through Percy Jackson and it's been good, i've been enjoying it, but i'm never gonna just
like pick up greek mythology because i want to. But i'm actually really interested in this because
for some reason i follow Alexandra Brecken on um on instagram. I don't follow authors on platforms
ever, but somehow this happened and i have enjoyed myself a lot following her because she has been
hyping this book so hard, like really really well with with giving me excerpts of the story and she
puts together, i don't know she puts together. The publishers put together this um video uh
hype trailer thing that always looks so good and the general premise of this is actually
really really interesting. There's some sort of uh thing that happens every seven years where these
gods are being hunted down and Lore has run away from this life that she knew, but now
she's back because her parents have been killed and she's trying to kill the god that killed them.
And it just sounds really cool plus slow burn romance. If i'm gonna like a romance it's gonna
be a slow burn "will they won't they" so i'm i'm gonna i'm hopefully gonna like that too. I don't
know. Alexandra Bracken or her publishing house (i don't know) have done a great job at hyping
this for me and i'm really excited to read it and i think i could potentially love it even though
it's way outside of my comfort zone. Next book on the list is The Foundations of Silence by
Ruta Sepetys. So historical fiction for whatever reason i never reach for, don't ever want to read.
But there have been some historical fictions that i've really really really loved so i'm trying to
push myself to make time for it. One of the reasons why historical fiction is something
i never reach for is because so much historical fiction takes place in the same setting in the
same time frame, you know? And i am looking for books that step outside of that a little bit,
that will still have you know the emotional impact that historical fictions a lot of times
bring. So for this one it's set in Spain and um the main character... i actually
don't know what the female main character is about, but the male main character is a
photographer which i thought would be really fun because my husband's a photographer and i really
enjoy stories that um have an emphasis on seeing the world through a photographer's eyes because
my husband like, i know how my, i know how my husband thinks. I know what you know how he sees
a patch of lighting and and how he's drawn to it and he needs to take a picture. It doesn't
matter what the subject is he needs to take a picture because lighting drives him and stuff
like that is really fascinating to me and uh the fact that this is set in a different setting, it's
by an author that i've already read. I read Salt To The Sea which Ruta Sepetys petty's fans seem to
think is her worst book and yet i really enjoyed it, so it's by an author that i've already read
and it has my husband's hobby in it which i think would be really interesting to read about. I think
i'm setting myself up for success. I'm trying to push myself here and i think that this one,
i think i could love it. Next book is House On The Cerulean Sea. This book, i don't read
a lot of contemporaries and my friend who is a mod over on our patreon server, she read this book and
has been hyping it so hard. She calls it the "hug book." She says reading this book is like is like
just being wrapped in a hug the whole time which sounds lovely, but i read a lot of dark books and
and this... being wrapped in a hug while you read a book... i know there's something wrong with me,
but that doesn't, that's not the type of book that i'm gonna pick up usually. Like, i'm gonna go for
the more, the... i don't know. I don't know guys. Anyway, i really think that i could potentially
love this and i know i'm gonna read it because it's a patreon buddy read so i know i'm reading it
at the top of the year. Like i've probably already started it by the time you're watching this video
and i think that i will love it, but it is way outside of my comfort zone
and i hope that i do love it for Lynn's sake. The Great Alone. This is another historical fiction
set in a different setting. Let me tell... Alaska i'm pretty sure. Yeah. Alaska. 1974.
And uh this is another author that i've read before. I read The Nightingale. I really enjoyed
it so i could potentially really enjoy this too. I think this is one of her more recent, oh! It's
a Book of The Month. No kidding. This is before i was even working with Book of The Month. I bought
it second hand. This was before i even knew who Book of The Month was. That's funny. Anyway,
this is i'm pretty sure a recent release and it's a book that i really um have been interested in
(or at least one of her books) historical fiction i'm trying to push myself out of my comfort zone.
I think i could potentially like it. Future Merphy here back with impressively even worse
lighting because i decided that the final book in my predictions video probably isn't actually
gonna get five stars. So i've replaced it with Royal Assassin. This is kind of a cheat because
adult fantasy isn't exactly outside of my comfort zone, but the reason it still fits is because
this is a series that i started with Assassin's Apprentice a year ago i think and i enjoyed it,
but i didn't enjoy it enough to continue on with the series. I've always planned to
continue on with the series, it's just never been a priority to me. However, several of my friends
have continued on with the series and everybody is just losing their minds over how good it is
so i've been saying for so long that i'm going to continue on with the series too
and then i just never do. So while it's not outside of my comfort zone necessarily,
i'm still counting it because it's a book that i'm not going to read without a bigger push,
without some sort of challenge, some sort of deadline that i'm setting for myself because
i enjoyed the first book, but i don't have motivation content to continue,
but i genuinely think that if i do continue i'll love it. So there you go. Those are
the last five star predictions and how terribly i did it predicting them. Here's the next set.
They're all out of my comfort zone, so i'm excited to do this because it will push me push my reading
a little bit and hopefully i will love them as well. I would love to keep chatting with you
about this in the comments now that you've seen my new predictions. What are the ones that you
think that i will love? What are the ones that you think, "No Merph, you're gonna hate that" which i
got some of that last time. Be sure to check out Lore, which is available now. Link in the
description to buy it! I post videos every Tuesday through Friday. I'll see you guys again soon. Bye.