hi guys and welcome back to my channel as you would have guessed from the title of
this video today i'm running through the books that i read in may 2021
i feel like i say this every month but in may i felt like i was in a bit of a reading slump
and so i wasn't really reading that regularly and it would be about a week before i read again and
then whatever um but i'm getting back into it now that it's like the beginning of june so all
the books i'm about to go through were actually kindly gifted to me by different presses so i'm
going to acknowledge that when i go through them the first one that i read was uh the listeners by
jordan tannehill it was kind of gifted to me by 4th estate i can't remember if in my last video
about like my reading update i had finished this or not but in i finished this in may anyway i did
really enjoy this one it's about it says on there can you hear the hum so it's about this woman
that one day wakes up and she is this like buzzing this hum in her ear but no one else around her can
and so she joins his club because there's other people that can also hear this strange hum and
they all kind of like get together on a regular basis have these meetings put together ideas about
what it could be or if it's just like a scientific thing or if it's like a psychological thing
or whatever it is and yeah i really did enjoy this i felt that it was like really gripping it's been
a while since i've read a kind of thrillery book thrill thrillery book is that what yeah it was
really good to feel like i was on edge the whole time and wondering basically what is the hum what
is the cause of the hum it feel for the character a lot as well because like people around her like
her husband for example were getting was getting annoyed of her because basically saying that he
didn't believe her and you know just it doesn't exist and so i felt kind of bad for the character
i'm gonna look in my notebook what else i said and one of the things i think i said this in my
last video as well but it was written from a male author but the narrator was female and i think
that was so well done because if you told me that the author was female would have 100 believed you
just some of the things they were saying as a female narrator i just yeah just side note
that was quite good really clever campaign if you haven't seen this before the campaign for this was
fantastic so this actually doesn't come out until the 8th of july 2021 but the campaign for it was
is they had can you hear the hum written on posters around london this number to call and when
you call the number it's this man saying hello can you hear the harm yeah we have answers all this
and no one knew there was about a book campaign until you phoned the number and then they asked
you to leave like an email address or something and then that's how i got this copy and because
they email you and they say thanks for calling the number we'd like to give you a proof of this book
so this is a proof copy so the real thing doesn't actually come out until july 2021
i would really really recommend it i think it's been hyped but for the best reasons
one of the things as well on a downside is it made me really more aware of my tinnitus or
tinnitus however you say i say tinnitus which is something that i have which is a like a constant
buzzing like ringing in your ear i think a lot of people do have it and the whole time that i was
reading this book i was then like oh it's made me so aware of this now on another note as well i'm
quite surprised it's called the listeners because throughout the book they refer to themselves as
the hummers like the people that can hear the hum like in the group and the families and stuff they
call them the hummers so i'm quite surprised to be honest it's not called the hummers rather like
it's called the listeners instead i'd like to hear more about like why they chose that name or maybe
they will change it by the time it comes to july i mean i doubt it but um that's one i read and i
did enjoy that then i moved on to what planets can i blame this on by ellie pilcher this was kindly
gifted to me by hodder studios i actually ran a little giveaway with this as well and a little
while ago now where i gave one of you guys a copy of this and you just had to comment a planet emoji
because yes it's all about kind of astrology but not so the idea of this book what planet
can i blame this on it's about this character who is just i think she's approaching her 29th
birthday all of her life is just a mess basically she's losing her boyfriend she's losing her job
she's losing her flat and then someone basically recommends to her to look to astrology to help
her deal with that and make her decisions for her and that and for someone that has absolutely no
interest in astrology like whatsoever i actually really enjoyed this book because
there wasn't that much astrology in it if that makes sense so at the beginning of every chapter
at the beginning of every chapter like that there's a bit about and what's happening with your
your star sign your moon and all that but throughout the book it's not about that it's
about how she develops this obsession almost with astrology and looking to this and looking at her
looking at her horoscope her looking at her horoscope every day it does become an obsession
that's the the way i see the majority of this book it's becoming an obsession in the beginning
of the book it actually made me want to turn to like mindfulness more because you know she um
wants to believe that her fate is determined by something out of her control because in the book
she takes a lot of time to do research and look at astrology etc it made me want to set aside
that time to do a bit more mindfulness and i actually have been doing that as a result so
i'm pleased about that it's a very funny book it is a hilarious book and i would recommend it if
you just want more of like a light-hearted read but some hidden messages within it
it's light-hearted in the fact that it's funny throughout but as i said there's a lot of like
hidden messages in it and i would also just say as well there's a lot that happens in it i feel
but in a good way sometimes i feel like when books have so much happening in them and this
is a fiction book as well i feel like sometimes you can get confused in what's going on and
something's happening all the time it's not like that at all it's in a good way that it's like
well paced the author ellie pilcher has also done an interview for my channel as she is a marketing
manager at avon harpercollins and so if you haven't already i do encourage you to check
that out and i'll leave it in the description down below then i moved on to again another
gifted book and this was my body keeps your secrets by lucia osborne crowley crowley i'm not
not sure how to pronounce that this was kind of gifted to me by indigo press i read i
choose eleanor um and maybe like a year ago now i remember seeing the cover and seeing the name of
the book and because it's like my name i was like hey i'll give that a go and it's quite a short
book and it really uh not hit home like hit hard basically it's about it's non-fiction it's about
lucia the author and she opens up about her rape as a teenager and the the suffering effects of it
as a result because she didn't open up to anyone about it and it's a really really important book
and i love that and then when i found out that lucia would be writing another book which was this
my body keeps your secrets i messaged the marketer immediately and was like please i need a copy of
this and to my surprise it did turn up in the post such an important book shocking is what i said
because there are stories within it that you just think how has that happened how is that possible
like things that you just wouldn't believe that are happening and that are real and this author
is shedding light on that so again this book is non-fiction and it is about rape it's about sexual
assault it's about the shame that comes with it but it's about so much more than that you don't
have to have gone through anything like that to read this similarly if you have been through
something like that it would really help to read this not only does lucia the author go through her
personal experiences but she's interviewed about 100 people to make this book happen
in it i think she changes the name of some of the people obviously for confidentiality reasons but
within it she weaves in these stories of other people who have been through similar things have
shared stories of shame or anything like that and the way it was done i think was so clever a little
while ago now i read three women by lisa today and what i felt with that was a lot of attention
was put on those characters and that was what made up the whole book it was about these three women
but in this book they show just the right amount of attention to each one i think without kind of
like dwelling on it and sort of making up words for the sake of it it was had enough
attention to draw enough attention to whatever the message was or whatever in the right way i
don't know if that makes sense but i feel like if you read it you'll know what i mean because
the author will talk about their own experience then they'll talk about this person's story go
back to their own experience talk about someone different etc and i thought it was just so
well written and moving on to that there were so many parts where i could have just highlighted
that ripped that page out framed it put it on a wall see it written in a museum somewhere because
i didn't know how to say this when i put it on my instagram but i was like there's so many
quote worthy quotes in it that will be quoted in future because there are so many things i
think that is such a powerful sentence what i felt with this is there are some books where there are
definitely some quotes that you think wow that's such a powerful sentence and that will be quoted
forever and that'll be known for that book like the opening sentence of pride and prejudice for
example you know it's a true universally knowledge that a single man in possession of a good fortune
must be a wonderful wife everyone knows that sentence everyone knows that's pride and prejudice
with this book there are so many of those quotes that are rhetorical questions they're statements
that are the author's own thoughts i just think that is so powerful and maybe i will get around
to writing them all out again i did take a couple of pictures of the page as well that stood out to
me the most but honestly i just kept going through like i could highlight this but i didn't know how
to like in the whole page i honestly think so many people need to read this book and having said that
again this is so rare for me to say but i would re-read this book i hate not hate i don't like
reading reading new books i don't think i've ever reread a book eleanor oliphant is completely fine
it's one of my favorite books and i've always said i'd reread that and i kind of got halfway
through rereading that and this absolutely would be something i would reread or just keep referring
back to i feel like now that i've read it once as well i could jump back into any chapter and
go from there if it's not already over obvious it covers a lot of um kind of like trigger warnings
and sensitive topics so i've wrote some of them down that covers like rape sexual assault abuse
shame relationships endometriosis pregnancy and sex so there are a lot of heavy topics in there
but saying that it didn't make me cry at any point it didn't make me sad it kind of made me feel sad
for the the people in it i suppose but it wasn't it wasn't a book to make you feel sad it's a
book to show you what's real it's a book to raise awareness it's a book to make you feel like you're
not alone and it's a book to i guess improve change like spark change that's the um the final
one i finished in may 2021. then i was reading the devil where's praja i've actually finished that
now but it's technically june now so i'm gonna that's gonna be my june wrap up but absolutely
love the devil's brother those are kind of like the three books i read in may again as i said not
not really a lot but i'm hoping june i will read a lot more i should say as well when all of these
are out so the first one was the listeners by jordan tannehill for state this comes out on
the 8th of july 2021. what planet can i blame this on this came out on the 3rd of june 2021 by hoda
studio by ellie pilcher and then my body keeps your secrets by lucia osborne crawley by indigo
press this comes out in september 2021 so thank you so much for watching and i hope you enjoyed it
let me know if you agree with any of my thoughts if you've read any of these proof copies if you're
going to be pre-ordering them i'd love to know and hopefully see in my next one thanks bye