Hi everyone, it's Vanessa. I haven't made a video in two months and I haven't really felt like it and it's been fine I've been trying to find a job. It's been difficult. My diploma got lost in the mail So that's the whole thing that I've been going through and I've just been busy honestly at work and with my doggy Who's right under me? He's going to an obedience class because he needs some obedience training to remember what he learned in his puppy training classes Right Sam. We'll get there. And the end of my boyfriend I've been doing really fun trips since the last time you saw me We also moved so it's just been a lot going on and just honestly not feeling like I wanted to post on this channel And that's fine to do. So today I'm here and I wanted to discuss what I've been reading in the past two months Which hasn't been much? Honestly, I've been watching more movies and listening to more podcasts and I've ever so that'll be another video for another time But today I just wanted to talk about all the books that I've been reading slash that I've DNFed while I've been gone I've continued to read lots of graphic novels and by a lot of time in three But I've continued reading the babysitters club graphic novel series by arena toga Meyer I'm on book four of it now. I've read number two and number three since last time you saw me They're just light fluffy cute realistic depictions of girls and a business that they're running to be babysitters I read be prepared as well by Vera Broskall who was the same person who wrote Anja's ghost and the really great picture book leave me alone It's about a Russian girl who goes to a sleep away camp with her brother and she is really excited at first But then doesn't like it because it's kind of hard to fit in there and to Get other people to become her friend. It's based on her real life, which was interesting But I thought it would just be a little bit more profound at the end than it was I also read another really disappointing book which is More disappointing because some people live this book and I honestly thought it was just okay And that was the double in the white city, which is a book that I feel like everybody recommends to People who are trying to get into nonfiction and I would not recommend this book I thought that overall the idea of it is cool the idea of looking into the world's fair is cool But I think what really lost me in this book is the author trying to pair that That world's fair how that construction happened and how it actually played out with people coming to see the fair with a Serial killer on the loose tangentially in the same sort of vicinity The serial killer wasn't loose on the property or anything like that It was just kind of happening in the background and around the same time period sort of nearby And I just felt like it was such a stretch for those two things to go together They were two things that happened in 1893, but I didn't really think that they fit a single narrative and that turned me off a lot I also really Disliked how much architecture talked there was when I came to the world's fair Some of it was cool like all the new inventions that were going on that are kind of Conplay today that you wouldn't expect started then that was cool But I really didn't care about the construction malfunction and the architecture change and plans and How are people are running this fair to make sure that it's up in it the most amazing thing ever? Wasn't my jam I've DNFed a lot of books and at this I feel as my year of DNF's I don't feel bad about it at all anymore if I am 200 pages into your book and even like a hundred pages into your book And I don't like where it's going or I feel like I've gotten my share of it I'm gonna say goodbye to you because I don't have the time So one of those books was the good byline which is a cozy mystery about a Millennial librarian who is trying to become a reporter and I thought this all sounded really cool Relatable the fact that she was a millennial I've never really brought a book with a millennial main character in a mystery and so I checked it out I thought it was quirky and fun But that core kind of started turning cringe for me around 150 pages or so mostly because I think honestly I will never get into cozy's I feel like all the tropes are there always and they're never done in a way that like turns them on their heads for me And they just don't work for me I just feel annoyed when I'm reading them and I feel like the main character is dumb and doesn't see what's going on here We'd love triangles and like with information and violence happening and has no idea How to put the pieces together so not my thing, but if you're into that kind of a thing I would tell you to consider checking it out Another DNF was the astonishing color of after I was really into this book because I love how it depicted grief and losing someone close to you to suicide and kind of a mother-daughter relationship I think what ended up happening for me is that I felt this book became repetitive There were kind of three main scenarios that would happen It felt like the paste lag and it never felt like I could read a lot of pages at once And I also thought after a while all of the color that she was trying to put into every single description felt more Over the top than it did flowery and beautiful and that kind of bothered me as well So I decided I was done with that book and I closed it and the last book that I want to talk about that idea And that is the kiss quotient which is a book that's been very busy and Here I am trying to get into romance here. I'm trying to get into cozies Um and and still having a hard time I think my problem with the kiss quotient is that I didn't care to read about the sex and I felt like the sex scenes kept coming and wouldn't stop and there was points where I fast forward through them thinking I would get more of the relationship forming and the personalities vibing off each other but no sex and sex I got to the point where I wasn't enjoying it I really liked the pace at first the introduction of the characters and kind of the personalities their backgrounds I thought that was so different for a romance and that's initially why I wanted to read it You know having a sex worker male character and having a main character who is on the autism spectrum I liked all that we focused more on the sex and sexual chemistry and initial attractions Then we did on them like trying to get to know each other and I felt like I I Understood what the author was doing and where it was going anyway, so I thought I had enough a book that I really loved What a switch up. I loved the Magpie murders by Anthony Horowitz This is a book that also has been talked about a lot especially by mystery lovers I really read it so quickly. It was kind of amazing considering how slowly I had been reading everything else I just loved kind of the setting of it I loved the small town characters that were there and they were very charming I really felt like I was in that town and I understood how they were each thinking and all of their motivations so I really like this story within the story a lot more than I like like the second part Which was the modern mystery story? I kind of feel like I would have been just fine with the first part and just having series of that like if it was actually a real thing I would be reading them. It was really great on audiobook the narrator was fantastic And I liked him a lot better than the narrator for the second part of the story There was so many meta aspects to the story that I also really liked which got you thinking about like why do we read mysteries and Why are we into this sort of thing? But yeah, I'm gonna definitely continue reading Anthony Horowitz He has a new book out and I haven't one hold for it But I've suspended it because I want to be at a good place before I read it another book that I finished really quickly was Simon versus the homo sapiens agenda just because the audiobook was so quick I felt like it was a very sweet fluffy light book and I decided to read this after I watched the movie and loved the movie Honestly, I like the movie better I think the movie fixed a lot of the things that I had problems with in the book concerning pacing and like friends and How I felt about all of the characters and I think the actors really sold it in the movie overall I really enjoyed being in Simon's head again I just loved his monologues a fun teenager you want to listen to the last book that I read really quickly and Did not really like was Evelyn Hugo honestly considering dropping my two-star rating to one star at this point I wanted to read this because I heard it was very quick paste and kind of addictive and it was But I don't think in a good way. I thought it was addictive in like a sped-so-be magazine kind of a way where all of the characters were like Really hard to like I didn't really care for Evelyn Honestly, and I feel like everybody loves her and wants to be here and I'm like not me I thought it was predictable I thought it was stale and that includes the characters and the dialogue and the situations that they were placed in and even the way the Marriages came to be and like dissipated and turned into divorce It all felt like the same thing over and over for me So I didn't quite work for me as much as other people and that's all I read in the past two months That I feel like I can't have an opinion on I've DNFed lots of other books And I'm thinking of doing a whole video about all of my DNFs so far this year And then I want to quickly talk about the two books that I'm currently reading I'm halfway almost done, hopefully with I will find you by Joanna Connors This is a nonfiction book about a journalist who is looking back at a the rape that happened to her decades and decades before and trying to Understand why the man that did this to her did this to her and the circumstances of his life What she thinks about it all these years later It's set in Cleveland in the 1980s because that's where she was living when this happened to her So it's also interesting to get that 80s feeling of what the country was like and what her job was like then as well The last night I started on audio Matilda, which I've never read Matilda. It's really funny on audio It's narrated by Kate Winslet. So I'm enjoying that and I'm probably like three chapters in I also started on audio the Sun also Shines the Sun does shine by Anthony Hinton a Nonfiction book about a man who was incarcerated for decades before DNA ex-honorated him and we haven't really gone to any of that It's just kind of like his early life. I'm probably not more than three hours into the audiobook right now Thanks so much for watching this video. I know it's been forever. We'll see what comes of life and if I'm back here soon Thanks for watching. See you later. Bye