Hey guys I'm Olivia from Olivia's Catastrophe and today I'm here to give
you my January wrap-up. In the month of January I read 16 books and I'm here to
tell you all about them. So I started off the year with reading my graphic novels
and the first one I read was Monstress and this graphic novel is written by
Marjorie Liu and the drawings are done by Sana Takeda and this was my first
5-star read of January and 2019. This one follows this girl who has this monster
inside of her and she is travelling in this fantasy world which is quite grim
and dark, and she's trying to find out what has happened to her mother. This one
was so good. It's 200 pages long so getting your money's worth for a graphic
novel and the artwork is so so gorgeous I don't think I've seen artwork this
gorgeous in a graphic novel before. The story is perfectly grim and dark which
is the kind of thing I love and the world-building was just fantastic. I
cannot wait to get to the second volume so I can just read more and find out
more about what happens in this book. Then I continued on with reading graphic
novels and the next one that I read is Paper Girls and this one is written by
Brian Vaughan who also wrote Saga. Now I really wanted to love this one a bit
more than I did but I just found that it didn't have enough substance to it. So we
follow these four paper round girls. It's set in history in America and they are
just going around they're paper round when something apocalyptic kind of
happens and these aliens are on the earth and there's good aliens and bad
aliens. They don't know which is which and they're just trying to survive. Also,
nearly all humans have suddenly disappeared.
This one just had no explanations for anything whatsoever and I mean, I'm all
for you know having some things explained and then you need to wait to
the sequel to get more things explained, but you can't have nothing explained the
reader just won't know what's going on. And yeah, I just felt so confused and
lost throughout all of it and that really impeded my enjoyment of this
graphic novel. Not sure if I'm going to continue reading but we'll see, However,
the colour scheme for this one is beautiful. It's all like pink and blue
like see on the cover, and the artwork is done
like decently well. I really love the colors chosen. Then moving on to some of
my young adult reads the first one that I read was Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay
Coles. This is by a person of color and it's about these two twins Tyler and
Marvin. They go to this party and things go completely wrong. And a couple of days
later Marvin finds out that his twin brother
Tyler is dead and he was killed by the police in complete brutality. So this is
a police-brutality book and it was just so hard hitting. I really enjoyed it
because I could relate to a lot of the, you know, black culture in this one and I
could really relate to it. But don't think this is an own voices review
because I am NOT African-American. I don't live in America and we don't face
police brutality like the Americans do here in Britain. So, even though I know a
lot about American police brutality and all the things that are going on. I've
been, like, keeping up with it online. It still shocked me it still shocked me. The
way they had to live their lives, what happened to them, the follow up... I don't
know maybe because I was reading it and I just felt so close to the characters
it just knocked me right out and it was such an emotional book. Next up we have
another young adult read and that is Genuine Fraud by E Lockhart. I read We
Were Liars, like, a while ago and really enjoyed it. So I was very much looking
forward to getting to this novel of hers that she's published and this one was
fantastic. I was on a wild ride! So it follows this character called Jule. I'm
not going to tell you much about her. When you meet her she's in this hotel
and she's on the run from this detective that is following her. This is a book
that starts at the end and then it rewinds and we rewinds and rewinds and
goes back to the beginning so you're getting the story from end to beginning,
instead of beginning to end like you usually do. And it was just so well done
and so cleverly done. Things about the plot just kept getting revealed the
further back we went. And then you get into this question of whether the main
character is a good character, or if she's a bad character, or she's just an
entirely unreliable narrator and you shouldn't take anything she says as the,
you know, complete and honest truth. I was just on a wild ride. The writing star was
perfect for a young adult thriller. Short sentences, hooked me, suspense! I
just - I was doing assignments so I couldn't read it in one sitting but - I
just wanted to read every opportunity I could. Next up time I'm gonna talk about an
ebook that I read and that is The Thousands Floor by Katherine McGee. This
one totally surprised me. I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. But one
thing I really love reading about is cross genres and this one just crossed
genres so well. So it's a sci-fi, but I would also say it's a contemporary. So
basically it's a contemporary novel with contemporary themes just set in a sci-fi
world. It follows these teenagers who live in this huge futuristic skyscraper
and if your penthouse level or the thousandth floor or the 999th floor, that
shows how rich you are. And then if you're on the lower floors like the
tenth floor or the ninth floor that means you're very very poor. So you can
see that there's a hierarchy system and it's got some classism themes going
on. But it's about these teenagers and there's a lot of point of view so be
ready for that. And all of them come from different floors and they all are on one
floor doing things but they come from different floors, they've got different
secrets and they've got different connections to each other and
relationships, and throughout the book all these characters just tangle their
relationships up so so much. And then at the end like big thing happens and I was
shook because when I was reading at the beginning I was like: all this is just all
relationship drama, so, you know, contemporary cliche. But I was still
addicted to reading and then, you know, the secrets unraveling and everything
kicked in and I was like: this offer is actually a genius.
The prologue opens with one person being pushed off of the tower and falling off
the tower to her death. But we don't know who this character is and we don't know
why they're falling to their death. So you have to read the whole book to find
out what events led to that and I think the prologue was used very cleverly. I
was... I was so hooked. It's quite a long book but again I was reading whenever I
wasn't doing assignments. Then we're going to go back to physical books and I read
Engelen in Het Donker by Lauren Kate which is originally written in English and
it's called Angels in the Dark. It's a Dutch book. It's a novella collection of
all the novellas that had to do with the Fallen trilogy by Lauren Kate. I
haven't read the full and trilogy by Lauren Kate I know you're wondering, 'so
why reading the novellas in Dutch, Olivia?'
Mostly because I live in England now. I don't hear Dutch as much as I used to. I
don't get to speak Dutch as much as I used to and I'm definitely not finding
Dutch books here. So when I went to the Netherlands I
decided to bring back a few Dutch books and I'm just going to try and read a bit
more in Dutch because I don't want to lose the language and yeah, that's the
main reason why I read this. But I actually -- even though I didn't know what
was going on and that's not because of the book it's because of the fact that I
haven't read the main trilogy -- I did still enjoy it enough for me to know
that the world is one that I like and even though I had no intention of
reading the Fallen trilogy before I might actually read it now. Hm. Then we're
gonna move on to some books I read for uni and the first one is Death on the
Nile by Agatha Christie. Guys, I love Agatha Christie I can't
believe this is, like, one of the -- this is only the second time I'm reading her
work. So Death on the Nile is about these characters who go on this boat along the
Nile and they're in this boat so it's like an enclosed space and a murder
happens. And the person who gets murdered is Lynette who is this
very very rich and wealthy girl who just got married. However, she got married to
the person that her best friend used to be engaged to, and her person -- the person
she's engaged to is also on the boat. So there's quite a lot of tension already
and everybody kind of doesn't like Lynette for one reason or the other so
basically anybody could have killed her. It's a Poirot mystery so Inspector Poirot
is the person who is doing all the inspecting. And it's just so good guys.
She is the queen of crime fiction and there's a reason for it. This one is
quite a famous one and I highly recommend it. I enjoyed it. At the
beginning you get introduced to quite a few characters. Don't let that faze you
because the sooner you go into the book the more like you get the hang of who's
who and not all of the characters you meet are going to be relevant all the
way through. I was able to semi guess who did it in this one which made me feel
very very proud. But I had no clue as to how the person did it. Because how can I
guess that? She's too Queen for that. Then I had to read another Agatha Christie for
uni and this one was The Murder at Vicarage. And this one is set in a small
village and the vicar is kind of the one who's doing the inspecting, but of
course, it's a Miss Marple novel. It's the very first Miss Marple novel so she's
also in this one doing her own inspecting and detective work too. And
what happens is there's this murder. There's loads of characters who have
motive to kill him but the main problem is they don't understand how it could
have happened. I had no clue who did this one, I was completely stumped, I didn't
know whodunnit. And again I didn't know how. So I was just reading through and
going my own way. Then I read a classic just of choice and that was Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. This is just one that's referenced a lot
at uni. And people just reference it a lot when talking about books but I'd
never read it myself so I wanted to finally pick up this copy I've had for
ages and read it. And I really really enjoyed it. It's a very short one. It's
only about 80 to 90 pages and it's just so interesting! Like, I really knew what
was going to happen because it's a well known storyline. But there's these two
people one. Is Dr. Jekyll who is a very nice, loving doctor and everybody likes
him but he really is enclosed he cuts himself off from people. And there's also
Mr. Hyde who is this criminal, who is horrible, who's mean and people are just
wondering about when Mr. Hyde goes when he goes off missing. And where and why
Dr. Jekyll doesn't connect with more people.
The ending was good guys. And it just -- if you study it there's so many different
themes and topics you can delve into. A lot of deeper meaning and I very much
enjoyed reading this one. Then I'm going to talk about some of the poetry that I
read. So I finally read Edgar Allen's collection of poetry, the complete
collection. I thought it was just okay. I wanted to loved it a bit more than I did.
For some reason I felt like his poems were raw and unedited. Like sometimes he
had some good rhythm going, he had some good rhyme going. And you could tell that
his relationships that happened to him in real life really do affect his poetry.
So it's all very personal. But at the same time I also felt like sometimes I
wanted to just take a pen and edit his poetry. Like that rhyme felt a bit rough,
that felt a bit uneven and uncomplete. So I liked it but also I feel like it could
have been better sometimes. That's very critical of me to say but that's just
how I felt. I felt a bit mixed when it came to his poetry. Then I also read
Titanic by Bridget Minamore. This is a chapbook collection. Bridget Minamore is a
black poet and I have heard her do her spoken word poetry a lot. So I was very much
looking forward to get into this chapbook of her poetry. However, has spoken
word poems are very long, they're very thematically driven, but her
written poems are much shorte. They're kind of like Rupi Kaur lengths except
for a couple at the end. And Rupi Kaur poetry is just not me. I'm not for
insta the poetry and very like, minimal poetry. So this one just didn't sit right
with me. But if you like Rupi Kaur I think you'd like this more than I did.
I read to new adult romance. The first one I read was Rend by Roan Parrish
and this was my second 5-star read of 2019. I absolutely loved it! I had
assignments to be doing, I had work to be doing, but I just shoved it to the side
and read this book all night long. And guys, when I think about it actually
makes me emotional because Matt the main character was scarily like me. Like not
entirely because I haven't had some of the traumatic experiences that he has
had and I've never been in the foster system. But just his personality and some
of the things you like -- you know things that you do just because you're you. He was just like
me and I was reading and I was like how is this author writing me to the minute?
Like to the letter and I was just -- I was just so shook. But it's a
romantic story between this married couple: Rhs and Matt. They're married
already and they're living there like happily ever after life. However, Rhs is
a musician and when he goes off on his first tour Matt kind of gets caught up
in his own head and he starts to spiral, and when Rhys returns back from his
tour they kind of have to fall in love all over again and get used to being
together all over again. Which is interesting because we never really get
to see an already established couple go through their difficulties and having to
solve it. Again there's a lot to do with mental health in this one. And there's a
lot to do with the foster care system and how that affects you later on in
life. And to be honest -- I don't -- as much as I've worked with foster children
before, and as much that lived with children who have been fostered -- when I'm
all pairing I deliver the family who foster kids I'm helping with those kids --
I just wasn't aware of how horrible some foster systems can really
be. And how horrible they can treat the kids. And what a huge effect that has on
you later in life. So I think my eyes were very much opened by reading this
one. it's an m/m new adult romance so yes,
there are some explicit scenes that are very steamy. They were really nice and
Rhys himself as a love interest was just such a cute person. But of course, he has
-- he has his own fault to work through as well. And then the other one I read
was a reread and that is For Real by Alexis Hall. I've talked about this many
times on my channel before. It's an m/m BDSM romance and there's a huge age gap
between the characters so if age gaps are not your thing, don't read this one.
The -- the explicit scenes in this one are so just so steamy and I just love it! And
the characters themselves: I just love it! Again that there's this like fine layer of
cheese on the romance it can be quite cheesy at times, but you know I just
scrape off that cheese and I love it! And Alexis Hall is just such a brilliant
writer. One thing that I want to tell you about his writing is that even though he
is writing m/m BDSM romance you can tell that he's
someone who studied English literature and creative writing, because his
references sometimes are just so on point and out there. And he's like
referencing classic books I love it! And the last three things -- the three
books that I read were plays. They were Shakespeare plays and I'm just gonna
rattle through them because this is quite a long video already. So the first
one I read was Richard the Second by Shakespeare. I had to read it for uni and I
didn't really like it. It's a history play so of course Shakespeare had to
stick to the history. However, Richard the second story was just so, so passive. He
really is just a passive character. He really doesn't do much of anything and
nothing much of anything happens in this play. We did study the themes and I can
understand why it's the way it is and all of that jazz. Doesn't matter, I didn't
really enjoy reading it. Then I read Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare and
this is another history play that follows Cleopatra story. And also
her love story love affair with Antony who is a Roman warlord, I guess. It was
all right. It was just very military. A lot of military talk, a lot of military
happenings. And of course there's the romance all through it, but it kind of
overshadowed by all the politics you have
go through. Again it wasn't really my thing. It was a nice enough play just not
really my thing. And then lastly I reread King Lear again for university. And in this one
it's about a king who decides that before he dies he's going to -- like before he's
actually dead and passing on his inheritance -- he's gonna split his kingdom
between his three daughters. He gets betrayed a lot of jazz goes down.
And I actually really like this play. I think that it really raises questions
about good characters or bad characters, grey area characters, if you are the one
who of course your own problems and it's karma coming around, or if other people
who are just being mean to you. And I think the themes and symbolism is done
very well here and there's some beautiful writing. There's also a fool
character who is really wise and I'm always here for fool characters in
Shakespeare. Thank you so much for watching this video. Those are all the
sixteen books that I read in January. Please leave a comment down below
telling me what your favorite read in the month of January was. Thank you so
much for watching. Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed, it hit that
subscribe button to see more, and don't forget to the notification bell to be
updated every time I have a new video. And I'll see you guys in the next one.
Goodbye
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