Hi everyone. I'm rincey and this is rincey reads. Today i'm going to be doing
my December wrap-up part two. So just to kick things off, I just want to say, again,
thank you so much to everyone who watched my videos over the course of
vlogmas. I made a lot of videos and I'm very glad to be not making that many videos
anymore, to have my evenings free again without video editing having to be done.
I will link to the playlist up in the cards just in case you want to peruse it
to see if there are any videos you missed over the course of the month.
Also my favorite books of the year video went up. You guys have been like very
responsive to that video. Like my favorite books of the year video is
always my most popular video of the year, but it's kind of crazy to me like how
many views that video already has. It's nothing like trend worthy or anything
like that, but for me personally that's a lot of use to have over the course of
like less than a week. So again, thank you so much to everyone. I mean, even if you
watch any of my videos, thank you again just for participating in this. So I have
about six books that I want to talk to you guys about.
I got significantly more reading done in the second half of the month as like
vlogmas wrapped up and everything like that. So let's jump into the books. So the
first book that I have is Severence by Ling Ma. This is a relatively new
release. It came out in the fall of this year. This is one of those books that's
really hard to describe. I feel like the way that it's pitched on the like dust
jacket and in marketing material and things like that gives you a very
different vibe than what this book is actually about. This book flashes back
and forth between two different time periods and you are following this
character named Candice Chen who works in New York City. There is this like
major flu outbreak that happens and so you're basically following the time
period like right when the outbreak is just starting to happen overseas and
then it slowly like spreads up around the world and specifically to New York
City where Candice Chen lives. And then you are also following this timeline
that is farther into the future when there are just like less people around.
And Candice Chen ends up joining this other group of people who are headed to
Chicago. They're headed to this place that they called the facility and the
leader of this group named Bob knows about this place where they can
basically have like access to more resources and food and shelter and
things like that. So yeah, that's like the basic synopsis. But this is kind of also
like a two-part story where it is this slightly dystopian survivalist type of
story but it's also this like weird commentary — I don't want to say weird. I
just mean weird like unsettling sort of commentary on like Gen X and society and
things along those lines. It's one of those books that the entire time I was
reading it I couldn't figure out whether or not I liked it. Like the
writing is really good and I found like the more survivalist dystopian stuff to
be more compelling than the basic literary navel-gazing to be. But again,
that's more my personal preference about books in general. I thought some of the
things she explored in here to be really really interesting especially like the
concepts of like home and family, especially when like all of your
biological family is like missing, what do you do then? And like finding your
identity in the places that you live and the people around you and where you work
and things like that and how like sort of unfulfilled that whole thing is. There
were parts of it that I think were supposed to be surprising that I saw to
be very predictable. Maybe it's because I read a decent amount of genre fiction
that I could see it sort of coming. But I don't know if they were like supposed to
be surprising or not. Like maybe if you don't read a lot of genre fiction you
won't see the tropes so to speak. Ling Ma is a really strong writer but I think plot
wise, it was a bit of a mixed bag. Like there's a lot of people who really,
really loved this book and I think that there's a good reason to love this book.
But it's just like one of those books that didn't really work for me because
it was trying to do two very different things in the same book and it felt like
it didn't really mesh really well. And I ended up just like liking one of the
ideas better than the other, so. The next thing that I finished was a novella and
that is prime meridian by silvia moreno garcia. Anyone who's been watching my
channel for a while knows I really enjoy Silvia Moreno Garcia's books. Signal to
Noise is one of my all-time favorite books.
I liked this, I didn't love it. And a lot of my sort of quibbles with it just have
to do with the fact that it's a novella. I think that if this story and these
characters are fleshed out a lot more I would love it. So in this story you are
following this character named Amelia who lives in Mexico. This takes place
like slightly in the future and there are like colonies and settlements
on Mars and Amelia dreams of living on Mars one day. But she is like extremely
poor and so it's not really a viable option. And so you're kind of just
following Amelia in her life day to day as she's dealing with the struggles of
being poor and like the difficult decisions that she has to make and the
complicated relationships that she has with like her sister and her
ex-boyfriend. And so like part of it is the fact that Amelia works as like this
rent a friend where people pay her to have her keep them company. And so like
she is a friend to this woman who was an actress back in the day. Part of it is
like following that and then part of it is just Amelia living her life and
there's like a little bit of a love story there. I feel like plot wise, it's
not super great but Sylvia Moreno Garcia is really good at creating really
interesting characters, characters who are morally gray and slightly abhorrent
at times but like you still feel really compelled by them. Also, based on the
cover because I did not read the synopsis super hard, I definitely thought
that this was going to be like a straight-up sci-fi book where she would
go to space or take place partially in space and it isn't that. So warning to
anyone else who might be interested in this book based on the cover alone. But
that's like, you know, my bad for not reading the synopsis, I suppose. So yeah, I
don't know. It's not like a novella where I feel super compelled to tell you guys
to pick it up like say Martha Wells' series or something like that. But if
you like a good character study and you like novellas or you like Sylvia Moreno
Garcia's characters specifically, it's not a bad one to pick up, I would say. Like if
it's on sale still for like two bucks or three bucks, it's not a bad purchase to
make. Alright another book that I had really complicated feelings about
because apparently that's the theme for this end of the month, Commonwealth
by Ann Patchett. So I made the terrible mistake of listening to this on
audiobook. If you're going to pick up this book, do not do that because this
book is so freaking confusing if you try to listen to it.
And you might be thinking, rincey, why didn't you just switch to the physical
copy since you had the physical copy? I was listening to this as an audiobook on
like a really slow day at work. And so I basically just like got through the
entire audiobook in that work day. By the time I realized that listening
to this on audio was a terrible decision, it was already too late. So the story
starts off in Southern California in the past, I think it's like the 1950s or 60s.
It takes place at this baby's christening. And this one character ends
up kissing the mother of that baby. That basically sets off the divorce of those
two separate marriages and then those two separate marriages sort of like end
up joining together, or these two families end up joining together. And then you
follow them over the course of the future over like a couple of generations
of time. So the great thing about this book is that Ann Patchett is a really
amazing writer and it shines in this book for sure. Like I said though, I had a
really hard time with this book because again it spans multiple generations, it
doesn't go chronologically, it like jumps around in time quite a bit. There's very
little indication about which time period you're in, at least in the audio
book, and there's also very little indication as to like which character's
point of view you are following. So you're following multiple people within
multiple generations and I personally got really confused about like who was
married to who and who was related to who and how all of these different
characters fit together and the complicated web that is this family.
But that might have been something that I would have been okay with if I was
reading the physical book. But it also was one of those things where again when
there are multiple perspective books, there are certain perspectives that I
cared about more than others and that is definitely true for this book. And there
were certain things that I like, again, saw coming that I don't know if it was
meant to be a surprise or not. Like she might have been like very obviously
laying down the groundwork for certain things. But I think that again Ann
Patchett is a really strong writer and she does some really great explorations
of like families and relationships and terrible life decisions and the way that
those things impact the future in a really interesting way in a relatively
short book. So I think that if you are an Ann Patchett fan, this is definitely one
that you should pick up. Maybe it's one that I'll pick up again in the future
and like read the physical copy of so that way I can have a different sense of
it. But if you are gonna read this book, do not pick up the audiobook. All right the
next book that I finished was dark places by Gillian Flynn. This was a book
I had, again, complicated feelings about.
This is the last Gillian Flynn book that I had to read besides her novella, the
grown-up. And I feel like with this book, reading it last, it was pretty obvious
that this was her first book. I think that the mystery isn't as strong and the
characters aren't quite as compelling and it felt more like horribleness for
horribleness sake rather than well-developed characters who are
horrible people like her later books. So in this story you are following this
character named Libby who when she was about seven years old her sisters and
her mother were brutally murdered and her brother was convicted for the
murders. And then 25 years later Libby is contacted by this group called the kill
Club who are like obsessed with unsolved or sort of like really horrific murders
like this one. And they are trying to find out more details about the murders
and a lot of them also believe that Ben isn't the murderer.
And so Libby actually starts to look into this night for the first time in
her life and starts to discover things and obviously things they're not as they
seem. This book feels a little bit underdeveloped compared to her other
ones. It's still a strong book because again Gillian Flynn is a great writer
and so like a great writer writing an average book is still above average in
terms of general books. But also like I found the mystery aspect of this to be
kind of obvious. Like I guessed what happened pretty early on for the most
part. There was like one part that I didn't see coming but like overall I
kind of figured out what was happening. And because of that this book felt like
a little bit of a drag. Like it is meant to be like a bit of a slow burn. But it's
also one of those books where like I didn't feel compelled by the story to
keep reading it, I just kind of wanted to know what the ending was to see if I was
right or not. So like that's never really a fun experience when you are reading a
book. Like if you're reading the book just to see if you're right or just
to see what the ending is, it's not that enjoyable as opposed to like if you're
compelled to keep reading the book because you're compelled by the story
and things like that. So yeah, again, another book that I gave it 3 out of 5
stars because to me it wasn't my favorite Gillian Flynn experience. It's
not terrible but it's not my favorite. So there's that. All right, next up I did a
reread of the book Scarlet by Marissa Meyer. I actually listened to this one on
audiobook as well because all the audiobooks for the series are up
on Hoopla. I listened to Cinder back in June. I actually looked it up to see how long
it had been between the two. And I remember like I started Scarlet almost
immediately after finishing Cinder. But then I'm like not a binge reader at all.
But I was like kind of trying to find an audiobook to listen to and I remembered
that I hadn't finished listening to Scarlet because I was talking to one of
my friends about the Lunar Chronicles series. Scarlet, again, not my
favorite out of the series. I think that the beginning gets off to like a really
slow start and I'm not like a huge Wolf/Scarlet person. But I still really enjoy
the series a lot and I am kind of excited to pick up Cress because I
think Cress is my favorite out of the series. But again, I'm gonna give myself a
little bit of space in between the books. I think that these are kind of nice to
drop in randomly when I can't figure out what I want to read or I need something
to listen to specifically and that I know I'm going to enjoy. So yeah, I like the
Lunar Chronicles. I don't have a whole lot to say about it. The same woman
narrates the entire series and she's really great at it. So I highly recommend
them on audio if you haven't given them a try already. And the final book that I
have to talk about in this video is the map of salt and stars by Jennifer
Zeynab Jokhadar. This is a book that I have mixed feelings about. I literally
just finished it today so I haven't completely formed all of my feelings
about it yet. I don't even know what I'm going to write this yet because again I
have complicated feelings about this book. So this story takes place in 2011
and you are following this character named Nour who is of Syrian descent. She
was born in New York City but everyone else in her family was born in Syria. But
then her family moved to New York City. And then after her father passes away
from cancer, the mother decides to move them all back to Syria. But obviously
Syria during this time period is not a very stable country and it's not the
same place that they remember from before. And so there is an attack that
happens that ends up blowing up their house and injuring some of her family
members. And so they are forced to leave their home and figure out what they're
going to do next. Also in this book you are hearing the
story about this girl named Rawiya who lived during the 12th century and it's a
story that Nour's father told her when she was younger. And it's
about this girl who basically dressed up as a boy to become a warrior and to be
an apprentice to this famous mapmaker. All right so the reasons why I have
mixed feelings about this book: I did not care about the Rawiya storyline at all. So
like the beginning of every chapter has like a little bit of a snippet of the
story about Rawiya. Did not care about that at all. Like if that had been a
separate book unto itself like maybe I would have felt more connected to that
part of the story but I just didn't. I really felt connected to the main
storyline. This book does a great job of talking about the horrific and difficult
experience of Syrian refugees and the terrible things that they have to go
through once they are forced to leave their homes. That part of the story is
like really beautiful, really heartbreaking. Parts of the story do feel
really simplistic to me. I'm not sure if it's the writing itself that is
simplistic or if it's just because this is a refugee story and it feels like
every possible bad thing that could happen happens to this family. And so
sometimes when I was reading through this book like really tragic things
would happen and I would feel really heartbroken, but it also slightly felt
like there were boxes that she was checking off of different terrible
things that could happen to a refugee family and having it happen to this
family. But there are also points in this book that feel just so moving. This
family and this girl are both grieving their father, their dead father, as well
as grieving the loss of their home and other people that they knew and things
like that. In like full disclosure my dad's like death anniversary is coming
up in like a week and a half or two weeks, and so like reading those scenes
while knowing that's coming up and having that in front of mind made me like
really emotional. But yeah, there were other times when it just felt like the
writing was overly simple. Now I do believe that this is supposed to be a
young adult book. So that might be why the writing is more simplistic. But
sometimes with stories like this when writers are trying to tell about this
very specific experience that happens in another part of the world, it's hard to
understand whether or not the experiences that like characters like
this go through are realistic or not. Now obviously I know like refugees go
through really really terrible things and have
impossible hurdles that they have to get over in order to find a safe place to go.
So I'm not like discounting that by any means. But I don't know, sometimes this
book just felt like it was watering it down just a little bit too much. But that
being said, again, I found a lot of this to be really moving and really
heartbreaking and I think is a really good book to pick up if you want a
fictional story about the refugee crisis and what it's like specifically from
when a person loses their home and is forced to leave to like them getting to
a safer spot, so to speak. Because I think a lot of times we see refugees sort of
like when they've already arrived in these other countries are these other
places and we don't see as much like what their life was like before and like
the hurdles that they had to overcome. So for that point, this book is very well
done. All right so that is everything that I have for this video. So I
mentioned in my 2019 goals video about how I was like going to do these sort of
quarterly goals. And so I thought one thing that I could do with my monthly
wrap-ups, at least the one that I do at the very end of the month, is to sort of
like check in a little bit. Now obviously it's December so my goals haven't
started yet. But I kind of wanted to have this as like a starting point because
now it's like officially going to be the beginning of the year. So my two
things that I'm going to be focusing on are reducing my physical TBR and trying
to read books off of the book riot best of list. So my sort of tentative goals
are to have sort of like a net 5 down of my physical TBR. So my physical TBR right
now is at 65 unread books. That's higher than the number I mentioned in that
goals video because I like forgot to count a couple of books. They were like
in a different part of my room and things like that and I got a couple of
books for Christmas and stuff like that. So yes, I'm currently at 65 books. If I
read anything between like Friday and, you know, Monday, I'm just gonna count
that towards the January net of 5. So my goal is to be to 60 books by the end of
January. So if I read like seven books but acquire two, I'm still at a net
five. And then my other is to do at least two books off of the book riot list.
I would like to do three if possible. Like I feel like three is a nicer number.
I made like a full list of all the books that I have yet to read from
that list and I actually have 35. So if I did like three a month, I could actually
get through the entire list. But again, no pressure on myself to do these things. Like
I'm the type of person who really likes really evenly round numbers like that.
But if I don't do it, it's fine. So yes, two is my real goal. Three is sort of like my
stretch goal because I feel like those three books are gonna be completely
different from my TBR books cause I don't own any of the books that are on the
book riot list. And then also I'm gonna have to like read books read or dead and
things like that. So yes, that's sort of where my head is at right now. We'll see
how I do at the end of January. Hopefully I remember to do these sort of like
monthly check-ins on my quarterly goals. But I think that'll like help me also to
continue with these goals further than just the first couple of weeks of the
month. So yes, that's everything that I have for this video. Let me know down in
the comments below if you've read any of the books that I mentioned in this video.
Or if you have any questions about the books, obviously leave that down in the
comment section below. Otherwise let me know what your favorite read was so far this month.
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