Hello friends! My name is Marines and today I'm gonna be wrapping up the next bunch of books that I read. Books number 35 and 36 for the year were "The Last Wish" and "The Sword of Destiny" by Andrzej Sapkowski. So, I'm very casual gamer. I enjoy playing video
games but in the hierarchy of things that demand my time, as far as hobbies go,
video games usually get the shorter end of the stick. More recently I've been very slowly
playing through "Witcher III" and immensely enjoying it. I'm not the type of person that has
crushes on characters unless we're talking about like The Tenth Doctor, Captain Malcolm Reynolds and Aragorn but Geralt…
Anyway as I got into the gameplay, I did feel like I was missing pieces of the story because I
hadn't played the first video games and also because the books come before the video games so they are almost like a prequel to the video games. As I fell more in love with Geralt and the entire Witcher world, I decided to pick up the series.
I've seen different reading orders for these books but I am following
what I believe is the publication order which means that this series actually starts with two books that are collections of short stories, which are the two that I'm talking about today, "The Last Wish" and "The Sword of Destiny. I really enjoyed that as a start of a series. I'm not sure how much I would've enjoyed if I were being introduced to the series by way of short stories but because I had some knowledge through the video games I felt like I was getting pieces of back story in an almost easter-egg-like way because I was picking apart these short stories
and getting things that called into the gameplay so I personally really enjoyed it.
I thought both of these reads were really fast and interesting though not without their faults. This is early
nineties fantasy, so the treatment of women here is not amazing and in this
almost subtle micro-aggression kind of way. We do have female characters that
are very powerful and very present and some that I really enjoyed, but the problem is in the way they are described by others. They are hyper-sexualized at points, to the point that I almost expected Geralt to start making out with every woman that he encountered and it took me a bit to process that that was happening because of the way that women were being described. It was like we couldn't encounter one without some kind of sexual feelings attached to it. So I was like, "is Geralt just gonna like make out with everyone?" He doesn't, which you know, points for you, but the feeling, that description is still there. All in all, the world is interesting, Geralt and Ciri are fast becoming some of my favorite characters. It's action-packed and it's not without its flaws especially in the way that it describes women and in kind of the plain and formulaic writing, but I am interested and invested so I'm going to continue on with the series.
Book 37 was "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline. I did a full review on this book, which I will link for you guys and basically I was underwhelmed.
At the heart of it is an adventure story that's pretty interesting and has a lot of nice call backs to previous eras of pop-culture and that was great but I think surrounding it is a lot of problematic things, especially when it comes to the basic storylines, the superficial characters and just kind of the way that things are discussed as– in terms of representation body image, and just a lot of things that made me feel uncomfortable so that the overall experience wasn't a positive one for me.
I ended
up giving this 2.5 out of 5 stars. Book number 38 was "salt." by Nayyirah Waheed. This is a collection of poetry, the first and only collection of poetry
that I've read this year. "salt." explores a variety of topics though I think the
emphasis really is on identity and relationships. One of my favorite things
about this collection was Waheed's ability to convey so much in a couple of lines
and a title. She conveyed not only emotions but these particular experiences
that are really tied to racial identity. I thought it was just lovely to consume and to
think over and it had such an impact where you just have a line and a title that ties it all together.
It was just really, really great to read. As with any collection, not all of the poems were my favorite and there were a lot of times that in that in that same format, there were formatting
choices that she made that I didn't understand but overall I thought that
this was a really impactful read, a really important one and I gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Books number 39 and 40 were two books that I reread and both are middle grade books.
The first was "The Boy Who Lost Fairyland"
by Catherynne M Valente. This is the fourth book in the Fairyland Series so I
have now reread books 1 through 4 multiple times each and I still haven't
finished the series because I think I'm just in denial. I love this series and I really enjoyed
this book but upon rereading I adjusted my rating from a 5 star to a 4.25 star rating.
While I love the characters and Valente's whimsical style is very much
present here, her beautiful writing is very much present, this book happens in
two parts almost, one in the human world and one in Fairyland and she has so much to convey in so little time that it almost gets sloppy and rushed and for that I just couldn't rate it as high as the other entires into this series.
The second reread was "Liesl & Po" by Lauren Oliver. I've been recommending this book all over BookTube since I joined and I finally reread it and I don't
regret that. I think that this is a very worthwhile piece of fiction. It's a
pretty simplistic children story that really conveys complex human emotions.
That said, rereading it for the second time, time, I just didn't connect as much to
the story as I did originally. This book is a lot about loss and grief and how
and if you can get over certain things that happen in your life that are– they're
kind of universal to the human experience and I read it at a time of person grief and I just connected to so much. All of that happens under
this almost cliche fairytale story on top and Ifeel like if you don't have the emotional connection, what you'll is get is just the kind of cliche fairytale story and it'll be an overall "meh" experience for you.
This time around for me I was a little more disconnected from story but I still could appreciate it for what it was: a lovely children's story about a young girl suffering great loss. That's it for me today! I'm still not caught
up with my reading but I like to do individual reviews for books that I'm going to do those for before I do the wrap-up, like I did with "Ready Player One" in this video. So I have a couple of those that I have to film and publish before I can move on to my next wrap-up, including one for "Americanah" and "A Court of Mist and Fury." As always, let me know if you've read any of these books and what you thought of them.
I would love to chat with you about them down in the comments. Thank you so much for watching this video and I will see you guys soon! [OUT TAKES] *tries real hard to pronounce Andrzej Sapkowski*.
