 Hello hello friends! How are we doing? Welcome to our last summer ween vlog. If you don't know I've been doing vlogs for summer ween. I did a vlog for days one and two, a vlog for days three and four and now we're doing a vlog for days five six one seven and I'm excited. So far we've read four books and a short story which like guys I think it's pretty great. Wow so make sure you go check out those vlogs if you haven't seen them yet but this is the closing off of summer ween and I want to end on a really high note. So I've got some books that I'm really excited. Let's chat through my plans okay. I'm trying to be realistic. I feel like I'm you know I want to start doing some other stuff other than just reading. I haven't played cozy groves since you saw me play it in day one. I still haven't finished speaking out. I haven't listened to the vault tracks guys so we have to do that at some point. So I'm trying to be realistic of what I'm gonna get read in these three days. So if you've watched other vlogs you know that I'm reading like a short story a day kind of of her body and other parties. I think I've read the first four and I've got four left to read so I'll try to run them today but I'll probably just chat about this with you on the last day once I've read these last four maybe or maybe I'll chat with you after every two. But I'm really enjoying this so far. I've saved my ratings of the short stories in this we've had so far. I've been a five, a four, a three and a five. It's very like surreal horror with like a little bit ugly. It's very like sensual. It's queer. There's a lot going on. So I'd like to make progress on this and then the two books that I'm aiming to get read are Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. This is gonna fulfill my prompt. The only prompt I haven't fulfilled yet which is read a book set in full. One of my patrons sent me an image. She was also reading this for summer ween and she sent me an image where it says that this does take place in autumn at least part of it. So it's what I'm counting. This is a five star prediction to me okay. It's about two eyes one who's gone on this deep sea mission and she comes back completely changed and it's about their relationship. I read the first chapter of this as a contender for my first book of the year and it narrowly missed out legends and lattes which is like you know stiff competition. It's hard to match up. So yeah this is a five star prediction for me. I think I'm gonna love this and then I also want to get around to Horror Store by Grady Hendrix. I just picked this up the other week and I just feel like I want to read it straight away you know. I love Grady Hendrix. He is definitely an author that I want to read all of his backlist. I feel like in terms of horror I'm a bit of a wimp right. I'm watching everyone's summer ween videos and some of the books people are reading. I'm like that's past my limit. It's past my limit. I'm not a big horror girlie. I like horror. I like dabbling but I don't... I don't love super graphic stuff. So Grady Hendrix is more camp. I feel like he is my perfect horror author even though I've already given him one... I've already read one book for a moment. It's been a four star. I feel like we do have five stars you know potential with him. So those are the books we're gonna be reading in this vlog. Who knows if we'll read more. I may read these really fast. We do have three days left but I'm trying to be realistic. It's not realistic. It's just not realistic. Now I was gonna start Our Wives Undersea just so we could tick all the prompts off but I'm gonna be honest guys. I'm having a bit of a meh day. It's already like four o'clock. I've been working again this evening. It should have only taken me to like maybe one o'clock to do all my work but it's taken me until almost four. It's like half past... it's more like half past three. I'm being harsh on myself. But I'm just having a day where I'm just kind of like I feel very sluggish and I feel very like... I don't know. The vibes aren't great but we're gonna turn it around. Change your costume. Change it around. We're gonna turn it around. So I was gonna start with that but I feel like I need an audiobook and I don't have the audiobook for this but I do have it for Horror Store and I have it for her Bonnie and other parties actually on the script. I feel like... I was wondering about this guys. Yes it does limit you right? A script if you don't know. I always have a link where you can get two months free if you want. In my description I get a month free. Thank you to everyone who's ever used that because I now have a script for free until like 2060 or something. So if you know anyone else who has a link like a friend or whatever I always tell my patrons like ask if anyone else in the patron in the discord has a link because use theirs instead of mine. But I feel like script selection has been really freaking good lately. Like I've been looking up some of the books on their like hair's yellow face. It has... I don't know I can't remember the other ones but there was so many good books that have been added lately. Anyways so I do have the audiobook for these. I think I'm gonna read Horror Story. This wasn't the plan but I'm really excited. It's set in an Ikea, the camp. Grady Hendrix. The camp I'm so excited. I think we're gonna start this. I think this is what we need. I'm gonna go ahead and read it and I'll chat with you maybe when I'm about halfway through. It's not very long. It's like 230, 240 pages. I'm just hoping for fun, for ridiculousness like I think I'm gonna love this. So this is what we're gonna go for and maybe we'll try and read this all today. I don't know. I do have reading sprints late as my Patreon. So anyways let's get into it. Let's have a great last days of the readathon. I'm very excited for the books that I've got in front of me. Let's go start this. The audiobook is definitely helping me stay focused and like have good vibes because I just you know you need an audiobook to stay focused. I mean I wouldn't recommend getting just the audiobook for this. I think it is free if you have Audible or at least in the UK. I think it's like one of those ones that's included in the catalogue and that's how I have it. But um yeah because so much of this is visual I would really recommend getting it physically. So all you need to know about this is that it's set in like an Ikea rip-off and strange things have been happening there. Things have been getting vandalized. The boss says to some of the some of the workers there like I need you to stay here tonight. I'll pay you double overtime. Stay here and we'll try and figure out who's doing this. And it's basically like a it seems to be like a haunted house story but in an Ikea essentially. And I'm enjoying it. I'd say at the moment it's like a 3.5 but I'd round it up to a 4 kind of situation because here's the thing. I'm enjoying this. I don't have any problems with it but I'm not like enamoured with it. I'm not reading it and I'm like oh my god you know. I think it's good. I think it's fun. I love a book but that's something different. Some of my favourite parts are the bits of the beginning with like a map and like telling you about the catalogue and like the fucking home delivery form. That's the kind of shit I love. You guys are so weird. Oh my god you guys are so weird. I know. Everything is weird. I wish I'd actually been a bit more of that other than just at the start of every chapter there being like a piece of furniture. I think the writing is good. I just think I'm not gonna love this as much as maybe find a girl support group and as much as I would you know. The ones that I really think I would love from Greyly Hendrix are probably Southern Book Cubs Guide, Besser and Zexasism, House on a Haunted House. They're ones that I probably had higher like rating anticipation of. I would just excited to read this because I think it's a fun twist on the genre and I love something that's a bit different. That's more why I was excited to read this. I think the characters are fine. I think it's probably fairly forgettable in terms of the plot itself but I'm enjoying the campiness and the kind of referential aspect to it and like the idea is like a really cool bit where they were getting lost in the showroom and like Ikea's, I mean we'll call it Ikea is, they reference Ikea in this and say this story's a knockoff of it but like Ikea's the pathway is, it's a maze. It's meant to make you get stuck in there and spend your money so I don't know. I really enjoyed the kind of references in it but it's not incredible. It's fun. It's fun. Anyways I'm on Reading Spirits of my Patrons now. I would like to get close to finishing this tonight because I don't think it's going to take me long to finish it. If not we'll finish it first thing in the morning but I'm really enjoying this. Granny Hendrix likes to do something different and I appreciate that. Appreciate that. That's weird. Okay bye. Good morning! Hello, how are we doing? Physically on my chest. I have really sensitive skin just on my chest and I don't have to like scratch it and it goes red and I don't know why and then it like takes like 10 years to come down so anyways. I finished Horror Store this morning and I enjoyed it. I'm gonna give it a 3.5, round it up to a 4 on Goodreads. I'd say the halfway mark to the 3.5 mark was like a five star section. It was intense horror. It was so good. The way the story kind of shifted all of a sudden and it got really dark and it got really dramatic and it got really over the top and I loved it. I really liked the end ending but then that kind of like 3.5 to end mark wasn't as strong for me but I think this is fun, right? I don't think it's particularly memorable. I just love the uniqueness of it. I love the kind of like catalogue idea of it and there's some extra elements in it that just make it so much fun. It's camp! It's camp! I don't know what to tell you! I don't think it's the best plotted story. Like I feel like, I don't know if I was saying this to you or to my patrons on the live last night but I don't think I'm gonna remember the plot of this or the characters. I'm gonna remember just the unique aspect of it which is basically what you know going into it that it's set in an IKEA-esque store and it's kind of like a catalogue. That's what I'm gonna remember of it and kind of the way that it twisted the idea that we have of a place like this and twisted the idea of a haunted house. I enjoyed that aspect of it but the plot itself wasn't incredible. I don't think it's probably Grady Hendrick's best but I'm glad that I've read it and I'm glad that I read it so quick after buying it. You know, this really is about the horror of working in retail. I never worked in retail. I worked in a lot of restaurants, well two different restaurants when I was younger so that's like more hospitality I guess so I haven't worked in retail but some of the people you meet in hospitality did go on and this was like giving me wall flashbacks to my first job. My first job was horrible. My second one was lovely. I worked like a little cafe bistro kind of thing for the second one but the first one was it one of my favorite restaurants to this day. It's still putting the place I go to on my birthday dinner but the experience of working there and my boss it was just it was too much for the little old Megan. It's like a steakhouse and you always had to carry three things. You always had to carry something in your hand something on this like elbow or whatever something in this hand and one time he made me take a 16-ounce steak, a 16-ounce steak, a tray of like eight fries and bear in mind I'm quite weak upper-bodied but even my wrists I have very small hands and quite weak wrists which also one of the fucking like creepy um waiters. Bear in mind I'm 16 and this is a grown man and I'm like oh god it makes me want to throw up. He's like I said I've really struggled because I have quite weak wrists and he goes that's not what I heard about Essex girls so I didn't have a good experience working there and it's just giving me like wall flashbacks to working there as a 16 year old. I don't know but yeah I would I would recommend this. I think it's a fun time. I enjoyed the audiobook. I enjoyed reading it physically as well. It was fun. It was perfect read-a-thon. I feel like I've been pretty good with the books I've picked for this read-a-thon like they've all been you know books that are fairly easy to get through fairly easy to read so we are now going to start Our Wives Under the Sea by Judy Armfield. I'm very excited. This is like a five-star prediction for me. I'm going to go make some dinner. No not dinner lunch but I did tell a bit of a lie there. I'm going to make a cob salad okay a cob salad is kind of like an American thing isn't it but I had one on holiday when I was in Portugal and I loved it. It was so good so I'm going to go make one. The thing I'm nervous about is getting the ratios right. So I'm really excited though. So anyway so let's go make a cob salad. Okay I've got bacon on. I've got eggs cooking. The thing that I'm worried about is the ratios because I'm not sure I have quite enough chicken. I only have like one. Is that enough for two lunches? I'm trying to make two here. I don't have avocado but I think I'm going to add some red onion in because I do love red onion. So that's the plan. Oh yeah this goes. I haven't done to make a lot of salads guys. I have like one halloumi salad that's my go-to. I don't know why I'm nervous. Okay I'm also watching the reunion from season one of Rehousewives of Beverly Hills. I've watched the whole season after watching the most recent season and I'm obsessed. Tom was watching it with me last night and he was like asking all the questions. When I first put it on I could see he was like playing a game on his switch and I could see his head kind of like looking over. Like he was trying to pretend he wasn't watching it but then he just started asking all these questions about who are these people. Anyways I'm going to go watch the reunion and make my salad. Okay I'm on my phone because I'm about to die. I'm worried I've made it too big but I'm going to add some seasoning. I'm not going to add the dressing until the end when I've portioned them separately because I don't want it tomorrow to get soggy but it's add some salt and pepper and then mix it. Add some dressing now that I got. I'm not going to add a lot because I'm not a big fan of dressing. I'll probably just add like a tablespoon I think. I just had a bite. It's really good. I slapped. Okay hi I'm trying to get you to stand up on the bed. Okay how are we doing? I am 75 pages into our wives under the sea and the wrong problem we're having is just that I don't usually read every day. As we've seen I had already had one day in this read-a-thon where I didn't basically read anything. I mean I've read 75. Actually no I've read like a hundred pages today which isn't bad but I'm kind of like pushing through and I don't want to do with that with this because this was a five star prediction. Like I said many times I read it on that first chapter video I did at the start of the year where I was trying to choose my first book of the year and I loved the first chapter of this and it gave me such a feeling and an emotion and a vibe and I only didn't read it because it was against their juzanates and that's like an impossible feat to come up against. But I'm just not getting the same vibes from this today because I don't think I want to read but then I'm like I have to finish this before the readers want to answer then I'm trying to like force myself through and then I'm getting stressed out about like is this right moment should I really be reading this now am I doing the book of the service am I doing media to service and I'm getting like stressed out so like what do I do I think I'm just gonna have a bath and then read more tomorrow but basically I've told you everything you need to know the wife went on a deep sea mission and the submarine was lost but is now back home and she's like not speaking there's some weird stuff going on with her body she's bleeding a lot from like her gums and nose and stuff and we're switching between perspectives of her recounting her childhood but predominantly also when the submarine kind of went underwater and then her wife is telling us the present day story and it's kind of the main voice of the story I am enjoying it but I'm just getting stressed out about not enjoying it as much as I could you know I think the writing's great it's got this very claustrophobic tight atmosphere to it it's a horror because there's some weird shit going on and it's unsettling but it's also about their love for each other and I think that's kind of beautiful so anyways I'm gonna have a bath I might check in with you again tonight if I read loads more but probably I'll see you in the morning with some more thoughts and hopefully I'll be more into it then because I'm getting a bit panicked okay it's the last day of summer wean we've got to hurry up because we have got two books to finish I didn't read any more of our wives under the sea last night and we've got to finish her body of the parties I'm not even gonna film any b-roll today because that like takes up an extra element in my brain we just need to read and read and read and read and read because it's already like I checked if I ever watch it's already like half three so we've got to get to reading I'm gonna try and finish our wives under the sea first and hopefully love it more than I was yesterday so that's the end of the game so I will see you once I've read a bit more of that please hope and pray for me send good vibes because I'm gosh we've got to get this I don't know how I'm feeling about this okay and that's not me saying I don't know what it's trying to do I now get what we're trying to do I now get the vibe like I get what we're trying to go for here but I just don't know how I feel about it and I don't buy that I mean I don't know if I'm gonna give it a five star or two like it could be anything still I really haven't made my mind up on what I think about it I'm also finding it incredibly hard to talk to you about because I think it's a pretty short book and I'm doing three check-ins I'm a hundred and three hundred and fifty pages in so this will just be a short check-in so I don't know what the fuck I think I suspect it's eerie it's slow it's intimate it's romantic it's beautiful but it's ugly it's many things I just I don't I I have no opinion I have no opinion I feel like I have too many conflicting opinions in my head that they're all just drowning each other out and I have nothing for you so I really I was gonna say I really like the writing but then I was like is that the truth I don't know I could I do I hate it do I like it do I love it I love I don't know what love is I think I just need to go finish it because I don't know where me and this book are at right now things could change it could get a two it could get a five I generally feel like that is still all the possibility so I'm gonna go finish it I don't think it's gonna get a five though but it could I'm not ruling anything out I do I am feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt that I have not read this this wasn't the perfect time to read this book and I've scuppered it and I've ruined it but that in itself is ruining the reading experience I said this to you before and it's just you need to calm down anyways let's go finish it and then I will have an opinion wherever this is hopefully so last night I finished both her body and the parties and our wives under the sea we'll talk about this first because I finished this first I just came over and feeling not very well last night and I just didn't want to film I was like no one could see me this book is so difficult to talk about I'm ending up giving this a four I did really enjoy it I feel like it's such it's such a strange reading experience to me it was kind of like straining against letting me in do you know what I mean I was like let me in let me in and the book was like no then I feel like I kind of like I don't know pierce the fold it's getting weird in the last third and really got into it and got into the beauty of it and got into the atmosphere of it everything just came together I do think this is a book that not everyone is going to love but I do think it's something that's very unique and something that's very special and so I am hesitant to recommend this because I think some people will go into us thinking they're gonna love it and then not love it but I enjoyed it I didn't love it as much as I thought I would and we had a bit of push and pull throughout the whole book you know me wanting to fully connect and get past a little bit of a barrier that I felt the book could put up and then kind of finally in that last third I feel like I kind of got into it but it's strange it's weird you're not gonna get easy answers on this book but I think it was beautiful and I really really enjoyed it now this one let me get my phone actually because when I last checked in with you in the last vlog I'd read the first four short stories then last night I read the second four and it's really difficult to talk about because I gave the first two of those last four both five stars basically one was maybe a 4.5 and then the last two were both threes verging on 2.5 for me so this book and me have been all over the place let me add up all of the ratings so it's five four three five four point five five three okay let me try and add all these up and see what the average rating is divide that by eight okay exactly four exactly four is what my average rating of all the short stories is so I'm going to give this a four star there were quite a few short stories in this that I loved but then a few that I found boring and didn't work for me what I said at the start of reading this in the first some wing vlog still stands I think Carmen Maria Machado is one of the greatest writers in terms of like craft and I feel like I fully I'm not fully there like I can't fully get it because like her brain is like above mine I think that the way that this blends ideas is really interesting and amazing and actually one of the short stories really reminded me of our wives under the sea and then one of them really reminded me of the writing retreat another one was like this art retreat but yeah I'm really excited to read in the dream house I know that's going to be a difficult read but I'm still excited to read it after reading this and again this is one I'd be tentative to recommend because I think it's like a lot and like you have to pay attention reading it it's not an easy read I feel like I've also read a lot of depressing reads in summary guys these two in particular are just kind of like both sad in a lot of ways and I just feel like I need to read something happy next or something fun is one thing like so let's have a look at all the books I read in summer wean let me rank them actually in terms of enjoyment give me a moment so the good thing about summer wean is that I didn't have anything below a 3.5 so that's pretty good so these are both 3.5s here at the bottom then we are 4 4 4 4 5 but that is what I would say my ranking is of all the books that I read I just put our wives under seat at the bottom of the falls because I did have that kind of resistance with it fangs doesn't have I don't think has as much substance as these falls you know what I mean it's just like a graphic novel but it was fun and cute you know I mean and then the writing retreat the first book I read of summer wean is still the standout for me nothing it's gotta get a sip of water nothing topped it for me I get that it's not gonna be everyone's thing but I just loved it I thought it was so good I thought it was so much fun oh it's crazy but I loved it and that lot of people have said to me that the last word by Ted Adams is crazy on a similar level so I'm gonna wait a little while to read that I am I don't I can't have too much crazy at once so there we have everyone that is the end of summer wean I hope those of you who participate in summer wean had a great time I had a great time I feel like reading eight things because I read the Ed Gallin Poe short story as well eight things in seven days is pretty great pretty great so I'm really happy I feel like I'm gonna take like three days off of reading now and start getting on Monday with reading because my brain is kind of like but yeah if you want to do a video comment a pumpkin or a ghost emoji we did with those for the previous two vlogs so comment a pumpkin or a ghost emoji if you got to the end thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you very soon in another video bye