 Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me. So it has been a difficult past couple of weeks. I am sure that a lot of you have felt this as well as me. It is a very uncertain, very anxiety inducing time for a lot of people. Cameron and I have actually been self-isolating for the past week or so. I'm very fortunate that being in the industry that I'm in, I'm able to work from home. And obviously we have each other. So in many ways we are very, very lucky, but of course it is still a very worrying time. So today I thought, let's just do something fun, let's do a tag. I have been meaning to do the big books tag for a while now, and I thought this was the perfect time, when better to get excited about massive books than when there's a pandemic going on and we're all spending a ton of time inside. So the idea behind this tag is to simply talk about the five biggest books that you have read and the biggest books on your TBR. I'm not certain who created this tag. I had a little trouble finding the creator but I will look again once I've filmed this and tag their original video down below. So let me start by saying that I absolutely love big books. I love epic, character-focused literary fiction novels. I love fat fantasy books and dense classics. Coincidentally, I am actually currently reading the biggest book that I have ever read and that is Les Miserables that comes in at 1,232 pages long. I'm not going to be talking about this as a book that I have already read or a book that is on my TBR because it is technically neither. I'm reading it right now and I am sure that I will be talking about it a ton on my channel soon. But I wanted to quickly mention it anyway to say I am reading it and I am absolutely loving it. This is unlike any other reading experience I have ever had before with a book. It is so beautiful and perceptive and powerful. I cannot explain to you how much I'm connecting to this book. It is for sure one of my new all-time favorite books. I am absolutely adoring it. I am also not going to be mentioning The Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling in this video which comes in at around 800 pages. That book would be on a lot of people's lists. I think the majority of people on BookTube have read that book so I think it will be more interesting if I just skip over that one and talk about some other big books that I have read. So on to the five biggest books that I have read. The first one that I'm going to talk about is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. This comes in at 736 pages long and it follows the lives of four men who meet at university and move to New York together. The book then simply follows these four men over many many decades throughout their lives. I absolutely love this novel as it does Cameron. It is a very special book to us both. It is such a powerful emotional ride of a book. This is very character focused. It's very relationship focused. You really get to know these characters and witness all of their trials and tribulations. I have very rarely been as invested in character stories as I was when I was reading this book. The writing in here is also super beautiful. It's really descriptive and lyrical. This is just an amazing book. I think that it carries its size perfectly. You really feel as though you've witnessed some real people's lives which I absolutely love. Do bear in mind though if you're thinking about picking up this book it has many many trigger warnings that go along with it including physical, emotional and sexual abuse and rape. I can hear you scurrying around. Fucking hear you rustling around. Bye. The next big book I'm going to be talking about is A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates and this comes in at 737 pages long. This is another contemporary fiction novel that is quite similar to A Little Life in a few ways. This one is set in America and it follows two different families who are very different from one another when they become irreversibly linked at the beginning of the novel when an evangelical christian man shoots and kills an abortion doctor. The book then follows various members of these two different families over the many years that follow this event. I read this book in 2018 and it was one of my favorite books of the year. Again this is very character focused. It's very observant. You witness the events in the novel in a lot of detail. The storyline in here is super interesting. The catalyst event at the beginning of the novel is central to the ethical debate around reproductive freedom which is something that I'm really really interested in. A large part of my degree focused on applied ethics if you didn't know. I particularly enjoyed how this book focuses on lots of different characters from different backgrounds who hold really different beliefs and views. Every single character in here was fascinating and had something really interesting and valuable to offer. If you really like these kind of literary fiction novels and you haven't given Joyce Carol Oates a go then I would definitely recommend her. The next big book is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and this one comes in at 771 pages long. This is another epic literary fiction character focused novel. Can you tell what I like? I read this one at the beginning of the year and I absolutely loved it. This book opens in an art gallery in America when 13 year old Theo Decker survives a tragedy that kills his mother and the book basically follows Theo's life from then on. I've been meaning to pick this book up for ages and I'm so pleased that I finally did. It is my kind of book in all of the same ways that the two previous books were. I loved the discussions of friendship and loss and addiction in here in particular. The writing in here is also lush. It is very traditional but leaning towards being very descriptive and lyrical which is my favorite. This is a great book if you have had it on your shelf for years and you've been meaning to pick it up then just do it. The next book that I'm going to be talking about is The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson. This is actually the first book in the series and The Well of Ascension is the second but it's the only one I have here to hold up so it will have to do. The Well of Ascension comes in at 781 pages and it is very different to the books that I have talked about so far in this video because it is actually a high fantasy novel. I read The Mistborn trilogy years ago now. I think it was around five years ago and I absolutely loved it at the time. It follows people called Alamances who can consume various types of metals and burn them and this then gives them lots of different mental and physical abilities. If I remember correctly some of the metals give you extra physical strength. Some of them mean that you can push and pull objects and one of them gives you heightened senses. I loved the magic system in this book. I thought it was so cool, so unique. I remember there being tons of really cool fight scenes which I really enjoyed where people were burning different types of metals. The characters were also such a highlight in this series. There is such a fun central cast of characters and I really liked them and got really invested in their stories. This is a great fantasy series if you're into that kind of thing. It's actually one that I think I might enjoy rereading at some point because it was just so much fun the first time around. And now on to the biggest book that I have ever read according to Goodreads. This comes in at 994 pages and that is The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. Again, this is actually the first book in the series but I'm going to be talking about the second book in the series, apologies. So this is the second book in a fantasy series that I absolutely love even more so than The Brandon Sanderson. This trilogy follows a man named Kvothe who when he was young attended a magical school called The University. He became very powerful, very well known, went on lots of adventures but nowadays Kvothe is living as an innkeeper under a different name and we don't know why. This series is so awesome. I have read the first two books and we are eagerly anticipating the third installment. The world is just so cool. It is some of the best, most well developed, rich world building I have ever read. The magic system is so good. It is really clever and almost academic. It's quite logical being underpinned by scientific principles which is something I had never experienced before in a fantasy book. The writing is, as you'd expect, it is very descriptive and very magical. There is definitely a lot of it but I think that suits the series very well. This is such a cool fantasy series. I am sure that you've all heard of it by now but rest assured that I also think it is brilliant. So now on to the biggest books on my TBR. I'm actually going to be talking about the two biggest books on my TBR instead of just one because they are both quite different and why not? So the first one is Middle March by George Eliot and this comes in at around 850 pages long. As you'll probably know, if you've been following my channel for a while, I am a huge classics reader. I love Victorian classics in particular. Austin, The Brontes, Hardy, Dickens, give me them all. I have read one George Eliot in the past. I read Silas Marner because I had to read it at university but this is the one that I've always really wanted to read. This is the big one, isn't it? So I don't really know what this book is actually about. I've just heard that it is epic. I believe that it follows a huge cast of characters. I think it is very relationship focused while also being drenched in social commentary. I expect that it will probably explore themes of politics and religion and self-identity. I don't really need to know any more about this one to be honest. I will definitely be diving into it regardless. This is actually Cameron's mum's favourite book of all time as well, which is really exciting. She has read a ton of classics and she has very good taste. I'm really excited for this one. I am sure I'm going to love it whenever I get around to it. And the biggest book that is on my TBR, which comes in at 901 pages, is The Crimson Petal and the White by Michelle Faber. This is a book that I had heard of for many, many years, although I never really knew what it was about. I recently found myself in the mood for very thick, epic historical novels I could really get immersed in, and I found this second hand on World of Books, so I had to pick it up. I believe this follows the story of a young female prostitute in Victorian London who ends up ascending in society. I've just heard great things about this one. Michelle Faber is obviously a super lauded author, and I'm just really excited to experience this one for myself. So there we go, those are all the big books I'm going to be talking about today. Thank you so much for hearing me natter about them. I was quite surprised when I was doing research for this video that some other books on my shelves didn't make the cut. For example, any of the Wolf Hall books by Hilary Mantell or The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty. But apparently the page counts weren't long enough, so there you go. I would love to know what your favourite big books are. I am always in the market for some recommendations. Are you planning on reading some big books soon if you're spending a lot of time in your homes? Please tell me your plans. I would love to hear. I hope you're all doing really well. I hope your family and friends are doing well, especially with all this crazy stuff going on at the moment. I'm definitely thinking about you all. I hope you all have really great books to help get you through this time. They are now more than ever just the best things. Thank you again for watching this video, guys. I really, really appreciate it, and I will hopefully see you all soon with another video. Bye.