 Hi guys Julia and welcome back to my channel and for today's video I'm going to be sharing with you guys the books that I read in the month of January. So this month I read a total of 10 books and that is really really good for me. I haven't read that much in a while. Mind you these are a lot of like short stories and things that I read for school. But for some stats I read 10 books this month. Eight were classics because of school. One contemporary and one fantasy. My total page number was 1127. And again this is kind of low I think compared to other peoples because I read a lot of short stories. I read eight ebooks and two physical books. Eight of the books I read were adult one middle grade and one YA. I also have read out of the authors that I read this month. Five of them I've read before and five of them were new to me. So that's like a perfect balance right there. For ratings I gave no ratings. So a few books I gave no ratings this month just because I didn't want to just put a number on it just because I'm supposed to rate all my books. I really didn't know what to rate it. So I'm just gonna talk about it but like I didn't give it a rating. So there's four books like that. Uh two three star books. Three 3.5 star books. And one for one four star book. So the first book that I read here was 4 3 2 1 by Courtney Stevens. This is a young adult contemporary novel. This follows the story of bus 21 where a bunch of people were on the bus and a bomb went off. So 19 people died and there were four survivors. So we follow those four survivors and how they all processed trauma and how they all process it. So for the four survivors we have Rudy who is now in a wheelchair. We have Carolyn who was the bomber's boyfriend. I mean the bomber's girlfriend. And we have Golden Chandler who were a couple at the time and who were not even supposed to be on the bus but they were. And how that impacted not only them separately but their relationship. I found this story super interesting and it was like a great way to start off the year. I really liked the multiple point of views in this book and how we got to see each individual and how they coped with their mental health issues and their own guilt surrounding the incident. Overall I thought this read was super engaging and interesting. I would definitely suggest this book if you're interested in picking it up. It does have some trigger warnings for bombing, suicide, self-harm, cheating, PTSD, death and toxic relationships. Keep that in mind before picking this book up but I found it very interesting to see not only how trauma can affect each individual but how it can affect relationships and how sometimes in a relationship it could either split you apart or bring you closer together. So that's what I found super interesting about this book and I gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars. The next book I have here is a short story so this is called The Story of an Hour by Kate Chompin. Chompin? Chompin? Chompin. Chomp. I pictured a little like dinosaur when I said that. Okay this is about a woman named Mrs. Mallard and her husband dies and she has a heart heart condition and that's like really all you should know for a synopsis just because I have short this is and I don't want to give anything away but it has a feminist vibe which is super nice and overall it was like a pretty good short story. I would recommend picking it up. I give it 3 stars. This one I'm gonna struggle with because I'm looking down on my computer because of I have I have a nice dock full. So the next book I have here is Iphigenia and Terrace by Euripides. I totally could have said that wrong. I 100% could have said that wrong. I read so many Greek tragedies this month and I fucking love them like so this one had some trigger warnings for animal deaths because there's an animal sacrifice so keep that in mind. This is different from the other Greek tragedies that I read because this one actually kind of has a happy ending so this one was super interesting. I don't really know what else to say about it but I didn't write this one. This is one of the ones I didn't write but it was still like a good experience and I'm glad I read it for class but it's not it's something that I do not know how I would write it. I don't know. Next here we have The One and Only Bob by Catherine Avalgate. So this is the sequel to The One and Only Ivan and this is the middle grade book that follows a bunch of animals. It is so cute so this book follows Bob who is the little dog on the cover and the gorilla named Ivan is from the previous book so you get to see him again and the elephant rubies in this as well. So this book talks a lot about friendship and family and it's just like a really wholesome story. There's some like little illustrations throughout it. If you're looking for a fun middle grade I would recommend this series. I still liked the first book better in my opinion but this one was still like so wholesome. So wholesome. I gave this one a 3.5 and there are some trigger warnings for animal cruelty so keep that in mind. Next here I have Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway. So I've read from Ernest Hemingway before but it was a very very long time ago. It was the old man in the sea. I read my mom's old copy. This is the first time I've read by like this is the first time I've read just a little short story by him so this one was basically about a man and a woman talking in a cafe and it talks about abortion. That's really all I think I can say without giving a lot of weight just because it is so short. Whatever they're talking about you have to kind of dig deep like dig a little bit further to understand exactly what they're talking about but like once you do it's like a really good short story. These three were probably my favorites. These were all plays. I'm going to butcher this author this play writer's name. Absolutely but it's basically a trilogy with Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and Humanities. I looked up pronunciation guides before this video and I'm still struggling with this author's name so I'm just going to put it full blown on the screen just so you all know. This one the first two plays I didn't rate. I thought the first one was probably the best in the trilogy but the first two I didn't really give a rating to until I finished them and then I rated the trilogy as a whole. So as a whole I rated it 3.5 stars. These do deal with like death, suicide, rape and cheating so keep that in mind. This was Agamemnon 10 years after the fall of Troy. Yeah it was a very good trilogy and I just have been really I've been reading these for my mythology class and I'm just really enjoying flying through all of these and I find them I don't know I just I love it. I love it but overall I really enjoyed that trilogy and yeah if you guys have read any Greek plays let me know your favorite down below. I would love to know. I still don't know my favorite. I don't think I want to read way more before I can like pick you know a favorite but let me know if you guys have any favorites down below. We only have two more here so next is the rocking horse by DH Lawrence. This is about a young boy named Paul who learns to predict the winners of horse races with the help of his rocking horse so this talks a lot about family and money and it's very insightful in that way. It is like a gothic tale kind of vibe. I overall gave this one 3.5 stars. I thought it was super interesting. It's not really what I expected at all but these like little gothic short stories are becoming like my favorite thing ever to read. I think they're so interesting. Last but not least we have Rose for Emily by William Faulkner who I've never read anything by as often before. This one does have some string warnings for poisoning, suicide, and death. Also there is a few N-word drops in here which I noticed and was like so I just wanted to mention that as a trigger warning that there are some N-word drops in here. This follows a woman named Emily and it's told it's basically a group of people telling the tale when she's at her funeral so they all gather together and they're kind of like talking about her life and like all these things about her and they're doing this at her funeral because the whole town went to her funeral which is like one of the first lines of the story. This kind of gave me this was my favorite by the way uh this was like one of my favorite short stories that I read but it kind of had the virgin suicides vibe where these other people were like an outside point of view was narrating about a particular person and their struggles. So that's why how I kind of caught that similar vibe I guess. But honestly a Rose for Emily was really good and it was like a darker gothic tale. I gave it four stars. I thought it was very good. If you're interested in it I would also suggest picking that up. So there you guys have it. That was my January wrap up. Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below and your favorite book in the month. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed it give it a like down below. Subscribe, follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads, any of that kind of thing if you're interested and I'll see you all super soon with a new video. Bye!