 Hi everyone! Welcome back! Today is my April wrap up and I don't... I don't want to talk about it. I just don't think this is like great for me. I don't want to do it. I want to go home. Like, I can't take the pressure of it. I don't think any job interview... I think I'm going to title this video. I thought it couldn't get any worse because for the past three months, January, February, March, I've been sitting here whining about my reading slump. I was in a bit of a slump in January. I ain't gonna lie. I feel like the reading slump that I was talking about in January has kind of progressed to being a life slump in February. The question you'll be asking is, has her reading slump ended? And if you follow me on anything, you know, watch my other videos, follow me on Twitter, Instagram. You'll know the answer to that is no. Those months I read like seven or eight books each month, this month, she read five. She read five. Five books. Can I go back to reading like 14 books a month again, please? Like what the fuck is this? But anyway, it is what it is. April, I have spent a lot of time on uni work. If you don't know, I'm in my last year of uni. And this month, I've been specifically working on my documentary, which is basically my equivalent of a dissertation. I studied journalism, so I've had to make a documentary. And I think I finished it. I think I made the final touches to it yesterday. I'm just holding off a few days before I submit it. But I think I'm done. And I still have some work to do. I have two essays and a little like digital media short to do, but that's all the uni work I have left. So I'm hoping in May, we're going to start coming out of that and start progressing out of that. But we're going to talk about, as always, my reading statistics first. And then we're going to talk about the five books I've read. There's actually two I haven't spoken about yet, which you would have thought if I'd, you know, only read five books, I would have spoken about them. But no. Kiss my ass. I've had enough. I read a total of 2,352 pages, which actually is more pages than I have read in March or February, because I read fairly long books this month, mostly. So actually, I shouldn't be too harsh on myself because I read more pages. And I read specifically one really difficult book, which is why this is probably so few books this month. So I read that many pages, which is an average of 78 pages per day. Again, that's not too bad. I think that's kind of like what I've been averaging in total over this reading slump. My average rating was the lowest I've had so far this year at 3.2, because I did have quite a few like lower rated books. So in terms of individual ratings, I had one five star, one 4.5 star, and then we jumped down to one three star, one 2.5, and one one star. So I had those two high rated books, and then the other three were kind of lower rated books. In terms of genre, I read four fantasy and one horror, which usually I like my genres to be a much better mix, like it's almost entirely fantasy. Even the horror is kind of like fantastical in its own way. So I think that also explains why I haven't read a ton because I like there to be like a greater variety in what I'm reading. I read one adult book, one middle grade, and three young adult books. In terms of own voices, I categorized three, I read as own voices and two as not. Two of them I did categorize are the Six of Crows trilogy, and I did categorize them as own voices because of the disability representation that we have in Kaz in that book, and how a lot of Kaz and some of Nina and stuff, like Lee Boduga, has spoken about that representation being stuff that's very much mirrored from her own life. So I decided to class that as own voices. In terms of where the books came from, one I received in a book box, three were gifts, and one I got on script. In terms of the author's status, two were debuts, two I'd read before, and one was new to me. And finally, many of you know, I'm trying to read at least 50% non-white authors this year, but I did terribly with that this month, and four of the authors I read were white and one was Latinx. So that was a failure this month. In terms of where I'm at so far this year, 55% of the authors I've read from have been white. So that won't take much to like fix to, you know, to put the other way. So we're going to do it a bit differently this month, because the two that I haven't spoken about yet are the two I read last. And so I think it makes sense to speak about them first. Usually I do it chronologically, but I think it makes sense to speak about them first, because you haven't heard me speak about them. So let's speak about the one I actually finished yesterday. Today's the first of May, by the way, I'm filming this. So I finished, it's called Ghost Squad, right? Ghost Squad by Carabel Ortega. And I ended up giving this three stars. So this is about a young girl. I feel like I can't really explain this plot. Okay, I literally just read it. About a young girl who can see her dead relatives. They kind of live in her house, but they're also fireflies on a tree in her backyard. They start becoming really ill. Basically, they start like disappearing and becoming really, really ill and like reenacting the way that they died. And it's clear that something kind of paranormal is going on within the town and her and her best friend kind of set out to save it. I wanted to love this. Even when I finished it, I was like, can I rate that higher than a three? Like, can I do that? I really wanted to. But I just didn't really feel anything towards the book, which is very unusual for me with middle grades. I usually like love them. But I just didn't like, I just didn't feel anything. I can't even look at the wall with sad pics. I think this could be a case of it being an audiobook. I listened to the audiobook and like I was not engaged. I was barely listening at some points and I really had to force myself to finish the book. And the audiobooks only five hours long. So like, you know what I mean? It's only five hours long. So I should have been able to fly through it. I thought the writing was good. I would definitely read from this author again. But like, it's not a good sign. I've literally just read it and I can't tell you the plot. And again, it's a five hour audiobook. And it took me like two weeks to read it. But towards the end, I was just not engaged with the story. And I think when that happens with an audiobook, you kind of lose it. Do you know what I mean? You're just listening to words at that point. I really liked though the kind of idea of heritage in it and the way that she could see her family and had this relationship with her family and with tradition and how that was explored. I liked the relationship between her and her best friend, her relationship with her and her dad. I thought the paranormal aspect was interesting, but I just wasn't like super engaged. Like, I just didn't fully care. It's been the worst week of my life actually. Oh, I'm so sorry. It could have been an issue with the audiobook. I think books are very hit or miss as audiobooks. They either work or they don't. And perhaps this was just one that didn't. Okay, now, if you've been following me closely the past couple months, you'll know I'm not even, I don't, I don't even want to talk about it. Like, I don't, I have been, I have been avoiding this. I have been avoiding discussing this in any way. I've been reading House of Leaves. Oi! He's not meant to be in here. Has he got in here? Get out! I read this for two months. I started this on March 12th. I finished this, like, April 20th something. Oh my God, never, never, never have I had more of a horrible reading experience. The way I described this, we, this was for the Literary Dead Book Club with Books and La La. And the way I described this on the live show was like, it's like that video of when Paula Abdul gets fired from the Bratz movie, from making the music for the Bratz movie, and she's like going like, oh, what a hideous experience for me to go through. Hideous experience for me to go through how I want to. That's how I felt reading this. So this is a chunky, oh my God, kind of like academic horror where you've got, oh my God, there's so many layers to this story. So basically, there is an old guy called Zampino who has written this kind of academic text of the story of this thing called the Navidson Record, which is a story about a family whose house grew a corridor and the exploration of that. And the Navidson Record was like a film, this short film that we don't really know whether it existed or not of like the photographer who this happened to, he was a photographer, him documenting it happening. So Zampino's writing an academic review, an exploration of the story of the documentary, and there's a character called Johnny who after Zampino's died is like going through and trying to collate it. Does this make any sense to you? It didn't make any sense to me. But he also goes on these long tangents and as his story goes on, he starts to go insane with kind of like the, by reading the story. Does that make any kind of sense? This was horrible, right? You have just like pages of, the thing is that wasn't even the hard bit. The third, the hard bit is when it starts going into like the theory of sound and like you just have Johnny's footnotes going on for like five pages of him talking about who he's had sex with and how we can no longer understand reality and then someone else who's had sex with and then talking to his friend about who he's had sex with and then going even more insane and imagining as a monster that eats him. Like I just don't, this was one of the hardest books for me to ever read. Now saying that, the Navartan record is really well done. That was like a 4.5, right? I hadn't even told you my rating. That was like a 4.5. Johnny's sections were like a 2.1.5. So I've given this a 2.5 overall because of how like the experience of how difficult this was to read was a zero. I also sit in the live show how I recognize how the fact that I'm like doing last stages of my university degree and I would go from my desk reading academic articles and I'd have to go over there and read about like myth and the theory of sound and all this stuff. Like it just wasn't the right time for me to read this. But anyway, back to what I was saying. The Navartan record is great. The Navartan record is super interesting, really well written and has a lot of layers to it. So that I really enjoyed. There are so many theories around this and when we did the live show, Kayla was telling me some of the theories and I love that side of it. I love the conspiracy theory side of it. So I think I do want to like go into some deep dives on what all the different major theories are. I just, I was saying on a live show, I just want someone to like sit me down and go right, here's theory number one. Here's where you can find the things that point to that theory and I don't have to read the whole thing again. I can just go and refer to those parts and like start to understand it a bit more because it is very difficult to understand. It was an experience. I'm glad I read it. Okay. I've never had a book that I felt so positively about some aspects of it and I felt so negatively about other aspects of it. Some parts of it I think it does so well are so interesting and then other parts I'm like I literally never want to read again. So I'll leave the live show linked if you want to go check it out. We talk a lot in detail about the book there. It was an experience and I don't know why but I look at it and I'm like I could do it again because I want to know and understand all these theories and I want to figure it out but also the experience of reading it was hideous and horrible and like one of the worst things that I've ever done in my life. They put me through purgatory. They put me through hell on this earth. And then we've got three books which I did reading vlogs for. The first I read both Six of Crows and Cookie Kingdom by Lee Bardugo. I will leave the reading vlog linked for that. Let me talk about even tandem right because I feel like I read them so close to one another it's kind of difficult to separate. So in this you're following Kaz Brecker and him putting together a team to perform a heist basically. In this one they kind of have to go somewhere else to do the heist and in this one what happens is they say pretty much in Ketterdam which I really love the setting of Ketterdam. This kind of like dark dingy setting full of crime and gangs. The characters are what makes this series. Enesh is one of my favorite characters. She is kind of the spy for the dregs, Kaz's gang. She's really good with knives. She's silent so she can like spy on people really well. It is just some of the best characters I have ever read. The kind of like exchanges between them, the way they talk to one another is so well done. The heist is super interesting but what I felt like Cookie Kingdom did way better. I gave this one 4.5 stars, I gave this one 5 stars was Cookie Kingdom. You were constantly five steps behind Kaz and the gang. I felt like in Six of Crows I kind of knew what was going to happen the entire time but in Cookie Kingdom I kept being surprised and tricked by the people themselves so a scene would happen and you'd think oh shit no it's gone wrong or what's happening here or whatever and then it would flip in a couple pages and you'd realize maybe that was always supposed to happen or this has happened to set that emotion or do you know what I mean? You were constantly being um you were constantly being surprised and tricked by the gang and that's what I thought worked so well. I have started Shadow and Bone on Netflix but I'm only like two episodes in because of uni but I really loved these it was a great reading experience I'm so glad I've read them but nothing has yet to top ninth house for me that Lee Budugo has written. I am waiting for ninth house tune. I am waiting. Why are we still here? Just to suffer. Miss, come on. Miss Lee Budugo please. Like now they keep pushing the release date back and I'm so annoyed I just need to read it so bad but um yeah I really enjoyed these go check out the vlog if you want some more thoughts on them and then finally I read Fable by Aji and Yang. So we've got a gorgeous edition from Fairy Loop. Um I do not want to comment. Why? Why? So I read this in an episode of Wrapped Up. I'll link this as well. It's a series where I've wrapped up some of my books and I unwrapped one and I read it in the reading vlog. Now I gave this one stop. Didn't like it. This is about I thought this was a little mermaid retelling. That was me talking out of my arse it's not. I like told everyone it's a little mermaid retelling and it's really not. Um but this is about Fable whose dad is like kind of like a is it are these pirates? Oh yeah I would say they're pirates. Um he abandoned her on this island and she has fended for us. Fended? Is that a word? Fend? Anyway she has lasted for a couple years on this island and now she is aboard or she she like a couple pages and she gets aboard this other guy's boat who she's been trading with for the past couple years um and convinces him to take her to where her dad is so that she can get what rightly is hers. Um but the the people on the boat don't know that he's her dad because he's one of like the biggest pirates in the area. Nothing happened in this entire book. Nothing. Nothing happened. The entire plot is hello everyone. We're at sea. We're riding the waves on the sea. That's the entire plot. That is it. The characters? What characters? I actually can't tell you any of the names. I can't can I actually remember I can't remember anyone's names and I literally just read this. I don't understand it and the writing I found so hard to read. I found so hard to read. I really like the words didn't compute in my brain. They didn't flow nicely. They didn't flow together. Oh my god. I was it was bad and everyone loves it. It's got a pretty good rating on good reads. Like it was fairly hype when it came out. I just don't get it. Like I actually just don't understand. There was just zero plot. I just have nothing else to say than that there was zero plot. Not a thing. I wish I were dead. Go watch the vlog if you want to see me slowly descend into anger and sadness and annoyance. It was really really bad. I have nothing else to say. It was just not good. Not for me. So that is the five books I read this month. I've got really exciting vlogs planned. I've got so many vlogs planned that are going to be coming soon. I actually can't decide what ones I want to do first. Like I actually I know what I'm doing next but like it's really hard to decide what vlogs I want to do when I've had so many ideas for ages I haven't been able to do. Let me know how the reading month went for you. Let me know if you had a good reading month or if you are still struggling like me. If you've gone to the end comment a leaf emoji for House of Leaves and the pain that spent me through is a comment a leaf emoji and I will see you very soon in another video. Bye!