 Hello my darling extraterrestrials, I am Kim, this is Dustmoats and Velikor, and this is my most of July wrap-up video. I'm filming this on July 22nd, so my August wrap-up video is going to include the last week of July. This bugs me on a creator level, but unfortunately at this point time is linear, and there's really not much I can do about that. What do we want? Time travel! When do we want it? That's irrelevant! Okay, this has been a tangent. Basically, my family is jetting off to Uganda, so we're going to go hang out with my sister and maybe go on safari. I'm sorry, I've never been to Africa before, so like I'm really excited, and like saying let's go on safari just seems kind of weird to me, but I'm really excited. I said that already, oh my god, this has been yet another tangent, but the reason I was talking about this is because all of the videos that you're going to see over the next three, possibly even four weeks, have been made before today's date. Which I'm kind of really proud of, because it's a logistical nightmare, man. Like I have to read the books in order to have reviewed them, so I had to get really far ahead even though I was really far behind, and I did it. This is the last video I have to film before this whole thing starts, and I have to edit it before Friday, which should be possible. I should be okay. This is all going to be okay. I was talking about something. But basically I've been jumping through logistical hoops for the last few weeks so that this channel will keep going even when I'm not here to upload it. So I may not be as good at responding to comments, but please still talk to me about books. I really do like it a lot. Next month's book count is going to be crazy. Like I have so much time on airplanes, like do you know how long it takes to fly from the West Coast to Dubai and then to Africa? Like so many hours. So many, so many books. This has been a third tangent onto the books. So in my June wrap up, I mentioned that I had started the How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell. Yeah, I read one book in June, and I read the other 11 in July. So books one through 11 for this month are the How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell. My full review will be posted on August 6th, but eventually I will link to it here. Basically, this is the silliest, most ridiculous, most epic adventure series that you should definitely give to your kids. Hiccup Perendis Haddock III is a scrawny, too smart, entirely unlikely viking in training. And you get to watch him grow up and become a hero and become a leader. Mostly via highly improbable shenanigans. Number 12 is The Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. My full review can be found here, but this one is a sci-fi epic for a generation. Becky Chambers explores philosophy and interspecies diplomacy through the eyes of the crew of the Wayfarer, which is a tiny, mining spaceship that tunnels wormholes through space. Thirteenth on the list was Trader's Ruin by Becky. No, not by Becky Chambers. Becky Chambers wrote the last book. This one was written by Erin Beatty. Once again, my full review can be found here. Basically, this one is a lovely action-adventure romance with some espionage and a ton of politics. Just a fun, solid, enjoyable read. Fourteenth was The Sleeper in the Spindle by Neil Gaiman, which for some reason I got in the form of an audiobook. It's illustrated. I don't know why I did that. Anyway, this is a beautiful bastardization of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale and the Snow White fairy tale, except everything gets turned on its head. Snow White has a sword. It's just grand old time. Then came Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, which I was so, so excited for. I mean, have you read Uprooted? If you haven't, it's fantastic. This one is not quite a sequel, but it's definitely in the same tone. A fairy tale within a fairy tale with some historical fantasy and a sous-saint of political intrigue. I kept thinking, oh, I figured out the equation that this book is going to turn out to be. And then things kept going wrong. And it just gets so good. Like, this book is a labyrinth of masterful wordplay. And if you haven't read it yet, you should. Naomi Novik's Brain was created by those future toys from that one movie, The Last Mimsy, where he telepathically trains spiders to build webs in specific patterns. Did anybody else see this movie? It was really good, okay? It was high concept and low plot, but still. This is not a review of The Last Mimsy. This is a review of Spinning Silver. What I'm saying here is that she creates worlds within worlds that are just so improbable and yet still so logic-based. I really enjoy the works of Naomi Novik. Like, she's just impressive. Just read Spinning Silver and come talk to me. Number 16 is Binti by Nieria Korofo. And it's the first one in a trilogy of sci-fi novellas about a young woman from a very traditional tribe called the Himba on Earth going to the best university in the entire galaxy. She was accepted to this incredible university because she scored the highest in the planetary exams in mathematics than pretty much anyone ever. And she's the first of her tribe to do so because they don't traditionally leave their lands. What happens if she goes? Also, this book is dedicated to a jellyfish, which I thought was a joke. But it's not. It's not a joke. And last was Every Heart Adore Way by Seanan McGuire. This is Surreality at its finest, but skewed in a slightly darker direction than traditional YA. We often go for the cupcakes and the unicorns and la-de-da and da-daism. And this one skews a little bit further into the darkness. Miss Eleanor West runs a school for wayward children, which is a euphemism for children who have a very specific delusion. And that delusion is that they went through a door somewhere and fell into another world. They're not all the same worlds. In fact, some would say that the individual world calls out to the individual person. Time passes differently in these worlds. Some people are gone for hours and some are gone for years. Some don't come back at all. And honestly, those are probably the lucky ones because the ones who do come back often find themselves at Miss Eleanor West's doorstep because their parents don't know how to handle them anymore. Nancy is just the latest addition to the school's roster after her brief stint in The Realms of the Lord of the Dead and her arrival coincides conspicuously with a rash of murders within school. So that brings my total to 17 books this month, which is impressive because I'm owning that now, but also is less impressive because all of these books are very short. Each of the hiccup books you can read in an afternoon. Very hard-to-doorway is less than 200 pages. Binti is 100 pages soaking wet. The sleeper in the spindle audiobook was an hour. I don't even know how this happened. I just happened to select a bunch of really short books this month. Anyway, as I said before, I may be a little later when it comes to responding to comments this month, but they always make me smile so I'm gonna say it anyways. Please come talk to me about books. And don't forget to subscribe. Aviento!