 Hello and welcome to Libro Crone. I guess that's my new intro, I don't even know. Hi, I'm Kate and this is Libro Crone or something. I'm here to do my fall wrap-up because I missed doing my wrap-ups for the months that are generally considered fall, September, October, November, and I didn't necessarily read a ton so I will just do a whole seasonal wrap-up and that'll be that and everyone will be happy including me. So the first thing that I completed back in September and I think the only thing that I finished in September, not a great reading month, was Vox Machina Origins 2 by Matthew Mercer, Judy Hauser, and a bunch of other people who do a lot of different things on this comic. So this is the critical role comic book, the origins for their Vox Machina campaign. This was stuff from their home game that they are now bringing to light as a comic book because they just are just gonna hit every single medium possible. They stream, they do shows, they do comics, they do animated shows soon too. So this one follows the story about Grog and we meet our very very wonderful gunslinger Percy in this one. So yes, I have a lot of feelings. I love these, I'm super biased because obviously I love Critical Role. I love the Vox Machina campaign. I'm super excited. I know all of these characters really well so I'm very attached. I'm just so excited to see these old games of theirs coming to life in this new way. You know, you get more information on Taldore and Xandria, which is the world that they live in. It just feels good. It just makes me so happy to always be back in this world. I again don't really know how how much other people who don't watch Critical Role will feel about this. I loved it. 5 out of 5, like 100%. But I mean, also this would probably be a good, the comic books will be a good place to start if you're interested in Critical Role but feel nervous about watching 500 hours of Dungeons and Dragons. Comic books will be a good place to go if you're interested but intimidated. The next book that I read I listened to on audiobook and that is Imprasive Slowness Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honoré. This was like a weird listen. This was also recommended to me in library school by one of the professors I really liked. But this book, not my favorite. I liked the ideas but it was very repetitive and very just sort of like one note the whole way through. I guess I should tell you what this book is about. It's about slowing down and just sort of like not letting a capitalist society run you ragged just because you need to save 30 seconds. Like people like moving very quickly just to save a couple of seconds at the Starbucks or something or rushing around and not spending time with your family and whenever you do spend time with people you're always worried about what you have to be doing next. Like really not savoring moments and how our society is programming us to just go faster, faster, faster to never be satisfied and to never really enjoy the moment that we're in which I do think is a very prevalent problem and I do want to try to challenge that in my own life but like the thing about it that pissed me off the most is that he would say all these things like about how like capitalism runs you ragged and capitalism makes you miserable and capitalism makes you unhappy because you are like always being productive and there is no time to just enjoy life and things in life and family and food and interaction and travel and blah blah blah but then he literally comes up short and he says but capitalism is not the problem here. What are you talking about dude? Yes it is um basically that kind of thing it was just really annoying where he like walked headfirst into the problem and the solution and was like but this isn't the problem or the solution. We don't need to dismantle capitalism we just need to change our relationship to it and it's like no so that was annoying. Also I was listening to it on audio and he read it himself and he mispronounced a lot of words um he mispronounced the word artisanal and he was like artisanal like he didn't say artisanal he didn't say like that but he was like artisanal or something like ridiculous that's just like that's how you pronounce artisanal I don't understand like he and he's like really into this whole like slow food artisanal food movement but he doesn't know how to pronounce the word artisanal also he has graduate degrees in like Italian and he can't pronounce words. He also mispronounced Don Quixote he literally pronounces Don Quixote as quicksote and I had to like pause the audio book and be like did I just hear what the what I think I just heard? Don Quixote it makes it makes Quixote sound so much better doesn't it to be like Don Quixote and really mean it so it was hard to take him seriously in a lot of these instances because he was so like trying so hard but like failing so miserably but the ideas are there of like ways to slow down ways to sort of detach from this like ultra capitalist ultra productivity perspective on life which I think a lot of people do could benefit from reading this book I think a lot of moderates would really love it I feel like moderates would just eat it up. I ended up giving it three out of five stars because like the ideas are good but like there's a lot wrong with the book and the author in my opinion so like yikes. The next book that I read was my reread of The Diviners because I'm kind of in a constant state of rereading The Diviners these days just because they're just like so fun and they may be so happy. I reread this around Halloween because I just wanted a spooky book. This one and Lair of Dreams are always just so like muah perfect five out of five for like the third time in a row or whatever um I love it. It's always weird to come back and like each book is sort of like a different focus on a different boy and she's focused on like Jericho so much in this one and I'm always like this is about in case you haven't heard this is about 1920s magical power children kind of like it's YA technically but like they don't act like teenagers they act like adults who are young which is great. Lots of spooky ghosts lots of creepy crawlies and an extremely 1920s aesthetic and that is so good. The 1920s vibe is engaged with completely which I love so so much. It does not shy away from how gross and bad the 1920s were. This series is one of my favorites it always will be I think it's so good. The next book I read after that was Piranesi by Susanna Clark. I read part of it and listened to part of it on audiobook because I actually pre-ordered the audiobook ages ago but I got this physical copy from my birthday which is super cool super happy to have both because I am more likely to read things at audio these days than I am in print but I really wanted to read this one so I actually like read along with the audio which was super fun and if I recall correctly the audio was narrated by Chill and Tell Edgiphor who cool British actor love him. He did a great great great great great job with this. This is about a man called Piranesi who lives in the house which is this labyrinthine eerie creepy beautiful set of halls full of statues and he documents the statues and he keeps track of the tides because there's this water that comes in and out throughout the house and he keeps track of it and he learns it it's almost like um it's almost like being someone who's like really into like nature and like early humans documenting natural phenomenon is kind of like what he's doing in this otherworldly place he's visited a couple times a week by his only friend the only other human he knows called the other who is eerily different than Piranesi in many ways and this book is atmospheric it's creepy it's uncomfortable you sense instantly that something is just like wrong but the narrator is so happy and so content that this dissonance in the writing in between the characters is just so uncomfortable you you just like can't deal with it so you have to find out what's going on what's wrong it's a very short um it packs a punch with just a little bit and to me this is like immaculate Susanna Clark she is such a master of craft that she can write you know a 900 page epic magic battle basically and then follow it up with just you know under 300 pages of beautiful atmospheric writing that just transports you it's weird all the characters are so interesting I absolutely loved it I do like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell better but I kind of expected to I'm really excited to reread this just because I feel like it will be so interesting upon rereading when you can pick up more from it Susanna Clark is a kind of author who I really believe should be taught in classes these days like she is so brilliant and I think what I love most about her is how much time she takes to work on her her projects I feel like you can really see how much work she's put into these things because she takes the time to just sit with her work ain't that just the slow movement I love her and I love this can't remember what I gave this what did I give this I gave it five out of five stars shocking I might have given it four brain my brain was like did I give this four no I gave it five it's incredible it was just excellent the next book I read was New World Coming the 1920s and the making of modern America by Nathan Miller I listened to this on audio and ended up giving it four stars which I think was probably more of a three and a half um it was enjoyable it was very informative about the 1920s it pitches itself as like this like overarching discussion of the 20s which I guess it kind of is but it definitely focused a lot more on the politics of the 1920s and not necessarily just like the general politics or like cultural politics like very literal like we talk a lot about harding we talk a lot about coolage we talk a lot about political events like like the democratic national convention in like 1926 or whatever it was so yeah it was very very politically focused and I had been kind of hoping it would be a little bit more culturally focused it did go into culture and it kind of the I think my problem there is that it like kind of framed itself as culturally focused because the opening is like oh we're going to like frame this narrative around F. Scott Fitzgerald because of course they are um and then they don't really do that very much at all they talk about Fitzgerald a bit they talk about Zelda Fitzgerald a bit they talk about F. Scott Fitzgerald towards the end he sort of bookends it more than he is the through line through the story or through the the textbook it's a lot less narrative it's not like a narrative discussion or explanation of the 1920s it's more of like a textbook so yeah it was like not quite what I wanted from it basically more than it was like bad or anything I think ultimately the information will be like helpful it learned a lot about like Coolidge's personality which was fun and interesting but um I'm just hoping that the next 1920s book that I pick up will be a little bit more focused on the culture rather than the direct politics of the time and the next book that I read was Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia which I gave it 4.5 out of five stars it was like so close to a five star book it was amazing I loved it I think I will like it more on reread but I loved it the first time too I love Gothic fiction I love like Rebecca is one of my favorite classics and this had a lot of Rebecca vibes it feels like a mix between like Rebecca and something else that I can't quite place um and I love it I just need to figure out what that other thing is but this book is about a young socialite in the 1950s in Mexico she goes from Mexico City to a sort of like outskirtsie rural town to check in on her cousin who seems to have gotten very ill psychologically physically ill for no particular reason and has sent a letter to her and her father asking for help so they send no at me and she goes to figure out what's going on here figure out why this like British English family is being so secretive and standoffish and creepy and they are very creepy I thought it was a brilliant brilliant book and I was just so impressed with Silvia Moreno Garcia's writing I was impressed with her the vision she had for it it it was so good and it did every Gothic literature thing just right the pacing was probably the only thing that I would say was like not perfect because we go really slow for about the two-thirds of the book and then the last third is like a breakneck speed so I feel like there needed to be more of a build rather than a slow period and a fast period I feel like it doesn't really speed up in the middle there it goes from like 30 to 90 in like a second and then from 90 to 100 so I I would have liked a bit more of a build up but otherwise I thought it was like pretty great I loved the main character of Noemi I loved the like weird psychological how unsure she was of her surroundings and her relationships and I really liked the love interest I thought that was like really cute and well done I really just loved it I loved the ending I thought it was great 4.5 out of 5 stars I'm so excited to read more from Silvia Moreno Garcia after this and finally the last book that I finished in the fall right at the end of November was Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis I read this as a buddy read with SuperPow and we both sort of had a similar vibe for it where it was like good but not great this is a first contact story about aliens and the government and it's set in 2007 which is like borderline historical fiction now which is entertaining in itself I liked the main character she sort of like meets this alien and becomes his interpreter and that's how the sort of like relationship between her and the alien makes any sense and then there's all this government stuff and then there's the fact that her father is sort of like a Julian Assange type whistleblower um he's douche I was surprisingly interested in him he was like not on page he was sort of the character who there was tension with him even though he wasn't there which was fascinating and I thought that was actually some of Ellis's best writing in the book was the fact that there could be so much tension with a character who isn't there at all everything else felt a little bit formulaic and the fact that it is a first in a series it felt very expository in that way you know we have to learn about the aliens we have to make friends with this alien we have to do this part before we can get to the meat of the story that she's trying to get to which is going to happen later in the next books it was okay three out of five I'm gonna give the second book in the series a chance um probably because I really love Lindsay Ellis and I think she's great um I'm also not like I've mentioned this before but like I'm not super into sci-fi in general so like this is a hard sell for me it was fine um and since I like her I will give her second book a chance I'm really hoping that the dad character comes in because he was really the most interesting factor of it all for me the fact that everyone's obsessed with him I'm just like why let's meet him and find out so these are the books that I finished in the fall I've already finished two books in December which is like pretty darn good for me this year and I will be back on your screens soon thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time