 it's been a lot stressing me out right now to think about. I am still catching up I guess. Did I need to reread these to talk about them? Probably not. Next up is another book that I despised. Well hello it's been a minute since I did a video that was bookish. I suppose an argument could be made that we love time is bookish but I'm not talking about the books. I am very much not talking about the books in those videos. Anyway so time for another catch-up session slash life update. The life update is that I have a new job. So that coincided that like dovetailed not nicely with Wheel of Time being a show that I decided I knew that I was going to be covering. So in September I was wrapping up my old job, prepping for my new job, going out of town for several days. So okay let's start over. So in September I was wrapping up my old job then once that job was over going out of town and then the day I got back from out of town I went to Universal Studios and then the very next day I started my new job and Wheel of Time had begun at the beginning of September so I was like trying to cover that while doing all these things and um it's been a lot. I knew it would be a lot um and I yeah it was just a lot and then I just got behind because then like when I did have a weekend free um I was just exhausted because like I hadn't given myself time actually to properly like recover um I haven't fully unpacked yet from my going out of town in September. I got behind on filming, I got behind on reading, I got behind on I haven't been as active in my discord, I've just been I've just been swamped. So I owe you an August wrap up because I did read books most of this stock to be perfectly honest is August because I did not read terribly much in September. I read the barest minimum of what I absolutely had to read for some kind of an obligation um and I still haven't finished a couple books that I I really really need to. So I just thought I'd do a quick video to catch up on all the reading I've done that I haven't told you about and to let you know why that's been behind and will for the foreseeable future be less can like I I'm hoping to develop a more steady routine and Wheel of Time is over now. I'm I'm not done with making my videos for Wheel of Time yet but I think by the time this goes up I will be done with that. I'm currently in the midst of that um so that has also been like a big suck on my time because those videos not only like take time away from videos that I would normally be making bookish they just take a ton more of time to do unless you count like the time that it takes to read books but I'm doing that too slash anyway. So like every Wheel of Time video like I have to watch the show obviously but I have to watch the show like extremely slowly so that I can like type out my notes as I go and often have to play back scenes um because I want to make sure that like the thing that I thought I saw I did see or like to catch the line like the way that it was phrased if I wanted to talk about that um so like an hour episode takes me like two hours to watch and then I have to like film the freaking video which is which is the part that probably takes the least amount of time um although filming anything where I live takes a million years because I I cannot tell you how much footage gets cut from me just sitting here and waiting for the sirens to stop or the backing up truck to stop beeping or the just traffic noises to stop it's a lot so like again like a 10 minute video there's probably like an hour of footage at least half of which is just me waiting for noise to desist and then editing editing the Wheel of Time videos takes forever because in addition to normally editing a video which takes some time it all videos take some time to edit but I have to pull all the screenshots and enter the all the screenshots and make sure they're like positioned correctly and timed correctly and that takes it and minimum like five hours so yeah that's been a lot it's been a fucking lot so we are in the midst of spooky season which is my favorite time of year um my favorite time of year for for food for clothing for reading for watching movies for everything and I have a massive October TBR which is what I'm filming after I filmed this which I've kind of sort of started on even though I hadn't yet wrapped up yet September and I still haven't wrapped up some books that I need to finish as I said before anyway yeah so with Wheel of Time being over me kind of like getting into the swing of things with my new job finally like just taking time to just like rest and relax from recovering from my traveling and all of that I have so many plans in October which is you know stressing me out right now to think about I'm going to see Hades Town for the fifth time I'm going to Disneyland for like Halloween times I'm having a friend over and we're going to see the up play and also going to Universal Studios we have blades and bodice rippers this month which we don't normally which we have to also dress up for which I kind of have sorted but I need to like fully sort that out and my brother's coming over and we're going to do like a whole like Halloween time fun festivities together which will just mean it'll be fun but it'll mean I have time or nothing else my new job I do work in the office um not 100% of the time but a lot of the time and so just the fact of that means that I have less time because just literally commuting and I live really really close to the office but at least an hour a day is the commute and then before I leave you know I have to like get ready in a way that I don't have to get ready you know if I'm working from home so like it's just like a ton of time they get sucked up by just the fact of getting to and from an office and then I'll just like feel slightly more drained by that because like after sitting and traffic when I get home I don't want to like do anything for a minute anyway I'm sure you all have jobs like you know what I mean but I'm just saying it's I didn't I was working 100% from home before so like now I'm working in a physical office so it means I have less time and I have to kind of like adjust to this readjust I did used to have an office job like a physically office job anyway yeah so it's still crazy times it's not all like oh we're all very relaxed now everything's back to normal it won't be back to normal I still post probably slightly less than I was for the time being maybe I can you know work up to more again in the new year or something but I am still catching up I guess but we're back to doing at least a bookish video so yay and I think I've rambled for long enough so maybe I should actually talk about the books that I read in August and September and forgive me but the top of this stack is August and it is now October so I will do my best to remember my thoughts and feelings about these books but it's been a minute so bear with me the first book that I read in August was antimatter blues which is the sequel to mickey seven by Edward Ashton and I like this as well I think I like mickey seven slightly better but I really really really liked mickey seven so that's not exactly like um an insult antimatter blues um a lot of people said they people were like poo pooing mickey seven and then saying antimatter blues is worse and I guess I agree that it's not quite as good as the first one but I really really liked this I don't understand what people are disliking about mickey seven I don't understand people so I'm a bad book reviewer I guess because like I'm not when I like a book it probably means that no one else likes it and if I hate a book it probably means that everyone else loves it so you should just like come to my channel to find out the opposite of what you should be thinking I don't know I really like both books so I'm glad I have them in the UK hard covers and y'all are crazy now as to the specifics of this book they are a little hazy if I'm honest but I remember really enjoying it and I remember thinking about how I was going to be telling people like what the heck why don't you like it this is so good but if we were gonna like go through the specifics of it right now um if if someone mentioned them to me I'm sure they would like spark something for me right now like I vaguely remember what happens in this book um and I remember thinking it was good so there you go there's my in-depth review um the next book I read was The Only One Left by Raleigh Sager this is my second Raleigh Sager book possibly my last Raleigh Sager book. The first Raleigh Sager book I read I hated so I only got this because book of the month and I love this cover and also like with thrillers um in particular I have often found that they were hit and miss so like if I read a thriller from an author and I dislike it I will possibly still give them a chance because there's plenty of like thrillers that I love and then other books by that same author I hate so if I had started with the one I hated then I never would have read the one that I really loved so I was like well I didn't like that one Raleigh Sager book but this one looks kind of cool maybe I like this one better and I did like this one better I did but I still didn't think it was very good and I think that like by the end it like really devolved into nonsense it had pretty good vibes it was pretty page turning as thrill it's just like the one job of a thriller I guess and it's not the worst thriller I've ever read I've read some much much worse thrillers this year but yeah I got this for the cover and it certainly did not live up to the cover I wouldn't like highly recommend this but I don't know like it was fine so if you've already got it or like or whatever like you know it was it was fine not like a rant review or anything else it was very very mid I suppose uh the next book I had originally intended to do a full rant review for but now it's been too long and I can't remember I wrote down some specifics but like my rage isn't fresh enough for me to like film a video that would do justice to my rage um that was my rage when I read this so Immortal by uh or Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong is a retelling of Anthony and Cleopatra by The Bard it was atrocious one of the worst books I've read this year I really wish I had had time to do the rant review because I'd always kind of cement something in my mind in the specifics I was ranting to my patients about it as I was reading it and sending egregious quotes everything about this was awful not least of which was the prose itself the story also was bad the world building was also bad this was awful I was terrible terrible terrible dang I really wish I'd had time to do the rant review I had I was livid so no I don't recommend this to anyone not Shakespeare fans not to not Shakespeare fans not to people who enjoy the written word this was terrible the first Chloe Gong book I read was um her debut and a dnf this is an adult book the others were YA this is so this is her adult debut and this reads exactly like YA it's like no different and it's terrible I think this is she's into I guess doing Shakespeare retellings um I think she should stop that's all I have to say about that next up is Hyperion which was a reread for me by Dan Simmons because my patients and I um are in theory reading the Hyperion Cantos although we were doing every other month and we've already like lost some people who are not enjoying it so we might give up on it we were taught we talked about doing this and I wanted to do it because I did want to finish the cantos because I had read the first two and that's where we're at the first two spoilers for the end of the stack also this I was supposed to read this I think in July and I finished it I don't know I don't know whatever yeah so I still like Hyperion I liked it less on reread and I'm currently one of the books I desperately need to finish for tomorrow is follow-up Hyperion even though I have read it before but it's been a minute and yeah definitely I'm not really liking how follow-up Hyperion that much I feel like this is why I didn't finish the cantos originally so I've kind of be okay with this not finishing it if I'm perfectly honest anyway Hyperion I think is still quite good and I still would recommend Hyperion to people but there are some things about the like science fiction aspects of these books that um drive me nuts because they make no sense and not in a like we haven't invented that yet kind of way like in the rules established by the book books doesn't make sense and it drives me really really really nuts and also Dan Simmons obsession with Keats is inexplicable and the way Dan Simmons writes like women and women's bodies and NSFW things is like not a fan anyway that's my glowing review I mean Hyperion I think was my one of my best books of the year the year that I first read it I think it's fallen from grace a little bit for me but Hyperion is definitely better than fall Hyperion next up was the buddy read for August yes for August an alchemy of masks and mirrors by Curtis Craddock and because Alan was originally supposed to buddy read this with me ages ago and forgot and he did already read this then he joined us um for our patron chat and for the most part Alan was very civil not not wholly civil because this is Alan we're talking about but for Nemesis behavior I think it was very very um very best behavior and and Alan and I discovered that we agree about lame is Rob so that was a pleasant surprise I didn't really like this book most of my patrons didn't really like this book Alan really likes this book but Alan by the end of our chat kind of forgave me I think is fair to say for not liking this book so I think that's progress and I think that should be celebrated but yeah I did not like this book I do not plan to read the second and third books I do still like this cover and it's not the worst book I've ever read but the prose was pretty pretty bad next is the other read-along that my patrons and I are doing which we're doing simultaneously with Hyperion flipping back and forth but if we give up on Hyperion then we can just read these and that is the hornblower books by um CS Forester I love love love love love the hornblower like the adaptations I've seen them many times I own the box set so that you know my patrons interested and so we're reading the books we're reading them in chronological order not publication order which we collectively suspect is why this first book isn't as fun to read because it does read a little bit like just these short bursts of story that are kind of like filling in some details that because uh he wrote like about later he started writing these books later in Horatio Hornblower's life and then went back and wrote essentially prequels about like the early years so if you start with the early years it kind of reads like someone's just like catching like oh remember when I mentioned he did this thing well here's like the full story of how he did that thing so it's not that fun as an intro reading experience for this series I can see what people recommend not reading them in in chronological order but the adaptations are in chronological order so it was interesting comparing and contrasting with the adaptations so yeah um I really enjoyed it that's that being said and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the books and yeah yeah I'm I'm happy to be doing this and I get to picture yoan gruffin the entire time which is an added bonus next up we don't really need to talk about this but I reread before they were hanged on last argument of kings because Mara was reading them for the first time and she and I had our live chat if you missed it it's it's you know back a few and you know friendship saved she did not hate the first law did I need to reread these to talk about them probably not but you know I read so many books that I hate that I have to sprinkle in some first law just for my sanity so anyway enough said next is the witcher read along um the end of like the proper series um on chapter three podcast we got to lady of the lake um and in October we are concluding full-on concluding with season of storms this is my least favorite book in the witchers series and I've read them all except for season of storms I think this is also bethany's least favorite it is also the longest and it is also the ugliest in my opinion because look at how much purple there is like an obscene amount of purple so anyway um it's still very interesting as a book and the concepts that he plays with and I did I think I did enjoy him more the second time partially because I knew what to expect this time there's a lot to unpack with this book and with these books in general but I do think like it is narratively messy and could have been executed a little more smoothly is what I'll say about that next is a book that my patrons chose for me to read and vlog for them in august yep and that is the vanished birds by Simon Jimenez and I despised this book it was a very ranty vlog partly because I hated this book so much and partly because it was in the midst of me like like prepping like wrapping up a job starting a job traveling all this kind of thing so I was like quite stressed and tired and busy and oh yeah I'd just been doing the wheel of time videos um yeah so like I was not in a great mood to be honest but I don't think any mood would have made me favorably disposed towards this book which is terrible in my opinion just so bad so yeah see this is why I need to reread first law because I keep reading stuff like this then next is the September patron buddy read yes yes yeah these last three are the ones that I actually read in September so three books in September the patron buddy read is the house with good bones by teaking fisher this is my third teaking fisher my second adult teaking fisher because I read the baking one was my second one and I generally like that my first one was what moves the debt and I loved what moves the debt um it's been kind of downhill ever since I liked the banking one less than this or less than that and I like this less than both I think or maybe equal to the banking one although it's extremely different hard to compare um yeah this just like I just think this wasn't like terrible and where we haven't had our chat about it yet so I guess we'll see what other people think a lot of people really really love this for me I didn't find the characters terribly compelling and the story itself wasn't like engrossing or spooky enough for me to be like well the characters suck but like I'm into the story or the vibes or something because it was like a little bit more like cozier I suppose than what moves the debt because what moves the debt is like so atmospheric and creepy this isn't really that creepy I mean it's got some creep in it not enough for that to carry it for me and I think the strength of it for people who do like it is that they really like the character or characters and I don't maybe it was the narrator although I when I said that I hated the narrator a lot of people said they loved the narrator so I don't know tastes differ um I just the narrator is um I think the main character because the main character has like a sense of humor um like and I say that in terms of like a lot of like books will have characters that sometimes crack jokes but it's like a feature of this that the main character has a sense of humor like all caps TM and I don't think the jokes are that funny to begin with and then also I felt like the narrator of the audiobook didn't have any sense of comedic timing and like delivering the jokes that I already thought weren't that good and needed all the help they could get so all of that together I was just like I don't find this amusing or charming and the story itself isn't that great so I guess if the humor in this book works for you or you find it relatable then I can see why you'd like it but I don't and I didn't so I think that's what really what mainly broke it for me but again I don't I didn't hate it I was just like that was really mid so yeah I love the cover though and a lot of people like it so my sense of humor is very much not a majority sense of humor a lot of people like a lot of books that because of their humor and I'm always the one that's like I don't think this is funny so you might like it next up is another book that I had despised um actually the best book I read in September of the three was house with good bones it's all downhill from there so share cart by Emily Habek was my book of the month club and I picked it because I was just like this is so weird I initially like skipped over it um because like the very very short blurb was like oh I'm like newly married couple receives like a really receives like a really upsetting diagnosis and they like work through it and I was like oh it's gonna be like cancer it's gonna be you know that I don't want to read a book about like a married couple who's terminally ill and it's just sadness but I was like something possessed me to click on it because I think I just wanted to confirm I was like I want to know if I'm right I bet it's cancer and I clicked on it and they're like he's diagnosed with turning into a shark and I was like okay no that wasn't on my bingo card and so that was just so weird that I was like that has the potential to be brilliant if it like really leans into it and like is wild with the concept in a way that works like it that sounds like it has a high like high-risk high reward kind of situation where like that could be amazing could be ridiculous unfortunately it was ridiculous and like the book did not go I don't really know how to put it into words the book wasn't like very interesting or compelling to read and I also don't think that it knew what it wanted to do with this whole people turning into animals thing as like a medical diagnosis because I feel like the strength of that premise is like its metaphorical possibility and you could go really extreme with it but then you kind of have to have like a very kind of like heightened non-reality to the story if that makes sense like it has to be surreal it has to be you know pretty extreme I suppose um like really lean into the concept in a way that's like kind of wacky or like that's what will make it work but here it was like very like I guess magical realism about it and it took itself really really seriously but in a way that felt like I can't really take this seriously because he's turning into a fucking shark so I feel like for it to really work it would have had to have been like darkly humorous if that makes sense and it doesn't mean that the book ultimately has to be a big joke like it can have a serious like message but its tone should kind of like acknowledge the inherent absurdity of its premise if that makes sense so I just feel like this this idea still could work if it was handled by someone else with a better idea for like why they're gonna employ this metaphor at all because it has to be a metaphor right otherwise like someone turning into a shark being your story like there's no point to that story unless it's a metaphor for something and I'm not sure that it was a metaphor for something or at least not fully like thought through what that metaphor is um and it was really really long it would not end and the characters were like really kind of annoying in itself for one inconsistent I just feel like this book didn't know what it wanted to be and it frankly would have been better if like the diagnosis had been like Alzheimer's or something early onset Alzheimer's because that's functionally how it works in the story but I feel like a lot of the world building of the story it like was not thought through at all like forced euthanasia on people that turn into animals that won't like submit themselves to like living in a zoo basically I'm like I just don't feel like that would be the system maybe it would be but in that case I want the story about that that's what this book should be about but they just kind of like mentioned that as like oh that's background info for how this world works and I'm like I don't care about these characters I am interested in why you think that's how the world would work and wouldn't people feel some kind of way about that but again I just don't think this book was fully thought through and then the book they chose for me to read in vlog in September was God killer by Hannah Caner or Caner and I got this from Waterstones when it came out in the UK in like a year ago it's only just now come out in the US and this was terrible pros terrible world building terrible characters terrible plotting and story terrible I hated it I hated it a lot it was really really dumb and for such a short book it felt like it took forever yeah I do not recommend this cover is stunning the book side not so much unless we want to say that it's stunningly bad in which case I will co-side oh I mean I obviously talked about it in the vlog for my patients but we also talked about it on chapter 3 podcast and then quickly I guess I technically read this in October um but I'm just lumping it with September I just read Sleepy Hollow not the whole collection this is Sleepy Hollow and other stories by Washington Irving I just read Sleepy Hollow because of the project I'm working on that I needed to read it for um this was a reread I read it in college the first time it's super short yeah so this too and then I am currently in the midst of Fall of Hyperion not loving it need to finish this before tomorrow and I'm still reading Lightbringer I haven't finished it yet I will I will I will I will and those are all the books that I've read in in my absence in the interim since you last heard from me about books let me know in the comments down below if you're still alive um I've been what you've been reading if you read these if you were planning to and now you won't because I talked you out of it oh and everyone let me know I post videos I usually say on Saturdays but that is definitely not been true lately so I post videos I can say that with certainty so yep like and subscribe if you want to catch them when they drop join my patreon if you feel so inclined and I'll see you when I see you bye