 What's your new booktube? My name's Cam, and welcome back to another video. Well, hot damn, the year is drawing to a close. The decade is drawing to a close, which is pretty crazy when you think about it. 2010 was the year I graduated high school, so thinking about the fact it's been 10 years since then is... it's an experience. Christmas is once again upon us, that's why I've replaced the blue today with a lovely, uh, Christmas aesthetic. Damn. No, don't celebrate Christmas alone, you're so sexy. It's Christmas time, the buble has once again been unchained. In all seriousness, this is your last chance to get the lasts for the decade, and for example, your last read of the decade, it could be your last trip, vacation of the decade, it could be your last f***ing, f***ing, f***ing spectacular of the decade. I don't know. So, I don't know exactly how many books I actually read this year, to be honest, I don't really care, but I do know that it's enough books that for me to do a wrap up of the good and the bad, I want to split it into separate videos for the good and the bad. Why? Extra content, baby. The reason is I want to actually tell you what I did or didn't like about those books, rather than just spitting titles at you. And I'm pretty interested to see if my feelings have changed in retrospect, because all of the reviews I did, I did pretty much immediately after reading them, so maybe after marinating with them for some time, I feel differently. I don't know. Anyway, let's get it started, baby. Goddamn, I'm, okay, hold up, I'm thirsty as frick. Oh, yeah. So, I started off 2019 and the best way possible, apparently. Dog goes, baby, yeah. I read three dog themed books at the very start of the year, and the first of those was a dog's purpose. I rated this one four stars. So, the story starts off like most dog stories. It starts off with a young boy and his new pet dog, and they bond become best friends, obviously, that kind of thing. And pretty early on in the story, the dog actually dies, which is pretty, you know, that's pretty interesting for a dog themed story that's usually saved for the end. But that's when the actual story begins, and that is that the dog involved, Bailey, is actually reincarnated through all of these different dog lives, and he spends each of those dog lives trying to find his way back to his original owner, Ethan. I think one of the main reasons I liked a dog's purpose so much is that because it was a pretty campy, sure, it was, you know, had the wholesome kind of feel good thing. If you've seen the movie, you'll know what I'm talking about. It wasn't a lot of ways your classic feel good dog story, but it also didn't shy away from some pretty dark and serious stuff. Most of that comes through the alternate lives. In particular, there was one where Bailey is a police dog, and the relationship with the police officer and the actual police officer's backstory is pretty dark, but super interesting. That was probably my favorite part of the whole story, in fact. It's just interesting seeing such a character arc for a dog, and all of that character development came through interactions with different people in different lives for Bailey. The next one was Waiting for Doggo. I rated this one five stars. I really, really liked this one. I've actually reread it, I think twice now. Re-reading this, the closest kind of comparison I can give you is kind of like rewatching a sitcom. It's just comfortable, feels good, feels safe. Waiting for Doggo is interesting because it has almost no actual plot. I mean, there is a story there, of course. We have our protagonist and his girlfriend, his long-term girlfriend, leaves him and she leaves behind her ugly dog that he doesn't really get on with. And through the story, he goes through some dramas with his career, meeting a new love interest, and building a relationship with the ugly dog. I feel like it was well written enough that, despite the real kind of lack of conflict or even plot, it was pretty charming, and that's why I like it so much. You might remember from the video where I read one-star reviews of my favorite books, I read the one-star reviews for this one, and the consensus among people that don't like it is basically that it's a total bro book, dude. Certified Bro Literature. Fuck yeah. If there's two things I like, man, it's chugging beer and reading soft contemporaries. Then we have The Art of Racing in the Rain. I gave this one four stars. In retrospect, that's really weird that I rated this one lower than Waiting for Doggo. In almost all aspects, this is definitely a better book than Waiting for Doggo. Not because Waiting for Doggo is bad, obviously, but just because this one has a plot, a really well-written one, I don't know. Maybe sometimes I'm just too generous with my five-star ratings. The story focuses around a dog named Enzo reflecting on his life, and the difference between Enzo and most dogs from other dog books and movies, etc., is that Enzo is actually pretty much on par with human intelligence. He can understand English. He knows what's happening pretty much all the time. And it's really interesting because through a lot of the story, it feels a lot less like Enzo is actually a dog character in the story and more just a device for the reader to be directly inserted into it. So you're basically getting the story through the eyes of a dog. It's a really, really fascinating and really, really sad story. I mean, it has a lot of good positive messages, and it's very philosophical. But this definitely isn't your classic, you know, campy, feel-good dog book. It's just not, it's a lot more deep. It explores a lot more dark themes that ultimately end up being like bittersweet optimism, but you know what I mean. Enzo is adopted and grows up with a race car driver named Danny, and basically through the story, you see Danny get a family and go through his life. But a lot of sad things happen. A lot of antagonistic things happen to Danny. And the story is basically about, like the title suggests, the art of racing and the rain. The reason it's called that is because Danny's specialty as far as racing goes is being able to control the car in the wet. And it's a massive allegory for the story itself. It explores the idea of trying to control your life when it feels like it's spiraling out of control. Enzo is like the whimsical old man who's always hanging out at the back of the local pub, and every time someone says more than two words to him, he dishes out some fair dink and wisdom. No race has ever been won in the first corner, but many have been lost there. Holy shit, dude. By the way, the book is a lot sadder than the movie. The movie omits some stuff that I guess was just even too dark for that. So I finally finished a series during 2019 that I'd been reading since a long time. I'd been reading it since I started Book Two, basically. And that's the Felix series by Morris Glitzman. This one's called Once. This is the first book in the series. The Felix series is a historical fiction based around the journey of a young Jewish boy during the occupation of Poland in World War II, basically on the run from the Nazis and searching for his parents. It takes you through a lot of fictional events, but also a lot of real stuff that happened during those times that is just catastrophically heartbreaking. It's a really rough read, but it's also really good. These books were actually written for a younger audience in mind. I have a book review of this that still gets a lot of comments from kids who I guess are being made to read it for school, so maybe they come to my review video hoping to get a shortcut. I don't know. It's a really confronting and emotionally taxing series, but it's also super respectful and pretty damn educational. It's hard for me to imagine a better example of how to introduce your young kids to World War II and the atrocities that happened. I also finished another series in 2019 that I'm sure you're aware of. I'm absolutely positive you know about this one. It's Nevernight. I finished the Nevernight series. I have a whole video going into depth about what I liked and didn't like about the Nevernight series, so I'll summarize here and just say it's easily one of the best fantasy series I've ever read. Definitely the best one I've read in the past year, maybe a couple of years. I've maintained that stylistically it's closer to being a YA than an adult book, although I know it's not. I know there's stuff in the series that disqualifies it from being a YA, but I still feel that stylistically it could be mistaken for one, but who fucking cares, man? It's about the story. The story in this case being a real vengeful bitch named Mia Covair, who basically goes on a really long journey from being a recently orphaned young girl to one of the deadliest assassins in the entire fictional world. The world building and lore in that series I think is the real draw there and the characters are pretty damn well written. And if you've been considering reading Nevernight but you're not too sure, a good place to go from here would be to go to Piera Ford's channel and watched her recently made three-part mini web series basically introducing you to the world of Nevernight. It's really, really good. It's going to be some of the best production value you'll find for a book adaptation on YouTube. I gave the series as a whole five stars because like I said it's one of the best fantasies I've read in a long time. So the next book was one of my most anticipated reads for the year and it was from one of my favorite authors, Blake Crouch, and the book was Recursion. I really, really enjoyed this one, perhaps not as much as his book Dark Matter which is the book that introduced me to Blake Crouch and perhaps not even as much as the Pines series which I still feel is his best work but I still really, really enjoyed this one. It plays around a lot with the Mandela effect which is like just one of those super interesting phenomenons. The idea of Recursion is that there's two characters stories who become intertwined as the story goes on and it's really hard to say anything without spoiling because it's a it's a sci-fi kind of thriller. You just have to read it. I guess what I would say is that if you're a fan of the TV show Black Mirror you'll probably really like this and you'll probably really like anything else from Blake Crouch as well. It's basically for fans at Black Mirror or anyone else who likes strapping themselves in and having their brain clapped like a Valentine's day booty. The next one was my most anticipated read for the entire year of 2019 and it was from my favorite author and that's Full Throttle by Joe Hill with some stories co-authored by Stephen King which was really cool. It was an anthology of short horror stories and it was just classic Joe Hill. It had that wacky bizarre flavor that makes it both unpredictable but more importantly makes it super interesting. I think the story from that anthology that stuck with me the most was Fawn. It was just again like I said interesting and really bizarre. Fawn being a short story about the kind of toys with the idea of what if instead of well-meaning kids who found the door to Narnia what if it had been a person with much more sinister intentions. So I also read a couple of self-help writing books in 2019 as well which is something I never had an interest in doing whatsoever. If I needed writing advice or anything like that I would take an actual course or I would go to YouTube something like that or I would even just look on the internet. I never thought I would actually get a book and read it about the idea of writing it just never appealed to me seemed like it required more time than was worth it but I read Stephen King's on writing which I gave four stars and how to write best-selling fiction which I gave five stars. Stephen King's book was I guess half a biography of his life which had value in it for aspiring writers sure and the other half was some of his personal advice. Most of it like subjective stuff that he has found you know suits his personal tastes whereas how to write best-selling fiction was just cover to cover it was just useful mostly objective writing advice quite literally covering the entire process in strupulous detail like literally from getting an idea to publishing it and marketing it and I know what you're thinking that sounds pretty boring but I don't know how he did it but the author managed to make it super compelling and interesting by using like really well thought out analogies as well that make it super easily digestible. Like I said I have videos about this one in particular I would recommend because I have a video where I talk about all of the stuff that I learned from these books and I've maintained from reading especially how to write best-selling fiction that if you want to be a writer you should definitely read this book or at least get the audiobook there is so much value there that you just can't find just from a youtube video or something like that it's just it's honestly insane. I want to take a moment to do a bit of a shout out I guess to the more mediocre reads that I had this year the ones that weren't necessarily bad but haven't really stuck with me as much I'll just mention three of them so we have The Devouring Grey Warped which is a horror anthology by Jeff Manapace and the well-known Fight Club. All of these books were not bad but you know they were just yeah I'm going to be following up this video with a video of all the books that I really didn't like all the books I hated that I read during 2019 so if you want to catch that one subscribe subscribe the channel and I'll be your your Christmas kiss baby. As always thanks for watching. Catch ya!