 Hey guys and welcome back to my channel, a reading warrior. Today is January 2, the second day of the new year, the new decade, 2020. And as I said in my last video, I was going to do a different genre every month and that's kind of going to be my focus this year. Quick side note, I am sick so I will sound weird and probably not be near as energetic and I am sorry for that. But being sick is like a great opportunity to read because it's like I can just close myself in my room and people won't bother me because I'm sick and then I can just sit there and read all day long. Anyway, back to the point of the video. So how I've decided to do the video about historical fiction is I'm going to do a little intro, I might add in some clips and updates from my reading throughout the month. We'll kind of see how that goes. But it's all going to be one video at the end of the month. Now I'm going to tell you the books that I have chosen and not too much about the books because I don't actually know a lot about the books but you know, we'll see how it goes. So yeah, I have chosen, I have chosen four books for me to try and read this month. I'm hoping to read like a book a week but I don't know how well that's going to go. It really depends on because I'm going to be home for two more weeks so I can hopefully get a lot of reading done. But yeah, we'll just see how it all goes. So the first book that I have chosen is one that I had already owned and I bought a while back with the intent to read and then I didn't read it. It's called The Miner's Lady and it's by Tracy Peterson. I'm really excited to read this one because it'll be a book off my shelf that I haven't read and I need to read and I was really excited to read when I bought it and then I got distracted with life and other things. I'm sure you all know how that goes. So this is more of a love story historical fiction and as you'll probably see with all the books that I have chosen I tried to choose different kinds of historical fiction so like this is a love story it's kind of Romeo Juliet vibes kind of ish a little bit and yeah I'm excited to read this because this is one that I own. The next one that I chose to read is The Witches of St. Petersburg and this is by Emojin Edwards Jones. I'm sorry if I said that name wrong it's very cool name. I'm excited to read this one because this is gonna be a little bit more of the fantasy side of historical fiction so obviously St. Petersburg is gonna take place in the history of Russia and witches. I mean it's gonna be very different from the first one. It's gonna be very different from the first one that I had chosen and I'm really excited to read this one. I saw it on the shelf and I wasn't initially looking for this book and I saw it and I was like I need to read this one so I bought it and I'm really excited to read it. Again it's a whole different continent than the first one it's a whole different like kind of subgenre of the first one and so I'm really trying to get a taste of all different kinds of historical fiction with these books. Moving on to the it is called Anna of Cleave and it's by Alison Weir Weir Weir something like that I'm sorry. This is gonna be a bit of a bigger book and so I might say this one until last just so I make sure I read the other ones and actually get some historical reading done past this one. This is much more of a just pure historical fiction it's very based off of the history. For this one it's so the king sees a portrait of a beautiful woman and he needs to be remarried and so he sees her and he's all like oh she's pretty, have her sent over. The thing is the guy who painted her kind of enhanced some of her features and painted her straight on so they don't see like how big her nose is so she gets there and everyone's like hmm she's not as pretty as the picture and it's like oh no she's not as pretty as the picture what are we gonna do? So it's about her going to the English court and being like hey you know I'm here let's get married and everyone just kind of being like whoa okay and just kind of figuring that out and going through with all the politics and everything of you know way back when in England when the king could just do that and be no problem. So I'm very excited to read this one I was super excited to read this one but I don't know if I'll have time I might I might try and listen to it as an audiobook actually because I haven't picked out a book to listen to as an audiobook so I might just do this one as an audiobook and read it when I get the chance but it would be the most likely option for me to actually like get the book done within the month is if I'm listening to it at the same time as reading other books. I did also get I think I got two more books both are historical fiction not sure if I'm going to read both though so one of them is the Winter Palace a novel a story of Catherine the Great so also this one ancient Russian I'm not ancient but like old times in Russia I was really excited about this one because I don't know a lot about Catherine the Great and I really want to because I hear she was really interesting and cool yeah so I'm really excited about that one plus winter like it's January winter is starting yeah winter is starting it has just become on us but at least here in Michigan but in Minnesota it's been here for a little bit so I thought that would be enough so that is the plan for this coming month I am really excited I'm gonna have a lot of fun because I love historical fiction and I put a lot of time and work into finding these books so I am really excited to read them and I will catch up with you all labor later after I have started the first book so I realized it's been a hot minute since I've done any filming at all as it is now the middle of February Valentine's Day was yesterday so it's the 15th of when I'm filming this and I am really sorry about that I just have not really had time to sit down and film anything I've kind of taken a lot on my plate this semester so did we're just gonna see how much I can and cannot do but that does not mean I have stopped reading I've actually had a lot of books that I've been able to complete and I am still following the prompt that I gave myself this year of reading different genres every month and I did read a lot of historical fiction last month and I am currently reading romance like I promised I just haven't had time to record so I'm recording now that I finally have a free Saturday so I'm going to get into finishing up what I read in January and what I think about the historical fiction so the first book that I read and finished was called The Miner's Lady and it was by Tracy Peterson I don't have it with me because I finished reading it while I was at home and then to make my backpack lighter in the airport I didn't take it with me so sorry about that but it was mentioned earlier in this video I finished reading it and I gave it a three out of five stars because like it was a good book like I like the description the characters were fine but I mean it really was just another like Romeo and Juliet and Family Feud which like was entertaining and it was nice because it tried to add a twist of like so basically it was about this family where there are two daughters and then another one where there are two sons and they're feuding with each other and they're very strong Italian families and they're immigrated to the United States their grandparents did they are living in was a Minnesota I think I hope yeah they moved to the US and the sis one of the sisters falls in love with one of the brothers from the other family that they don't like and that's a big problem but then in trying to break them up the older sister ends up falling in love with the other brother as they're both trying to break them up and saying that this is bad and it's just kind of how like the families are trying to push past this whole feuding against each other but not everyone in both families are completely open to that and just kind of dealing with that like it was a well-written book and the characters were fine I definitely felt for some of the characters like I had emotional ties to them just the story it's story itself wasn't the most unique thing in the world which I don't think it needs to be but yeah I just think it was a fun little read I would still recommend it even though I only rated it like three out of five stars I never give out five-star review so like three stars is still pretty good like I would still recommend people read that but yeah it's just a nice little just sit down read it like I still flipped through it pretty quickly yeah so that was a definitely recommend the next book they ended up reading was the winter palace a novel of Catherine the Great and that was written by Eva Stachniak again I did not bring that book with me but that's because I listened to it as an audiobook because it is quite a bigger book I do actually own the physical copy because I ended up really liking this book and so this one is about this girl named Barbara or Barbara depending if you're saying in Polish or in Russian and she basically goes to the palace and she becomes a spy for the what was she like the Queen of Russia no it doesn't seem but the person who is ruling Russia until they can get their next start on the throne and it's basically it's the story of Catherine the Great you know her coming from Germany and having to marry and all that but it's actually told the entire stories completely from Barbara's point of view and how she grew up in the palace and then she gets married off to a soldier and then how that happens and it's a long story like it is kind of a full-life story she even talks about the very beginning and her childhood and then going to the palace and it goes like all the way plenty into her life and I was always expecting like oh this is gonna be the main thing the story and then like it goes over this hump of plots and then as soon as that dies down and another hump keeps going and it's just it's not necessarily one overarching like constant build-up main event fall down it's just it's literally living a life which normally I don't actually find that much entertainment from in books I get very bored after like the first or second plot arc but I did not with this book which I really appreciated I kept wanting to listen to it I kept wanting to read more and keep going even if like a problem had been resolved or oh now this new thing has been introduced and you don't quite see how it's gonna fit into the story but then it does and I just thought it was really interesting I kept it going I rated it four out of five stars which is one of my better ratings yeah I just think it's really interesting to take such a prominent historical figure and then to tell it from someone else's point of view and I just I ended up really enjoying the book I like the characters I will warn you that there is a little bit of graphic romance in there but it's not super detailed then it's really only like in the beginning and then once you kind of get through that then the rest of the book is fine it doesn't really describe too much of anything but and there are also some moments I laughed I when I was listening to this book I was flying back to Minnesota and I was just sitting there in the airport playing a game of playing a card game and I just started burst out laughing at one point and everyone looked at me like I was crazy and I was like I'm listening to an audiobook and this is hilarious I didn't know what to do so I just sat there and laughed because there were just a few moments like it wasn't a comedic book and it wasn't also just like a one line out of place it'd be like every like five to ten chapters there would be one little thing that like made me giggle or made me laugh which I kind of appreciate it so it wasn't just this dull all of a story in the palace going on all the time like it it had some life to it which I really appreciated the next book that I read and actually the last book that I finished in January was called Juliet by Anne Fortier and this book was actually recommended to me by my roommate so I was very curious about that I listened to that book as school starting and it was really interesting I was fully expecting it to be like the traditional Romeo and Juliet story kind of like the main minors lady was I was almost expecting it to be like that except modern times like I knew that it was going to be like generations later some girl named Julia and generations later a guy named Romeo and like just I kind of expected that to come but I really did not expect how they did it like in this novel there's plenty of mystery and intrigue and misleads I will say that some of the misleads weren't actually that misleading and there was a point in the book where I was like I bet it's this and then it was and I was like great I'm glad it was even though I called it I still enjoyed that that's how it went so basically it's this girl named Julietta Tolome and she is the great great great granddaughter of generations down of not really Juliet herself because Juliet never had her kids but her sister Gianotta. Juliet also has a twin sister named Gianotta in this modern day and so it's really just an exact repeat of like the characters from way back in the 1400s to modern day and so she um she goes back to Italy and she's unraveling the real story of Romeo and Juliet not the Shakespeare version not someone else's version she's going through and she's finding the real story and she's trying to lift this family curse something like that um by writing the wrongs and being with Romeo and just making sure that everyone either gets their revenge or is satisfied in some way and lots of the characters come back and it was actually pretty interesting I went into it slightly critical but then I came out of it pretty happy which is why I rated it which is why I rated it three stars like it did surprise me in some areas but honestly my favorite character was Gianotta the modern version of her um just I didn't I started off not liking that character and then loving that character by the end of it but there was just a lot of pulling the main character around this way and then pulling her that way and it just it didn't seem like she had much of a backbone or much of a spine to herself other than she wants to get this done and then everyone's like you should do this and oh you need to figure out this and oh but this is what happened then she just kind of gets tossed around quite a bit um so like I was on a super big fan of that but I still enjoyed the book and again it was very it was like was Romeo and Juliet without being super Romeo and Juliet which was really interesting um and yeah like I said her name is Julia Tolome and I think Romeo's last name is different too but the point is is that it wasn't exactly that and that they changed the names and they changed details it it flashed back and forth between modern day and the real story of Romeo and Juliet back in the 1400s which at first I didn't like but then I ended up really liking so yeah that's just another thing I'm critical about in books like if you're gonna do flashbacks then like make sure it does well and it like parallels the books at an appropriate pace and I I feel like this one did um but yeah I just felt like it was also kind of predictable in some places and some of the characters were pretty and some of them were great but yeah so those are all the books that I finished in January there is another historical fiction that I wanted to read Anna of Cleve and I am still reading that I just didn't get it done in January and even though it is February I am listening to and reading a lot of romance books but I am still finishing one that I wanted to get done in January just because it's a really interesting book and it might fall into the category of romance anyway I'm not 100% sure about that but we'll see okay so now I'm gonna talk about like what I thought of historical fiction as a genre based on these books I tried to choose books that are that take place in different parts of the world so like one was in Russia Anna of Cleve is in England Miners Ladies in America and I wanted to do more of other places as well but I just didn't quite have the time or resources to go and find those but I really enjoyed them the thing about historical fiction is that I feel like nothing is ever just historical fiction it's historical fiction and romance a historical fiction and mystery so I mean if you like one of those other genres I don't think you should not like historical fiction because it's the same thing it's just in past times and it just adds a new element to stories and I actually really liked it I like I knew I liked historical fiction before I started reading these books but now I just have a better idea of like all the broadness that historical fiction can be there are even books that I found that was like historical fiction like fantasy like there was witchcraft there was like the witches of st. Petersburg but the witches of st. Petersburg was one that I was wanting to read and I thought was interesting but again I didn't have time to sit down and read it but yeah historical fiction just covers so much more than like just a historical based story or like an accurate story so I really appreciated that and I think just by me expanding my historical fiction it got me so much more interested in other historical novel books and hopefully now I can follow some authors so I can continue to read historical fiction because I would love to do that when this year is over and I can start reading based on what I want and not what genre I want but so far the beginning of the year has been really good with experiencing these new genres and so I am very happy about that I want to continue reading historical fiction if you're on the fence about it I say be picky with historical fiction books you choose because again they can cover so many different genres not just historical fiction there might be some that you really like and some that will not float your boat for example like growing up I loved reading Laura Ingalls Wilder my mom read those to me and then we even started reading about her daughter Rose and then we started going back with her mom Catherine and like those were based on like true events um but I can see how that wouldn't be for everyone because like it is one of those like just the life of this person and it's all normal there's not much mystery and there's not much romance and there's not much like fantasy or anything like that um but some people really like those books so I mean don't discard historical fiction just because it's historical I would say definitely like look for historical fictions that are similar to genres and books that you would read and then that maybe can like serve as a gateway into finding other books in that genre that you're like and who knows you never know what you're gonna find um so yeah that would be my review of historical fiction it is very interesting and I think there's a little bit of it for everyone you just got to look for it it won't always present present itself to you like it didn't present itself for me at all like I spent hours wandering around Barnes and Noble and Goodreads and asking people and being like help me I need books um yeah so I definitely really like historical fiction and now because it is the middle of February I'm gonna go back to reading my romance books and I will talk about those in a different video hopefully more towards the end of February and not like the middle of March but I mean my spring break is like the second week of March so it just might have to be that way I don't know we'll see but I hope you guys have a lovely day um if you have any questions about any of the books that I read for historical fiction or just any more my opinions about different ones of those feel free to comment down below and if you just like the video or you like historical fiction yourself please give this video a thumbs up and don't be afraid to share with other people if you want someone to who you know to read more historical fiction just like send this video off to them being like hey hey you should you should read this historical fiction book I've been wanting you to read other people who don't like historical fiction actually do like historical fiction so maybe you do too yeah so like comment click the subscribe button if you want to see more or if you're interested in the rest of my journey throughout the year of the different genres of books um I do have the genre set for every month that I'm going to read um I that was all announced in my previous video so they can have the schedule there but just so you know February because of Valentine's Day is the month I am reading romance novels and again if you have any book suggestions for me like there is this romance novel that you really liked that I want her to read it so that she can like give an opinion and then hopefully have a better more positive view on romance as a genre then yeah seriously let me know my social media is also in the description box below if you want to reach out to me that way or follow me and see like what all I'm specifically reading and maybe some more in-depth reviews and I definitely encourage you to do that but for now I hope you guys have wonderful reading adventures and have a good rest of your winter hopefully spring will be here soon so I can start reading outside but we'll see yeah happy reading