 What's shaking book to my name's cam and welcome back to another video. So Christmas is over But we're not quite in the new year just yet. Nevertheless, the boobly has been put back in the cage until next Christmas And you know 2019 came with its normal hefty load of disappointments no doubt But the most appropriate of those disappointments to talk about in a video would probably be the shitty books that I read this year Ultimately, I want to see if my feelings have changed because I did my reviews for these books pretty much immediately after reading them So maybe after sitting with them for a while. Maybe I feel a bit differently now before you assume I'm just a cynical dingleberry. I have done a video on my favorite reads of 2019 That was the last video I did but also I am a cynical dingleberry. So just Buckle up buckaroos. The first disappointing read I want to mention for 2019 was perhaps the one that I had the highest hopes for and that was Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James. I don't blame Marlon for the marketing for the book which was I mean effective, but pretty wrong They were saying it was like the next Lord of the Rings Game of Thrones type thing But I just think that part of the marketing was a bit of a cop-out. Don't get me wrong I don't have a problem with in marketing when they compare it to a popular franchise or something like that I know a lot of people do and I know a lot of people say it should be able to stand on its own that kind of thing And they're right of course, but but I don't think that's an inherently bad thing to do when you're marketing something to to compare it to Something that people will immediately recognize But the only time you should be able to get away with that is if it's accurate I find the point out some of the biggest reasons that this book is in this video rather than my favorites of 2019 It would come down to these things The anti-chronological like formatting of the story was just extremely confusing and lost me pretty much at every turn It's very hard to enjoy a story when you have no fucking idea what's going on A lot of the characters in the story were either Over-explained or under-explained we either got too much or too little backstory for them And a lot of the characters would pop in and out of the story just for seemingly no reason whatsoever The motivations for the quest felt pretty much non-existent I really couldn't bring myself to grow any attachment to them because I didn't believe that they Wanted to be doing what they apparently were doing in the story But the worst part of this whole book the part that just it kind of like I get it liking things as subjective But one of the main things that kind of boggles me as to how this book still got as popular as it did is Just how like gross it is like unnecessarily gross. I want to make it very very clear I am a hundred percent fine with exploring like dark and uncomfortable themes in books Especially books like this like fantasy where it's no holds bar like this book takes off pretty much every trigger warning You could ever imagine for any story and that itself doesn't bother me That's fine, but the problem is like most of that like edgy triggering stuff Serves no no purpose whatsoever to the actual story or the characters or the plot It's just it's just there and it's just Hard to read through and once you read through it. You're like like why like why did I have to read that? What was the point? Why why why why? It's like a super common thing in this book for whatever reason for like characters to be introduced while they're in the middle of Reaping someone and that someone is usually a child and it just happens a lot a Suspiciously large amount ultimately when it comes to this book what I would say is just that I think it is way way overhyped I don't think it came even close to Breaking in any kind of new ceiling in the fantasy genre or story telling it whatsoever Most of my time reading this was spent like geez another kid just entered the scene I hope this doesn't oh God again why next up is se Hinton's classic the outside is I rated this one two stars I know a lot of people like hold this book really really closely to their hearts But I'll boil my negative opinion of this book down to one thing and that's just that I think if you stripped away the Greaser aesthetic from all of this like the glamorous greaser aesthetic There's nothing really that profound happening here man Like it's just this book is like the epitome of it's not that deep. Don't get me wrong I did greases. I'm a kinnicky man myself And it wasn't even necessarily a bad story I just think the fact that this book is like put on such a pedestal of you know virtue and allegory I don't know if it's Well-earned I think if they were just normal-looking towny kids I don't think people would care as much to be honest. I don't think many people would remember this book So the next one I know I said that black leopard red wolf was overhyped, but this one This one is definitely one of the most overhyped books I've ever seen and that would be Daisy Jones and the six again Bullet pointing my like issues with this book is gonna be pretty difficult So if you want to see my full opinion on this you can watch the video But like the outsiders I feel like this book is only loved as much as it is because of the aesthetic or the glamour of The period it's set in Daisy Jones and the six Holy shit It rides the hell out of the coattails of like rock and roll lifestyle in glamour without actually doing any exploration whatsoever of the culture itself So Daisy Jones is basically a bunch of rock stars being interviewed and reflecting on their life in the time of a Band which is very very blatantly meant to be look I'm willing to call it a tribute or a homage to Fleetwood Mac. That's basically what it is It's like reading the story of Fleetwood Mac Except much worse. Although the problems I had were just that the characters were Unlikable and I know in most cases they were meant to be because of what was going on But I think even in moments where they were meant to be likeable I still didn't like them and I thought they came off as just obnoxious The rock and roll time period that it was like what is it the 70s was used for nothing more than aesthetic There was actually no diving into the culture of the time Which is the only reason I was excited to read this in the first place because there is so much rich value in what was a problematic lifestyle of you know the 70s reading band stories from back then is so Fascinating because of the social norms that were romanticized at the time It's it's insane to look back on through the eyes of someone who was famous even upon finishing the book I'm still not sure there was any actual character development for any of the characters in my book review I point out the whole just as an example the relationship between the brothers within the band that I think are kind of based on Eagles, you know band the Eagles But you have these brothers within the band and they have this relationship that has its highs and lows through the story And it builds up towards a climax at the end of the book and then just nothing happens just Nothing happens man. I just remember reading like that that resolution I was like what but another one of my biggest problems with this story is how the hell do you write a Story that is based around drugs and addiction and still haven't mean nothing and go nowhere The thing with the two main characters, you know, what is it Billy and Daisy is that Billy is a former alcoholic who still struggles with temptation and his past addiction and Daisy is a beautiful drug addict and Addiction and temptation is Billy's whole thing and that's great because that temptation for Billy isn't just about the temptation of alcohol and drugs And his past lifestyle Especially when his bands exploding and fame and those things are being kind of presented to him much more frequently is also the temptation of Falling for someone when he's happily married and the person that he's falling for Happens to be a drug addict, which again circles back to his past drug It's a whole thing and then you have Daisy who is a drug addict and her thing through the story is you know Is she gonna overcome it so she can become a better person to abandon and start respecting herself more and stop being so self-destructive and That goes nowhere Nothing nothing happens there. There's a scene where she where it seems like she might go to rehab But that's literally negated on the next page So I guess that whole thing was just useless the story circles around drugs and addiction and temptation But at no point do we find out you know what the real root cause of that is for Daisy It's just she's just she just likes drugs because that's her character because that's who she is because it's cool And it's rock and roll man. That's just rock and roll Like I said, I just don't get how you write a whole book about addiction and temptation and have it go absolutely nowhere So the next one is called and as a pretty long title bear with me It's called I'm a therapist and my patient is going to be the next school shooter Six patient files that will keep you up at night. God this one sucked. I gave it one star It was just I don't like just being mean when I review stuff, but God this book was trash. It was just real bad It's easily one of the most incoherent like inconsistent reads I've had all year and the thing is it's posed like an anthology So you read that title, you know six patient files that will keep you up at night and you're like, okay It's an anthology, but it's not it's it's literally just one story divided up for Seemingly no reason really and it's just the world's worst therapists Continuously breaking the law on a whim because of any slight suspicion he could ever have like my whole idea when I Went into this is that it would be six completely separate fictional therapy appointments where we get to dive into the Psyche of like people who are genuinely dangerous. That's what I thought it would be I thought that would be kind of interesting to read about and I didn't even have a problem with the fact that the person Who wrote it isn't a real doctor I just assumed they would have done their research and that's okay, but this book isn't a story about the patients It's a hundred percent about the therapist the patients are like basically props at most Trivial side characters and it turns into this whole weird like bad Sherlock Holmes fanfiction where the therapist is solving a mystery and all the Patients are linked together and it's just really dumb It's just it's really it's really dumb His biggest problem is that he jumps to conclusions like nobody's business during this mystery He'll get a clue which isn't a clue and it's it's obviously not a clue and he's like I've solved the case and this happens like ten times through the book and it always ends badly and then he's like oh I was wrong But I'm still smart and I can still figure this out at one point He immediately suspects his assistant of being the bad guy for almost no reason just on the Flimsiest bit of evidence I've ever seen and fucking sucks the guy in the mouth He literally punches his assistant and the assistant's just like that's all right man shit happens Wearing black pants criminals wear black pants Yeah, those are the books that made me Punch dance my rage away this year. There's those the ones that really got under my skin I appreciate the experience of coming across bad reads because that just makes me appreciate the good ones even more No regret as they would say and hey, I hope you have a great New Year's. I hope you get a Hope you get a smooch as always things are watching catch it