Just so we all know that this happened, when I typed BookTubeAThon into the post title it automatically changed itself to BookTubeAThong. Let us all take a moment to appreciate the unintended comedic genius of autocorrect.
Now that we got that out of the way, we shall proceed with today's topic: BookTubeAThon!
If you don't know what BookTubeAThon is let me post this helpful video of my TBR from this year:
It probably wasn't that helpful, but you get the gist of it and I'm lazy and will do my utmost best to avoid any unnecessary typing. Maybe I just need to build up my typing muscles. I think spirit fingers are the solution to this problem. The answer is always spirit fingers (and the limit does not exist).
Now for the answer you've all been waiting for to the question which I haven't actually asked yet...How many books did I actually end up reading during BookTubeAThon?!
Out of the 7 books I had intended to read over the week of BookTubeAThon, I ended up reading 4 of them. Not too shabby in my opinion (there was also the fact that I had to work every single day of that week and had very little time to read that makes this seem like a slightly more impressive number).
Here are the books I had intended to read:
1. Summer Days & Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories by Stephanie Perkins
2. Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson
3. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
4. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, #1) by Seth Grahame-Smith/Jane Austen
5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
6. The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4) by Maggie Stiefvater
7. Morning Star (Red Rising, #3) by Pierce Brown
Here are the books I actually read:
1. Summer Days & Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories by Stephanie Perkins
2. Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson
3. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
4. One Day by David Nicholls
5. And the bare beginnings of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, while eating a burrito in a park during my work break.
Now almost three weeks later I have fully finished reading Wuthering Heights and I'm halfway through with Morning Star! It's taking me almost a month, but I am going to finish this challenge gosh dangit! (Hopefully with another burrito. And chips and guac. Mmm.)
Summer Days & Summer Nights is a collection of short stories written by current, popular, young adult authors. I admit I skipped a few of the stories because not all of them were...that great. But a lot of them were really enjoyable! It can be difficult to write an amazing short story because everything achieved in an average sized book has to be condensed into a short and concise format. Flowery language and long ass descriptions do not cut it in a short story. There is also a lack of quality short stories because frankly they are just not as popular and therefore not a lot of them good, bad or otherwise exist (most books these days turn into series and for some reason that usually means there are at least 6 of them, at the minimum...I'm not bitter). So it's refreshing to read something short once in a while. I noticed the shorts with fantasy elements tended to be better, but that could just be because I think a little bit of magic makes most things better. I will give you a list of the authors whose stories I enjoyed the most in this book (I realize it's pretty much all the big names, but hey they're big for a reason). The list goes Stephanie Perkins, Cassandra Clare, Leigh Bardugo, Veronica Roth, and Lev Grossman. I surprisingly really enjoyed Lev Grossman's story (mostly because some of his other books I wasn't as big of a fan of). It just goes to show that authors can surprise you and it's good to give writers second chances (and third chances and sometimes fourth chances).
Tiger Lily was a dream. This book was a retelling of the story of Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up. The unique thing about this book was the perspective. It was told through the eyes of Tinker Bell who had taken a liking to Tiger Lily and decided to follow her around. Instead of the secondary character status Tiger Lily and Tink get in the original, in this story they are given a sense of depth and life that makes me love the world of Peter Pan and Neverland even more than I did before. The Neverland in this version was a dark and unforgiving world, yet still a place made of dreams. We get a glimpse of a Peter Pan with extreme flaws, but it's hard to not to still fall in love with his character right alongside Tinkerbell and Tiger Lily. It's the first time a retelling has made me wish for a different outcome in the original source material. That's how you know a retelling has been done right. Retellings can sometimes be a complete and utter disaster or at times even better than the original. I don't think Tiger Lily was better than Peter Pan, but it did give me that same feeling of nostalgia that I usually end up feeling by the end of this story and That. Is. Everything.
Station Eleven was terrifying, but I loved it. It was such an incredibly unique story. The premise of this book is that there is a time before and a time after civilization. The world was rocked by a deadly flu epidemic that killed a vast majority of the human populace. It was so easy to see the possibly of this happening in real life. That was what I found terrifying. The story jumped through time and was a layered perspective from characters that all had known at some point or another a famous actor named Arthur Leander who died on stage in the middle of a production of Macbeth the night of the beginning of the the end of the world. This story highlights the amazing resilience of the human race and leaves you with the reminder that even when the worse happens, in the end there is always still hope.
I had intended to read another book for this category, which was to read a book and then watch it's movie counterpart, but I had been meaning to read this book and decided to switch it up. I had picked One Day up one day (harhar) at a used book sale. It had been sitting on my shelf ever since and I had always planned to watch the movie at some point or another, so it seemed like a good idea to read/watch it now. Except it wasn't. I mean, I liked some parts, but I had a hard time with this book. I found the characters awful and I knew there was a non happy ending to this book and that probably ruined it for me from the start. This book relied heavily on shock factor, which I find rather unappealing unless it's done well (which in my opinion, it was not in this book). I was getting so bored by the pretentious attitudes of these characters that I decided to watch the movie before I had even finished the book. It made the story somewhat better actually. The actors slightly saved the annoying nature of the text based version of the characters. I hadn't even gotten to the "shocking" part of the story in the book yet and in the first scene in the movie I correctly guessed what was going to happen (of course while thinking that it was stupid and that can't possibly be what happens and then it turns out it does...). I will admit, even though I mostly didn't like the story, it did hold an element of reality that cannot be denied. Random things out of our control happen all the time in life and things don't turn out exactly as we expect them too when we're young and idealistic. That's what saved the story for me in the end. It was also really fun to read and watch the book and movie versions back to back. Highly recommend trying this to anyone who hasn't yet done this before.
I never thought I'd say this, but I actually liked Wuthering Heights. I remember trying to read it before, getting half way through and thinking it was terrible and writing it off as a lost cause. Lesson learned, give classics another chance, especially when you're older. It can be hard to appreciate a book sometimes when you're being forced to read it for a class. I found the characters unlikable still of course, but it gave me the important realization that just because you don't like a character, it doesn't mean it's a bad book. I need to work on this judgement when reading.
Alrighty, this is where I'll stop. I believe that the next two books deserve whole entire posts of their own, so I will leave it at this. Thanks for reading my thoughts on these books and let me know if you agree or disagree with me! Reading marathons are cool. Books are cool. You're cool :)
