**A Underwhelming Experience: My Thoughts on "Cinder" by Marissa Meyer**

As I began reading "Cinder", the first installment in the Lunar Chronicles series, I couldn't help but feel a sense of disappointment. The book, which was initially released as a standalone novel, feels like a warm-up act for the rest of the series. It's a short-lived competition that doesn't quite live up to its full potential. In this book, Celaena Sardothien is at a point in her life where she's not easily trusting people, especially after her experience in the salt mines of Mondovia. However, despite this, the actual plot of the book takes a backseat to her relationships with other characters.

The options for romance are limited, and both Dorian and Chaol are portrayed as having some major issues that make it difficult to root for them as love interests. The chemistry between Celaena and one of the male leads is lacking, particularly in the way they bond over books and letters they exchange. One scene in particular stands out as being forced, with the male lead commenting on Celaena's smell like fish - it was a cringe-worthy moment that didn't quite land.

I will admit that "Cinder" does have its moments, particularly when it comes to foreshadowing for future events in the series. The foundation laid in this book is definitely there, and I appreciate how it sets up some of the larger plot threads that become more important later on. However, these subtle hints are not enough to make up for the overall lackluster experience of reading this book.

One aspect where "Cinder" does shine is in its exploration of Celaena's character development. As she navigates her way through the competition and her relationships with others, we see glimpses of a more vulnerable side to her personality. It's these moments that make me want to keep going, even if the overall story doesn't quite live up to my expectations.

Despite its flaws, I do think that "Cinder" has some redeeming qualities. The writing is still relatively new and raw, which may take some getting used to for readers. However, this also means that the book hasn't yet found its voice, which can be a bit jarring at times. As someone who's been following the series for a while, I was excited to see how Meyer would execute this particular story, but ultimately, it feels like just another stepping stone in the lead-up to the more substantial events of the rest of the series.

**A Personal Take**

Personally, I found my experience with "Cinder" to be underwhelming. The episodic nature of the competition didn't quite hold my attention, and I often found myself wondering when the plot would pick up pace. I also felt like Celaena's relationships took center stage over the actual story, which made it difficult for me to invest in her journey as much as I wanted to.

Overall, while "Cinder" does have its moments, I wouldn't say that it was a standout read for me. As someone who's been following the series from the beginning, I feel like I already knew where the story was headed, and this book didn't quite do enough to make up for my expectations. For new readers, however, "Cinder" may still be worth checking out - particularly if you're a fan of science fiction or retellings of classic fairy tales.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, while "Cinder" is not the worst book I've ever read, it definitely didn't live up to my expectations. The episodic nature of the competition and the lackluster romance options made it difficult for me to become fully invested in Celaena's journey. However, I do appreciate how this book sets up some of the larger plot threads that become more important later on in the series.

As I move forward with reading my next book, I'm excited to see what other adventures await me. If you're a fan of science fiction or retellings of classic fairy tales, you may want to give "Cinder" a try - but for those looking for a more substantial read, you may want to look elsewhere.

**Book of the Month Sponsorship**

I'd like to take a moment to thank Book of the Month for sponsoring this video. As always, they offer an amazing selection of books and authors that I'm excited to share with my audience. If you're looking for new reads or just want to explore different genres, be sure to check out their offerings.

Additionally, I'd like to invite you all to listen to the Book Riot podcast, which offers in-depth discussions on a wide range of topics related to reading and literature. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more.

**Patron Support**

If you're looking for exclusive content, early access to videos, or simply want to support my work as a reader and vlogger, I invite you to join my Patreon page. There are all sorts of perks and rewards available, from personalized bookmarks to in-depth analysis of the books we read together.

Thanks for joining me on this reading adventure, and I look forward to sharing more thoughts with you all soon!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello friends and happy wednesday when i am filming this it is wednesday hello and i am starting a little vlog not necessarily a weekly reading vlog though it could be a weekly reading vlog i am still quite unsure as to how long this is going to last for but i think wednesday to tuesday also makes sense and it's almost also like a week and i almost never weekly vlog so i thought it would be fun to do that for you guys now the reason why i'm deciding to weekly vlog this week is because a i recently filmed the meteor freak out book tag in fact it is going up today today is july 6th and i realized when i was filming that video how all over the place my reading year has been i feel like most of the things that i have read i have read because of video projects and july i'd love to just free fall in love with reading outside of the scope of a video project so i am essentially going to mood read for most of the week i've got books that i really really want to tackle that i just want to experience all for myself and share my thoughts with you guys so i'll talk about those in a little bit and i also am doing a few changes around the office so i just thought i'd include all of those clips in here so that you guys can experience this office glow up with me because i'm really excited about it and so yes i just want to document this week which i rarely rarely do because i'm always focused on other sorts of videos but i'm excited to try this out almost i think it's been almost a year since i last weekly vlogged which is like crazy so i think it's going to be fun all around and let me just quickly fetch the books that i want to get through this week and potentially some others but i don't know we'll eyeball it and before we get started i do need to talk about the sponsor of today's video which is a one lovely one stunning book of the month you guys know book of the month you guys know how much i love them you guys know it's one of my favorite book subscription boxes however they now have a podcast called virtual book tour and their latest episode is with one blake crouch the author of upgrade which is one of the books that i chose for the month of july now i love listening to podcasts it just gives you a better insight as to who these authors are the way that they grew up and exactly what has driven them to write the stories that they have and we get a closer insight as to why the theme of their latest release that book of the month has chosen for their service was so important for them to tell us a story and in this episode in particular we got to listen to childhood stories from blake crouch and when i tell you guys i was genuinely laughing at blake crouch writing an entire sequel for star wars and just listening to his take to current star wars landscape it was just like such a rewarding fan moment and also obviously the topic of science which is very much aligned to the genre of this book this is science fiction is very much present in the podcast as well in the way that he talks about gene modifications and all of these big corporations essentially being run by ai based on some of the choices that are being made that don't seem very human-made it was just so interesting too to see what the behind-the-scenes process looks like for an author down to hiring scientists in order for the science in this book to actually feel realistic and not feel like something that came out of nowhere it just makes you want to experience it yourself so you know exactly what they're talking about obviously virtual book tour is out anywhere you can listen to podcasts so i will be leaving a link to it down below so you guys can go check them out you can go listen on spotify or an apple podcast and just see everything these authors have to offer and listen to the blake crouch episode thank you so much to book of the month for sponsoring today's video and let's get right into the weekly reading vlog i think the bulk of this week for me are going to be these three books right here now throne of glass i still need to read as one of my book club picks i host a book club on patreon with liv called lue fantasma and we're doing a throne of glass read-along this year and i still need to read throne of glass which is last month's pick so i definitely need to read this this week because the live show is next wednesday so my days are counted and after that re-read i've got two books that i've never read that i'm super excited about and the first one is a book of night by holly black i've been meaning to read this for a while and i want to start this today and also funny you should ask but i think i'm gonna start out with book of night and then go into funny you should ask so yes my desk chair is waiting on me on my living room so i'm gonna bring it in and we're gonna build that together we've got one vinster over there entertaining herself with the bag where my packages are in and then we've got one desk chair to build okay we've got a new desk cheer people look at her she's so sexy this is what i was using before which is just like sad and like sad look at the rug the rug which the look at the chair look at the chair is this our new discovery does she just like plastic bags it looks like it when i tell you guys i'm living for this chair like i'm not even kidding i feel like a whole new person i feel like i could take over the world right now am i about to perform a group with the minions sort of thing maybe i don't know i feel like i could do anything now my back feels so supported i'm like living for this however we've got one other thing to do today and that is to install this freaking led strip behind my computer so we're about to do that i've got it right here and we're gonna hope for the best and hope that it lights this girl up so i'm excited i hope that i don't mess this up yes i don't know what else i'm supposed to do and we have this little devil doing demon-like things on my chair vin what are you doing she really is like my sleep paralysis demon like what at her vane what are you doing if she starts climbing i swear to god oh there she goes there she looks she's crazy okay so let's trips are in chair is built i'm having a moment and i just ate lunch had some sushi it was great and now it's time to read so that being said i'm going to start book of night because i'm really excited about this and i just want to take advantage of some free time before i need to start editing so that i can then finish editing tomorrow morning hello friends i'll be one of the cool kids now because i have a purple light and i've got some mellow some sexy some colorful lighting going on that's not like stark or white i am here to not update you about the led light but i've been talking about it all day and i can't stop cause i'm so excited but i'm here to update you on book of night which i have started and i'm 47 pages in and i'm about to start chapter six and i'm actually really really liking this i was actually super scared to read this because i have been seeing people returning their books people canceling their orders people saying that this wasn't what they were expecting and just not liking it at all and i don't know what it is i don't know if it's because i kind of went in with the notion of i may not like this so let's not hype ourselves up to high mel or if it's the fact that i've read the folk of the air series now and so i kind of know what to expect with holly black but not at the same time that is making me actually really really enjoy this don't know what it is but i am having a great time with book of night i am super intrigued to see how the world is going to develop and to see everything that's going to happen we followed charlie charlie hall and she used to live a very dangerous lifestyle she is a thief a liar and she basically cons and scams everybody for a living or at least she used to it seems a very impulsive thing for her or she can't really help this need of hers to do all of these things and so now she is quote unquote retired or so she says because right now she is looking into the book of night and ms gurley just seems a little bit too eager to know what exactly the book contains and potentially maybe steal it i don't know i feel like that's what's going to happen but the book of night is essentially this ancient book that contains a little bit more information about shadows and potentially shadows outside of people's bodies and how to maybe link that with somebody who doesn't own a shadow or doesn't possess a shadow that whole shadow thing is the one thing that i find just a little bit confusing still because it's not too too clear as to what the rules are or how exactly it works but i'm hoping that she develops that further as the story goes on so that i am just understanding 100 and not making sure that because it's very much possible but i think it's very interesting this concept of people who have shadows have the ability to wield magic of some sort and they are technically above others and they just seem a little bit more privileged it seems like in this world and so even her sister seems a little fascinated by this whole shadow thing and obtaining one by any means necessary because she is reading all of these threads and all of these blog posts and everything she can get her hands on to find out how to obtain a shadow for herself and both of them both charlie and her sister have not had the best of childhoods they grew up in a very unstable household with their mom her mom was going from boyfriend to boyfriend a lot of them weren't the greatest of people and so a lot of the time when they were doing just terrible things to charlie and her sister they would tell their mom but their mom wouldn't listen and so they had to make this elaborate plan to make her mom believe what they were saying so that she would leave said trashy man and actually pay attention to her daughters but it seems like it didn't really work like it worked but then she moved on to another terrible person and charlie keeps reinforcing the fact that incidentally her sister her mom and herself always find themselves with terrible men and that makes me really curious about charlie's boyfriend because he is very mysterious he is said to have had a shadow at some point and now he doesn't have one charlie also suspects that he could come from a very wealthy background and especially because of the way he talks i think it could be true and i think he is the illustration that's at the back of the book and so so far i am vibing i'm listening to my classical piano playlist and i am very much liking the experience so we'll see what happens i'm trying to get to page 100 tonight before i go to bed because i literally need to go to bed no matter an hour and a half thursdays i don't know if you guys do this too let me know down below if you do i always choose a day to get everything done adulting wise so thursdays are the days where i just deep clean my apartment that's the day that i go grocery shopping or get the groceries delivered and organize everything it is the day that i meal prep i run errands i just get everything done on a thursday so i literally wake up at 5 30 am does anybody else just choose a day to do all this because i definitely do i also need to take vin to the vet tomorrow she needs to get her second shot and so we're gonna go do that at around 9 00 a.m because at that time the vet is typically empty so we're gonna go do that and i also need to buy her some toys because miss ma'am is too active and too chaotic and some of the toys that i bought her last time around we went to the vet she's already destroyed two mice and then one one toy gone in the trash no more and that was literally three weeks ago right okay i'ma keep on reading and i'll update you maybe once more tonight before i go to bed if not then tomorrow good night my lovely people it is 10 p.m and i need to go to bed however i wanted to give you one final update of the day with a book of night this is getting good i will say though it has alternating timelines between charlie's past and the present the past is not nearly as interesting as the present though i appreciate the background that we're getting and that we get to first hand see it because we are getting to see how she got started as a thief with the pit pocketing and all of these things it is just pit pocket right picking pockets you know all that good stuff it is really interesting to see how she got into that lifestyle and that it was somebody that her mom was close with or was friends with rather and so it was just really interesting to see once more her mom's bad and toxic inner circle leading charlie to some not-so-great situations and so it seems to be a constant cycle in her life and that just kind of skyrocketed into its own thing and so we do get to see that background but at times it's really not that interesting it's definitely not as interesting as the present there was this incident at her bar and that is kind of the catalyst towards what's going to happen for the rest of the story i found it immensely thrilling and interesting and it's also giving us a different glimpse into vince who's her boyfriend who again is very mysterious so i'm here for all of it i just wish that the flashback chapters weren't as prominent and maybe just a little bit more scattered because it seems to be happening every two or three chapters or so and they feel a bit lengthier than the regular chapter sometimes they take up to 10 pages which arguably is not a lot but compared to other chapters which are anywhere between three to five pages it feels kind of long and maybe i just feel it's longer and that it's just a tad bit more boring just because i'm uninterested and so i would rather be getting more present chapters because it's really interesting and in the last 50 pages that i read we did get some more world building so that was really great because i feel this whole shadow magic thing is a little bit more clear now which is always good so i'm enjoying my time but i need to go to bed but honestly i feel like this is a book i would be able to binge so easily and literally read in one sitting but i have to be a responsible adult so we're going to bed so that we can wake up early tomorrow and do all the things that we have to do foreign i literally haven't had boba in so freaking long and i'm so happy right now hi friends it is if i can find my phone not me losing my phone on my desk it is thursday it is almost night time it is literally 6 20 p.m while 6 17 i'm just rounding things up but i need to edit hi i ran all of the errands that i needed to run today i went to the vet with vin she was a very good girl and she gained 0.5 kilograms which was great and she behaved very well when she got her shots and after that i gave her some treats and it was a great time and i'm about to give her some treats in a little bit too i cleaned the house i meal prepped i got my groceries i need to organize them in a little bit i already you know cleaned everything disinfected everything am i the only one who does that as well i literally disinfect all of my groceries i don't know ever since the pandora box started i just find it just a little bit gnarly to not clean them anymore and it's just a weird habit that i've picked up ever since this whole thing started and it's just a thing so am i the only one but i am currently listening to a podcast i love listening to podcasts while i'm doing the cutting process of my editing the way that i edit is that i just cut out all of the big silences in between all of the big pauses between sentences and just gibberish that i can find and once all of that is cut out then i go and nitpick and actually edit out the video and as i do that i also put in the overlays add-on sound effects all that good stuff so i am currently in the first phase of editing and so i'm listening to a podcast by danny schulz it is in spanish called viven and so i'm listening to her latest episode and it is very very interesting very sad but also very interesting and i just as a person who does social media as well i find it very relatable maybe not to the extent of what has happened to her but very enlightening and relatable as well in some ways because it's talking about vitriol in social media hate and social media and just people sometimes crossing a line and not knowing boundaries and so that's what i'm currently listening to and i'm gonna go back to doing that as i edit and drink my boba i also have some hot chili squid chips they're very very good they're very the scent it's just spicy but like the right amount of spicy and it just complements the boba which is so sweet so well so i'm about to have a great time doing that i'm gonna give you guys some b-roll also just organize all of my groceries and hopefully i can read some tonight i don't know what the probabilities are of me actually doing that but i will try very hard to read because i really want to keep reading book of night good morning hi so today is friday it is 10 a.m hello and am i always in the office what makes you think that of course not i seriously need to start vlogging in other parts of the house but i think this is a great way to start the day and just talk here also it's probably the comfiest chair i have in my house now and i am that annoying person who is always at the new chair they've bought i i am that human hello however i have the day free and most of the weekend free now which is great so i will take advantage of this time and read i have please hold book of night i want to read what i didn't read yesterday and potentially finish this book today i also bought movie tickets for thor today at 1 15 so i am going to do that i'm very excited i am going by myself and it is actually my first time going to the movie theater alone and i don't know why i've never had an issue eating by myself i've never had an issue going to a coffee shop by myself for some reason i have always associated the experience of going to the movie theater as a group experience and so if i don't go with someone then i just don't go at all and i need to unlearn that because i know so many people and i was literally talking to my patrons about this this morning where i know so many people and some of them also said that love going to the movie theater by themselves and it's a perfect opportunity to unwind after a really hectic week and that's exactly how i felt this entire week i've just been like on it thing after thing after thing and i really just want to relax this afternoon and be able to not think about anything else so it's gonna be great i'm gonna have a great time hopefully so and yes i may also just stroll around the mall because all of our movie theaters are in malls and i will probably swirl around the mall and see just window shop maybe uh welcome to the clothing hall nobody asked for hi this is what you get when you guys want a weekly vlog from me okay this is what you get hi i say that like it's a bad thing it's not but i just came back home just watched 4 11 thunder it was good but it wasn't all at the same time christian bale was terrifying but beyond that comedy thought forced cgi was strange but it was fine that being said however i did make a stop at 8 m and i bought some things so let me just show you because you guys know me my style is very simple i'm a simple gown i wear t-shirts i wear hoodies i wear jackets i just like to be comfortable we've got sweatshirt number one it is just this very light beige color but the sleeves look like this and then it's got like a little scrunchie at the bottom which i quite liked because you can just cinch that a little bit and pretend to dress up even though you're wearing a sweater got the same one but in orange because they were discounted now this sweatshirt i got for two reasons a it was like a muted green and then b it literally says the self-care club more green because why not we got this new york blooming what does it say i really just liked the color and the font new york blooming gardens i don't know what the blooming gardens are but i for sure will be wearing them now this shirt i'm wearing right now is also from h m and i really love it because it's got the name of the band at the front and then it's got the set list from the tour at the back and i found this one ac dc wine also at the back it's got the set list so i saw it and i knew i had to bring it back home with me and last but not least i thought this was the front and i just realized that it's the back but it doesn't really matter this is the back of the shirt i thought it was super cute super colorful and the shirt is just very neutral but the front is this a little bit plain jane but it's fine we'll make it work it's got this little detail on the left a boo great that was my haul and now it's time to throw this all in the washer so let's go i am back in my forks hoodie just comfy and i am about to sprint in a little bit and i am very excited to do so also does anybody else drink sparkling eyes strawberry lemonade top tier point is my goal of the night is to finish a book of night so we'll see if that happens i am currently 124 pages in so i roughly have around 175 pages to go all things considered and not that bad and usually when i sprint at night i go as close to midnight as i can so we'll see what happens we'll see what the plan is hello friends welcome hi today is saturday and saturday is already gone because it is literally 9 p.m i am starting to think that my toxic trait is to update at night time though i don't even know if that's a toxic trait or if that's just how things happen sometimes could be a little bit of both but i was feeling a bit under the weather today i guess under the weather it's a little bit dramatic but i was just extremely sleepy and so i have been sleeping most of the day unfortunately and i say unfortunately because i don't like sleeping like that i don't i really don't so especially because it's a type of sleep where even if you sleep like five hours you wake up feeling more tired it was one of those and i was just i'm not a fan i'm not a fan of that so there was that but but i finished of night and i am giving this three and a half stars i really really enjoyed this though i think my main critiques for this book are parts of it were uninteresting and most of those parts were flashbacks to the past which i didn't really adore i will say there were parts that were flashbacks on vince's end which i found immensely interesting but overall i think even in the present time there were scenes that i was just like okay that happened and i was just not as interested as i guess the really juicy parts because i mean the really interesting parts of this book i think are really interesting and that's when charlie is being her usual self where she is lying and scheming and investigating all of that i really really enjoyed the mystery aspect of this whole thing was actually also really good and i just think the whole shadow thing really worked for me the other critique that i have for this book that i didn't necessarily love is the fact that i feel holly black could have gone even darker in tone with this book especially because of the things that were happening in the story and how when we get to see murders happen they are gnarly and i kind of wish that we would have gotten a darker tone to the whole novel because it lent itself for a very gothic mellow super dark tone and although parts of the book did have that i feel overarctingly i would have wanted just a little bit more because it would have been perfect literally the twists and turns in this book also had me absolutely bamboozled like every single one of them the last 70 pages of this book i was sitting there reading and i was like what and it was just so good i loved every second of those last 70 pages it's funny also because i was saying to myself this is probably gonna be a three star and then i read those pages and i instantly went okay you know what it's a 3.5 like it's actually it wrapped up really really nicely and i'm actually super intrigued to see what's gonna happen in book two i'm not sure if this is a duology or a series i know holly black confirmed it on instagram let's double check okay yes it is a duology and you know what i like the fact that it's a duology because i think given the premise on how everything went down more than two books of this would be stretching it out just a little bit too much so i am glad that this is a duology because i think that works perfect and that being said i do want to read a little something before going to bed and i feel like funny you should ask is going to be the perfect before bed kind of book so i am going to start this and just lay in bed and get some reading done because that's just what's calling to me at the moment i haven't updated you today hi there's a loud car going through but i have not updated you guys today it was a long day woke up super early tidy up the home then had breakfast had a six hour and 47 minute live show with my patreons where we solved the mystery at hunter's lodge it's the hunter killer game and then we watched spider head and now it is almost 10 p.m and i'm tired a little bit tired yes no maybe but i am ready to read funny you should ask because i started this last night and i am really really enjoying this while i was hoping to enjoy this i have seen some reviews that say that this book has been underwhelming so it's funny also because i watched one of those reviews quite recently in a wrap up and it just kind of freaked me out a little bit because i'm like am i going to enjoy it or not it can still go downhill so let me not claim victory quite yet but 80 pages in i'm really liking this so the first 80 pages of this the first six chapters consists of the past which is where channy horowitz she is a journalist she is appointed to do a piece on gabe parker gay parker is an actor he has been very prolific so far but most recently he has sparked a bit of controversy because he has been cast as james bond which notoriously as we know that every bond actor has been british in this novel gay parker an american is the first american to be casted as james bond a lot of people are not happy with that a lot of people would have preferred his co-star oliver matthias to have been casted as a bond because he is british and he is supposedly much more charming and supposedly much more talented people are also sparking a lot of controversy particularly because gabe was a part of angels in america when he was in college and so there's been just many a controversy with mr gabe being casted people say he is not tough enough he is not british obviously there's just a multitude of reasons apparently as to why he is not fit to be james bond and so because he has been casted in this role and she has been appointed to this interview she obviously has to go interview him and just figure out who gabe parker is and just give a very detailed thorough account of what happened during this interview now what has said to this interview apart is that it was very unusual it didn't necessarily happen in one day but the piece that she wrote was panned out over the course of a few days so they kept meeting each other and it also sparked a lot of interest in the public as to whether or not these two were romantically involved and now flash forward a decade later she is being contacted again to do another piece on gay parker now gabe parker is i guess the equivalent of rdj in a sense where he was very famous very well known and then he unfortunately went down a very dark self-destructive path of drugs and alcohol and just self-destruction i think just encompasses a lot of what he has gone through and she has half a mind to turn it down she is now a very successful writer and she has the life that she has always wanted but she decides to accept it because she is releasing another book and he is starring in one of her favorite films a remake of the philadelphia story now one of the things i am liking about this book so much are all of the pop culture references which if you guys know me at all you guys know that i don't like those i think in the context of this book given that gabe is obviously an actor and she is a journalist and a lot of what happens in here is the media about film the media about performing arts there has been many a mention of musicals there has been many a mention of films i am also a film nerd if you will my brother and i watch every oscar-nominated movie every year or we try to and then we make a ranking and we make our predictions and it's a great time we also try to watch indie films when we can when they're available to us and so just seeing so many references to things that i've either watched or seen discussed before has been super rewarding as a reader and so that i love and i think it's just a very personal connection i guess on my end as to me loving all of these things that are being discussed and the way that they're being discussed also almost these breakdown happenings depending on the film that they're talking about but almost breaking down these films and saying why they're so great or why parts of them don't work and just really analyzing the structure of a film that has happened quite a few times in this book is also something that i've quite enjoyed and i love that it just works for me and it's just been really interesting because we did get an excerpt of her article and her article is very kind of happy-go-lucky very you know gabe is the best ever and we had just hyphen and we oh the camera and we had a great experience in the interview and it was all great and dandy but turns out the interview so far is not going as smooth as she claims that it did and so she definitely embellished a lot in that article so i think it's gonna be really interesting moving forward to see exactly what happened with them if they were actually romantically involved or what exactly happened and she really is taking the second chance with the second interview as an opportunity to settle everything that wasn't settled when they first met and so that makes me think that there were a few loose ties when these two met up and never spoke again so can you see vin up there yes it's interesting i like the writing i like the structure of this i like that we started in the past and now we're moving back to the present i think structurally it works i think what's included in here just works really great for me and i also just love the discussions of chine as a writer i think she does have a lot of imposter syndrome and she often questions herself and her capabilities as a writer and i think more than anything there was this really nice passage of because she also writes a blog she had this very nice passage saying how uh she didn't know exactly what she was more afraid of being a good or bad writer or being just a boring one one that just felt incredibly mediocre i quite like the introspection of chine in these blog posts and not in the blog post too i just think the internal monologue is very interesting and the characters do so i'm excited to keep on reading and i'm really enjoying this so we'll see how much of this i get done tonight but i do want to get some reading done hi good morning happy monday happy start of week even though you are not watching this at start of week when this is going up it'll be friday but happy friday happy monday happy all of it it has been a productive morning so far i just edited a sponsorship for wednesday's video and i have sent that but my brother is coming over in a little bit we are going to watch the boys which i'm super excited about i literally watched part of season one back when it came out when did it come out 2018 2019 i know this was like around my heather's era when we were in the production for heathers but i can't remember if it came out on that year or the year after all i know 2018 2019 when it came out i watched most of the season and then i didn't finish it and so my brother has literally binched the whole thing in like a matter of three days and he is begging me to watch it so that he can just rave about it and i initially told him to come over for a movie and he's like now we're watching the voice so we're gonna watch the voice instead and we're just gonna binge all of season one today and probably gonna order some food and just you know have a good time and i still have a bit of tidying up to do around the house he's probably gonna get here like sometime soon but you know if he gets here while i'm doing the dishes or while i am tidying up the office or my bedroom it's fine it doesn't matter so i just want to make sure to get that done before we even start watching the boys just because we're gonna watch that and after that i need to film so i want to make sure that i get it all done and i've read a little bit more of funny you should ask but i'm going to update that later on and i also need to start throne of glass because the live show for that is literally on wednesday and i mean all things considered i've already read the book before so i can just look through the annotations of my first time read but i still very much want to reread it so we're just gonna do that and we're going to read all of it in the next two days i was gonna do a thumbs up and i don't know what this is great do you guys i just finished funny you should ask why am i evil that ending made me so emotional for no reason okay wow hi you guys so today's tuesday hi manny a thing to do today need to film need to edit me to start and finish throne of glass either today or finish that tomorrow morning it is going to be a very very long day however i just finished funny you should ask and this was so good that i think i'm gonna rate this five stars i didn't think i would love it this much i knew i was gonna like it like you know like a four star sort of like but the five star thing was kind of unexpected and i just love this i love how it ended with this sort of epilogue but it wasn't an epilogue and it was rather a an article i think it was super original and just super cool and all of the commentary on the film industry as a whole it was so good it was so insightful it was just so nice to read in a story that takes place in this landscape obviously having gabe as an actor and all of the commentary about the toxicity really of celebrity culture and how they really don't have a personal life and a lot of things are weaponized and how even for those things that they could be proud of there will still be heavy criticism and there will be unfair criticism and there will be people nitpicking and there will be people defending their fandoms to whatever extent they can and so that part of it was really interesting because we not only get to see chinese articles but we also get to see other people's articles commenting about gabe about his career about his roles about even chinese oh my god vin is coming up about tiny and just everything and everything in between and it really just speaks to the toxicity of celebrity culture and it was just not something that i was expecting to get with this book but it made it all the better and i just think it made it more realistic to get all of those articles questioning gabe questioning his life his motif why he was casted as james bond and it was so cutthroat and so terrible but i mean hit pieces are a thing and we see them all the time all of these articles these i think they're called puff pieces all of these articles just intruding into celebrities lives you want to go up baby you're not going to be able to jump from there come on and so even if i wasn't expecting to get that i just think it made the story even better and it obviously caused a lot of conflict more so internally rather than anything else you can see how both of them feel very inadequate in each of their professions gabe doesn't feel like a good enough actor and on top of that what he already thinks of himself is only being reaffirmed by the media and then you've got tiny who was being reduced to the article she wrote about gabe that was the only thing people wanted to talk to her about the only thing people inquired about when they met her they didn't want to know about her writing they didn't admire her as a writer as a human but rather the fact that she got to spend an entire weekend with gay parker and that is an infuriating thing as a writer i can only assume when you're so proud of your work but people are continuously putting you down because they think that you're a not good enough or when they're reducing you to only one part of your job and so it was so nice to see their internal battles separately and also just together because these are two people that essentially haven't spent a lot of time together it seems like they have and it seems like they get along extremely well but the reality is that in the course of this novel it it spans out in like six days literally it's like a week and so despite them having so much chemistry there's so many things getting in between that the uncertainties the insecurities the media and i just loved all of it it again felt very realistic and i also think there's almost this i don't even know what word to put to it but it's this almost irrational at times sort of attraction that the two have for each other and not irrational in like a bad way but it's one of those things where they've known each other for so little and they feel like they've known each other for forever and i think it's just because she has treated him normally and they can talk normally as two people can and she doesn't really although she had a crush on him because she admired him she doesn't really treat him any differently than she would any other person and so i personally really really liked this ollie was also a great addition to the story oliver matthias who was another actor friend of gabe's who also befriended chani and i just loved his presence in the story and all of the life that he brought into it all of the commentary as well that he brought into it with the systemic homophobia that sometimes riddles if not most often than not riddles hollywood and and how that affected him as an actor and his career and so overall it was just really really good and it was more than i was expecting out of this novel and i just love that it was equal parts commentary on this industry as it was a romance and it was like super slow burn too there's a lot of chemistry and you can tell that there's also just a lot of awkwardness riddling this whole situation because it's awkward you know you've been watching someone on screen for so long and you admire them and then you meet them in person and you're you know wanting to do an interview but you're also attracted to them and they're also being all kinds of straightforward but also not and obviously gabe's alcohol problem going into it too and so so many things going into it that's what i loved that the romance was at the forefront of the story but there were also so many things surrounding that that just enriched the story so i just really liked this it was really good and i'm giving it five stars it is throne of glass time because i have not read this yet the live show is tomorrow and i because of the structure that we have for the live show i really do have to reread this i know this is not as long as some of the other novels so like i'm not too concerned it's like i think under 400 pages we'll see what happens this is the plan this is what we're doing and i'm excited to re-read it welcome to wednesday and the end of this vlog hello everybody so i am extremely tired however in the turn of events i ended up finishing throne of glass i mean not an alternative event i had to finish it for the live show with liv but i ended up reading this in 3.5 speed with the audiobook and it was great actually because the narrator's voice like the cadence of her voice was good enough to listen at 3.5 speed while still being able to distinguish exactly what she was saying i never listened to audiobooks that fast just because there is a starting point with an audiobook where with certain narrators i hit that two time speed mark and i'm like whoa i need to get used to this and i need to keep rewinding to like get used to it and then i'm fine for some reason 3.5 just watched or maybe it was just my brain under peril that i was just like it's now or never and you know what i did it i have thoughts on this i said it more in depth in the live show obviously because it was spoiler filled however rereading this book for the third time this is my third time reading this book now it just solidified that this is my least favorite in the series and i like this even less than assassin's blade and i mean it makes sense she wrote this when she was 16 and it really feels like a long-winded prologue for whatever is going to follow it doesn't really hold to the standard of even crown of midnight or the rest of the series and so as a first installment kind of does what it has to do but the episodic nature of the competition where it's obviously you got one task to do you've got one thing to solve one thing to try out i just have realized that i am not that into it because in this book it feels kind of underwhelming just because it's so short-lived in comparison to everything else happening it felt like celaena's relationships in this book were much more important than the actual plot of the book rather than the actual competition taking place which makes sense because selena is at a place at the start of this book especially coming out of the salt mines of mondovia where she doesn't find it that easy to trust people and where she doesn't find it that easy to even befriend people especially given the events of the assassin's blade however it was just not it because the options are not great it's either dorian or chaol which it's either the colonialist son or the captain of the guard who just stands by and does nothing as the colonialism happens and so you know what not that into it not that into it and then we've got the friendship with nahimia which is arguably one of my favorite parts of this book but beyond that this book didn't really have a lot going for it and the romances are both very forced in my opinion because dorian being the princess son in this book he is very cocky he is just very flirty and he treats elena in the way that i would believe he treat any other girl and the chemistry is very lacking if i do say so myself they find themselves bonding over books and back and forth letters that they were sending to each other but they're not cute the whole selena plays music and selena reads i'm just like like girl i've never read anything more forced in my life and i just it's it was kind of sad i'm being honest kel's fine but also this is also the man who tells her that she smells like fish so it was a riveting time to re-read this i will say what this book is good at but not really because it's so obvious too is the foreshadowing in here and the foundation for a lot of the things that will become very very important later on in the series they're here and so in that regard they're not very subtle but they're there and you know they're good and they're you know they did their thing that's about it i i just think it was really underwhelming loads of things were being mentioned that i found were not being developed the writing has yet to season and so you know it's the urge in me to give this two stars now i initially gave this three and a half when i read this uh for the second time in 2020. now i feel inclined to give this two stars and you know what i think i will because who's going to stop me nobody and so that was my reading of the week thank you for coming with me on this fine week i hope that you guys enjoyed this i literally haven't weekly vlogged in so freaking long it felt really weird to do so but it was great because i could read when i wanted to i wasn't focused on project and i could just update you on you know the little things and so i hope that you guys enjoyed this if you did give it a thumbs up down as a below and comment down below what you've read in the past week what you're currently reading have you read any of these books but have you thought about them and if you reached this part of the video let us leave you know what let's leave a plain emoji for funny you should ask just because this was my favorite book don't forget to subscribe down below if you haven't done so already i am constantly blowing videos i am sure you do not want to miss and if you want to support this goal further i do have a patreon loads of cool things happen over there we play games we do sprints we watch movies we watch tv shows we sprint have i said that we sprint and you get early access for videos you get a discord server and you get exclusive content and to be quite honest it's the place where i am most active so join patreon if you haven't already it is linked down below alongside all of my socials and thank you so much to book of the month for sponsoring today's video don't forget to go ahead and listen to the virtual book tour podcast completely free you can listen to it on apple podcast on spotify and just enjoy all of these authors stories their motivation towards writing and why they write the stories that they do again i will be leaving a link at the top as the descriptions and yes i love you guys so much and i will see you on the next one bye guys youhello friends and happy wednesday when i am filming this it is wednesday hello and i am starting a little vlog not necessarily a weekly reading vlog though it could be a weekly reading vlog i am still quite unsure as to how long this is going to last for but i think wednesday to tuesday also makes sense and it's almost also like a week and i almost never weekly vlog so i thought it would be fun to do that for you guys now the reason why i'm deciding to weekly vlog this week is because a i recently filmed the meteor freak out book tag in fact it is going up today today is july 6th and i realized when i was filming that video how all over the place my reading year has been i feel like most of the things that i have read i have read because of video projects and july i'd love to just free fall in love with reading outside of the scope of a video project so i am essentially going to mood read for most of the week i've got books that i really really want to tackle that i just want to experience all for myself and share my thoughts with you guys so i'll talk about those in a little bit and i also am doing a few changes around the office so i just thought i'd include all of those clips in here so that you guys can experience this office glow up with me because i'm really excited about it and so yes i just want to document this week which i rarely rarely do because i'm always focused on other sorts of videos but i'm excited to try this out almost i think it's been almost a year since i last weekly vlogged which is like crazy so i think it's going to be fun all around and let me just quickly fetch the books that i want to get through this week and potentially some others but i don't know we'll eyeball it and before we get started i do need to talk about the sponsor of today's video which is a one lovely one stunning book of the month you guys know book of the month you guys know how much i love them you guys know it's one of my favorite book subscription boxes however they now have a podcast called virtual book tour and their latest episode is with one blake crouch the author of upgrade which is one of the books that i chose for the month of july now i love listening to podcasts it just gives you a better insight as to who these authors are the way that they grew up and exactly what has driven them to write the stories that they have and we get a closer insight as to why the theme of their latest release that book of the month has chosen for their service was so important for them to tell us a story and in this episode in particular we got to listen to childhood stories from blake crouch and when i tell you guys i was genuinely laughing at blake crouch writing an entire sequel for star wars and just listening to his take to current star wars landscape it was just like such a rewarding fan moment and also obviously the topic of science which is very much aligned to the genre of this book this is science fiction is very much present in the podcast as well in the way that he talks about gene modifications and all of these big corporations essentially being run by ai based on some of the choices that are being made that don't seem very human-made it was just so interesting too to see what the behind-the-scenes process looks like for an author down to hiring scientists in order for the science in this book to actually feel realistic and not feel like something that came out of nowhere it just makes you want to experience it yourself so you know exactly what they're talking about obviously virtual book tour is out anywhere you can listen to podcasts so i will be leaving a link to it down below so you guys can go check them out you can go listen on spotify or an apple podcast and just see everything these authors have to offer and listen to the blake crouch episode thank you so much to book of the month for sponsoring today's video and let's get right into the weekly reading vlog i think the bulk of this week for me are going to be these three books right here now throne of glass i still need to read as one of my book club picks i host a book club on patreon with liv called lue fantasma and we're doing a throne of glass read-along this year and i still need to read throne of glass which is last month's pick so i definitely need to read this this week because the live show is next wednesday so my days are counted and after that re-read i've got two books that i've never read that i'm super excited about and the first one is a book of night by holly black i've been meaning to read this for a while and i want to start this today and also funny you should ask but i think i'm gonna start out with book of night and then go into funny you should ask so yes my desk chair is waiting on me on my living room so i'm gonna bring it in and we're gonna build that together we've got one vinster over there entertaining herself with the bag where my packages are in and then we've got one desk chair to build okay we've got a new desk cheer people look at her she's so sexy this is what i was using before which is just like sad and like sad look at the rug the rug which the look at the chair look at the chair is this our new discovery does she just like plastic bags it looks like it when i tell you guys i'm living for this chair like i'm not even kidding i feel like a whole new person i feel like i could take over the world right now am i about to perform a group with the minions sort of thing maybe i don't know i feel like i could do anything now my back feels so supported i'm like living for this however we've got one other thing to do today and that is to install this freaking led strip behind my computer so we're about to do that i've got it right here and we're gonna hope for the best and hope that it lights this girl up so i'm excited i hope that i don't mess this up yes i don't know what else i'm supposed to do and we have this little devil doing demon-like things on my chair vin what are you doing she really is like my sleep paralysis demon like what at her vane what are you doing if she starts climbing i swear to god oh there she goes there she looks she's crazy okay so let's trips are in chair is built i'm having a moment and i just ate lunch had some sushi it was great and now it's time to read so that being said i'm going to start book of night because i'm really excited about this and i just want to take advantage of some free time before i need to start editing so that i can then finish editing tomorrow morning hello friends i'll be one of the cool kids now because i have a purple light and i've got some mellow some sexy some colorful lighting going on that's not like stark or white i am here to not update you about the led light but i've been talking about it all day and i can't stop cause i'm so excited but i'm here to update you on book of night which i have started and i'm 47 pages in and i'm about to start chapter six and i'm actually really really liking this i was actually super scared to read this because i have been seeing people returning their books people canceling their orders people saying that this wasn't what they were expecting and just not liking it at all and i don't know what it is i don't know if it's because i kind of went in with the notion of i may not like this so let's not hype ourselves up to high mel or if it's the fact that i've read the folk of the air series now and so i kind of know what to expect with holly black but not at the same time that is making me actually really really enjoy this don't know what it is but i am having a great time with book of night i am super intrigued to see how the world is going to develop and to see everything that's going to happen we followed charlie charlie hall and she used to live a very dangerous lifestyle she is a thief a liar and she basically cons and scams everybody for a living or at least she used to it seems a very impulsive thing for her or she can't really help this need of hers to do all of these things and so now she is quote unquote retired or so she says because right now she is looking into the book of night and ms gurley just seems a little bit too eager to know what exactly the book contains and potentially maybe steal it i don't know i feel like that's what's going to happen but the book of night is essentially this ancient book that contains a little bit more information about shadows and potentially shadows outside of people's bodies and how to maybe link that with somebody who doesn't own a shadow or doesn't possess a shadow that whole shadow thing is the one thing that i find just a little bit confusing still because it's not too too clear as to what the rules are or how exactly it works but i'm hoping that she develops that further as the story goes on so that i am just understanding 100 and not making sure that because it's very much possible but i think it's very interesting this concept of people who have shadows have the ability to wield magic of some sort and they are technically above others and they just seem a little bit more privileged it seems like in this world and so even her sister seems a little fascinated by this whole shadow thing and obtaining one by any means necessary because she is reading all of these threads and all of these blog posts and everything she can get her hands on to find out how to obtain a shadow for herself and both of them both charlie and her sister have not had the best of childhoods they grew up in a very unstable household with their mom her mom was going from boyfriend to boyfriend a lot of them weren't the greatest of people and so a lot of the time when they were doing just terrible things to charlie and her sister they would tell their mom but their mom wouldn't listen and so they had to make this elaborate plan to make her mom believe what they were saying so that she would leave said trashy man and actually pay attention to her daughters but it seems like it didn't really work like it worked but then she moved on to another terrible person and charlie keeps reinforcing the fact that incidentally her sister her mom and herself always find themselves with terrible men and that makes me really curious about charlie's boyfriend because he is very mysterious he is said to have had a shadow at some point and now he doesn't have one charlie also suspects that he could come from a very wealthy background and especially because of the way he talks i think it could be true and i think he is the illustration that's at the back of the book and so so far i am vibing i'm listening to my classical piano playlist and i am very much liking the experience so we'll see what happens i'm trying to get to page 100 tonight before i go to bed because i literally need to go to bed no matter an hour and a half thursdays i don't know if you guys do this too let me know down below if you do i always choose a day to get everything done adulting wise so thursdays are the days where i just deep clean my apartment that's the day that i go grocery shopping or get the groceries delivered and organize everything it is the day that i meal prep i run errands i just get everything done on a thursday so i literally wake up at 5 30 am does anybody else just choose a day to do all this because i definitely do i also need to take vin to the vet tomorrow she needs to get her second shot and so we're gonna go do that at around 9 00 a.m because at that time the vet is typically empty so we're gonna go do that and i also need to buy her some toys because miss ma'am is too active and too chaotic and some of the toys that i bought her last time around we went to the vet she's already destroyed two mice and then one one toy gone in the trash no more and that was literally three weeks ago right okay i'ma keep on reading and i'll update you maybe once more tonight before i go to bed if not then tomorrow good night my lovely people it is 10 p.m and i need to go to bed however i wanted to give you one final update of the day with a book of night this is getting good i will say though it has alternating timelines between charlie's past and the present the past is not nearly as interesting as the present though i appreciate the background that we're getting and that we get to first hand see it because we are getting to see how she got started as a thief with the pit pocketing and all of these things it is just pit pocket right picking pockets you know all that good stuff it is really interesting to see how she got into that lifestyle and that it was somebody that her mom was close with or was friends with rather and so it was just really interesting to see once more her mom's bad and toxic inner circle leading charlie to some not-so-great situations and so it seems to be a constant cycle in her life and that just kind of skyrocketed into its own thing and so we do get to see that background but at times it's really not that interesting it's definitely not as interesting as the present there was this incident at her bar and that is kind of the catalyst towards what's going to happen for the rest of the story i found it immensely thrilling and interesting and it's also giving us a different glimpse into vince who's her boyfriend who again is very mysterious so i'm here for all of it i just wish that the flashback chapters weren't as prominent and maybe just a little bit more scattered because it seems to be happening every two or three chapters or so and they feel a bit lengthier than the regular chapter sometimes they take up to 10 pages which arguably is not a lot but compared to other chapters which are anywhere between three to five pages it feels kind of long and maybe i just feel it's longer and that it's just a tad bit more boring just because i'm uninterested and so i would rather be getting more present chapters because it's really interesting and in the last 50 pages that i read we did get some more world building so that was really great because i feel this whole shadow magic thing is a little bit more clear now which is always good so i'm enjoying my time but i need to go to bed but honestly i feel like this is a book i would be able to binge so easily and literally read in one sitting but i have to be a responsible adult so we're going to bed so that we can wake up early tomorrow and do all the things that we have to do foreign i literally haven't had boba in so freaking long and i'm so happy right now hi friends it is if i can find my phone not me losing my phone on my desk it is thursday it is almost night time it is literally 6 20 p.m while 6 17 i'm just rounding things up but i need to edit hi i ran all of the errands that i needed to run today i went to the vet with vin she was a very good girl and she gained 0.5 kilograms which was great and she behaved very well when she got her shots and after that i gave her some treats and it was a great time and i'm about to give her some treats in a little bit too i cleaned the house i meal prepped i got my groceries i need to organize them in a little bit i already you know cleaned everything disinfected everything am i the only one who does that as well i literally disinfect all of my groceries i don't know ever since the pandora box started i just find it just a little bit gnarly to not clean them anymore and it's just a weird habit that i've picked up ever since this whole thing started and it's just a thing so am i the only one but i am currently listening to a podcast i love listening to podcasts while i'm doing the cutting process of my editing the way that i edit is that i just cut out all of the big silences in between all of the big pauses between sentences and just gibberish that i can find and once all of that is cut out then i go and nitpick and actually edit out the video and as i do that i also put in the overlays add-on sound effects all that good stuff so i am currently in the first phase of editing and so i'm listening to a podcast by danny schulz it is in spanish called viven and so i'm listening to her latest episode and it is very very interesting very sad but also very interesting and i just as a person who does social media as well i find it very relatable maybe not to the extent of what has happened to her but very enlightening and relatable as well in some ways because it's talking about vitriol in social media hate and social media and just people sometimes crossing a line and not knowing boundaries and so that's what i'm currently listening to and i'm gonna go back to doing that as i edit and drink my boba i also have some hot chili squid chips they're very very good they're very the scent it's just spicy but like the right amount of spicy and it just complements the boba which is so sweet so well so i'm about to have a great time doing that i'm gonna give you guys some b-roll also just organize all of my groceries and hopefully i can read some tonight i don't know what the probabilities are of me actually doing that but i will try very hard to read because i really want to keep reading book of night good morning hi so today is friday it is 10 a.m hello and am i always in the office what makes you think that of course not i seriously need to start vlogging in other parts of the house but i think this is a great way to start the day and just talk here also it's probably the comfiest chair i have in my house now and i am that annoying person who is always at the new chair they've bought i i am that human hello however i have the day free and most of the weekend free now which is great so i will take advantage of this time and read i have please hold book of night i want to read what i didn't read yesterday and potentially finish this book today i also bought movie tickets for thor today at 1 15 so i am going to do that i'm very excited i am going by myself and it is actually my first time going to the movie theater alone and i don't know why i've never had an issue eating by myself i've never had an issue going to a coffee shop by myself for some reason i have always associated the experience of going to the movie theater as a group experience and so if i don't go with someone then i just don't go at all and i need to unlearn that because i know so many people and i was literally talking to my patrons about this this morning where i know so many people and some of them also said that love going to the movie theater by themselves and it's a perfect opportunity to unwind after a really hectic week and that's exactly how i felt this entire week i've just been like on it thing after thing after thing and i really just want to relax this afternoon and be able to not think about anything else so it's gonna be great i'm gonna have a great time hopefully so and yes i may also just stroll around the mall because all of our movie theaters are in malls and i will probably swirl around the mall and see just window shop maybe uh welcome to the clothing hall nobody asked for hi this is what you get when you guys want a weekly vlog from me okay this is what you get hi i say that like it's a bad thing it's not but i just came back home just watched 4 11 thunder it was good but it wasn't all at the same time christian bale was terrifying but beyond that comedy thought forced cgi was strange but it was fine that being said however i did make a stop at 8 m and i bought some things so let me just show you because you guys know me my style is very simple i'm a simple gown i wear t-shirts i wear hoodies i wear jackets i just like to be comfortable we've got sweatshirt number one it is just this very light beige color but the sleeves look like this and then it's got like a little scrunchie at the bottom which i quite liked because you can just cinch that a little bit and pretend to dress up even though you're wearing a sweater got the same one but in orange because they were discounted now this sweatshirt i got for two reasons a it was like a muted green and then b it literally says the self-care club more green because why not we got this new york blooming what does it say i really just liked the color and the font new york blooming gardens i don't know what the blooming gardens are but i for sure will be wearing them now this shirt i'm wearing right now is also from h m and i really love it because it's got the name of the band at the front and then it's got the set list from the tour at the back and i found this one ac dc wine also at the back it's got the set list so i saw it and i knew i had to bring it back home with me and last but not least i thought this was the front and i just realized that it's the back but it doesn't really matter this is the back of the shirt i thought it was super cute super colorful and the shirt is just very neutral but the front is this a little bit plain jane but it's fine we'll make it work it's got this little detail on the left a boo great that was my haul and now it's time to throw this all in the washer so let's go i am back in my forks hoodie just comfy and i am about to sprint in a little bit and i am very excited to do so also does anybody else drink sparkling eyes strawberry lemonade top tier point is my goal of the night is to finish a book of night so we'll see if that happens i am currently 124 pages in so i roughly have around 175 pages to go all things considered and not that bad and usually when i sprint at night i go as close to midnight as i can so we'll see what happens we'll see what the plan is hello friends welcome hi today is saturday and saturday is already gone because it is literally 9 p.m i am starting to think that my toxic trait is to update at night time though i don't even know if that's a toxic trait or if that's just how things happen sometimes could be a little bit of both but i was feeling a bit under the weather today i guess under the weather it's a little bit dramatic but i was just extremely sleepy and so i have been sleeping most of the day unfortunately and i say unfortunately because i don't like sleeping like that i don't i really don't so especially because it's a type of sleep where even if you sleep like five hours you wake up feeling more tired it was one of those and i was just i'm not a fan i'm not a fan of that so there was that but but i finished of night and i am giving this three and a half stars i really really enjoyed this though i think my main critiques for this book are parts of it were uninteresting and most of those parts were flashbacks to the past which i didn't really adore i will say there were parts that were flashbacks on vince's end which i found immensely interesting but overall i think even in the present time there were scenes that i was just like okay that happened and i was just not as interested as i guess the really juicy parts because i mean the really interesting parts of this book i think are really interesting and that's when charlie is being her usual self where she is lying and scheming and investigating all of that i really really enjoyed the mystery aspect of this whole thing was actually also really good and i just think the whole shadow thing really worked for me the other critique that i have for this book that i didn't necessarily love is the fact that i feel holly black could have gone even darker in tone with this book especially because of the things that were happening in the story and how when we get to see murders happen they are gnarly and i kind of wish that we would have gotten a darker tone to the whole novel because it lent itself for a very gothic mellow super dark tone and although parts of the book did have that i feel overarctingly i would have wanted just a little bit more because it would have been perfect literally the twists and turns in this book also had me absolutely bamboozled like every single one of them the last 70 pages of this book i was sitting there reading and i was like what and it was just so good i loved every second of those last 70 pages it's funny also because i was saying to myself this is probably gonna be a three star and then i read those pages and i instantly went okay you know what it's a 3.5 like it's actually it wrapped up really really nicely and i'm actually super intrigued to see what's gonna happen in book two i'm not sure if this is a duology or a series i know holly black confirmed it on instagram let's double check okay yes it is a duology and you know what i like the fact that it's a duology because i think given the premise on how everything went down more than two books of this would be stretching it out just a little bit too much so i am glad that this is a duology because i think that works perfect and that being said i do want to read a little something before going to bed and i feel like funny you should ask is going to be the perfect before bed kind of book so i am going to start this and just lay in bed and get some reading done because that's just what's calling to me at the moment i haven't updated you today hi there's a loud car going through but i have not updated you guys today it was a long day woke up super early tidy up the home then had breakfast had a six hour and 47 minute live show with my patreons where we solved the mystery at hunter's lodge it's the hunter killer game and then we watched spider head and now it is almost 10 p.m and i'm tired a little bit tired yes no maybe but i am ready to read funny you should ask because i started this last night and i am really really enjoying this while i was hoping to enjoy this i have seen some reviews that say that this book has been underwhelming so it's funny also because i watched one of those reviews quite recently in a wrap up and it just kind of freaked me out a little bit because i'm like am i going to enjoy it or not it can still go downhill so let me not claim victory quite yet but 80 pages in i'm really liking this so the first 80 pages of this the first six chapters consists of the past which is where channy horowitz she is a journalist she is appointed to do a piece on gabe parker gay parker is an actor he has been very prolific so far but most recently he has sparked a bit of controversy because he has been cast as james bond which notoriously as we know that every bond actor has been british in this novel gay parker an american is the first american to be casted as james bond a lot of people are not happy with that a lot of people would have preferred his co-star oliver matthias to have been casted as a bond because he is british and he is supposedly much more charming and supposedly much more talented people are also sparking a lot of controversy particularly because gabe was a part of angels in america when he was in college and so there's been just many a controversy with mr gabe being casted people say he is not tough enough he is not british obviously there's just a multitude of reasons apparently as to why he is not fit to be james bond and so because he has been casted in this role and she has been appointed to this interview she obviously has to go interview him and just figure out who gabe parker is and just give a very detailed thorough account of what happened during this interview now what has said to this interview apart is that it was very unusual it didn't necessarily happen in one day but the piece that she wrote was panned out over the course of a few days so they kept meeting each other and it also sparked a lot of interest in the public as to whether or not these two were romantically involved and now flash forward a decade later she is being contacted again to do another piece on gay parker now gabe parker is i guess the equivalent of rdj in a sense where he was very famous very well known and then he unfortunately went down a very dark self-destructive path of drugs and alcohol and just self-destruction i think just encompasses a lot of what he has gone through and she has half a mind to turn it down she is now a very successful writer and she has the life that she has always wanted but she decides to accept it because she is releasing another book and he is starring in one of her favorite films a remake of the philadelphia story now one of the things i am liking about this book so much are all of the pop culture references which if you guys know me at all you guys know that i don't like those i think in the context of this book given that gabe is obviously an actor and she is a journalist and a lot of what happens in here is the media about film the media about performing arts there has been many a mention of musicals there has been many a mention of films i am also a film nerd if you will my brother and i watch every oscar-nominated movie every year or we try to and then we make a ranking and we make our predictions and it's a great time we also try to watch indie films when we can when they're available to us and so just seeing so many references to things that i've either watched or seen discussed before has been super rewarding as a reader and so that i love and i think it's just a very personal connection i guess on my end as to me loving all of these things that are being discussed and the way that they're being discussed also almost these breakdown happenings depending on the film that they're talking about but almost breaking down these films and saying why they're so great or why parts of them don't work and just really analyzing the structure of a film that has happened quite a few times in this book is also something that i've quite enjoyed and i love that it just works for me and it's just been really interesting because we did get an excerpt of her article and her article is very kind of happy-go-lucky very you know gabe is the best ever and we had just hyphen and we oh the camera and we had a great experience in the interview and it was all great and dandy but turns out the interview so far is not going as smooth as she claims that it did and so she definitely embellished a lot in that article so i think it's gonna be really interesting moving forward to see exactly what happened with them if they were actually romantically involved or what exactly happened and she really is taking the second chance with the second interview as an opportunity to settle everything that wasn't settled when they first met and so that makes me think that there were a few loose ties when these two met up and never spoke again so can you see vin up there yes it's interesting i like the writing i like the structure of this i like that we started in the past and now we're moving back to the present i think structurally it works i think what's included in here just works really great for me and i also just love the discussions of chine as a writer i think she does have a lot of imposter syndrome and she often questions herself and her capabilities as a writer and i think more than anything there was this really nice passage of because she also writes a blog she had this very nice passage saying how uh she didn't know exactly what she was more afraid of being a good or bad writer or being just a boring one one that just felt incredibly mediocre i quite like the introspection of chine in these blog posts and not in the blog post too i just think the internal monologue is very interesting and the characters do so i'm excited to keep on reading and i'm really enjoying this so we'll see how much of this i get done tonight but i do want to get some reading done hi good morning happy monday happy start of week even though you are not watching this at start of week when this is going up it'll be friday but happy friday happy monday happy all of it it has been a productive morning so far i just edited a sponsorship for wednesday's video and i have sent that but my brother is coming over in a little bit we are going to watch the boys which i'm super excited about i literally watched part of season one back when it came out when did it come out 2018 2019 i know this was like around my heather's era when we were in the production for heathers but i can't remember if it came out on that year or the year after all i know 2018 2019 when it came out i watched most of the season and then i didn't finish it and so my brother has literally binched the whole thing in like a matter of three days and he is begging me to watch it so that he can just rave about it and i initially told him to come over for a movie and he's like now we're watching the voice so we're gonna watch the voice instead and we're just gonna binge all of season one today and probably gonna order some food and just you know have a good time and i still have a bit of tidying up to do around the house he's probably gonna get here like sometime soon but you know if he gets here while i'm doing the dishes or while i am tidying up the office or my bedroom it's fine it doesn't matter so i just want to make sure to get that done before we even start watching the boys just because we're gonna watch that and after that i need to film so i want to make sure that i get it all done and i've read a little bit more of funny you should ask but i'm going to update that later on and i also need to start throne of glass because the live show for that is literally on wednesday and i mean all things considered i've already read the book before so i can just look through the annotations of my first time read but i still very much want to reread it so we're just gonna do that and we're going to read all of it in the next two days i was gonna do a thumbs up and i don't know what this is great do you guys i just finished funny you should ask why am i evil that ending made me so emotional for no reason okay wow hi you guys so today's tuesday hi manny a thing to do today need to film need to edit me to start and finish throne of glass either today or finish that tomorrow morning it is going to be a very very long day however i just finished funny you should ask and this was so good that i think i'm gonna rate this five stars i didn't think i would love it this much i knew i was gonna like it like you know like a four star sort of like but the five star thing was kind of unexpected and i just love this i love how it ended with this sort of epilogue but it wasn't an epilogue and it was rather a an article i think it was super original and just super cool and all of the commentary on the film industry as a whole it was so good it was so insightful it was just so nice to read in a story that takes place in this landscape obviously having gabe as an actor and all of the commentary about the toxicity really of celebrity culture and how they really don't have a personal life and a lot of things are weaponized and how even for those things that they could be proud of there will still be heavy criticism and there will be unfair criticism and there will be people nitpicking and there will be people defending their fandoms to whatever extent they can and so that part of it was really interesting because we not only get to see chinese articles but we also get to see other people's articles commenting about gabe about his career about his roles about even chinese oh my god vin is coming up about tiny and just everything and everything in between and it really just speaks to the toxicity of celebrity culture and it was just not something that i was expecting to get with this book but it made it all the better and i just think it made it more realistic to get all of those articles questioning gabe questioning his life his motif why he was casted as james bond and it was so cutthroat and so terrible but i mean hit pieces are a thing and we see them all the time all of these articles these i think they're called puff pieces all of these articles just intruding into celebrities lives you want to go up baby you're not going to be able to jump from there come on and so even if i wasn't expecting to get that i just think it made the story even better and it obviously caused a lot of conflict more so internally rather than anything else you can see how both of them feel very inadequate in each of their professions gabe doesn't feel like a good enough actor and on top of that what he already thinks of himself is only being reaffirmed by the media and then you've got tiny who was being reduced to the article she wrote about gabe that was the only thing people wanted to talk to her about the only thing people inquired about when they met her they didn't want to know about her writing they didn't admire her as a writer as a human but rather the fact that she got to spend an entire weekend with gay parker and that is an infuriating thing as a writer i can only assume when you're so proud of your work but people are continuously putting you down because they think that you're a not good enough or when they're reducing you to only one part of your job and so it was so nice to see their internal battles separately and also just together because these are two people that essentially haven't spent a lot of time together it seems like they have and it seems like they get along extremely well but the reality is that in the course of this novel it it spans out in like six days literally it's like a week and so despite them having so much chemistry there's so many things getting in between that the uncertainties the insecurities the media and i just loved all of it it again felt very realistic and i also think there's almost this i don't even know what word to put to it but it's this almost irrational at times sort of attraction that the two have for each other and not irrational in like a bad way but it's one of those things where they've known each other for so little and they feel like they've known each other for forever and i think it's just because she has treated him normally and they can talk normally as two people can and she doesn't really although she had a crush on him because she admired him she doesn't really treat him any differently than she would any other person and so i personally really really liked this ollie was also a great addition to the story oliver matthias who was another actor friend of gabe's who also befriended chani and i just loved his presence in the story and all of the life that he brought into it all of the commentary as well that he brought into it with the systemic homophobia that sometimes riddles if not most often than not riddles hollywood and and how that affected him as an actor and his career and so overall it was just really really good and it was more than i was expecting out of this novel and i just love that it was equal parts commentary on this industry as it was a romance and it was like super slow burn too there's a lot of chemistry and you can tell that there's also just a lot of awkwardness riddling this whole situation because it's awkward you know you've been watching someone on screen for so long and you admire them and then you meet them in person and you're you know wanting to do an interview but you're also attracted to them and they're also being all kinds of straightforward but also not and obviously gabe's alcohol problem going into it too and so so many things going into it that's what i loved that the romance was at the forefront of the story but there were also so many things surrounding that that just enriched the story so i just really liked this it was really good and i'm giving it five stars it is throne of glass time because i have not read this yet the live show is tomorrow and i because of the structure that we have for the live show i really do have to reread this i know this is not as long as some of the other novels so like i'm not too concerned it's like i think under 400 pages we'll see what happens this is the plan this is what we're doing and i'm excited to re-read it welcome to wednesday and the end of this vlog hello everybody so i am extremely tired however in the turn of events i ended up finishing throne of glass i mean not an alternative event i had to finish it for the live show with liv but i ended up reading this in 3.5 speed with the audiobook and it was great actually because the narrator's voice like the cadence of her voice was good enough to listen at 3.5 speed while still being able to distinguish exactly what she was saying i never listened to audiobooks that fast just because there is a starting point with an audiobook where with certain narrators i hit that two time speed mark and i'm like whoa i need to get used to this and i need to keep rewinding to like get used to it and then i'm fine for some reason 3.5 just watched or maybe it was just my brain under peril that i was just like it's now or never and you know what i did it i have thoughts on this i said it more in depth in the live show obviously because it was spoiler filled however rereading this book for the third time this is my third time reading this book now it just solidified that this is my least favorite in the series and i like this even less than assassin's blade and i mean it makes sense she wrote this when she was 16 and it really feels like a long-winded prologue for whatever is going to follow it doesn't really hold to the standard of even crown of midnight or the rest of the series and so as a first installment kind of does what it has to do but the episodic nature of the competition where it's obviously you got one task to do you've got one thing to solve one thing to try out i just have realized that i am not that into it because in this book it feels kind of underwhelming just because it's so short-lived in comparison to everything else happening it felt like celaena's relationships in this book were much more important than the actual plot of the book rather than the actual competition taking place which makes sense because selena is at a place at the start of this book especially coming out of the salt mines of mondovia where she doesn't find it that easy to trust people and where she doesn't find it that easy to even befriend people especially given the events of the assassin's blade however it was just not it because the options are not great it's either dorian or chaol which it's either the colonialist son or the captain of the guard who just stands by and does nothing as the colonialism happens and so you know what not that into it not that into it and then we've got the friendship with nahimia which is arguably one of my favorite parts of this book but beyond that this book didn't really have a lot going for it and the romances are both very forced in my opinion because dorian being the princess son in this book he is very cocky he is just very flirty and he treats elena in the way that i would believe he treat any other girl and the chemistry is very lacking if i do say so myself they find themselves bonding over books and back and forth letters that they were sending to each other but they're not cute the whole selena plays music and selena reads i'm just like like girl i've never read anything more forced in my life and i just it's it was kind of sad i'm being honest kel's fine but also this is also the man who tells her that she smells like fish so it was a riveting time to re-read this i will say what this book is good at but not really because it's so obvious too is the foreshadowing in here and the foundation for a lot of the things that will become very very important later on in the series they're here and so in that regard they're not very subtle but they're there and you know they're good and they're you know they did their thing that's about it i i just think it was really underwhelming loads of things were being mentioned that i found were not being developed the writing has yet to season and so you know it's the urge in me to give this two stars now i initially gave this three and a half when i read this uh for the second time in 2020. now i feel inclined to give this two stars and you know what i think i will because who's going to stop me nobody and so that was my reading of the week thank you for coming with me on this fine week i hope that you guys enjoyed this i literally haven't weekly vlogged in so freaking long it felt really weird to do so but it was great because i could read when i wanted to i wasn't focused on project and i could just update you on you know the little things and so i hope that you guys enjoyed this if you did give it a thumbs up down as a below and comment down below what you've read in the past week what you're currently reading have you read any of these books but have you thought about them and if you reached this part of the video let us leave you know what let's leave a plain emoji for funny you should ask just because this was my favorite book don't forget to subscribe down below if you haven't done so already i am constantly blowing videos i am sure you do not want to miss and if you want to support this goal further i do have a patreon loads of cool things happen over there we play games we do sprints we watch movies we watch tv shows we sprint have i said that we sprint and you get early access for videos you get a discord server and you get exclusive content and to be quite honest it's the place where i am most active so join patreon if you haven't already it is linked down below alongside all of my socials and thank you so much to book of the month for sponsoring today's video don't forget to go ahead and listen to the virtual book tour podcast completely free you can listen to it on apple podcast on spotify and just enjoy all of these authors stories their motivation towards writing and why they write the stories that they do again i will be leaving a link at the top as the descriptions and yes i love you guys so much and i will see you on the next one bye guys you\n"