You should definitely make a new storygraph account for books you read with Rowan! Would be so cool for him to have a record of what books you've read together
I just had my son at the end of July, and I bought “Together” after you featured it in an earlier video…it’s now my FAVORITE book and I want to cry just thinking of it
I love the Montague siblings books for all the reasons you say, and can confirm that Adrian's anxiety description is spot-on -- at least for my anxiety. I really appreciated this portrayal because anxiety is so varied but this really hit home for me & mine.
You mentioned you weren’t a massive grufflo fan, so I would recommend you check out Julia Donaldson's less well known books. Monkey Puzzle is a lovely one about a butterfly helping a baby monkey find his mum, and the kids in my class (year 1) love A Squash and a Squeeze.
I loooove project Hail Mary! Read it 3 times physically and listen to it at least twice a year. For some reason it’s a huge comfort read for me, just like the Martian
I have benefited so much from your prior recommendations, I’m looking forward to adding more to my tbr! Like Girls Friends. I already have the gentleman’s guide, and project Hail Mary. Yay!
Oh Hannah, now I'm considering starting a book log of some kind of my daughter. Trouble is we read approx 10 books a day minimum 😂 but could be cute for 2023 for her 2-3 years.
"Slash" is actually same-sex or same-gender fic, often abbreviated or tagged as M/M and F/F, or MLM and WLW, or male x nb character, female x nonbinary OC, nb x nb, etc. My four favorite books I've read this year have been: Franklin's Flying Bookshop, written by Jen Campbell and illustrated by Katie Harnett - I adore the story and art! Disability Visibility: 17 First-Person Stories for Today, edited by Alice Wong (adapted for Young Adults). So You Think You're Autistic by Samantha Stein. Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us and How We Can Fight Back by Julia Surano. I'm still reading that last one, I love her writing style and clear readability, and I want to read more by her. Honorable mention to Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality by Julia Shaw (Abrams Books, June 2022), which I liked so much that I bought a hardback copy for a partly-closeted young person who has violently queerphobic family members.
I didnt realise that slash was only for queer relationships. I though it just described the tagging. Like "Character A/Character B" is for romantic and sexual while "Character A and Character B" is for platonic or familiel relationships. I'm going by AO3 tagging but know it was a term before AO3. Do you know why the term came about?
@@jennykate10 Hi! 👋 I first heard the terms slash fic and femslash on AO3 and tumblr, in posts that refer to earlier zines, platforms like LiveJournal, and fan fiction history. Like you, I'd heard the name was due to the forward slash mark between character names. According to wikipedia, the definition has stretched, but still refers to fan fiction about romance between same sex partners: "Slash fiction (also known as "m/m slash") is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex.[1][2][3] While the term "slash" originally referred only to stories in which male characters are involved in an explicit sexual relationship as a primary plot element, it is now also used to refer to any fan story containing a romantic pairing between same-sex characters. Many fans distinguish slash with female characters as a separate genre, commonly referred to as femslash (also known as "f/f slash" or "femmeslash."" Happy reading! P.S. Yes, using the "Character and Character" tag is platonic, and the Character/Character tag is for romantic relationships. P.P.S. The other tagging conventions I showed are more common on tumblr, as it's the only site I know of that supports spaces in tags, and there's no master directory or tag wrangling like AO3, which is a non-profit online archive of transformative works. Tumblr is a for-profit blogging site that runs ads.
I don't know if you've read it but since you also loved all the other TJR books like Malibu Rising and 7 Husbands, I highly recommend Funny You Should Ask! It's similar to 7 Husband in that it also follows a reporter interviewing a famous person. In this case, she's going back to recreate the interview that kickstarted her career and in some ways, his. The book switches between present day and the past interview. It's a romance but imo one of the more fun ones!
Andy Weir is such an amazing author! I would highly recommend Artemis by him as well! It's also shorter so a little more manageable yet still an amazing and complex story
I read Idol too, she is great at nefarious characters! The library fines thing is wild - library fines have been abolished in Ireland about 4 years ago I forgot library fines existed and I was so confused!
I kept an excel sheet of all the books I read this year, lol. I think an app like StoryGraph would make things a lot easier, so I'll be downloading that for the new year :-)
Hannah, have you read Fierce by Gin Phillips? I would love to know what you thought of it, given your are now a parent yourself. Six Of Crows & Crooked Kingdom are both excellent!
Hard agree with you that the Six of Crows characters were more compelling than Shadow of Bone. I started with Shadow of Bone first after and seeing the show and was sad to miss out on those characters!! I loved Project Hail Mary! My husband liked the Martian better but I love the aliens meet and communicate books (e.g. Speaker for the Dead). Given we like some of the same books, I am *thrilled* that you started The Way of Kings! I hope you enjoy it.
in my opinion children books count as much as mangas, comics and so fourth. Let's stop gatekeeping what type of books count as red in reading goals it's just silly. Edit: How do you feel about the controversy around "The House In The Gerulean Sea"? It was on my list but hearing that the white author basically took the stories of natives and their experiences through colonialism etc it went way down on the priority list.
I know you're asking Hannah, but I wanted to share my thoughts. I think it's a beautiful book with an amazing audiobook narrator. The author took inspiration from all types of prejudice and discrimination to write a story about the dangers of ignorance and finding your people. The inspiration included the 60s Scoop in Canada and the Holocaust. Personally, I don't see how it's bad to take inspiration from terrible parts of history - it's not as if he's saying it was good! But some people very passionately disagree with me, and they are free to do so!
Looks like I need to move The Love Hypothesis further up in my TBR pile! (I’ll have to keep in mind that it’s apparently Reylo fic haha.) Currently reading Loveless, which is the first YA book in my collection with an asexual protag. She doesn’t know yet and my heart hurts for her in the best way (feel the same looking back at high school me before I found the word asexual for myself).
The lion side is so cute and and the cover is adorable for kids and The Six Crows I love creepy and amazing 🎄💚⛄️❤️⛄️⛄️🎄🎄⛄️💚🎁🎁🎁❤️💚🎄❄️❄️❄️🎄⛄️❤️❤️🎁❤️❤️⛄️💚🎄❄️❄️🎄⛄️❤️❤️⛄️⛄️🎁🎁❤️❤️💚🎄❄️❄️❄️🎄💚⛄️❤️🎁🎁
See, for me as a queer and anxious person, my GG ranking would be 1, 3, 2. Monty is obviously the best character, and I liked seeing him in the background of Adrian's story. Don't get me wrong, it is exhausting to live inside an anxious (and I believe obsessive?) mind, and Adrian was pretty intense, but it was not much exaggerated from what lots of folks go through.
Book recommendation that is both fun fiction and sex and relationships relate: Erotic Stories for Punjabi Women. It's about a young women who attempts to teach Punjabi widows how to read and write English (in London) but they end up creating erotic stories. I'm just about 1/3 in but it's fun, breezy read and has some intrigue. Figured it may be of interest
