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Madame Bovary is a brilliant read! Hope you love it too when you get round to it :) Excited to see a library room update!

love the little snippets of life u capture ❤

This is exactly the same favorites list as Sunbeamsjess, descriptions and everything 😅

do you have a goodreads or storygraph? our tastes are so similar, i’d love to get recs through there! happy to have found your channel!!

I've had The Golden Notebook on my shelf for maybe a decade now and I'm embarrassed to say I haven't got round to it yet (you beat me to it). Last month I decided that this shall be the year, I suspect my reaction might be a bit similar to yours, which is why I've been putting me off, and that's curious because I REALLY enjoyed two of her earlier books The Grass Is Singing and Martha Quest, I'd absolutely recommend those. Also that Giant O'Brien book sounds great, I must put that on my list.

annnd shes back!! <3

Thanks so much for your reviews! I just finished the trilogy and I loved them too. I'm working on processing them. Probably will break my brain. 😅

'Promo SM' 🤗

Love the vibes of this vlog Carolyn! loved the music and all the little bits into your days and reading hours. big love and big hugs.

😍!!!!

Love the decor!

Looks great!! Glad you're able to paint and make this place your own. Looking forward to your January and February reviews. 💛

Just found you and I'm in awe! You are so well spoken and I literally have not heard a single thing about any of the books you talked about! Ah no I lied 😅 Robin hobb I heard of. So stoked to look into your other videos to see if I will pick up some of your recommendations 🥰

Ive found your channel today and subscribed. I almost certain that your calm energy is going to put you among my top booktubers.

Vandermeer is also one of my favorite authors. My favorite book of his is Finch. I like to think of it as a stand alone novel, although I know its part of the Ambergris series.

Happy I just found you! I've been looking for book lovers who don't read just new releases. I love your recs and have added many to my TBR. You also made me want to try Robin Hobb one more time 👀

Of all the fiction I read in 2023, Claire Keegan’s “Foster” is the book that has lingered in my mind the longest and with the deepest emotional effect since I first came across it last March. And I wouldn’t have heard of Keegan’s story had it not been for the Irish language film adaptation-“An Cailín Ciúin”-“The Quiet Girl”-which I also first saw last March at my local independent cinema. All I knew of “The Quiet Girl” beforehand was what I had seen in a trailer a few weeks earlier, so the film’s story and its overpowering final scene caught me entirely off-guard and left me emotionally wrung out. After I got home from the movie theatre that day, I began rummaging around online and was able to find a PDF copy of “Foster”, which I read in one spellbound sitting. I’m a retired child protection/family services worker, so the story of Keegan’s nameless little girl, her dire family situation, and her restorative summer months with John and Edna (Seán and Eibhlín in the movie) struck a sensitive chord with me. One of the foster couples I used to work with even ran a dairy farm, just like the Kinsellas. The screenwriter/director, Colm Bairéad, did a wonderful job of bringing Keegan’s long short story to the screen, and I highly recommend “The Quiet Girl” to anyone who hasn’t seen it. The film was released in Canada and the US last March, but I don’t think it received the theatre distribution it deserved, as I still meet people who have read “Foster” but have no idea it was made into an Oscar-nominated film. “Foster” is part of the curriculum for Irish schoolchildren, and you can find a copy of the study guide they use by doing an online search for “Study Notes on ‘Foster’ by Claire Keegan - Reviews Rants and Rambles”.

just found your youtube channel and I’m so excited to watch more of your videos! i have barely heard of any of these books, so I hope that your videos will expose me to some new reads that I wouldn’t have found outherwise :)

Watching this on a cold& gloomy day is perfect. Love hearing u discuss books 🩵

So glad you're enjoying Ship of Magic! The Liveship Traders is my favourite trilogy by Robin Hobb, it is incredible ❤

your makeup looks so so good <3

Assassin of reality was great, but too short😢

I’ve had a lot of the same experiences with you on the acne front. Tried doxycycline and topical treatments forever and my dermatologist literally just put me on accutane. It’s so tough to have acne cause it’s something I’m like always always conscious about so I am glad that finally it could go away (hopefully!!) My side effects have been dry lips and that’s it so far (if you’re wondering)

Roaccutane really takes it out of you. It is absolutely worth the end result if you can manage it - unfortunately my prescription was unexpectedly stopped before I had a chance to finish it so I've never quite gotten rid of my acne, but I hope that you're able to stamp it out. For what it's worth, you look wonderful 24/7 and nothing can change that. China Mieville and Mervyn Peake are soooo good - I can't think of any other writers I've read that are quite like them.

The Word for World is Forest is a punch of a book, I stayed up late because I HAD to know how it would end.

What a cozy vlog! The gloomy lighting ❤ but omg carolyn your highlighter ✨ and your overall style you look like a contemporary irl american girl! I would totally read your american girl series, starring you! ❤ can’t wait for your upcoming vlogs as you settle into your new apt

I feel you on the acne struggle….I really hope you’re able to get it cleared up 🤞🏼 Also, have to ask where in the WORLD you got that wonderfully floppy edition of Ship of Magic that has the beautiful cover???

Thank you for the recommendation of Foster!! Wow! I loved it!

The covenant of water sounds right up my alley! Omg Foster is my fav claire keegan and you cannot miss the forester’s daughter. Whale-cheon myung kwan really hit me hard and it’s also a multigen saga! And just an absolutely crazy ride that I was gleefully chuckling throughout and had me painfully sobbing at the end. Happy 2024 Carolyn! Hope you have a great reading year ahead! ❤

loved it! i started my robin hobb journey in 2023 and will keep going with her work later this year :)

Oh man, if you are looking for another Louise Erdrich to read I would love to see you read The Round House. It is harrowing, rage-inducing, desperately sad; so so many layers. I'd read some trigger warnings before diving into this one if that is something you're sensitive to in books, but LE never makes it gratuitous. So many ways in which violence perpetuates violence, esp in acts of vengeance -- as "justified" as it may seem. Lots of interesting things to say about penalization vs. rehabilitation, esp where it concerns the feelings of victims too.

I love we are all completely beside ourselves it’s so good. A must read

Can't wait to read Royal Assassin and finish the Farseer trilogy this year ! ❤great vlog !

I loved Round House by Louise Endrich. Highly recommend.

My standout book of 2023 was the book of short stories, Sketches from a Hunter's Album by Turgenev. Best wishes.

Have you watched The Handmaiden (2016)? It’s an adaptation of the fingersmith that is one of my favorite movies of all time. I totally agree with your description of Robin Hobb trilogy, so so so excellent with compellingly realistic magic! I’ve been meaning to pick up the mountain in the sea

I love your videos, you always have really interesting recommendations! My favourite of the year was Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, beautiful writing about nature, and the relationship between Indigenous knowledge and science. I think you would really like it if you haven’t already read it 😊

Wonderful video! If you enjoy Sarah Waters I would also highly recommend House of Longing by Tara Calaby.

So glad this video popped up for me today - I feel like we are so similar!! I love Robin Hobb, and I also read Foster and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan recently. I also loved your explanation of bodily, sticky writing - I thought Lapvona was fascinating, uncomfortable, and bleak. If you haven’t read Hunger by Knut Hamson, i would recommend; it has a bodily feel to it, for sure. The Mountain in the Sea and Perdido Street Station are on my TBR! And Stardust is one of my all-time favs 😊

Erdrich - try the round house or love medicine or plague of doves! Such a stunning writer

There were a few stand outs for me this year: On the Savage Side, A Little Life and Hello Beautiful but the Cromwell trilogy totally stole the show for me. Just loved it so much. I think I’ve recommended Julia Armfield to you before but her books are one I’d recommend for the bodily and grotesque - she has a short story collection called salt slow and a novel called our wives under the sea!

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves sounds so so good and right up my alley!

One of the best books I read in 2023 was The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. It’s one of those stories where nothing happens but everything happens. It’s really stuck with me and I think you might really like it!

The title novella in My Monticello is so powerful. It has really struck with me.

Great reviews! I have Booth and cannot wait to start it!

I would recognise the ever incredible Jim Dale anywhere ❤

December is made for slow and cozy days! Loved the opening montage on this video!! I also picked up a copy of Birnam Wood recently. It's not typically a genre I'd read (thriller-ish?) but so many people have been talking about it

What is your job? :) Also love the new apartment

woooww big chunky books in this video! I read the golden notebook earlier this year after a previous, arrested attempt last year (I think?). I ended up liking it, but I understand stalling on it. does it get better? I think if you don't like the first hundred pages, you probably won't ever get hugely into it. the writing continues to be very pensive and internal and meandering, and the different notebooks are all basically telling the same story with different vantages/agendas. I think the length and ouroboros narrative of the book are assets, but I'm not sure you're going to start liking it more. I hope I'm wrong! I do suggest trying to read a big chunk of it in an uninterrupted way, bc that helped me

i've heard the golden notebook is supposed to be good... but its just so big!! lessing's life was really interesting though. I read about her life in The Baby on the Fire Escape. hope u like birnam wood!! i thought it was a lot of fun