_Of course_ Angela loves Elle Cordova. Honestly, who doesn't? Speaking of widely beloved internet figures: at the same time I got the notification for this video, I got one from Hank Green saying they're accepting applications for Crash Course hosts. I don't know if that's something you're interested in doing, but your "Coffee and a Physics Problem" series has reliably been S-tier quality pedagogy for how to approach physics problems, and the world of online learning benefits greatly from every video like that you put out into the world.
Ex seminarian here. If you have a book with a tassle (e.g. "Age of Innocence", "The War of the Worlds") the thing to do is to have the tassle go diagonally across the page so that it emerges from the book on the lower half of the right side of the page. Jamming it straight down the crease will put pressure on the book's binding and very likely bend or tear the page at the top. You'll find the book stores better on the shelf as well.
my grandma is i think 87 and has also decided no more surgeries or chemotherapy cancer treatments, she could live 6 months or 5 years, she's also no longer doing regular like blood tests because if you're not doing the treatments its only a source of anxiety and like "THINGS ARE GETTING WORSE YOURE RUNNING OUT OF TIME" that she doesnt want, she'd rather just live life day by day and whatever happens and time comes when it does is how it will happen.
I just read Jekyll and Hyde which I didn’t like and so I considered getting rid of it, but it has my favorite line of any book which is “If he be Mr Hyde then I shall be Mr Seek.” Perfect. No notes. The book stays on my shelf.
Gotta love those Victorian puns. I say, give it another read someday. The novel suffers in a similar way to Frankenstein, in that the film versions lead current readers to expect things that simply aren't in the story. There's no cackling mad scientist quaffing a potion, much like Victor Frankenstein doesn't reveal how he created the monster.
As someone who finds it really difficult to dedicate time to reading and wants to improve, I'm amazed by the volume of books you've got through. I usually get through 3/4 a year (though in my defence I tend to read very long books). I'm going to make it my New Year's resolution to read a book a month this year. Tove Janson is also the author of The Moomins, I have a print of her artwork on my wall that I bought when I was in Helsinki, she's great.
I'm a big fan of Tchaikovsky! If you like him I highly recommend Children of Time. While it's a series, the first book is self contained and can be read on its own. Go into it blind! It was a wonderful plot and structure to unpack without spoilers. The audiobook was a great way to read it as well Also, Dogs of War and Bear Head sound silly from their synopses, but are actually some really thought provoking social commentary
On Patrick Stewart's book: Totally agree. I think the strongest and most reflective part was about his childhood and his relationship with his parents, but after that it just felt like he was listing his resume. The book made me think a little less of him, if I'm honest. I don't like how he treated his wife once he got famous, and I found it a bit sad about how he barely said anything about his children apart from how one of them doesn't talk to him and the other kind of does. Maybe he felt they wouldn't want to be included and that's why, but it felt like a bit of a glaring omission that he hasn't reflected on enough. On Kindred: That was also one of my favorite books of the year and as a history major who is iffy about historical fiction, I think everyone should read it. There were maybe some things to nitpick history wise, but none that were worth mentioning. On Persepolis: This book is incredibly beautiful and you're right about how well it portrays childhood and a child's understanding of current events. Re Poetry: I find pairing poetry with the right background music helps. They're not for everyone but I do like Andrea Gibson. If you want a good non fiction book, I recommend Black Jacobins by CLR James. I did love Beverly Cleary's On My Own Two Feet as a memoir, too. Edit: not that anyone cares but my top books this year were: Dune and Dune Messiah Kindred The Three Body Problem Little Women (only just got around to reading it, how it took me this long I don't know) The Secret History (I would have put The Road on here but just as I finished reading it, that article about how awful Cormac McCarthy was came out).
I never liked Shakespeare when I was a student, but watching it as an adult is miles better! Lines are better through context clues and if you don't fully understand something, you can let it wash over you. My top 3: Patrick Stewart's Macbeth David Tennant's Hamlet Romeo + Juliet
As a frenchie, I have to admit he is the masters master. Even if I lack vocabulary, when I read his great work, I feel the the strength and the beauty of his choice of words right into my heart.
I'm looking forward to reading some more Le Guin too. I've only read the first book in the wizard of earthsea series but there was a humble bundle recently for a bunch of her books so Im going with The Dispossessed next.
I mostly only read poetry in high school textbooks and for assignments, but I still laughed when you started talking about Emily Dickenson. I was with you on being unsure about reading (modern, freestyle) poetry, and then you bring up a poet I already knew I liked. I just forgot about well-known, taught in schools, Emily Dickinson. I reccomend Robert Frost, another obvious one I don't actively read despite liking what I have read.
Since you mentioned you're going to study economics, I recommend reading The Undercover Economist Strikes Back by Tim Harford. I read it at the beginning of my studies, and it provides a great perspective on the main theories of macroeconomics in a more accessible way. The first book, The Undercover Economist, is also good but focuses more on microeconomics, so it doesn't cover the major "media headline" aspects of the field. I hope you won't be discouraged from reading about economics after tackling Keynes, as I've heard he's a really challenging author.
my suggestion to people who want to read more poetry is always to find a particular poem that you really like and then read more from that author &/or period- the poetry foundation has a Daily Poem email that you can subscribe to, there’s a new yorker podcast where authors read aloud poems that can be really good, and both of those are great ways I’ve found singular poems that I really love. Some unsolicited poet recommendations would be Ada Limon (the raincoat), Frank O’Hara (having a coke with you), and Jude Nutter (horses). Great video!!!
Poetry didn't click for me until I started attending poetry jams and hearing it live, directly from those who wrote it. To me it's an audible medium. I do enjoy reading poems but I frequently recite them aloud while reading. Alone. At home.
Serious +1 of the Donna Tartt reading of True Grit! I had already read the book in my youth and seen all the films, but your recommendation spurred me to seek out this audio version, and it did not disappoint- Tartt delivers that wonderful Portis prose and with such an authentic flavor, it really brought the material to life as a distinctly American story.
Skipping through to books I've read as well: Ted Chiang's short stories do indeed vary a bit, but I still enjoy them all. His worst is still enjoyable. Was this the one with "The Lifecycle of software objects?" Cause based on what you've said of other books I'm pretty sure that one would appeal to ya in particular. Cal Newport's Slow Productivty. I didnt read digital minimalism but I read Deep Work and I can say that Slow productivity was identical to that. It sounds like this guy has written exactly one book 18 times lol. I can sympathise with reading self help and not getting anything out of it. I think for me theres a false productivity to it? Like "I want to have read a book this week, but the last book I read was so high concept or dense non fiction that I need a break. Self help lets me say "I finished a book this week" while expending 0 mental effort haha Canticle for Leibowitz: phenomenal book. Incredibly thought provoking. The story surrounding the author's mental health and life trajectory might inform a little bit if you haven't engaged with that yet. Agreed on Yellowface. RF Kuang has a way of working her lived experience into stories that can make me understand and empathize in ways I've not been able to at a deep level. Like, it's one thing to be told in an academic setting or a video essay what it's like, and another to have the understanding put out in a digestible story. Babel I think has a lot of the same strengths you identify and an even stronger plot so I imagine you'll enjoy it (also unrelated top 3 covers of all time imo). The Yellow Wallpaper: I struggled with this one. Everyone I respect thinks highly of this book but characters that are as mentally unsound as the main character here I find I can't enjoy cause there's so little to latch on to. Absolutely feel pity for the people that had this sort of life pushed on them when they needed help, but mostly I just felt this uncomfortable horror vibe throughout The Word for World is Forest: oh my god I freaking love LeGuin. I think you talked about this in a previous video and I might have left a similar comment, but you absolutely need to read more. TWfWiF does indeed capture the talent LeGuin has for describing culture, but it lacks some of the human understanding that she excels at. The earth corporatw army people are one dimensional manifestations of toxic masculinity, and that works for making them villainous, but I didnt remember a character to latch on to? Absolutely check out The Dispossesed or The Left Hand of Darkness for universally loved Leguin. The Dispossed has the more interesting culture imo. But if you liked The Female Man and are interested in gender explored through scifi Left Hand might be good too. She is maybe my favorite author of all time and I really hope ya try some of her justifiably most famous books.
I love to see Emily Dickinson have a wonderful collision with another person's brain. You can read so much and only rarely come across things that are just so resonant for you, that feeling is pure lightning. All you can do is consume it, as quickly as you can, as if otherwise you would lose it or someone might steal it - and then you mourn the loss of getting to experience it for the first time. Very few authors, and even fewer poets, have hit that resonance so perfectly for me.
I just finished The Left Hand Of Darkness and was completely blown away. It's one of those books that within the first 10 pages made me go from "wtf is going on" to "oh my god this is going to be incredible". It's alien but so human. A book about accepting change and of love and friendship with others who are different. I had to read it twice back to back and I still can't get it out of my head. Very much a winter book. I just moved on to The Word For World is Forest, only a few pages in and already there are small hints and connections to the larger world that these books live in. I can't believe how long these sat in my shame pile. Thank you for your reviews and recommendations! I've added quite a few to my list
28:52 I love Le Guin's novels. I really enjoyed The Dispossessed but it had an odd ending and I feel like you'd get annoyed with her interpretation of physics but it does a really fun narrative choice of switching between moments of the main character's life. I also really enjoyed her book 'Always coming home', if you enjoyed Le Guin's alien world building then you'd really love the novel because it reads almost like a part anthropology book on alien's culture.
If you like Emily Dickinson, and you haven't read them already, be sure to check out Christina Rossetti (poems like Goblin Market), Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and John Keats... she was influenced by all three I believe and their poetry is so beautiful.
Commenting now so I don’t forget, but I’ll delete if you talk about it later: The second short story collection by Ted Chiang (Exhalation) is even better than the first in my opinion. I am very rarely brought to tears by anything but that book did it. Huge recommend to someone who enjoyed the first one
35:28 Mount Eerie (Phil Elverum) released an album last month titled Night Palace (named after the poem) with a song "Writing Poems" on it, whose chorus is simply "A poem only barely says the thing halfway". Highly recommend the album, if you're in the market for new music. 36:35 You've undoubtedly come across it, but Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber is a non-fiction book on the topic that you might enjoy. 38:35 She's also the author of the Moomin novels for kids! Highly recommend for for the young ones in your life. Kids stories with good politics are rare enough, and the Moomin novels are fantastic.
Based on books you've liked, I'd recommend early Kate Wilhelm, especially "The Infinity Box" her book of short stories from 1975. Some science fiction, some speculative fiction. Also Patrick Süskind's 1985 novel "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" set in 18th century France-- the best prose about smell, and a wonderfully constructed novel
I read the first two stories in Rejection and was about to recommend it to a friend before I got busy. Then I read the third one and decided she can find it on her own if she's meant to read it
Age of Innocence is one of my favorite books and your description of “A love triangle between the three worst people” is so spot on I laughed so loud I startled my dog 😂. My favorite kind of story is No Bad Guys (e.g. The Martian) and my second favorite kind of story is No Good Guys (a.k.a. Terrible People Only Hurting Each Other), so this tracks.
I am also newly obsessed with Emily Dickinson. My high school best friend has been trying to get me to read her for a decade and I finally understand why
I'm actually currently rereading Story of Your Life and Others , funnily enough, it's fun seeing which stories I like more or less the second time round. This channel got my back into reading after a long time so thank you for that
Happy New Year! I read "The Message" and "Ghost in the House" because of your videos on them and they were both really good! I'll be sure to check out the rest of the books on your top ten list.
Didn't expect a Elle Cordova surprise appearance. They're great, even if they make me feel lyrically challenged. Here I am failing to put together a simple youtube comment lol
My favorite Le Guin novel from the same universe as "The Word for World is Forest" is The Dispossessed but The Left Hand of Darkness might be the best. I hope you continue to enjoy her work!
I'm not a fan of poetry, but did enjoy the collected poems of Philip Larkin. I'm not sure if you have to be English to enjoy them, but it probably helps. I also do like Orwell's 'non-fiction' more than his fictionl Down & out, and Wigan Pier are great.
Olga Tokarczuk is pronounced like you did it except the ending is "chook" (cz=ch, u=oo). She won the nobel prize for something entirely different which is much more dense and very historical and i don't think you'd like it. But this one (drive your plough) is great, I read it in high school and loved it. It's an ecological murder mystery! And yes poland is cold in winter but not that cold that's just what americans think hahah
I am someone who doesn't like most poetry but I really love the things I love. I would definitely recommend: Sylvia Plath Philip Levine W.B. Yeats T.S. Eliot Wallace Stevens (esp. the early stuff) Ai Dylan Thomas Thanks, and Good Luck!
I never understood why someone would buy a bunch of books impulsively, and then I discovered that a library within walking distance of me has 25¢ to 1$ books about a month ago and I have already gotten 3 feet of books...
I love James Baldwin, I feel like any time I read or listen to him talk about ANYthing, I come away with some insight or some perspective that just sticks with me. Can't recommend them enough.
I really, really liked The Last Samurai for the mother's sections (less enthusiastic for the kid's part) and found it super interesting how the book does with language as the character suggests they should do. That's fun.
Loving the range of descriptions. Going from super detailed several minutes discussion to "He has a mustache that he shaves and people tell him he never had a mustache" and "They wear uniforms and sign up for sex time" 💀
i have two recommendations for you: this woman's work by julie deporte. the author attempts to write an biography about tove janson. Alison by lizzy stweart. a small town woman marries an older man and then goes to London to become an artist and is surrounded by disappointing men. both are graphic novels.
some great stuff, Grendel, The Chrysalid, Dickinson's work. I enjoyed Big Swiss, but I guess more so because I don't dabble too much in that genre. I usually read pulp, horror and scifi with some historical fiction
I like the notion of hating reading self help books, doing so anyway, to a degree that some might describe as self harm and not even remembering anything but the most cursory elements of the self help books. And then, pièce de résistance, it was a library book. Absolutely slathered in irony. None more ironic.
Ooh I love Olga Tokarczuk. "Cz" in Polish, and other Slavic languages that use the roman alphabet, is pronounced "ch". So it's pronounced like to-kar-chook, rhyming with shook. Drive Your Plow is very good and very wintery. I asked for The Books of Jacob for Christmas but am nervous because it's massive.
Really enjoy your book videos. I’ll get around to reading some of your recommendations eventually! If you want to read more Octavia Butler, the Xenogenesis trilogy is very good. Very short, breezy reads, and very thought provoking about colonialism, sexuality, gender, even like bodily and political autonomy. Dawn was my favorite of the three, Adulthood Rites is very good also. Imago was the weakest to me.
If you're newly interested in poetry, check out "Life on Mars" by Tracy K Smith and "Twice Alive" by Forrest Gander- they're both contemporary collections by highbrow literary poets that use science topics as thematic framing devices (astronomy and mycology respectively). Also, "The Ecopoetry Anthology" ed. by Fisher-Wirth and Street is my favorite anthology of the past decade- a really exceptional overview of the ecopoetry niche, which is both extremely timely and wonderful reading.
I think you might like A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. It's a nice, fairly cozy, short book set hundreds of years after a robot uprising that wasn't an apocalypse.
I Read "Insulin" and "A Canticle for Leibowitz" based on your recommendations and really enjoyed both of them. Thank you for all the effort you put into your videos. May the somewhat radioactive virgin Mary/Jesus homunculus bless you at this festive time of year 😂.
If you haven't read it yet and want to add another Nobel Price winning book to your list winter reading list, i highly recommend, Independent People by Halldór Laxness. From wikipedia summery: it deals with the struggle of poor Icelandic farmers in the early 20th century, only freed from debt bondage in the last generation, and surviving on isolated crofts in an inhospitable landscape.
do you keep a goodreads acct / would you be willing to let us follow it? would be fun to be able to see the reads as the year goes and be able to read them before the video, like a mini parasocial book club
Have you read the three "The Science of Discworld" books? I've not seen other pop science books structured in the same way. And you get a neat Terry Pratchett story along the way. I guess the science chapters are outdated, but its sort of a window in time.
I like that you actually ended up with a sizable donation pile. - Thanks for this review - I think that many of us should review our year in many aspects, books, movies, tv series, whisky.. :} - cheers
Nice end of year wrap up! It motivates me to read more. Based on your feedback I have the feeling you might enjoy "Piranesi" by Susanna Clarke. I really enjoyed it!
I love your channel because I can get the takedown from authority that String Theory has needed for us plebes for a long time and then I can get booktube but I will say that it breaks my pretentious heart that you didn't absolutely love Mrs. Dalloway. I do think To the LightHouse is my favorite tho, so maybe give that one a try!
great, fun video! commenting for the algo, and also because I love Tove Jansson - you may know her better for the Moomin characters and books - she wrote and drew them. T. Kingfisher (pseudonym for Ursula Vernon, a.k.a Red Wombat) has a comic series, which she made available free on the web, called Digger, about a lady wombat mining engineer who by mistake digs a tunnel to the other side of the world. I've read some short pieces that a re brilliant, but indeed her writing style can get a bit too much on a longer scale. I have a similar problem with Stephen King. I've tried, and tried; he's writing style kicks me out of the book. I haven't managed to finish even one of his books (films made on his books are great, so it's no the plot or the stories, it's his writing). You mentioned Lonesome Dove. Larry McMurtry is one of my favourites and his writing is very cinematographic. You could give a go to some Elmore Leonard, a writer who also adapted a lot of his books to film and where Larry McMurtry takes a good bit of inspiration for his form (and also Tarantino among others, very similar in their dialogues). Jackie Brown and Get Shorty are two good examples of Leonard and among the few cases where you can watch the movies and read the books, and they're both great in their own way.
On Weight: "I didn't like it. I'm not gonna read it again. I don't even have anything to say about it." So yeah I'll donate it and probably buy it to read it again. wut
I highly recommend Tombs of Atuan by Le Quin. It’s part of the Earthsea series but in my opinion you don’t have to read the first book to understand her second.
Good god, are you actually allergic to short videos? Now I have to sit and watch this for over an hour because everything you talk about seems captivating even when I have no idea what it means.
If you want to get into poetry more in 2025, I will never not recommend Amy Clampitt! She's criminally underlooked, and harks to the wonderful mellifluous poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins with a tremendously subdued and sober joy. Also Sylvia Legris, because science poetry rocks!
its magic when you see a bookshelf being filled. it feels like home for your body and mind.
_Of course_ Angela loves Elle Cordova. Honestly, who doesn't?
Speaking of widely beloved internet figures: at the same time I got the notification for this video, I got one from Hank Green saying they're accepting applications for Crash Course hosts. I don't know if that's something you're interested in doing, but your "Coffee and a Physics Problem" series has reliably been S-tier quality pedagogy for how to approach physics problems, and the world of online learning benefits greatly from every video like that you put out into the world.
Ex seminarian here. If you have a book with a tassle (e.g. "Age of Innocence", "The War of the Worlds") the thing to do is to have the tassle go diagonally across the page so that it emerges from the book on the lower half of the right side of the page. Jamming it straight down the crease will put pressure on the book's binding and very likely bend or tear the page at the top. You'll find the book stores better on the shelf as well.
my grandma is i think 87 and has also decided no more surgeries or chemotherapy cancer treatments, she could live 6 months or 5 years, she's also no longer doing regular like blood tests because if you're not doing the treatments its only a source of anxiety and like "THINGS ARE GETTING WORSE YOURE RUNNING OUT OF TIME" that she doesnt want, she'd rather just live life day by day and whatever happens and time comes when it does is how it will happen.
She sounds awesome! I raise a glass to her tonight
I just read Jekyll and Hyde which I didn’t like and so I considered getting rid of it, but it has my favorite line of any book which is “If he be Mr Hyde then I shall be Mr Seek.” Perfect. No notes. The book stays on my shelf.
Gotta love those Victorian puns. I say, give it another read someday. The novel suffers in a similar way to Frankenstein, in that the film versions lead current readers to expect things that simply aren't in the story. There's no cackling mad scientist quaffing a potion, much like Victor Frankenstein doesn't reveal how he created the monster.
As someone who finds it really difficult to dedicate time to reading and wants to improve, I'm amazed by the volume of books you've got through. I usually get through 3/4 a year (though in my defence I tend to read very long books). I'm going to make it my New Year's resolution to read a book a month this year.
Tove Janson is also the author of The Moomins, I have a print of her artwork on my wall that I bought when I was in Helsinki, she's great.
I'm really looking forward to hearing your reaction to Left Hand of Darkness. I finally read it earlier this year, and loved it.
It's "wintery"
I'm a big fan of Tchaikovsky! If you like him I highly recommend Children of Time. While it's a series, the first book is self contained and can be read on its own. Go into it blind! It was a wonderful plot and structure to unpack without spoilers. The audiobook was a great way to read it as well
Also, Dogs of War and Bear Head sound silly from their synopses, but are actually some really thought provoking social commentary
Interesting factoid, the term "robot" was first ever used in R.U.R.
On Patrick Stewart's book: Totally agree. I think the strongest and most reflective part was about his childhood and his relationship with his parents, but after that it just felt like he was listing his resume. The book made me think a little less of him, if I'm honest. I don't like how he treated his wife once he got famous, and I found it a bit sad about how he barely said anything about his children apart from how one of them doesn't talk to him and the other kind of does. Maybe he felt they wouldn't want to be included and that's why, but it felt like a bit of a glaring omission that he hasn't reflected on enough.
On Kindred: That was also one of my favorite books of the year and as a history major who is iffy about historical fiction, I think everyone should read it. There were maybe some things to nitpick history wise, but none that were worth mentioning.
On Persepolis: This book is incredibly beautiful and you're right about how well it portrays childhood and a child's understanding of current events.
Re Poetry: I find pairing poetry with the right background music helps. They're not for everyone but I do like Andrea Gibson.
If you want a good non fiction book, I recommend Black Jacobins by CLR James. I did love Beverly Cleary's On My Own Two Feet as a memoir, too.
Edit: not that anyone cares but my top books this year were:
Dune and Dune Messiah
Kindred
The Three Body Problem
Little Women (only just got around to reading it, how it took me this long I don't know)
The Secret History
(I would have put The Road on here but just as I finished reading it, that article about how awful Cormac McCarthy was came out).
I never liked Shakespeare when I was a student, but watching it as an adult is miles better! Lines are better through context clues and if you don't fully understand something, you can let it wash over you.
My top 3:
Patrick Stewart's Macbeth
David Tennant's Hamlet
Romeo + Juliet
As a frenchie, I have to admit he is the masters master. Even if I lack vocabulary, when I read his great work, I feel the the strength and the beauty of his choice of words right into my heart.
Exactly agreed! Better performed imo but also agreeing a lot easier to enjoy reading later in life
I'm looking forward to reading some more Le Guin too. I've only read the first book in the wizard of earthsea series but there was a humble bundle recently for a bunch of her books so Im going with The Dispossessed next.
Yessss the dispossessed is so good
I mostly only read poetry in high school textbooks and for assignments, but I still laughed when you started talking about Emily Dickenson. I was with you on being unsure about reading (modern, freestyle) poetry, and then you bring up a poet I already knew I liked. I just forgot about well-known, taught in schools, Emily Dickinson. I reccomend Robert Frost, another obvious one I don't actively read despite liking what I have read.
Since you mentioned you're going to study economics, I recommend reading The Undercover Economist Strikes Back by Tim Harford. I read it at the beginning of my studies, and it provides a great perspective on the main theories of macroeconomics in a more accessible way. The first book, The Undercover Economist, is also good but focuses more on microeconomics, so it doesn't cover the major "media headline" aspects of the field.
I hope you won't be discouraged from reading about economics after tackling Keynes, as I've heard he's a really challenging author.
my suggestion to people who want to read more poetry is always to find a particular poem that you really like and then read more from that author &/or period- the poetry foundation has a Daily Poem email that you can subscribe to, there’s a new yorker podcast where authors read aloud poems that can be really good, and both of those are great ways I’ve found singular poems that I really love. Some unsolicited poet recommendations would be Ada Limon (the raincoat), Frank O’Hara (having a coke with you), and Jude Nutter (horses).
Great video!!!
I’m reading Carl Sandburg’s, The People, Yes again to help repair the gaping gash in my American heart. He’s good like that.
Poetry didn't click for me until I started attending poetry jams and hearing it live, directly from those who wrote it. To me it's an audible medium. I do enjoy reading poems but I frequently recite them aloud while reading. Alone. At home.
Serious +1 of the Donna Tartt reading of True Grit! I had already read the book in my youth and seen all the films, but your recommendation spurred me to seek out this audio version, and it did not disappoint- Tartt delivers that wonderful Portis prose and with such an authentic flavor, it really brought the material to life as a distinctly American story.
Skipping through to books I've read as well:
Ted Chiang's short stories do indeed vary a bit, but I still enjoy them all. His worst is still enjoyable. Was this the one with "The Lifecycle of software objects?" Cause based on what you've said of other books I'm pretty sure that one would appeal to ya in particular.
Cal Newport's Slow Productivty. I didnt read digital minimalism but I read Deep Work and I can say that Slow productivity was identical to that. It sounds like this guy has written exactly one book 18 times lol. I can sympathise with reading self help and not getting anything out of it. I think for me theres a false productivity to it? Like "I want to have read a book this week, but the last book I read was so high concept or dense non fiction that I need a break. Self help lets me say "I finished a book this week" while expending 0 mental effort haha
Canticle for Leibowitz: phenomenal book. Incredibly thought provoking. The story surrounding the author's mental health and life trajectory might inform a little bit if you haven't engaged with that yet.
Agreed on Yellowface. RF Kuang has a way of working her lived experience into stories that can make me understand and empathize in ways I've not been able to at a deep level. Like, it's one thing to be told in an academic setting or a video essay what it's like, and another to have the understanding put out in a digestible story. Babel I think has a lot of the same strengths you identify and an even stronger plot so I imagine you'll enjoy it (also unrelated top 3 covers of all time imo).
The Yellow Wallpaper: I struggled with this one. Everyone I respect thinks highly of this book but characters that are as mentally unsound as the main character here I find I can't enjoy cause there's so little to latch on to. Absolutely feel pity for the people that had this sort of life pushed on them when they needed help, but mostly I just felt this uncomfortable horror vibe throughout
The Word for World is Forest: oh my god I freaking love LeGuin. I think you talked about this in a previous video and I might have left a similar comment, but you absolutely need to read more. TWfWiF does indeed capture the talent LeGuin has for describing culture, but it lacks some of the human understanding that she excels at. The earth corporatw army people are one dimensional manifestations of toxic masculinity, and that works for making them villainous, but I didnt remember a character to latch on to? Absolutely check out The Dispossesed or The Left Hand of Darkness for universally loved Leguin. The Dispossed has the more interesting culture imo. But if you liked The Female Man and are interested in gender explored through scifi Left Hand might be good too. She is maybe my favorite author of all time and I really hope ya try some of her justifiably most famous books.
Well, put Elle Cordova / Angela Collier crossover in my most wanted for 2025.
SMBC Comics / Angela Collier crossover for me.
I love to see Emily Dickinson have a wonderful collision with another person's brain. You can read so much and only rarely come across things that are just so resonant for you, that feeling is pure lightning. All you can do is consume it, as quickly as you can, as if otherwise you would lose it or someone might steal it - and then you mourn the loss of getting to experience it for the first time. Very few authors, and even fewer poets, have hit that resonance so perfectly for me.
Yay for John Wyndham! Try Triffids next. Double yay for Ted Chiang! Great stuff. Next read Exhalation. 🙂
I just finished The Left Hand Of Darkness and was completely blown away. It's one of those books that within the first 10 pages made me go from "wtf is going on" to "oh my god this is going to be incredible". It's alien but so human. A book about accepting change and of love and friendship with others who are different. I had to read it twice back to back and I still can't get it out of my head. Very much a winter book.
I just moved on to The Word For World is Forest, only a few pages in and already there are small hints and connections to the larger world that these books live in. I can't believe how long these sat in my shame pile.
Thank you for your reviews and recommendations! I've added quite a few to my list
You're probably one of the very few people who has read Howl's moving castle before watching the Ghibli movie
The overlap between your reading list and the Books Unbound podcast is insane, I love it so much.
what a great 2024 book report, thanks for taking the time to share it with us
28:52 I love Le Guin's novels. I really enjoyed The Dispossessed but it had an odd ending and I feel like you'd get annoyed with her interpretation of physics but it does a really fun narrative choice of switching between moments of the main character's life. I also really enjoyed her book 'Always coming home', if you enjoyed Le Guin's alien world building then you'd really love the novel because it reads almost like a part anthropology book on alien's culture.
If you like Emily Dickinson, and you haven't read them already, be sure to check out Christina Rossetti (poems like Goblin Market), Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and John Keats... she was influenced by all three I believe and their poetry is so beautiful.
Commenting now so I don’t forget, but I’ll delete if you talk about it later:
The second short story collection by Ted Chiang (Exhalation) is even better than the first in my opinion. I am very rarely brought to tears by anything but that book did it. Huge recommend to someone who enjoyed the first one
Exhalation is really good. Highly recommend that one.
Agreed! The Lifecycle of Software Objects alone is one of those stories that feels so true to life that it hurts
It makes me smile to see someone discovering Bitter Southerner.
Also, I hate poetry too, but I love Linda Pastan.
35:28 Mount Eerie (Phil Elverum) released an album last month titled Night Palace (named after the poem) with a song "Writing Poems" on it, whose chorus is simply "A poem only barely says the thing halfway". Highly recommend the album, if you're in the market for new music.
36:35 You've undoubtedly come across it, but Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber is a non-fiction book on the topic that you might enjoy.
38:35 She's also the author of the Moomin novels for kids! Highly recommend for for the young ones in your life. Kids stories with good politics are rare enough, and the Moomin novels are fantastic.
love ted chiang!!! I get why arrival is the one that got turned into a movie but they're all so good!
Based on books you've liked, I'd recommend early Kate Wilhelm, especially "The Infinity Box" her book of short stories from 1975. Some science fiction, some speculative fiction. Also Patrick Süskind's 1985 novel "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" set in 18th century France-- the best prose about smell, and a wonderfully constructed novel
That framed picture of the Argonath on the wall fooled me basically every time. I kept thinking Lord of the Rings was next in the discussion!
I read the first two stories in Rejection and was about to recommend it to a friend before I got busy. Then I read the third one and decided she can find it on her own if she's meant to read it
Age of Innocence is one of my favorite books and your description of “A love triangle between the three worst people” is so spot on I laughed so loud I startled my dog 😂. My favorite kind of story is No Bad Guys (e.g. The Martian) and my second favorite kind of story is No Good Guys (a.k.a. Terrible People Only Hurting Each Other), so this tracks.
I am also newly obsessed with Emily Dickinson. My high school best friend has been trying to get me to read her for a decade and I finally understand why
I'm actually currently rereading Story of Your Life and Others , funnily enough, it's fun seeing which stories I like more or less the second time round. This channel got my back into reading after a long time so thank you for that
Happy New Year! I read "The Message" and "Ghost in the House" because of your videos on them and they were both really good! I'll be sure to check out the rest of the books on your top ten list.
Didn't expect a Elle Cordova surprise appearance. They're great, even if they make me feel lyrically challenged.
Here I am failing to put together a simple youtube comment lol
37:08 my favorite poem collection I read this year was “All the Flowers Kneeling” by Paul Tran
My favorite Le Guin novel from the same universe as "The Word for World is Forest" is The Dispossessed but The Left Hand of Darkness might be the best.
I hope you continue to enjoy her work!
I'm not a fan of poetry, but did enjoy the collected poems of Philip Larkin. I'm not sure if you have to be English to enjoy them, but it probably helps. I also do like Orwell's 'non-fiction' more than his fictionl Down & out, and Wigan Pier are great.
Olga Tokarczuk is pronounced like you did it except the ending is "chook" (cz=ch, u=oo). She won the nobel prize for something entirely different which is much more dense and very historical and i don't think you'd like it. But this one (drive your plough) is great, I read it in high school and loved it. It's an ecological murder mystery! And yes poland is cold in winter but not that cold that's just what americans think hahah
I am someone who doesn't like most poetry but I really love the things I love. I would definitely recommend:
Sylvia Plath
Philip Levine
W.B. Yeats
T.S. Eliot
Wallace Stevens (esp. the early stuff)
Ai
Dylan Thomas
Thanks, and Good Luck!
I never understood why someone would buy a bunch of books impulsively, and then I discovered that a library within walking distance of me has 25¢ to 1$ books about a month ago and I have already gotten 3 feet of books...
If you haven’t seen the 84 Charing Cross Road movie it’s delightful. Ann bancroft as Helene I think.
I love James Baldwin, I feel like any time I read or listen to him talk about ANYthing, I come away with some insight or some perspective that just sticks with me. Can't recommend them enough.
I like Octavia Butler books! I read Imago and Adulthood Rites. Very good!
a canticle for liebowitz was on my upcoming read list...and I missed your dedicated video to it...but thanks for letting me know its a possibility.
I really, really liked The Last Samurai for the mother's sections (less enthusiastic for the kid's part) and found it super interesting how the book does with language as the character suggests they should do. That's fun.
Oh and I'm a fan of Ben Lerner's criticism and his stories but not his poetry, for what that's worth
I've read 1000s of books in my life, and it's refreshing to hear someone else say "I don't remember a thing about this one."
Crazy how The Word for World Is Forest is one of Le Guin's weaker novels, and it's still so good. She was an incredible writer
I strongly recommend Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son." It's a powerful and lucid gut punch.
Loving the range of descriptions. Going from super detailed several minutes discussion to "He has a mustache that he shaves and people tell him he never had a mustache" and "They wear uniforms and sign up for sex time" 💀
i have two recommendations for you: this woman's work by julie deporte. the author attempts to write an biography about tove janson. Alison by lizzy stweart. a small town woman marries an older man and then goes to London to become an artist and is surrounded by disappointing men. both are graphic novels.
some great stuff, Grendel, The Chrysalid, Dickinson's work. I enjoyed Big Swiss, but I guess more so because I don't dabble too much in that genre. I usually read pulp, horror and scifi with some historical fiction
The only self help book you will ever need. “Stop fixing yourself”
I like the notion of hating reading self help books, doing so anyway, to a degree that some might describe as self harm and not even remembering anything but the most cursory elements of the self help books. And then, pièce de résistance, it was a library book.
Absolutely slathered in irony. None more ironic.
Ooh I love Olga Tokarczuk. "Cz" in Polish, and other Slavic languages that use the roman alphabet, is pronounced "ch". So it's pronounced like to-kar-chook, rhyming with shook. Drive Your Plow is very good and very wintery. I asked for The Books of Jacob for Christmas but am nervous because it's massive.
Really enjoy your book videos. I’ll get around to reading some of your recommendations eventually!
If you want to read more Octavia Butler, the Xenogenesis trilogy is very good. Very short, breezy reads, and very thought provoking about colonialism, sexuality, gender, even like bodily and political autonomy. Dawn was my favorite of the three, Adulthood Rites is very good also. Imago was the weakest to me.
If you're newly interested in poetry, check out "Life on Mars" by Tracy K Smith and "Twice Alive" by Forrest Gander- they're both contemporary collections by highbrow literary poets that use science topics as thematic framing devices (astronomy and mycology respectively).
Also, "The Ecopoetry Anthology" ed. by Fisher-Wirth and Street is my favorite anthology of the past decade- a really exceptional overview of the ecopoetry niche, which is both extremely timely and wonderful reading.
The left hand of darkness is a perfect winter read. I hate seeing gaiman on all my Le guin books as well 😵💫
this video is so quiet my speakers are humming because of how loud i need to raise the volume
I think you might like A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. It's a nice, fairly cozy, short book set hundreds of years after a robot uprising that wasn't an apocalypse.
I want to shout out Charles Gonzo Dickens. Best adaptation on film.
I highly recommend Virginia Wolfe's first novel. To me its her best. A Voyage Out. I think you'll enjoy it more than the others.
I Read "Insulin" and "A Canticle for Leibowitz" based on your recommendations and really enjoyed both of them. Thank you for all the effort you put into your videos.
May the somewhat radioactive virgin Mary/Jesus homunculus bless you at this festive time of year 😂.
I just read the first story in Rejection and i feel worryingly similar to the main character in some ways.
I was chuckling at you skipping a kink scene, and then I paused to read the pic myself and was like "holy shit yeah I'd skip that too" lol
Rejection: Fiction is a ludicrous book, I loved it
If you haven't read it yet and want to add another Nobel Price winning book to your list winter reading list, i highly recommend, Independent People by Halldór Laxness. From wikipedia summery: it deals with the struggle of poor Icelandic farmers in the early 20th century, only freed from debt bondage in the last generation, and surviving on isolated crofts in an inhospitable landscape.
do you keep a goodreads acct / would you be willing to let us follow it? would be fun to be able to see the reads as the year goes and be able to read them before the video, like a mini parasocial book club
I read Ehrenreich's "Nickled and Dimed" some number of years ago and thought it was quite good.
PERSEPOLIS AND WORD FOR WORLD LETS GOOOOO
Have you read the three "The Science of Discworld" books? I've not seen other pop science books structured in the same way. And you get a neat Terry Pratchett story along the way. I guess the science chapters are outdated, but its sort of a window in time.
I like that you actually ended up with a sizable donation pile. - Thanks for this review - I think that many of us should review our year in many aspects, books, movies, tv series, whisky.. :} - cheers
1:05:35 Wow, that really is...something. Does the chapter start with "I put on my robe and wizard hat"?
Nice end of year wrap up!
It motivates me to read more.
Based on your feedback I have the feeling you might enjoy "Piranesi" by Susanna Clarke. I really enjoyed it!
Also hate garbage print on demand. The last one I got didn’t even have the title on the spine. Chrissakes
I love your channel because I can get the takedown from authority that String Theory has needed for us plebes for a long time and then I can get booktube but I will say that it breaks my pretentious heart that you didn't absolutely love Mrs. Dalloway.
I do think To the LightHouse is my favorite tho, so maybe give that one a try!
pretention redemption! You read and loved Grendel!
great, fun video! commenting for the algo, and also because I love Tove Jansson - you may know her better for the Moomin characters and books - she wrote and drew them. T. Kingfisher (pseudonym for Ursula Vernon, a.k.a Red Wombat) has a comic series, which she made available free on the web, called Digger, about a lady wombat mining engineer who by mistake digs a tunnel to the other side of the world. I've read some short pieces that a re brilliant, but indeed her writing style can get a bit too much on a longer scale. I have a similar problem with Stephen King. I've tried, and tried; he's writing style kicks me out of the book. I haven't managed to finish even one of his books (films made on his books are great, so it's no the plot or the stories, it's his writing).
You mentioned Lonesome Dove. Larry McMurtry is one of my favourites and his writing is very cinematographic. You could give a go to some Elmore Leonard, a writer who also adapted a lot of his books to film and where Larry McMurtry takes a good bit of inspiration for his form (and also Tarantino among others, very similar in their dialogues). Jackie Brown and Get Shorty are two good examples of Leonard and among the few cases where you can watch the movies and read the books, and they're both great in their own way.
"Like you're 85, you're going to die in the next 5 years..."
Maybe it's a good things that she's not that kind of doctor
Rec: read Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. It's short, well-written, and a classic. Thanks for the video!
9:56 you've gotta read The Left Hand of Darkness
Edit: 1:08:29 oh shoot, nvm
dickinson is truly the american poet. no one else has done it like her!
Please please someone tell me which rendition of Auld Lang Sign plays at the end. Its wonderful and I need it in my rotation!
Angela reads 100+ books a year and complains about not reading enough. Happy New Year. 🎉
On Weight: "I didn't like it. I'm not gonna read it again. I don't even have anything to say about it."
So yeah I'll donate it and probably buy it to read it again.
wut
Persepolis is great, you have to read the other book, and see the movie (assuming you haven't yet). It should've won the Oscar over Ratatouille.
Your reading volume is astonishing.
audio seems low
I highly recommend Tombs of Atuan by Le Quin. It’s part of the Earthsea series but in my opinion you don’t have to read the first book to understand her second.
Good god, are you actually allergic to short videos? Now I have to sit and watch this for over an hour because everything you talk about seems captivating even when I have no idea what it means.
If you want to get into poetry more in 2025, I will never not recommend Amy Clampitt! She's criminally underlooked, and harks to the wonderful mellifluous poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins with a tremendously subdued and sober joy. Also Sylvia Legris, because science poetry rocks!
Merry Christmas Angela.
Have you read Children of Time? You might like it
And This is how you lose the time war
I don't understand the concept of buying books ... that are not then with you until the universe freezes. 😅
I read of mice and men this year too 😢
Also, Emily Dickinson rules!
LIKE ET'S FINGERTIP!?
Glowing like E.T's finger tip BAHAHAHAHAHAAA holy crap this author was on something else entirely holy moly 😂
I am 253rd on the NYPL hold line for Orbital 0:57:16 I wonder if I get it before Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus. 17 vs 16 weeks I’m 485th for Nexus.