May Book Report

It is that time of the month again where I get to talk all things books once again.

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Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Let's Talk podcast. My name is Hannah Covington, and today we are back with another book report episode. Yes, I am gonna keep doing what I did with April because I feel that I explain the books I read much better after I finish a book, and I'm gonna keep doing it that way because I feel like I remember books way better when I first finish a book than recording an episode at the end of the month. And I'm like wondering, do I still remember this book? That's always running through my head. And I feel since I have started working on the April episode, but this will come out in the beginning of June, and you'll be like wondering why am I bringing this up? Well, I want to explain the editing process, and that is why is I was editing and I was like, man, I did a much better job explaining the books every time I would do small recording sessions after I finished a book. I hope to I hope you appreciated that episode because it will be out way before this episode comes out. So I hope you appreciate that episode. But what types of books do I plan to read for this month? Because I'm gonna do a little book talk before I dive into the first book I read and let's talk about what is my plan for this month. I plan to read mostly singleton books, hopefully, because I have a lot of singleton books that still need to be read before summer starts that are paperback, because my plan is to get caught up on my paperback so I have more digital books to read by the pool or the beach this summer, whatever water places I will be going to this summer because I don't like taking real books near water. That is one of those things I've learned over the years is it kind of freaks me out when people take books to the pool or the beach or the lake. I don't know how people do it. I guess that is one of my pet peeves people do with books, and that's why I think Kindles are great and we're embedded for that reason. Same with the books app on iPad and the Kindle app on iPad and iPhone. But yes, I kind of want to get caught up on some of my physical books as my plan that have been sitting around for years. I have a few I need to get through that are also connected through on my Audible app that I need to get through because I am making progress on how many audible books I have not listened to, which I am also planning on listening to an Audible book as well, because I have a long road trip coming up this month as well. So I will be listening to that book and I will be giving my thoughts on that book once I get back from that trip. So it will be very exciting to see what book I picked. Will it be a short one or one I listen to on the way up and back? We'll have to wait and see. We'll see. Will I start another book series this month? If I get caught up on my singleton books, possibly I do have a seri I have a couple series I kind of want to read on my Kindle that I want to read. One of them being the Hunger Game series, the powerless series. There's also another series I've been I was given the first copy of, and I think I'd finish the books on Kindle that I want to read. I possibly might also start the process of rereading Fourth Wing, the first two books for a third time, and the third book for a fourth time before the launch of another in-between book that's coming out between September, October range. So I have a list of books to get through between this month and July that I want to get through. Because if I get caught up on my books, we might be going on a shopping spree for books, either on Kindle or real books. I don't know. And will I keep any of the books I have read? We'll have to wait and see. Do I see myself buying any type of books this month? No. If I had any money that was supposed to go towards books, I spend it towards records and other things. Like I have several memberships I pay for. I also try to get my car washed once a month. So yeah, it went to other things. I might see myself buying some books once I get a bigger amount of money. I that's all I'm gonna comment on that. So let's dive into the first book I read. I thought I'd be probably into my sec finishing my second book by this point, but that is not what happened. I finally finished a book that I started the last couple days of was it April? If I look at my log of books I've been logging. Yeah, I how many days are in April? Yeah, the last two days of April that I started. I finally finished that book. I was so finally excited of finishing this book because I had many points while in the middle of this book where I wanted to DNF this book, by the way. I really didn't think I would finish this book because of the fact that it had a lot of dull moments. And the name of this book that I had very much trouble finishing was Ribbons of Scarlet, which was written by several different authors throughout the book. I don't know how to describe this book, and I want to dive into what points of this book do I want to address because I have a lot of thoughts on this book. Because I feel like this book was it wasn't written like a true chapter book, and that it was more of a short story form in that it was chunked by parts. It was six parts, if I remember off the top of my head, I vaguely remember stuff when trying to get through finishing a book. When did I start reading this book? April 29th. So a couple days before the end of April. I was thinking I could finish a 500-page book before the end of April and get four books read before the end of April. Yeah, that was wise planning on me. Yeah, that was not smart, but I did read it on my Kindle because it was one of my Kindle books. I'm trying to go in between real book and Kindle books, trying to get a flow of reading on a Kindle and then reading a paper book. Because people do go back and forth in the world hobby of reading and trying to get my feel as per se. What do I think of the time period of this book? Y'all are probably r wondering what the time period is of this lovely story, which is it takes place in France during the French Revolution, years before Nap Napoleon Bonaparte or Bonaparte, I'm trying to get my words straight, became a big known name in France. It was from before King Louis XVI was executed to after King Louis was executed in the years following his execution, which was quite interesting. So I would say between 1786 to almost the 1800s is my solid guess, or hint into the 1800s, and the French Revolution was not pretty, and I feel like I gained a lot of knowledge of what actually went on during the French Revolution. Not something I thought I would read, and I read it. What do I think of the layout of the book? I wish it had been more chapter style, is the one thing I would wish they had done with this be book because I think it would have flowed better if it was chapters. Because just like giving, oh, here's a short story that is two hours along, I'm like, people don't have two hours to sit still and read a book. I know I don't. I don't think the normal person does unless they are on a two-hour drive and want to kill some time to read this book, then yeah, that's totally fine. But nobody's gonna sit for two hours to read just one chunk. And if people were assigning it by chunk for even schooling, that would have also been impossible, in my opinion, when it could have been chunked even more in my eyes. Even one chunk was, I think, about three hours long, and I'm like, that's impossible to read. You could chunk that by hour or even pages. Like, which short story was my favorite? Oh, that's hard. I would say my favorite was the perspective in the royal family, which was the short story of King Louis's sister, Princess Elizabeth. Because I didn't even know King Louis had siblings, like it's never really brought up in the history classes when you take world history classes, classes. You just hear, oh, King Louis did this and this, and this is why the French Revolution happened. You never hear about his siblings and how they were as humans. And and the first short story kind of hinted at Princess Elizabeth being a kind, sweet woman, and how she was very easy to talk to, but then you really get to know her in another short story and learn the struggles she had and what and her feelings about being stuck in the castle they had in Paris and not being able to leave it and hating to be a prisoner because of the revolution, and that she did nothing wrong, and all she wanted was to be a nun. That's all she wanted. She didn't want to be a princess, she wanted to be a nun and give her life to other people. She liked the nice things she got as a princess, but she preferred being a nun. That's actually what she wanted to do with her life, and it is brought up during that section. But she was forced to be a princess because her brother, her oldest brother, was king. See, if I had to pick another one other than Princess Elizabeth, there was another one named Emily, which was the last section before you hit the epilogue, and she tells her story because she was well known as well as the most beautiful girl in all of Paris. Everybody wanted her. She had some struggles during the French Revolution, and it led to her getting her head guillotineed. She was killed during the French Revolution just for what her parents believed is what led to her death. There were many points when I was reading this story that I felt that it reminded me of LeMiz. And if you haven't seen Le Miz, you don't know what I'm talking about. Either if you read the book or seen the musical or the musical movie, you don't get what I'm saying because it felt like it was almost playing off of Le Miz a little bit, and then really just using real historical figures from that time from the female perspective that I found very interesting. I did not go in and read all the details about these women because I was more interested in the storyline. I wish I had read about that, but this is not a history podcast, and I'm not gonna go into that. But the thing about the story I found very interesting is most of the women who had voices seemed to end up in jail, is what I found out, and got killed. And I find that very sad. It's the best way I can put it is if you had a voice during the French Revolution and you were a female, there's a solid chance you were getting thrown in jail and were gonna be killed. So many women lost their lives during the French Revolution French Revolution from not being able to get food to just what they would say, which broke my heart. I didn't realize how many of the upper class got thrown in jail and killed. Some of them were pretty much innocent in why they got arrested and killed was because of their parents, is how I'm finding this out after reading this story. My eyes were pretty much open after reading this story about the French Revolution. Now, is it a book I'm gonna read again? Probably not. It was not my cup of tea. I actually gave this book two stars on Goodreads because I did not much care for this story. It would have gotten more stars if I could have read it faster and have found it more interesting. But that is why it got two stars. Because most of the books I read get three to five star range, but this is the lowest book I've read. I guess it's the woman. Yeah, that sounds about right. Another point I wanted to bring up before I finish talking about the Scarlet Letter is the fact of why did the book start and end with a certain character named Sophie? And why is this important? Sophie was the first short story you read that is three hours long or a hint over three hours, and she has a very interesting story because of number one, her uncle, uncle or great uncle was a lawyer in France right before the revolution hit, and she is one of those kind of free-spirited women of the upper class that doesn't want to marry, she wants to become a lawyer just like her uncle. She just that's what she wants to do. Her parents don't approve of it, they want her to marry. She feels that marriage is not the perfect thing for her, vice versa. And then she marries a very big name philosopher, is the best way I could describe him, Condorcet. They meet meet in an event her uncle takes her to, even though Sophie is crushing on Lafayette at the time, would wish to marry him, but sadly she does not marry him, and then marries Condorcet because both her and Condorcet really didn't want to marry, they just married to please some people, is what you find out. And then by the end of the book, you find out they have to divorce because of Condorcet does not want to drag her to jail, he they don't want to orphan their one child they had, and Condorcet doesn't want her to go through the same thing he's going through, is what you find out, and the epilogue is 10 years after all this craziness has kind of died down and is ramping up to Napoleon becoming the head person of France because Sophie gets introduced to Napoleon at an event where her daughter is coming of age to be introduced to society, is how the book ends. And one of the people who also gets brought up during the epilogue that we were introduced to at the beginning of the book is Lafayette Lafayette. Lafayette survived and is also at this event with his daughter, who has come of age to be introduced to society. So yes, we have entered that phase of where we where she has a daughter of age entering society and he has a daughter of age entering society. So it's kind of come f full circle that they both survived, even though one of them went to jail and the other did not. In that it looks like they survived it. But they don't have a crush on each other anymore like they did before. Which I find very also interesting as well. It's interesting, you can have a crush on one person as a younger person and be changed after a big event that happened in your country, and I feel that she handled it very well. And I will be back to give my thoughts on my second book pick of the month after I have finished the book, and I will be just right back. And I am back because I have finished a book or I have had a book finished for a couple days now, but I was out on the road when I finished this book because I said I would be back after I finished a book. I was hoping to finish this book before I went out of town for a couple days, but sadly I finished the book on the road. Thank you, audiobooks. You are a complete lifesaver, and I don't know what I would do without my Audible account at times because Lord that saves me when trying to find books, and I do a lot of audiobooks and books together, which is really, really good for me because I feel that I'm almost more immersed in a story than if I was just listening to a book or just straight reading a book. I have noticed over the last couple of years, and I've tried to work with doing more immersive reading. I know some people are not a fan of that, but I feel more connected to books if I do that, especially with historical reading, or I have a story with a lot of talking, it's so much help. And I will have another book that I'm currently working on. I don't know if I'm going to talk about it, or I will do just the smallest brief talk on it because I don't know how people feel about historical books in a pop culture podcast. So I was just encouraged to read a historical book because America's 250th birthday is coming up pretty soon. Should I do an episode on how the US is partaking in celebrating this 250th birthday? I'm thinking on it, so stay tuned for a different episode. I love to give teasers during my podcast. But the last book I finished while on the road, like I was so close to being finished with it, and it was also a book. Picked out by one of the today show hosts a couple years ago, and I'm just now getting to it. Was The Last Romantics, and it is 350 something pages long, if I am correct. Uh please don't take that seriously. I'm looking on my Goodreads. It says it's 384. I think it was 350, if I am remembering correctly. Who knows? But I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a very good soft read to have for a singleton book. Never knew it was one of those books. I was kind of iffy when I bought it a couple years ago, and that's why I put off reading it for so long. And that is why it took me this long to read it. I bought it back in college. Thought, oh, I'm never gonna read it. It's just gonna be one of those back burner books. But since I'm trying to get through a lot of books between my Kindle and my physical TBR, is that what people are calling it? I'm trying to get into the book knowledge world. I'm hoping I'm saying this correctly. So I'm I'm trying to get this book social media lingo. I think I got it. I hope I do. And the first thing I am gonna mention about this book was what do I think about the introduction? Okay, this introduction I found interesting because it went back and forth between like the past and the future, which was 2079. The main author of the story is right at 100 years old or close to 100 years old, and she is telling the story of her family of how the siblings were close and then they weren't, if I'm understanding this correctly. Yes, it's a story of four siblings and how they grew together after their father passed away suddenly when they were kids. Their father was a dentist and he passed away just working on someone one day is what happened, and they grew up on through their father's death and knew they needed to stay strong together, even though they grew apart at times throughout the whole story, from the brother not making smart decisions to the career the youngest sibling had. She was more of a she kind of worked for a very out there writing company, is the best way I could describe it. Was like a grassroots company, is the best way I could describe it. And so the introduction is her coming to this scene, being recognized for her poetry work, and someone literally asked the question of who is Luna, and she goes back to the story that led to Luna, which I think is a is the main part of the book, which I think is an interesting story, is the whole story was started based on this one question that was asked from an audience member. And you also wonder with this one audience member halfway through the book as well of is this one audience member related to Luna? That was one thought I had running through my head after I gotten through a certain part of the book. Certain thoughts come up as you read, so that was one of my thoughts. And what are my thoughts on the four siblings? Okay, the siblings. They are a quirky bunch of siblings, and I wouldn't have thought this out of a set of siblings. There's the one that's very serious, knew what she wanted to do in life, and did what she wanted to do in life, to the one that wanted to do the normal old school ways of what was expected out of a female. Like for modern day, she thought she didn't need to go to college, and that the only thing that was required of her was to marry and have kids. Then you had the brother who was destined to be a star athlete, athlete, kind of destroyed his life athletic-wise, and went a different route, working in an interesting job route. And then you have the youngest sibling who is a liberal kind of writer, is the best way I could describe it, still trying to find her way with writing. She started an interesting blog, which some of her siblings did not agree with. That you find out throughout the book, even though she was doing it as a way to find herself, because her poetry in writing was getting nowhere when she was in college. And someone recommended, hey, I think you should do this instead, and it kind of grew her writing, even though her siblings did not agree, and also the oldest sibling became a doctor and would later on in life actually have a kid after being donated uh eggs from a patient who died from a very sickly disease, which was really cool. Who is my favorite sibling of the story after reading the whole book? That is very hard because you almost like all the siblings at some point during the whole story, but I'm honestly going to say I liked the youngest, which was Fiona, because number one, she was she was just living in the shadows of her siblings, which was very sad because at points her sibling older siblings were having a life while she was just sitting in the background. Like she really didn't have friends after her siblings got to a certain age, they just moved on with their life and kind of left her behind. And it's like you feel bad for her, she didn't know how to do stuff, and I think that's why she was so dependent on them for such a long time and couldn't settle down, is because she was so dependent on her siblings until her siblings kind of is like were done with her after a certain point after the brother had passed away, unexpectedly, like the father did. Well, there was there were some things that led to the brother's death. Let's be real. If you read the book, you would know what I'm talking about. The brother did not make some smart decisions in his life. I don't want to go into details because I want to encourage you to read this book, it's a very interesting book, and when you don't get to like create these friendships and bonds with people, how are you supposed to grow as a person? And I don't think she had that opportunity, and I think that's why she was so dependent on the siblings, and also why I think I liked her was she was such a creative soul, and the other siblings were not as creative, and that might be because I'm a creative soul and I like being creative, and that's why I liked her. What is the pause? The pause is brought up numerous times throughout the whole story. It was a good chunk of the book for like I think the first section of the book, because the author was contemplating of how long was the pause in reality? Because they never really settled on a year, because the mom would argue it was a certain amount of years, while the siblings were like, No, it was this many years, and there were times you saw throughout the book where the mom would argue with her kids about oh, this didn't happen when really it did. Because during the pause, you would learn about how one of the middle siblings would learn how to technically bake. It was after the brother died, and it was right before she divorced her husband of a long time about the fact of she learned to make her brother's favorite dessert, and the mom said, I never taught you how to make it. Well, she learned how to make it herself, and the mom was never around to watch her make it, which was pretty dang sad, and it made the mom realize how much she missed out on because the mom was so depressed from the father's death that the pause was mainly the fact of the mom was depressed for X amount of years, and the kids had to learn to bond and learn how to take care of each other, which it was amazing what they had to do deal with, and how many many people stepped up and helped them at times because the mom was so depressed until a certain family member came in and woke her from her depression and said, Hey, you gotta take care of these kids. What did I think of the chapter in Renee's perspective? Well, each chapter kind of had some perspectives of each of the siblings to a degree other than Renee. I just I think found Renee's the most interesting because Renee is a doctor, she's living her life, and her life kind of is uprooted to a degree when she meets the guy of her dreams that she lives most of her life with, up until a certain point, and they break up for a certain reason. I kind of don't want to spoil the book, and then they get back together in the end, but it took a lot of time because you really don't hear about what happens behind closed doors of a doctor's mind, because you only hear about oh, it's a long process in becoming a doctor, and then you hear how Renee's experience as a doctor's training was while dealing with a brother who made some poor decisions to how she met her her boyfriend of a very long time, to Caroline's perspective of how she was as a stay-at-home mom, and how her cup wasn't being filled after a certain point after the brother died, and she felt that she was almost going into that depression hole, and she got saved, and her ex-husband asked her the question that needed to be asked of what made her hurt, which was very interesting. It's like those are the questions we don't ask when you're not doing well mentally, and addressed some very serious issues, and then another thing I wrote down was who is considered the last romantic? Why I'm bringing this up was nobody really knew who the last romantic is, other than the person writing it, which was Fiona. And Fiona hid her identity because she didn't want to be criticized, she just wanted to grow her writing style, and in order to do that, she had to hide her identity. And how you hide your identity is you just make this column that is written by a random person. I don't know how she got away with it, but she did, which was very interesting. I wrote something after that, and I'm like, what was that? And I'm like, I'm not gonna talk about it because I don't remember it. Because when you're recording stuff days after you finish the book, you're like, what was that? Okay, but yeah, the last romantic was Fiona, and Fiona didn't want to share her identity with her siblings, and she has a right to not want to share that with her siblings, because she was afraid of being criticized while growing herself as a writer, and she has every right to do that because we all have to make very conscious decisions when it comes to our writing or our creativity, even if people do not agree with it, and it's some of the sometimes the hardest decision in how she came up with the idea of the last romantic was she was in college and her writing wasn't getting anywhere, as I had mentioned earlier, and the instructor said, Why don't you create create a blog? Not a vlog, a blog, and write about something that interests you, and that is actually how her writing grew that led to her writing a poem book years down the road, which was really cool. And another thing I want to mention before wrapping up this portion of the book is the fact of who is Luna, because that is like the main question throughout the whole story was who is Luna? Luna was the last lover of her brother. Meaning Luna was the last per person that loved her brother before he died, and they're trying to get something to her after his death. Some of the siblings want to blame Luna for her brother's death when it was a natural cause that led to her brother's death, and in the end, you they do find Luna years later, and that Luna had moved on, moved to a different state, married someone else, and had kids with him. And Fiona, because Fiona's the one that actually gives her the ring years down the road, and Fiona is able to have a conversation with Luna, and Luna was glad to meet Fiona out of all three of the sisters, because one sister was not the best. I don't know the feelings about the middle sister, like they really didn't go into details, but Renee left a negative impact, whereas Luna was okay with talking with Fiona, which is the youngest sibling, and Fiona had mixed feelings about meet up with Luna, and Luna had the same feelings as well, but they did it because, for the sake of that's what the brother wanted was closure. Was he actually close to introducing Luna to his three sisters and his mother, never got to, and Luna fulfilled his wish of doing that, and then you later learn right right before Fiona leaves Luna's house is the fact of Luna did have a child with her brother. It was one of those things that Luna found out after her brother's death, and Fiona never tells her siblings that Luna had a child with the brother, she feels like it's not important, and I think that also played a big role role in the story as well, because I think the person asking of who Luna was might be related possibly to Fiona. We will never know, but I feel that she answered the question very well, as best she could. It's hard to ask answer some questions that get asked of who's this, who's that? And I feel that Fiona answered it as best as she could. And this story was a very interesting story. I would highly recommend this book. But I will be back with possibly another book. I don't know if I'm I'm gonna talk about my third book. We will see, but I will be back with another part of what I'm reading. It might be a smaller section because it is a history book, and I don't know if I want to share history on a pop culture podcast. And I am back to talk about the history book. Well, I don't know if I want to talk about this history book that I have finished. I literally finished it. What day did I finish it? It was let me look at my notes because I keep a note on when I finish books. I finished the book on the 30th that I was reading that I said I might talk about. Well, I'm too scared to talk about it because it's a very controversial topic. I don't know how people would feel about me talking about this book. And why I was wanting to read this book was when I was in St. Louis, we went through the museum, which is at the bottom of the arch, Saint St. Louis Arch, that is very famous, which I talked about in my St. Louis episode, which caught my interest of reading this book, and that's why I read it. I really don't want to go into details about that book because it might cause some very controversial stuff because it's very eye-opening, and what the topic is on is very eye-opening. I don't want to draw people away because of this topic, but I learned a lot from that book when I was reading it. I read it in a week and a day or a week and two days. I was wanting to read it much faster, but there were certain sections of the book I had to rewind and reread because of where I was and how I wanted to know if I was listening to it correctly. But it opened my eyes to a lot of things when I have talked to people about this book. By the by the way, I'm I think if you're a history nerd, you need to learn the true aspects of history, is all I'm gonna get at. I'm just it's not pop culture related and doesn't need to be mentioned in this podcast. I wish I could talk about it, but this is a pop culture podcast, and I'm gonna read more pop culture books and go into more detail, is my decision I made. That's why it has taken me a while to record this section of the podcast. Is I had to really think about what am I gonna say about this book to wrap up the month of May's book talk. Because people are probably wondering, are you gonna talk about it? Are you not gonna talk about it? Well, I decided I'm really not gonna talk about it because it's not pop culture related. Some people can debate me on this topic, but that is what I have decided on. Is I'm not gonna focus on history in a pop culture unless it comes relevant, then I might in the near future. But at the current moment, I am not because I want to keep this podcast very pop culture based, which means if I'm gonna read anything historical and talk about it, it will probably be about celebrities. So I hope you have enjoyed this May report. I was hoping to read more. I was working on a fourth book, thought I could finish it in a two-day span, which did not happen. My body was like, yeah, no, and gave me a pretty gnarly headache, which meant I couldn't finish it in a two-day span. And it wasn't like that many hours either. Like it was like I think an 11 something almost 12-hour book, and I could have read it because Saturday uh I stopped at two hours and something, and I'm like, I should have just thrown the audiobook on and kept listening because I could have gotten way farther. But oh well, I will probably be talking about this book in June now, but it is gonna be a really good book to talk about. I'm just fair warning. So I hope you have enjoyed my reads for May. I'm trying to work on reading four books in May. I was thinking I would actually accomplish it, but I had a book that made it very lagging. That is that happens in the real world of book readers, is you get a book and it takes you forever to read, whereas sometimes some books you can read in one sitting, like the trend coming right now. I don't know if if you've seen this, I'm gonna mention this before I end this podcast. If you have seen where people have been reading it in one sitting, I think that is crazy. So uh, you know, it'll be very interesting. Thoughts of people who are listening, of if you've seen people who have been reading the book It in One Sitting, I don't think I could do that. That would probably be a two-week spam for me. So I hope you have enjoyed this episode. I will see you next month for the book report for June. Bye.