Holiday Adventure-a-Thon Wrap-up | Vlogmas #holidaypenguin

Video: https://youtu.be/-jQIylS2j5w

Hello, and welcome to Vlogmas day 23. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you will know that I succeeded in my goal of finishing all of my seven holiday readathon books on the 23rd. Yes, technically the Holiday Adventure-a-thon ends on the 24th, not the 23rd, but I wanted to finish on the 23rd. That way, I could do a wrap-up for Vlogmas on the 24th. I decided I wanted to try a different style for this post/video. It’ll read more like a diary of sorts. See what I did get, and I’ll meet you after that.

The Holiday Adventure-a-thon started last night, and I thought okay, I’ll at least start one book. Just start. At midnight on the dot, PST (my time). So, fine, I started Cinder. Um… I couldn’t stop reading. I finished it in four hours. I didn’t stop, so 4 AM was when I finally went to bed. Definitely a must-read. I am getting the other books in the series, for sure. Warning! This is a series, so if you don’t want to get sucked into reading a series, don’t start this any time soon. But read it. Read it.

The second book I’ve started reading: Silver Sparrow. It’s still day one, so right now, I am not worried, because one book is finished. I’m already starting the second book, so we’ll see how the rest goes.

I just finished Silver Sparrow and… It was okay. Not… Oh, must read! But not a lousy book. Just…okay. Just, the writing is really strange, so. It wasn’t hard to read, just that it jumped around a lot. Now to decide which book to read. Probably will be Ramona Blue, but I’m going to leave that until tomorrow because I’m going to bed.

My third read is indeed Ramona Blue. I’m excited to read this, I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, so yay!

Just finished Ramona Blue, and I LOVE IT. I can’t wait to re-read it. It’s a very good story of exploration of identity, who you are, and queer representation. Oh, the queer representation in this book is fantastic! I’m going to bed now, and I still haven’t really decided what my next read will be, but probably my book that I got as a gift, The Last Lecture, just because I’m ehh about reading it, so I’m going to get that out of the way so I have the good books left.

Right now, I’m doing the captions for Vlogmas day 22. And it’s night. I have only finished like the first fifteen pages of my second-to-last book, Personal. So… Will I finish that AND Curious Incident by tomorrow so I can do Vlogmas day 23? I don’t know. Fingers crossed, we’ll see.

Finished! Now straight into the next one, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

I finished my book at–what time is it now? I don’t have a clock. Hold on. I did it! I did it! Yes! I did it! 9:53PM, I finished all seven books for the holiday readathon!

I’m going to go through them really quick, and let you know what I thought about them

Cinder. Amazing. Everyone needs to read this. Seriously. This is a Cinderella re-telling, and oh… I am in love! A fairy tale, but it’s set in the future, in a sci-fi world. It’s beautiful. Read it.

Silver Sparrow. This, I got by chance. The blurb seemed interesting, so I grabbed it and… Okay. Not what I was expecting. It’s not terrible, but it’s also not my kind of book, so… This book is about two families, both have a mother and daughter. They share the same father. One family knows about the other. One doesn’t know about the other. That’s the basic story. That’s all I’m going to say about it, so moving on!

Ramona Blue. I LOVE THIS! It’s so beautiful. This has amazing queer representation in it, and– It has a character that’s confused, struggling with their identity, trying to figure out who she is, and this is a story that applies to a lot of queer youth. So I think the fact that it’s in a story is fantastic.

The Last Lecture. I was really skeptical about this book, because I knew nothing about it. And it was a gift from work, so I was like ehh, I don’t know if it will be any good. Reading it, oh. Wow. Okay, I’m actually…touched. I laughed at a lot of parts, but I also teared up at some parts. I would recommend reading it, yes. Do it.

Close Range, Wyoming Stories. Okay. Half of the book I really liked. The other half, I was like… What? It’s a really interesting mix of short stories, all set in Wyoming. I don’t know how to describe it, but yeah, it’s really interesting. Oh, and you know the movie, Brokeback Mountain? That movie is based on a short story in this. So… Though I want to be clear, that is the only queer story in this book. Just so you know.

Personal. A Jack Reacher novel, this is #16 or something, I think. And… *shrugs* I generally like Lee Child, and Jack Reacher, I do like. But this one, I… I wasn’t… I read it, but I wasn’t really sucked into it, so… It’s okay. But it’s not great either.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. This was not what I expected at all. But I really liked the book. The main character is autistic, and this is written from his point of view, how he experiences the world, and all of that. I know nothing about the author, what his experiences are with autistic people, or if he is autistic, I have no idea. But without knowing that information, this book is good. I really enjoyed reading it. If you know more specifics about that information, let me know below. Apart from that, I enjoyed this book, it was really unexpected. In a good way.

That was a rapid-fire review of seven books in eleven days. Have you read any of these? What do you think of them? Let me know in the comments below. And that’s it for today.

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