Video: https://youtu.be/qLSgzj45Ozk
We have eleven books for this wrap up, so let’s get rolling!
Hello and welcome to my March books wrap-up. Like I already said, I read eleven books this month, so I’m not going to spend too much time on each one. This month, I had a LOT of e-books from the library.
The first book I finished this month: The Explorers Guild. It’s beautiful! I mean, look at it! The inside of the jacket and the endpages too! Oh… So beautiful. It’s a very interesting story. This one is called Volume 1, but I don’t know if there will be a second one. It seems like there won’t be another one. Who knows? Maybe they’re just taking a while to write it. The Explorers Guild is basically a story about a secret organization that has members all over the world, and to get into this guild, you have to have done a big achievement in travel. 
This is set in around 1910. It continues for a few years. What’s really interesting about this book is that it’s not just text. It mixes that with comics. What it does is that it will tell the story through both text and through pictures. However, the pictures don’t tell the same story. No, it picks up where the text stops and the text picks up where the pictures stop. 
Sometimes the pictures are there to enhance what you’re reading, giving you visuals of what the scene looks like. It’s really cool. It’s written almost like a journal. It’s good, interesting, but it’s not for everyone. It has a lot of old-timey language, so it’s not modern English at all. It matches the period, so that’s interesting.
The next book was recommended several times by Kathy, and yes, thank you. The book is Radio Silence. It’s amazing! This story is set in the UK, and the main character, Frances, is a brilliant student at her prep school, she’s smart, a study machine, gets top grades in everything. But the thing that no one knows about her is that she’s actually a HUGE nerd. She does fanart for her favorite podcast called Radio Silence. The podcast is similar to one that people know, and are very familiar with, Welcome to Night Vale. The podcast kind of parallels WtNV, and Frances is obsessed with it. One day, the person who creates the podcast—no one knows who this person is—contacts her and asks if she’s interested in doing actual art for the podcast. She freaks out, of course! This leads to internal conflict about if she wants to do art, or if she wants to continue with her studies, university, and so on. A lot of drama happens, it’s fantastic. Read it.
Next, You’re Welcome, Universe. This is… Interesting. It’s good, I don’t think it was terrible, but just interesting because the story is about a girl who got expelled from her school, because she did graffiti on the wall of the school. The graffiti was to cover up an awful slur about her friend. Now, the interesting thing about this story… The main character is deaf and was kicked out from a deaf school. So she was sent to another school, a mainstream school. She’s the only deaf student there, with an interpreter. She’s very angry, and graffiti is her thing, she loves and enjoys it. She starts doing actual street art, under the cover of night, of course. But…then…*dramatic music* someone starts doing some art over her artwork. I’m going to leave it at that. The reason why I said this was interesting was because, yes, a deaf character, but also because of how the author presented that. Sometimes it will have an emphasis, like “she signed.” Sometimes it will describe how a sign was done. …I’m not sure if I really like it. Some times it’s fine, it’s good. But sometimes it feels almost forced, like the author’s trying too hard to push in emphasis that she’s signing and showing it. It’s so hard to portray ASL accurately in written English without seeming contrived. But overall, the book was good, so yeah I would suggest reading it.
The next book is one I’ve mentioned here before. (Editor’s note: I mentioned it in my Q&A Pt. 2 as a childhood book I’d like to reread.) It’s part of a series, so I’m just going to talk about the series as a whole, instead of individual books. I’m talking about the Inkworld trilogy. Inkheart, Inkspell, and Inkdeath. The first two, Inkheart and Inkspell, are rereads for me, but the third one, Inkdeath, is the first time. Yes, I still love this story, it’s fantastic. So the basic story is that the main character, Meggie, and her father are very into books. Her father is a bookbinder. One day, Meggie finds out that her family has a gift. When they read aloud, their voices can bring characters out of a book. Of course, chaos ensues. It’s not a story that can be simply summed up. If you want to know more about that series, look it up. I don’t want to tell you too much because it’s good. I really like this series, I would recommend it.
Next is a book that is AMAZING: Let’s Talk About Love. Ahh, YES! Y e s. I saw this recommended by someone, but also perpetualpages made a video about that. I’ll link it here. Go watch it, I’ll just let her do the talking for me. But this book is amazing, because the main character, Alice, is ace. This book is the journey of figuring out who she is, it’s amazing. Read it.
After reading Let’s Talk About Love, I read Inkspell, so the next book is It Devours! This is so weird. It’s made by the same people who created the Welcome to Night Vale podcast. This is so bizarre, but it’s great, it’s so great! It’s about the citizens of Night Vale and weird things that happen in that town. I don’t want to explain too much about this, because it’s one of those books that you really have to read to understand. Now, I do want to emphasize this, you don’t have to know Welcome to Night Vale, you don’t have to ever listened to any of their episodes to be able to read this. This is a standalone novel. Though, this does reference characters from Night Vale, so if you read this, you’ll recognize some names. If you want something really weird that makes you go huh? this is a good read for you.
The next book I read was part of a series, so again, I will talk about them together. Sleeping Giants and Waking Gods. The third book in this series (Only Human) is not out yet, it will be on May 1st. I. Can’t. Wait. Okay, so this story: one day, a little girl falls into a pit, where there’s a giant metal hand. And from that day on, that girl was obsessed with that hand. It jumps to when she’s an adult, in college, and so on. She gets on a team to research and find out more about that hand. So good! But that’s where I’m going to stop, because it’s SO good. You have to read it!
The next book I read: Welcome to Night Vale. So, again, this is a standalone novel, you don’t have to listen to the podcast. Again, it’s so weird, it’s great. If you like Welcome to Night Vale, read this for sure. If you don’t know about Night Vale, or you don’t listen to the podcast, because like me, you can’t hear, or just don’t listen to it, but you are curious about what Night Vale is like, this is a good book to read. It approaches things in a way that makes the bizarre completely normal, and the normal be bizarre. It’s great.
After reading Welcome to Night Vale, I finished Inkdeath, and I just finished Waking Gods, so I’m finished for today. I didn’t go in depth as much as I usually do for each book, but I’m short on time, and a lot of these books, I don’t want to tell you too much, because… They’re things you need to read. Let me know if you’ve read any of these books, and did you like them or not like them, what did you think about them? And if you haven’t read them, do you want to read any of them?
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