Hello everybody, it is Anna, and welcome back to my booktube channel! Today I am
going to be doing the No Disclaimers book tag. I was tagged by Sloan Moran, so
thank you very much! So let's go ahead and get started with the questions.
The first one is, which trope or tropes in books annoy you the most? I have so
many: lost princess, I'm not like other girls, insta-love, and what is perhaps my
least favorite trope of all time, the Byronic hero. What is a Byronic hero, you ask?
Imagine if we lumped Edward Cullen and Jake- is that his name?- from
Twilight and literally every other entitled, narcissistic, self-absorbed male
love interest from a book ever into one character: that would be a Byronic hero.
This was a term that was kind of coined because of a poet: George Gordon, Lord
Byron, who was a Romantic poet in the English Romantic period, and he
had this habit of creating these sort of larger than life, emotionally brooding,
and [dramatic moaning] oh, woe is me! no one has ever felt pain like I have
before! [over the top sobbing] Those were the kind of male characters that he wrote, and he was
very proud that he like created these male characters in his own image. I can't
stand them! Which unfortunately means that there's kind of a large amount of
romance stories that I miss out on reading because a lot of them rely very
heavily on elements of that Byronic hero character creation, and that makes a lot
of it just unreadable for me because I find out so unpalatable. I can't stand it!
Couldn't stand it in school, can't stand it when I'm reading for pleasure.
Number two is, what writer or writers do you feel are overrated/overhyped?
Okay, I'm trying to do a mixture of like young adult and adult authors here.
So first... I'm not supposed to say any disclaimers! JK Rowling: I do think
that she is overhyped. Now, I love the Harry Potter stories as much as the next
person. I feel very personally invested
in the Hogwarts fandom, and this feeling that the Harry Potter fandom is
a place that I can go to feel at home and safe and comforted, but I think that
JK Rowling as a writer is very overhyped. And I think that especially in light of
the way that she's handled things like writing the extended universe material
on Twitter and Pottermore, "the cursed child," the Fantastic Beasts series, the
rest of the Internet and the fandom is kind of coming around to that same
thought, where she created something that we all really like and enjoy and we
find is a good thing to have in common, but that doesn't... you know, make her god!
I think that the rest of the internet is finally figuring that out, and that makes
me happy, just because it makes me feel like I'm less alone.
Another author that I think is overhyped is Sarah J Maas. I tried reading her
books, but I just don't really get the appeal. Of course if you love them, that's
great! I'm really happy that you like them. But I don't understand the mass
appeal of her books, either the "throne of glass" series or the "court of this and
that"... I don't know what the official name of that series is. I've read a little
further into that series, but I just... I got kind of bored and I stopped. I also think
that David Foster Wallace is overhyped. He was a sort of philosophical, literary
fiction writer in the 90s when he was doing like most of his prolific work.
I think his work is really good, but there are a certain demographic of straight,
white dudes that are very much like literary hoity-toity snobs, in a way, that
idolize him like he is some type of - the second coming of Christ! And I don't
understand that. I like his work a lot. I think I like his essays more than I like
his fiction, but he's just a man! Like, he was an imperfect human, he had problems
and struggles, and sometimes people take his writing and his words as though it's
like the end-all be-all of everything... and I just don't get it.
I really don't. That being said, I do really enjoy his two essays, "consider the
lobster" and "A Supposedly fun thing I'll never do again." That one is probably my
favorite. It's about this sort of weird experience he had going on cruise ship,
and I had a similar experience of finding it to be a very uncanny, strange,
alienating experience. So yeah, go read those if you like that. I think Ernest
Hemingway is also totally overrated. I think that as a sort of this "man's man"
writer, he just idealizes a certain type of masculinity that I don't really
understand why people are so drawn to that because it just makes him come
across as an asshole! And like I said in the first question, I also really,
really, really dislike George Gordon, Lord Byron. I've had people try to get me to
read other of his works, other of his poems, but I just I don't get it. I don't
get the whole idealization of the self-aggrandizing man. Okay, so we've been
talking about this for a while. Let's wake up my laptop again. What are your
least favorite books you've read since joining booktube? Well, since i joined
booktube only about... it's not even three months ago, it's been less than three
months. That was the beginning of 2018. There have only been two books that I've
given less than a three. The three star rating, which to me is like the "like"
threshold, so if it's lower than three stars, it means I disliked it. One of
those was "the gentle art of Swedish death cleaning," which was kind of like a
how-to practical book about being less materialistic and tidying
your home so that when you die, (it was kind of written more for older
people) but the idea is that when you die, your family doesn't have to shift
through all of the material crap you've accumulated. This didn't really jive with me.
I thought it was very similar to that "life-changing magic of tidying up" book
that really just blew up a few years ago, and I didn't feel like I learned
anything new from reading the Swedish one- the Swedish version of the Japanese
cleaning book! And then the other one that I really
disliked was "the glass spare" by Lauren de Stefano. Again, aside from the Byronic
hero, it had a lot of my like least favorite bookish tropes in it, and it
started out like it was good, but then it just... it fizzled and then just died on me.
I did not like the way that book ended. I'll actually link, because I'm now
remembering now that I say this, I'll link the review that I did of that book
up above so you can go hear more of my thoughts on that, but I don't want this
video to be too too long. Ok, number 4, a terrible ending that ruined an otherwise
quality book? I feel that way about "the glass spare," like I said. I also feel that
way about the end of "Mockingjay" because of who dies at the end.
I guess Prim's death seemed utterly pointless and tragic.
Maybe that was the point. Maybe it was just to show that like, people die in war,
and that's just what happens, but I thought was just really upsetting and
unnecessary. And I really didn't like the epilogue end of Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows where you see everybody as older people going
to see their children off to Hogwarts. I didn't like that. I think it should have
just cut off and ended. But there's not too many of those. I think I get more
irritated by that when I watch a movie or TV adaptation of a book that changes
the ending, and then that ending makes the adaptation really suck. "ooking
at you, Memoirs of a Geisha movie. Looking at you. Okay, what fictional characters do
you wish were not killed off? Well, Fred Weasley, obviously! Again, that was
tragic and unnecessary, and I still cry about that when I see it on freaking
tumblr. In "the heart's invisible furies," which is a novel that came out late last
year, by John Boyne, I did not understand why Cyril's boyfriend, partner... his
partner got killed just senselessly and needlessly. It was
already a story that I think walked a really fine line between
talking about a lot of the sadness and pain that gay men went through
during that particular time period, but the knife-murdering of the boyfriend
just seemed super gratuitous, and it seemed like it was maybe reveling in
that a bit too much. Like, oh! look how sad it is to be gay !it's nothing but
suffering! and I'm like, I mean, yeah, for this particular character, there was a
lot of suffering that happened to him specifically because he was gay, but that
particular choice felt extremely unnecessary. And then of course, I will
always be sad that Matthias, my book boyfriend, dies at the end of "Crooked Kingdom."
RIP, my sweet snowman child! Okay, next question: what are
some of your bookish pet peeves? Okay, we've got a few: excessive footnotes,
poorly written time-travel, queerbaiting, which is when, if you don't know what
that is, it's when a character is very strongly hinted that they may be queer,
but it's never explicitly stated for the sole purpose of getting queer people to
buy in and be the audience to your work because we're just really desperate for
some shred of representation. Don't like that very much. In the same way, using
a character being gay or a character coming out as a plot twist.
It's very cheap, and we deserve better than that in books.
Changing book designs partway through the series. I hate this!
There will be, I'm thinking right now specifically of the Akata
warrior series, like the Akata Witch & Akata Warrior books by Nnedi Okorafor,
where there was this beautiful, very simplistic pencil drawing of Sunny
the main character on the cover of the first book. Then when the second book
came out, they completely changed the cover design! So if, for instance, I wanted
to buy all of those books- I had bought the first one with the original
design, and then they up and changed it and the books don't
match! Which is why I'll usually wait until the series has completely come
out, or it's in like mass-market paperback form, to actually purchase it.
Because then you won't have the thing changed, you won't have a design changed
on you, but you also you know if it's mass market, that's very unlikely to
change at any point in the future. That drives me crazy! Okay, what are some books
that you feel should have more recognition? It looks like I'm running
out of room on this memory card, so we're gonna try and keep this quick, but I have
a giant stack here. "The Giver" by Lois Lowry. I know a lot of people, especially
if you're in the United States, you probably read this in middle school.
I did not know about this until I was an adult and read it recently. I think it's
one of those books that because a lot of people have to read it for school, they
miss out on what a wonderful story it is. And just... I don't know. This book
really touched me in a very serious way when I read it for the first time, and
especially nowadays with people thinking that Suzanne Collins invented
young adult dystopian: don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading The Hunger Games,
but this was how many years earlier? how many years earlier?
Exactly, 1993. Hunger Games was published in like 2008? And it
does it so much better! such a great book. A book that is great
for book lovers that I feel doesn't get enough love or notice is "84 Charing Cross
Road" by Helene Hanff. This is a novelization of an epistolary
friendship between an American woman and a British man who is a bookseller, and
they basically have this friendship that is brought about by writing letters in
the 1950s and 60s across the Atlantic Ocean back and forth between the two of
them. This is such a sweet book. I believe it was made into a movie.
It's quite short, and I would definitely recommend this for anybody who is a book
lover. "That Inevitable Victorian Thing" by E.K. Johnston. I think I've
mentioned this at one point, maybe in like my LGBT tag video?
I don't understand why this book doesn't get talked about
more because it's a great representation of queer teens, intersex
teens, and possibly polyamory. And it's told in sort of a cyberpunk, alternate
version of Canada, where the British Empire never fell, but instead
rededicated itself to racial and gender equality. And now there's a computer that
controls everybody's genetic information, and the whole idea is that
knowing that, we're supposed to realize that despite our racial differences and
despite other types of differences, we are all the same, and we are all
deserving of love. This is such a wonderful book. Just go read it! Just... just
read it, okay? This is an author as well as a book: I have "possession" here by AS
Byatt. I think AS Byatt is grossly underappreciated outside of a very
specific group of people that read literary fiction, which I get is kind of
understandable because her writing is quite dense, but it is very lush, and I
think that a great place to start with her if you've never heard of her, you
don't know anything about her, she's a British writer. She I think is a little
bit better known in Britain than she is here. A great place to start would be
with her short stories. I would recommend "the little black book of stories" or "the
djinn in the nightingale's eye". Those are both excellent places to start with Byatt.
A hilarious book that no one except
myself, it seems, knows about is "three men in a boat" by Jerome K Jerome. Just bring
it over here to avoid the glare. This is the story of three guys that decide to
go on a boat trip in early 20th century England, and it is freaking hilarious.
Okay, next is another one that I'm not really surprised people haven't heard
about, and that is "the diary of a provincial lady" by E M Delafield. This is
a novel that is told in the style of the diary of an English housewife in the
1950s and 60s . Funny as hell, read it if you're interested in comedy of
manners stories. Next up is "the blue flower" by Penelope Fitzgerald. I believe
that I discussed this as well in a video, but it is the story of the German
Romantic poet Novalis and his love for a young girl named Sophie. And then
we have two Anna favorites that you may know of here: "Northanger Abbey" by Jane
Austen. Need I say more? I think this is the best Austen book that there is. Well,
maybe Emma is the best Austen book that there is, but this is *my* favorite Austen
book that there is. And also my favorite contemporary novel of all time:
"Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore" by Robin Sloan. The cover glows in the dark, and
it is about a bookstore that is giant and full of secrets and mysteries. If you
are even watching this video, go read this book! I guarantee you! I'm match making
my audience to my favorite book. Trust me, you'll love it, it's gonna be great!
Ok, we have two minutes before my memory card dies. Ok, what are your
thoughts on censorship and banning books? Um, don't do it? This is kind of a strange
question to answer because obviously I don't think that banning books is
ever the right way to go, although if I were to write a book and get it
published, getting my book banned would probably be
the best thing that could ever happen to me. Because you know, nothing cements your
place at the top of a bestseller list like having your book banned for gross
indecency and indelicacies. We can all hope to write something that is so
meaningful and true to life that it's banned somewhere. Censorship,
yeah, governments and schools and people of authority shouldn't
censor things. I don't think that putting a trigger warning on a book, however, is
the same as censorship. I think that that's just very similar to
a movie rating, you know, is this movie a G movie or an R
movie? You know you're gonna you're gonna have different expectations from
those types of movies, and maybe if you're buying something for a child
or for somebody that you know may be sensitive to a certain topic, I think
that is good to be used as a guide, but
I don't think people should call that censorship, first, but I also don't think
that it should be used to be like, this book has a trigger warning for this,
therefore we're not putting it in a school library! That's different.
You all know there's American Library Library Association ethics committees
that can talk about this much more coherently than I can, so I will actually
just link you to those because they've done some wonderful writing, and from my
days of working in a library and then several bookstores in different parts of
the country, maybe I'll do a whole video on this because actually I'm
realizing now I have a lot more experience with that than I thought.
Final question is, who do you tag? I'm gonna send you down to the description
box: you can check and see if your name is there. I will tag a few people
specifically, but if you're watching this and you'd just like to do this video
anyway and you haven't done it already, by all means, please consider yourself
tagged! Let me know that you are gonna make the video so I can also go watch it
because I would really like to see what you all come up with. So thank you all so
much for watching this No Disclaimers book tag! I think I got all the way
through it without apologizing for anything, which is awesome. And I will see
you again in the next one. Bye!
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