i bought every book on my TBR to stock my home library *book haul

This is the final boss of book hauls. This is the Bowser's Castle of book hauls. This tower of books that I'm going to show you is so tall it makes the Burj Khalifa look like a garden shed. That is how many books I am about to show you because recently, as you know if you've been following the series, I built my dream home library. It's right here, it's right behind me. And as a little reward to myself for working hard this year, I decided that I would reinvest the money that I've made from my YouTube channel and buy the books that I wanted to stock my home library with. And so I wanted to give you a book haul of all of those books and show you what it is that I bought because I got books by my favorite writers that I haven't yet read or didn't yet own, books I've wanted to read for ages, a completed series that I hadn't completed. And it was a little crazy, it was a little unhinged, like I'm due a trip to the hardware store because this is unhinged. But I thought we would just do a chatty little video where I go through all of these books, why I bought them, why I want to read them, why I'm excited to read them, why I love these authors, or what fascinated me about these authors if I haven't yet read their work. You know, what was it about them that drew me in and made me want to read some of their work. So welcome back to my YouTube channel or welcome to my YouTube channel if you're new here, my name is Jack Edwards. This is my YouTube channel aka my audition tape for Solitary Confinement. Let's talk about some books. So where to begin? I'm going to start with this book, this is Mammoth by Eva Baltazar. I have read two of Eva Baltazar's books this year and I absolutely adored them. She writes originally in Catalan and is translated by Julia Sanchez. And these books are just these little pocket rocket explosions. Each one centres a woman at a kind of pivotal moment in her life and they are kind of erotic in a very literary way. Like one of her books, Boulder, has this sex scene where I was reading it and then I went to meet up with a friend who's also really into reading and I sit down at dinner and I was like, before I say anything, read this page. And he read it and he was like, can I borrow your copy? Like I need to read this book immediately. Her other two books are called Permafrost and Boulder and they're kind of part of this, essentially it's a trilogy but they're not necessarily linked, they just have thematic similarities and that they all centre a woman. They're all lesbians, they are all kind of feeling quite disenchanted by the world. They're all witty, they have this real sharpness, like every single line is a little treat. It's like an oyster that just has 25 pearls because every line is so good. The kind of book where I read it with a pen in hand to underline all of my favourite lines and then it ends up with ink all over the page, like there are more lines underlined than not underlined. That's how good Eva Balthazar's writing is and so I'm excited to read Mamma. In this book our character swaps her urban habitat for an isolated farmhouse, befriends a shepherd, nurses lambs, battles stray cats, waits tables, cleans houses and dabbles in sex work, all in pursuit of life in the raw. I just thought that sounded amazing. Damn, when I pursue life in the raw I just eat sushi. These three books are all books that were shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize and sounded to me so interesting, so I picked up these three. This is Enter Ghost by Isabella Hamad. After years away from her family's homeland and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia returns to Palestine to visit her older sister Haneen. On her arrival she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone deep and new. She then meets the charismatic Miriam, a local director. She joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon Sonia is rehearsing with a dedicated, if competitive, group of men, yet as opening night draws closer it becomes clear just how many obstacles stand before the troupe. Amidst it all, the life she once knew starts to give way to the exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home. I'm always really intrigued by books that are in conversation with Shakespeare or with other classic books, because often, I always say this, but I think a lot about what Greta Gerwig said when she adapted Little Women for the most recent movie adaptation, where she said, I didn't make Little Women modern. Little Women is modern. I didn't try to make the original book feel modern, I excavated it for what was modern about it, because a lot of the feelings that we find in classic books are just as pertinent today, and that's the reason they've stood the test of time, because we can, well either because, you know, a classic book captures a specific moment in time, and we use it as a kind of historical record, or because actually a lot of those emotions and feelings are still pertinent and relevant today, and I think so much of what we read in Shakespeare is just as relevant today, and that's why we see modern adaptations, like the film Anyone But You is a Shakespeare retelling, like you can really do so much with that source material, so I'm very intrigued by how Enter Ghost is going to grapple with that, but also I am obsessed with books about home and what it is to feel at home, whether home is a portable thing or whether it is specifically rooted in a place, and specifically I'm very interested to read more books by Palestinian authors, so very very excited about that one. Then we have Soldier Sailor by Clare Kilroy. In her wildly acclaimed new novel, Clare Kilroy creates an unforgettable heroine whose fierce love for her young son clashes with the seismic change to her own identity. As her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of autonomy, creativity, and the passing of time, an old friend makes a welcome return, but can he really offer a lifeline to the woman she used to be? What I heard about this book is that the narrator is just so captivating and she's the kind of character that you miss when you turn the final page, and that for me is all I want from a book. Also, I'm just seeing on the back, it says Kilroy made me cry. If a book says it made someone cry on the back or on the front or anywhere around it, best believe I'm on my way to the checkout, my card is pulling itself out of my pocket and it's paying before I've even had a conscious thought. Books that make you cry are my kryptonite, like that's my taste in books, books that make you cry. It's described as radiant and fearless, I was completely gripped. Pandora Sykes says a lacerating, gorgeous, clear-eyed book. I've actually got no idea who Pandora Sykes is, but she's always recommending books. Her name is almost always on the cover of books that I like, so Pandora, whoever you are, I trust your taste. You know that thing from Love Island where they're like, who's Emma? Who the **** is Emma? That's how I feel about Pandora Sykes. Who the **** is Pandora Sykes? But she loves all the books that I love, so Pandora, we should start a book club. This is the other book that I bought. I actually recently spoke on a panel at a book festival in Bali, which was so amazing and such a cool experience, and one of the people I spoke on the panel with was Ob, who wrote this book, River East, River West, and within maybe five minutes of being in her presence, I was like, I am now a dedicated follower of yours for life. I will read anything you write, because her mind was just amazing. Listening to her speak was so captivating, and we were on a panel where we were speaking about our favourite characters from books, and I had chosen Demon Copperhead from the book Demon Copperhead. There's a reason musical icons have albums named after themselves. Beyonce, by Beyonce. Taylor Swift, by Taylor Swift. Harry Styles, by Harry Styles. Demon Copperhead, about Demon Copperhead. Anyway, Ob chose the main character from the book All Fours by Miranda July, which was one of my favourite books that I read this year, and firstly, I was like, oh, we're gonna get along. We are gonna be friends. But secondly, I was like, screw you, because that was such a good pick. I was so annoyed that I didn't think of that. So when I met her, I was like, I think you're amazing. Also, I'm so annoyed that you chose that book, because it didn't even cross my mind, and I'm so mad at myself for not thinking of that. And the thing is, nothing will bring two people closer together than bonding about a character in a book. So I wanted to read Ob's book as well. So this is River East, River West, an intimate exploration of both China and the American dream. Poignant and propulsive, thoughtful and moving. A mesmerizing reversal of the East-West immigrant narrative set against China's economic boom. River East, River West is a profoundly moving exploration of race, identity and family, of capitalism's false promise and private dreams. And it's set in Shanghai in 2007 and Qingdao in 1985. A keen exploration of love heritage and a search for home. And of course, like I said, shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize, which I kind of do use as like a holy grail for finding amazing new books. Demon Copperhead, won it last year. There you go. There's the link to my random anecdote, but very cool. Oh, so last year I read my first book by Elizabeth Strout, and it completely got me out of a reading slump. That one was called O'William. This one is called Olive Kitteridge. I bought another one of her books because her writing style is just so silky smooth. It's like a blanket. You just want to wrap around yourself and lay in. And you would have a great night's sleep. You would get into REM sleep, I swear. So anyway, this is Olive Kitteridge. Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. This is her first novel. So this is Olive Kitteridge. Indomitable, compassionate and often unpredictable. A retired school teacher in a small coastal town in Maine. As Olive grows older, she struggles to make sense of the changes in her life. She is a woman who sees into the hearts of those around her their triumphs and tragedies. A penetrating, vibrant exploration of the human soul. The story of Olive Kitteridge will make you laugh, nod in recognition, wince in pain and shed a tear or two. Elizabeth Strout is known for her rich and detailed portraits of people, and I can't wait to read another one of her books. Speaking of which, this is a series that I bought in its completion. This is the series of Before the Coffee Gets Cold. You know I spoke a lot about Before the Coffee Gets Cold. It was one of the first books I really raved about on my YouTube channel because I found it so cozy and heartwarming and happy but also sad, you know, and often those two emotions were intertwined and I think that's what life is like. And the concept is so good. So the concept of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series is that there is a cafe where you can order a coffee and then someone from your past will revisit you and you have as long to speak to them as your coffee stays warm. And I just think that's such a genius concept because even though it is essentially magical realism, there's a fantastical kind of element to it. And you know, I'm not the biggest fan of high fantasy, but what I do love is that kind of light feathery kind of fantasy where basically it's just like a little glitch in what is otherwise a normal life and is the same world that we inhabit. It's just got one minor difference and that's this one magical element. In this situation, people can come back from the dead essentially and have one last conversation with you and I think that actually that fantasy element brings out the humanity of the characters because ultimately it just causes them to confront the human real life emotions and feelings and sentiments that we all do feel in this world that we inhabit, especially that causes people to think about grief and loss. And those are themes that I personally am very interested in exploring in the books that I read. So anyways, I wanted to get the rest of the books in this series just because it's such a great concept that you really can do anything with. And you know, there's actually another book in the series now, it's only available in hardback, which is why I didn't get that one yet because I wanted them all to be uniform because that's a small pleasure in life is having a uniform series of books. But there's so much you can do with it and that is why this author has written so many books. It's like, why do you write like you're running out of time giving Alexander Hamilton over here? But this is Before We Say Goodbye, Before Your Memories Fade, and Tales from the Cafe. I saw this really interesting thing actually recently, there was an article in the Guardian about Japanese fiction and how it's almost a staple of Japanese fiction to see a cat on the cover, even if in books like Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, there is no cat actually in the book, never featured at all. But they've kind of become a way of signaling to the reader, this is a cozy book. And also specifically, this is a cozy Japanese book. So I thought that was a kind of interesting thing of how cats have kind of become part of the marketing for Japanese books. I actually recently went to the launch of the new Murakami book at a cat cafe, like we did a mindfulness course with kittens, which was very, very sweet. But yeah, it's interesting how it's kind of become a hallmark of the genre. This is by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, and who translates these? Let's see, why don't people put the names of translators on the covers? This is translated by Jeffrey Trozelot. This has been a huge sensation and really, really wonderful and just lovely if you're looking for something heartwarming to read, read this. Speaking of Murakami, I have been trying to track down these books for the longest time. I found them in a McNally Jackson in New York City, and when I took them to the counter to pay for them, the shop assistant was like, oh my god, I'm so jealous. Those literally came in this morning. Every time we get them in stock, they fly off the shelves. And I got them. So that felt like a real achievement, and therefore justified the expense. So this is 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. This is a book that is divided up into three sections, and some places will sell books one and two as one book, and then book three as a separate one. But the one and two book is so chunky that it would be really hard to carry around. So this collection actually divides it up into three little books, and the spines all match in this gorgeous moon shape. Like, let me just give you the kind of 360... are you seeing this? I haven't even taken it out of its packaging yet because I'm so nervous to damage it, but it's just so beautiful. Oh my god, this is Murakami's kind of epic work. I love his books, Kappa on the Shore, Sputnik Sweetheart, Norwegian Wood, and he was kind of my gateway drug into Japanese literature. It's really interesting, again in that same article that I was talking about before, they speak about how Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami kind of burst onto the scene in the English literary world, translated from Japanese in the 1990s, and actually they were kind of criticized by some of their contemporaries at the time because they represented this kind of disaffected, uninterested generation. And there was a Nobel Prize winning Japanese novelist who really criticized writers like Murakami for writing in this way, but I happen to really love it. Do I think that Murakami is beyond criticism? Absolutely not. There are some really interesting interviews with Mieko Kawakami, who is a female Japanese writer who really challenges him on the way that he writes women. In some Murakami books, women are sort of seen as like breasts on legs, like ah, the tits entered the room, you know, and women kind of just like essentially waiting for a man to like have sex with them. It's a little odd, but I do think it's an interesting look into the male psyche of these characters, and of course no art is beyond criticism. I think that's actually part of the joy of reading, is being able to read something that you enjoy elements of, but also find flaws with and faults with, and can critically engage with. So I love Murakami for that reason, because it challenges me, it makes me really think, and his writing kind of has this sort of like filter. Oh, she passed away? Because I'm so nervous to damage it. That's why I kept it in the wrapping. Oh my god, I'm such a butterfingers! It's okay. Oh god, okay. It's fine, it's fine. Everyone stop panicking. I can't believe I just did that. But what I wanted to say is that Murakami's books have this kind of filter over them. I feel like they almost feel like sepia toned, like they have that Instagram Valencia filter everyone used to be obsessed with, kind of like teabag stained, you know. It feels like you're looking back with nostalgia, but also they are just soundtracked with jazz music. Murakami used to own a jazz cafe, and so there's lots of jazz influences that he references, and I just love his writing so much. And so that is one Q84. Speaking of writers, I just absolutely adore Toni Morrison. The GOAT Toni Morrison. I would read her toilet paper, like she is just a legend. Maybe the best to ever do it. I say it all the time, I will continue to say it, I will shout it from the rooftops. Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, the gold standard. Like it doesn't get better than that. The way they wrote about the human condition, what it is to be alive, what it is to live and love and laugh, they're just the best. I think Sula by Toni Morrison is my favourite book of all time, and I am rationing these. I am in no rush to read them because once I finish reading her novels, there aren't any left. And that experience of reading something for the first ever time is just, you can never replicate that, obviously. So I will be savouring these, but I wanted to own them, and now I do. So we have Paradise, we have Love, we have Tar Baby, we have A Mercy, Home, and you know how I feel about books about home. And then also I picked up this book, which is Toni Morrison, The Last Interview. This is a series that is being published with different writers. There's a James Baldwin one, there's a Joan Didion one, Ursula K Le Guin, Nora Ephron, and there's Hemingway. It's a really interesting series, and I wanted to... If I could spend literally five minutes in Toni Morrison's mind, I think I would be the smartest person alive. And so getting to read these little snippets of her interview answers, reading her novels, is a privilege, and one that I take very seriously. If you're looking to get into Toni Morrison, I would start with The Bluest Eye or Sula, or Beloved. I think Beloved is probably her kind most famous work, but I just think she was amazing. And yeah, just highly recommend Toni Morrison. I just mentioned James Baldwin, so it seems natural to talk about the two books of his that I also picked up. This is called Everybody's Protest Novel. This is a collection of essays in celebration of the centenary of James Baldwin's birth, which was this year. He would have been 100 this year. And I could sit here and tell you 100 reasons why you should read James Baldwin's work, but I'll give and that is that pretty much every author who I love loves James Baldwin. Pretty much every author I love will actively be ready to quote James Baldwin at any moment. He has so many zingers. He must have been a printer because he was spitting facts. He was an amazing fiction writer, but also in his essays he just shared so much wisdom and bestowed so much wisdom on the world that I think we're very lucky to have this. We were lucky to have him. And then this is one of his novels that I haven't yet read. Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can actually bear it. At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, we see the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the world of theatre lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. And everywhere there is the anguish of being black in a society that seems poised on the brink of racial war. In this tender, impassioned 1968 novel, James Baldwin created one of his most striking characters, a man struggling to become himself. That is, tell me how long the train's been gone. Even the title is pure poetry. Another book I've been wanting to read for a very long time is A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I feel like this is a modern classic that people really hold as a holy grail. It won the Pulitzer. This is the spellbinding novel circling the lives of Benny, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the troubled young woman he employs. We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her longstanding compulsion to steal. We meet Benny, divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed up band in the basement of a suburban house. Although Benny and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs over many years in many places. With music pulsing on every page, this is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption, breathtaking work from one of our boldest writers. So I think for anyone who loves music, this is an absolute must and it is heralded as one of the best books of the century so far and so I really want to read it. A book that I put forward for the best books of the century so far was The Beasting by Paul Murray and ever since reading it, I've been absolutely desperate to read another work by Paul Murray. So this is Skippy Dies. This is about regular 14-year-old boys at Dublin's prestigious Seabrook College and it's about one of the characters dies in the first kind of chapter of the book and the rest of the boys are therefore pushed to crossroads of faith and reason. I love his style, the way he wrote young people in The Beasting was so funny but also generous and empathetic and I really liked that. I find that often writing young characters is one of the hardest things for a novelist to do because as the generations change, so do the ways that people speak and the lexicon and the way they engage with each other and society and the world around them and so as someone reading in their 20s, I am closer to teenagers than a 50-year-old writer and so sometimes I feel a disconnect between the writer and the generation they are writing about because actually sometimes I'm like that isn't really how those people would interact but Paul Murray just got it so right in The Beasting so I'm very excited for Skippy Dies. Obviously not excited for Skippy to die, rest in peace Skippy, like hope, you know, God bless you but anyway moving on why am I saying that I'm not even religious. Next we have Graveyard Shift, this is by M L Rio. I love her book If We Were Villains which is a kind of secret history meets Shakespeare novel and what I love about that book is the way she writes the Shakespeare scenes because the kids are acting in a Shakespeare play but you're so immersed in the drama of it all that it feels like something that is actually happening to them and so this I didn't realise was quite so short this is kind of more of a novella than a novel but this is Graveyard Shift which is a kind of horror book set in an ancient cemetery, five people who are from all different walks of life, work all different kinds of jobs and interact with the town that they live in in very different ways, come together and discover a hole in the graveyard and so they're kind of trying to figure out who it was dug for, why it's there, what the purpose of it is and how long it's been there as well so kind of an interesting concept. It's meant to be very atmospheric and eerie and so I thought this is one that I want to read, you know, in the kind of autumn winter period. It feels very seasonal for this time of year so I liked M L Rio's writing before I hope I like it again. Speaking of the seasons, this is Ali Smith's seasonal quartet. They're in the wrong order which is very frustrating, I need to fix that immediately before I combust. So I think autumn was the first one that she wrote so we have autumn, winter, then there's spring, I don't yet own that book I'll explain why in a second, then there's summer and companion piece and while these are loosely based in each of the corresponding seasons they're also meant to be these kind of searing cultural commentaries on the British political system or the British way of life and I thought that sounded amazing. The reason I don't own spring yet is because all of the spines match so perfectly except spring. So each of these have Ali Smith's name with a different colour block and then this kind of same artsy style and in the same font and the same size the name of the season. They're all in white right? Why is spring in black font? Why would they do that so that one in the series doesn't match? Even companion piece is written in white. I don't understand why they would do that so I'm on the lookout for a copy of spring that has the white font. If anyone can track one down for me I will be so eternally grateful but since I haven't read the first two yet I'm in no rush to buy spring so once I can track that down I will get it but very excited about these and my plan is to read them in the corresponding season. So I've started with autumn, I'm really really loving it so far and then over the winter months I will read winter and so on and so forth. So the clock is ticking to find spring with the white font but I feel like it's possible. I feel like there must be a reissue where they fix that. I don't know but loads of these books won prizes. I know people absolutely adore this series and so I want a slice of that pie, pumpkin pie or I don't know it felt like an autumnal thing to say. One matching series I did pick up is this complete collection of Jane Austen's books. I mean Jane Austen is so iconic she's on the 10 pound note, come on. These I think give respect to the greatness of Austen, like this is how her books were supposed to be presented, right? So we have Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Love and Friendship, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. However I was so chuffed with this collection because I used to always borrow Jane Austen books from my university library and I would read them over the summer holidays so I didn't actually own any copies of Jane Austen's books and I really wanted to. I was showing this on my second channel and so many people pointed out the most heartbreaking thing. There's a typo! There is a typo on this book. It says Love and Friendship. Friendship is spelt wrong. How do you even manage that? How does that even happen? I just, I can't, I can't believe it. I cannot believe that Penguin Classics managed to do that. Imagine how much trouble you would be in if you discovered you'd messed that up. Someone has definitely had a worse time of this than I'm going to. I can kind of see past it. I'm okay with it. I've made my peace with it. I've come to terms with it. But imagine how much trouble that person was in when they realized they'd messed that up. Aside from that minor little mistake, you know, it gives them more character. I do think this is just incredible and it looks so great on my classic shelf which is just behind me. These are some Penguin Modern Classics. So these have the iconic baby blue spines. This one is called After Midnight. It's by Irmgard Kuhn. Translated by Anthea Bell, the Sunday Times say, I cannot think of anything else that conjures up so powerfully the atmosphere of a nation turned insane. Nineteen-year-old Sanna just wants to drink her beer in peace. Honestly, don't we all? But that's difficult when Hitler has come to town and his motorcade is blocking the streets of Frankfurt. What's more, her best friend Gertie is in love with a Jewish boy. Her brother writes books that have been blacklisted and her own aunt may denounce her to the authorities at any moment. As Germany teeters on the edge of the abyss, written after she had fled the Nazi regime, Irmgard Kuhn's masterly novel captures the feverish hysteria and horror of the era with devastating perceptiveness and humour. Now, I wrote my dissertation on Christopher Isherwood who was kind of visiting Berlin as a bit of a sexual tourist, shall we say? He really loved, well, so his books Goodbye to Berlin and Mr Norris Changes Trains are what the musical Cabaret is based on and so he writes about, you know, late 1920s, early 1930s Berlin as being this really fun, crazy, vibrant place full of all sorts of wonderful people and all this self-expression but then when the going got tough he just fled and went back to England and so I'm very intrigued to read about that same time period from the perspective of a German writer and so that is After Midnight and then another book I also got about Germany was Berlin Alexanderplatz. This is by Alfred Doblin and translated by Michael Hoffman. Now, Michael Hoffman just won the International Booker Prize for his translation of Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, also set in Berlin, one of my favourite books of the year and I heard that Michael Hoffman's style of translation is that he reads through the novel and then almost puts it to one side and rewrites it in his own kind of way when he's translating and I thought that was so interesting as a translator's style and it's unlike anything I've heard before. So, I'm intrigued by this and I loved what he did with Kairos. So, Franz is back on the streets of Berlin. Determined to go straight after a stint in prison for doing some stupid stuff, he finds himself thwarted by an external agency that looks an awful lot like faith. Cheated, humiliated, thrown from a moving car and embroiled in an underworld of pimps, thugs, drunks and prostitutes, Franz picks himself up over and over again until one day he is struck a blow which might just prove his downfall. This is a dazzling freewheeling collage of newspaper reports, biblical stories, drinking songs and urban slang. Berlin Alexanderplatz is the great novel of Berlin life. Yeah, I kind of just wanted to read some modern German fiction and that's what this is. Why was that giving the same energy as Debbie Ryan where she's like, I went into the Disney offices and I said, I want to make history and that's what this is. This one I picked up out of pure FOMO. One thing about me, I have a fear of missing out when everyone is talking about a book. I just want to be involved, I just want to be part of the conversation, I just want to know what everyone is talking about and this has been a huge book top sensation this year. The Housemaid, I think it's on track to be one of the biggest selling books of the year so far, at least definitely in the UK and I think it's kind of a thriller book. From behind closed doors, she sees everything. Every day I clean the Winchester's beautiful house, I collect their daughter from school and I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor. I try to ignore how Nina Winchester makes a mess just to watch me clean it up, how she tells strange lies about her own daughter and how her husband seems more broken every single day. But it's hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina's life, the walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband. I only try on one of Nina's pristine white dresses once but she soon finds out and by the time I realize my bedroom door only locks from the outside, it's far too late. But the Winchesters don't know who I really am, they don't know what I'm capable of. Okay, honestly I get why people were so gripped by this, that sounds really good. I've been making a series of videos over the years where I read the books that are kind of book top sensations and tell you whether they're worth your time to read them, so this will be in the next installment of that, so that should be coming at some point in the new year. Death in Her Hands I bought because I love that Otesha Moshfegh is just kind of a freak, you know, and I think that she wouldn't mind me saying that. I think a lot of her books are really crazy. I just finished reading her book McGlue, which is about a guy who is on a ship and has just murdered his kind of best friend. Lapwona is one of the weirdest books I've ever read. My Year of Rest and Relaxation is pretty crazy too, and this is Death in Her Hands. While on her daily walk with her dog in the woods near her home, Vesta comes across a chilling handwritten note. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me, here is her dead body. Shaky even on her best days, Vesta is also alone and new to the area, having moved here after the death of her husband. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession. Who was Magda, and how did she meet her fate? I went to a panel that Otesha Moshfegh curated one time, and there was this one guy on the panel who was just saying absolutely insane stuff. He was like, all modern literature is terrible, and Otesha Moshfegh was just like stirring the pot of chaos. She was like, let's make a chaos smoothie with this, and so she just kept being like, say more about that. What do you mean by that? Tell me more about that. And then someone would try and change the point, and she would be like, I think we should talk more about what you just said. And I really appreciated that, that she was just like, I am going to make this a chaotic environment, and I think that's what her books do as well. So that is why I bought another one of her books. This is Death in Her Hands, and I'm going to take a quick break because the sun is blinding me. It's actually just reflecting off a window over there, it's not like divine intervention. Maybe it is divine intervention telling me to go get some water, because I have been yapping. I'll be right back, it's going to be no time for you. Before I tell you about the next book, I just wanted to let you know that today's video is very, very kindly brought to you by Squarespace. And Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building a website or an online brand. And the best news is you don't need any coding experience, you don't need to buy this many books explaining coding to you and website development. Squarespace has amazing templates that you can customise and make completely your own. There is the ability to make a blog or an email sign-up list. They also have amazing AI features. There's AI design features, but also the ability to do AI search engine optimisation to make sure that your website is actually appearing on search results, so that all of your hard work does not go to waste. And if all of that sounds incredible to you, then you can start building your website today with a free trial over at squarespace.com. And then when you're ready to launch your beautiful new website, you can head to squarespace.com slash jackedwards and use the code jackedwards to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And thank you so, so much to Squarespace for working with me. You know, when you build a website, you want to put your best foot forward. That is how people discover you. With Squarespace, you can guarantee that your website will be looking professional and slick and people will want to contact you. So check out Squarespace. Speaking of book sock, these books I got. I mean, I've seen so many people speaking about The Priory of the Orange Tree and, well, this is kind of part of another project, but I want to... So, little indie lesser known author, Leo Tolstoy. You know, this is quite a small book. No one really knows of it. It's called War and Peace. And I want to do this video where I build up to reading War and Peace by reading increasingly long books. It's such a stupid concept, but I kind of think it's quite fun. Like starting by reading a 100 page novella, 200 pages, 300 pages, 400 pages, 500 pages, all the way up to this one, which is... It's actually insane. Oh my God, the font is so little. The pages are thin, like Bible pages. Oh Lord. Oh Lord, indeed. This is 1,227 pages long and it's kind of a life goal of mine to read this book. So I picked this one up and back to what I was saying before. So this might be one of the ones I read on my route to it. I think this one is like 800 pages. Let's see. Yeah, 800 exactly. So this is The Priory of the Orange Tree and I've heard so many people talking about this one. Again, I just have FOMO with this one. Like, I feel like there's a party going on and everyone's in there having fun and I'm leaning against the glass, like steaming it up with my breath because I'm so close. Like, what's going on in there? Like, what are you all talking about? Can I join in? And so I got myself a copy and I will say this looks really impressive on a bookshelf. And then this one I bought just because they look so good together. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I do really intend to read these books. This is the second book, also by Samantha Shannon. This is A Day of Fallen Night and it is just stunning. Damn, these are so beautiful and I saw the shiny thing and I wanted to own it. What can I say? I'm only human. These books are also going to be featured in some of my content, looking at books that are already popping off on BookTok right now. I think I'm going to do a whole separate video specifically on romance. So I got The Pumpkin Spice Cafe, which has been this runaway bestseller this year. Small town, cosy, romance vibes. Obviously, very autumnal, very seasonal. It's about a woman whose aunt has left her the ownership of a pumpkin spice cafe and she falls in love with someone else who lives in this small town and he kind of shows her the ropes, introduces her to all the other people, but someone is messing with her cafe and she's trying to get to the bottom of what it is. Very low stakes, but I'm intrigued why everyone loves this one so much and sometimes, you know, a simple concept doesn't mean bad writing. I'm open-minded and we will see what this has to offer. And I kind of like the gossipy vibe of a small town romance. I think it could just be a bit of fun and, you know, we don't always take ourselves so seriously. I'm looking forward to that one. This one is better than the movies and this is about a girl who is obsessed with romance movies and rom-coms because she used to watch them with her mother who has passed away and she, in her own love life, is kind of hoping to find that perfect rom-com moment. It's a cheesy concept, but you know what? Sometimes I like a charcuterie board. Sometimes I like a bit of cheese. It's so cheesy that the pages smell a bit like camembert, but I think it could be fun. It's by Lynn Painter. I don't know if I said the title better than the movies. And then, speaking of movies, this one is called You Again and apparently, I mean, you can even tell from the cover, this is based on When Harry Met Sally, which is such an amazing movie and, you know, Nora Ephron wrote the hell out of that. Like, there are so many amazing lines. I think that she really shaped the genre and so I'm intrigued by how this one takes inspiration from When Harry Met Sally and reimagines it in New York City in a modern context because, of course, now we have things like dating apps and, well, we have dating apps and technology and social media, you know. In When Harry Met Sally, they often talk on the phone, so I wonder if this will feature more kind of texting or that kind of thing. But I love a friends-to-lovers romance. I'm not massively into enemies-to-lovers, but friends-to-lovers, sign me up. And all of my friends watching should be very afraid. I may fall in love with you at any moment. This is a kind of tangent, but speaking about BookTok, this is actually a non-fiction book that I wanted to read because Lena Norms recommended it. She speaks so highly of this book. It's called Outraged. Lena Norms is one of my favourite YouTubers, BookTubers. I take her recommendations very seriously and this one is called Outraged, In this new attention economy, many exploit the outrage of others in order to gain power, but by shouting about everything, we are in fact creating a world where outrage is without consequence. There is still much to be outraged by in our final frontier, but in order to enact change and become more effective online, we must learn to channel our responses. Passionate, funny, and unrelentingly wise, this is the essential guide to living through the age of outrage. Often people on the left, actually Naomi Klein has an amazing book called Doppelganger, where she talks about the way that the right are always in pursuit of power and so even when people make mistakes, often they kind of get behind one another because their number one priority is staying in power or gaining power. Whereas on the left, we focus more on morality and as a result, we splinter and we fraction and there become more divides within that wider space where we turn on each other because we say, you did something I morally don't agree with, but often that doesn't take into consideration intention and what that person, you know, that person just made a mistake potentially and is still really on your side and so by splintering and having all of these kind of factions, we actually lessen our own cause. I do think that, ooh, should we get into it in this video? Yeah, why not? Basically, I think a lot about cancel culture and how I don't think that cancel culture really truly exists. Hear me out. Someone who is literally a criminal is now about to be the president of the United States. Famous authors who are actively transphobic are still selling millions of copies of their books. You know, I don't believe that cancel culture really has that many repercussions. I think often people say they're cancelled, but really it's sort of just to radicalise their fans more and their followers more. To be like, you are fighting for someone who has been cancelled by someone who has been rebuked. You should fight for me. You should increase your support for me. That's not really being cancelled because you still have access to all of these people. What I do think we have a culture of is nitpicking. I think that there is this really odd culture that we've seen, especially this year. It's got way worse online, especially on TikTok, where I think often people see the discourse before they see the original source and as a result, everyone is able to profit from being outraged. People are able to make bigger audiences, make money from always being outraged about something and trying to shame someone else for something that they did. And I think that, listen, people make mistakes and people say the wrong thing and people should be called out. But I think that the outrage that often people feel lacks a lot of nuance and doesn't allow people the space to grow and apologise and learn from their mistakes and for us all to collectively learn. I think there's a compassionate and kind way to, or a well-intentioned way, to point out when something is wrong and often calling someone out or turning it into discourse isn't the way to do that. So I have many, many thoughts on this. I don't think I'm explaining them very well, but I want to read this book and that is why. This book is called Didion and Babbitz. It's by Lili Analik. I am just enthralled by the writing of Joan Didion and Eve Babbitz. I think both of them wrote with this kind of audacity. I guess they were what we would now consider to be it girls, but they also wrote these gorgeous and provocative books about the time in which they were living in and the culture they saw around them. I will say, and this is shallow, if I see someone reading Eve Babbitz or Joan Didion, instantly I'm like, oh, so you're cool. Oh, you're a cool person. And so anyone I see reading this, I'm going to be like, marry me on the spot. So anyway, this is about the mutual attractions and mutual antagonisms of literary titans, Joan Didion and Eve Babbitz. Eve Babbitz died on December 17th, 2021, found in the rack, ruin and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken and inside a lost world, centered on a two-story rental in a down at heel section of Hollywood in the late sixties and early seventies. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American writer, Joan Didion. A mystery behind her dark glasses and cool expression, an enigma inside her storied marriage to John Gregory Dunn. Franklin Avenue was also the breaking and then the remaking and thus the true making of another great American writer, Eve Babbitz. Babbitz was a woman who burned so hot, she finally almost burned herself alive. Didion and Babbitz formed a complicated alliance, a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity. With deafness and skill, journalist Lili Analik uses Babbitz's brilliance of observation, Babbitz's incisive intelligence and most of all, Babbitz's diary-like letters found in those sealed boxes, so intimate you don't read them so much as breathe them as the key to unlocking Didion. So basically it's a study of these two writers through the lens of Eve Babbitz's letters to Joan Didion. This just feels like a moment for the culture, this feels so special to own and I cannot wait to get an insight into these two women, oh my god. Now one of my goals for 2025 is to finish writing my goddamn novel and this is Save the Cat Writes a Novel. So the theory of Save the Cat is basically that if you're writing a character who is a hero in your book, you need to show them doing something heroic as an introduction to the reader, that they are a morally good person. And okay, that sounds very straightforward when you think of like a straightforward hero and villain, but also what about a character who is later going to make a major mistake? And in order for the tension of the book to last, we have to be rooting for them as a person. Same with like morally ambiguous people, people who are very raw and authentic and real and ordinary who, like all of us do, make mistakes. You know, you need the reader to be rooting for them and so what you can do is get them to like save a cat in an opening scene or do something morally good so that we know that fundamentally they are capable of goodness. And the same thing applies to establishing villains, you have to establish early on that they are a morally bad person. Of course I think that the interesting thing that a book can do is then subvert this, but I do think that the rote style of writing is interesting to study because then you can subvert conventions intentionally and know kind of how you're doing it. So this is Save the Cat Writes a Novel, the last book on novel writing you'll ever need. And I think that while you can't necessarily teach someone to be a good writer, it is interesting to sort of read about different strategies and techniques that work for other people and then you can utilize them with intention, with purpose and know kind of what you're doing when you write. I just thought this might be a good book to read to kind of motivate me to keep going and to think about the craft of writing from the perspective of the literary greats. So that is Save the Cat Writes a Novel. I mean when it comes to literary greats, look no further than Clarice L'Espectre. Clarice L'Espectre is a writer whose work I've already been getting into in the past year and I want to read so much more of it. So I got four more books of her work to add to my little collection that I have going on over there. She was a Brazilian writer, an absolute titan. Not a word is wasted when it comes to her books, like every single line is meticulously crafted. And the thing is some of these books are tiny, but don't be fooled and think that that means they are quick to read because they aren't. You have to linger with these books. These books force you to slow down for a little while because each line is so textured, like you really just get to explore the contours of Clarice L'Espectre's brain and it's a treat. It is an absolute joy to read and they are weird, they're wonderful, they're wacky, but I can't wait to read more. So I have The Hour of the Star, and by the way these are translated by Benjamin Moser. We have The Complete Stories, translated by Katrina Dodson. We have Near of the Wild Heart, this one is translated by Alison Entrekin. And The Passion According to GH, translated by Idra Nove. Com Toybin writes, L'Espectre had an ability to write as though no one had ever written before. That is so true. So true, Com. Could not have said it better myself. Just a genius of the 20th century and I feel smarter every time I read her work. Patti Smith is an author who I want to give another go. I read Just Kids and I know that people absolutely worship the ground that that walks on, but I just didn't click with it fully. I felt like there was a lot of name dropping and it felt a little pretentious to me and I just didn't like Just Kids. So I absolutely want to give M Train a go, partly because when I lived in New York I would take the M Train all the time. And there's something so special about reading about a journey that you have done or a place that you have lived in and I'm hoping that's what this is for me. So this is an unforgettable odyssey told through the prism of the cafes and haunts Patti Smith has worked in around the world. It is a book she has described as a roadmap to her life. M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village cafe where she ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, we travel with her to Frida Kahlo's Mexico, to the fertile moon terrain of Iceland, to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits, to the West Fourth Street subway station filled with the sounds of the velvet underground after the death of Lou Reed, and finally to the grades of Gennett, Plath, Rumba and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer's craft and on artistic creation. Here too are singular memories of Smith's life in Michigan and the irremed- irremen- irremedible- oh my god I cannot ever say this word- and the irremediable- the irremed- the irremediable- the irremediable- ah I got it- thank god- the irremediable loss of her husband Fred Sonic Smith. Sorry, I feel like you just watched me have a seizure. That felt so vulnerable. I can just never say that word. Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable artists at work today. That is M Train by Patti Smith. Another writer I want to give a second chance is Colson Whitehead because the Underground Railroad was such a disappointment to me. I felt like it, on a craft level, the way that it explained its characters was so unengaging and there were lots of plot holes. I think that the Underground Railroad as a concept and this book about the slave trade is so important and so powerful and so remarkable, I just didn't like the execution of it. I didn't like the way that it was written and the style. Then I read Colson Whitehead's book about New York City, which is called The Colossus of New York, and it's one of the best things I've ever read. I think that he completely captured the city and the way that people inhabit it and all the different types of ways you can encounter New York City. It's broken up into chapters like New York in the rain, as well as physical locations like Central Park. Then there's New York in the morning, you know, and I thought that was really cool. One of the chapters is on JFK and the and I thought it was like five out of five, absolutely excellent, made me cry. And so I really wanted to read another one of Colson Whitehead's books to basically just see if the Underground Railroad was just a one-off that didn't sit well with me, like the writing style just didn't work for me in that particular one. And maybe I will like his other novels. So this is The Nickel Boys and I want to give this one a go. And this book lifts the lid on the racist brutality of reform schools in the Jim Crow era South, a commanding triumph, ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption. So that is The Nickel Boys. And I'm always one for giving writers who I previously didn't fully click with another shot because it could just be that one work or even the time in which you read it. Although I will say I've read The Underground Railroad twice and both times. I just, I didn't, I didn't like it. And that's okay. That's okay if you disagree. That's the joy of reading and engaging in these discussions is that we won't all like the same things and that sometimes someone's writing style just lets you down or doesn't completely work for you. And that's kind of what happened with me in The Underground Railroad. Okay, the final books are these. This is The Penguin Green Ideas Collection. I think this would be such a good Christmas gift for someone who is very interested in global warming and the climate crisis. These are very short little books by different people who have written about the climate and about ecocentrism, et cetera, and ecology. So we have Greta Thunberg, Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold. I feel like there are just going to be so many gems in this collection and I wanted to own it so that I could dip in and out of these little collections as and when I wanted to. And that rounds out this absolutely mammoth book haul. Oh my god. If you are still watching to this point, oh my god, there's more. I'm so sorry, there's actually more. But it's okay, it's just one collection of things and I will show you very quickly. These. So these are books all by Rachel Kusk, whose work I absolutely love. I first discovered her work when I was at university and I read her book Outline, which is part of a trilogy that also includes her books Transit and Kudos. Then I read her book Second Place, absolutely loved it. And so when I saw someone selling online Rachel Kusk's complete collection of books, I had pressed pay before I'd even thought about it. It was just a no-brainer and so I now am the proud owner of all of these books by Rachel Kusk. I love the way she captures the world, I love the way that she thinks and so I wanted to read as many of these as possible. I knew I would get around to buying them all at some point anyway, but someone was selling them as a collection and so I just, I just did it. And now here they are. I have no regrets, no regrets at all. So thank you so so much for watching this video, I hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that this helped you to find the next book that you might want to read or buy or borrow from the library. The disclaimer here is of course that talking about books, reviewing books, sharing books is my job and so this is an investment into my channel and that is why I was fortunate enough to be able to buy all of these books. I don't ever want to set a precedent or an expectation that you have to own something in order for it to count as like read or for you to count as a reader, that is absolutely not the case. You can borrow all of these books from your local library I'm sure. I guess I just wanted to point out at the end of this video that this is a very fortunate thing that I'm able to do and also a very unique thing that I'm able to do because it is my job. So please don't feel that you need to own or buy this many books in order to be considered a reader by any stretch of the imagination, that is not the case at all. But for me, having these books is going to help me make content for you guys and I like to have physical books to show you so there's something visually interesting on the screen for you to see while I'm flicking through them etc when I'm making my videos about them. So that is why I choose to own books but yeah I hope that makes sense. Thank you so so much for watching this video, I hope you enjoyed, I hope you found something that you're excited to read. You can follow me on all my social media to see me reviewing these books as I work my way through them, you know I'm on Goodreads, Instagram, TikTok etc. I have my second channel where I share more kind of reading vlogs and that kind of thing. Thank you for watching, I'll be back with another episode of The Home Library Diaries and all the best, stay in touch, have a wonderful day, buh-bye!