"enemies to lovers" is so very rarely actually enemies to lovers anymore, it's now just a catch all for any time characters don't immediately agree with each other and it's 100% used as a marketing buzz word to sell books
Basically, it's conflated with Hate-to-Love, which is a different trope. ((Not sure if that's the actual trope name tho🤣)) But, basically, two characters can absolutely hate or dislike each other even without being enemies outright(just because you don't like someone doesn't automatically make them a full-on enemy)-and just because two characters are enemies doesn't always mean they necessarily always automatically hate or dislike each other at all(in fact it might totally eat at them and rip them up inside that they're enemies) sometimes it really just means that they have jobs or philosophies that are at odds with each other(at least when they are enemies specifically because of a personal betrayal or other equally personal vendetta). You need something a little more than just not liking or just not getting along with each other to make two characters actual enemies. You can have both enemies-to-lovers and hate-to-love all at one same time, but you can also have either one by itself. And that's a distinction that seems lost sometimes.
Exactly what I was going to say! i love actual enemies to lovers, so the misleading marketing is disappointing. No, the FMC hating the MMC for a misunderstanding and him surprise, being in love the whole time isn't enemies to lovers. Banter and bickering where they argue but find each other hot right away is also not enemies to lovers.
I have to disagree… as someone who can’t stay focused with audiobooks and therefore doesn’t read them, I could not put down Daisy when I read it years ago.
voice might be giving them personalities but the thing is... for the most part, it might not be the personality the author is intended so voicing books by giving characters personalities might contradict the author intentions and make unnecesary fanwars between readers about characters real personality.. those who voice books need to just read without giving any emotions or personlity to anything
@@yukichan177 an audio book of a dialogue heavy story read with zero emotion would be unlistenable. The people who ready audio books are either the authors (who are bringing their intentions behind the writing that might be different than how readers would interpret them) or voice ACTORS who are acting out a story. Everyone who reads out loud well brings emotion to the reading. Audio books are their own category of art/lit.
Yes for calling out the misogyny that some authors are getting. Have been dealing with a bad pain week and appreciated the giggles in your jokes and editing talent. ❤
He makes an interesting and fair point about how female authors always seem to get disproportionate hate compared to male authors, and how it often seems people always find some excuse for it almost just because a female author gets popular. I absolutely support calling that b.s. out, too! However, what I've heard is that supposedly people are unhappy with something about how Taylor Jenkins Reid writes Latinx characters?. 🤔🤔
@Jaginaia Electrizs oh yeah the call out for Taylor is valid because the way she represents Latinx characters ain't cool with us, while I enjoyed Evelyn Hugo I can see and understand where folks are coming from and while I didn't read her latest it sounded like she did the same thing folks were calling her in on before. So 🙆♀️
hot take: dog-earing pages is fine! stopping to highlight or whatever breaks the flow of the story! once i've experienced the book as a whole i can go back to the folded pages as a highlight reel to keep the feelings alive a little longer!!
Long book recommendations! I am someone who actively avoids long books, but Kate Morton's books are the exception to that rule for me. She writes multi-generational family mystery type books with different point of views from different time periods. Those aren't usually my cup of tea, but her execution is so phenomenal, every word feels well placed and intentional, every sentence well-crafted, and when i pick up her books i feel like i'm in good hands. i don't have to worry whether I'll be able to understand the intricacies of the plot because she does such an amazing job with plot progression and pace. And her plot twists, oh man, they are the stuff i live for, they blow me away. My favourite book of hers is "The Lake House" (592 pages), and I've just started reading "The Distand Hours" (562 pages). Also! My unpopular opinion is that I loooooathe modern book marketing that relies on tiktok-able or instagramable images of the cover and a bunch of tropes surrounding it with little arrows pointing to it. And there's never a summary to be seen. I don't care if it's enemies to lovers, forced proximity, spicy, female protagonist, I DON'T CARE GIVE ME A SUMMARY! Tell me what the book is about or I will vow to never read it simply out of spite. This is not ao3 (i say this as a fic writer, but by god has ao3 rotted book publishing's collective brain), stop treating it like it is! I don't care about your tropes, i don't care about your blurbs, i care about the SUMMARY!
ALSO marketing a book based on its trope is my biggest pet peeve like ill be watching a video to find some recommendations and its all "this is small town romance, friends to lovers, grumpy sunshine" and im like okay but WHATS THE PLOT
i very much disagree that the hunger games isn’t as could as divergent. like for me, i think that the best divergent book doesn’t even compare to the worst hunger games book. idk maybe that’s just me. also with songbirds and snakes, i honestly have struggled through it (not even half way) because i’m really not about trying to victimize snow
For Song of Achilles, I finally read it this past week and I was scared it wouldn’t live up to the hype and how much I loved Circe and while it didn’t match that, and I think that’s more because I could identify with Circe more, I think it was a beautiful and heartbreaking story. I thought I would cry more, and then I read the last page and immediately started ugly sobbing. Was it brilliant…no. Was it a good book with the perfect ending…yes.
I agree with the person that Song of Achilles wasn't that sad but I think that might be because I was going in expecting it to be sad. I did cry on the last page tho, lol. But it wasn't devastating imo
HOW IS DIVERGENT BETTER THAN THE HUNGER GAMES i could go on a 3 hour rant about how terrible divergent is and hunger games (at least the first two but imo also the third) is one of the best series written in the 2000s
Song of Achilles left me pretty sad but i wasnt straight up bawling my eyes out. id say its a good sad book but the experience of the reader might vary depending upon your emotional stability. you should read it tho. its a good book.
I love these types of videos! I can not express the feeling of having Jesse explain exactly how I feel about Taylor Jenkins Reid down to which of the two books I prefer that I've read, and why I think I like Daisy Jones and the Six less than The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. But the characters feel so real, no doubt about it!
I did enjoy The ballad of songbirds and snakes book but I enjoyed doing origin villain stories a lot like I enjoy seeing where the villains come from what happened was their trauma and their past or that for revenge or did they just lose your way I think it's really cool that we got to explore a villain that I find more scary than most of the other YA because President Snow is just a man doesn't have any powers or special abilities
Exactly. The only thing I hated about that book was the "chase the trend" title that it was given. But I love a good villain origin story that proves to us even the villains have their humanity. (it's been a while since I read the book, so I can't remember exactly how it ended at all, just that I did enjoy it.)
My biggest "hot take", according to others, is that I think it's okay to dog-ear pages. I do it to mark pages that make me feel strongly in one way or another. Upon rereads, or if I just want to feel a particular way, I can just flip to them and reread those pages. Now, I need the opinions of others. My husband's cousin(s) wrote some --at least somewhat-- popular books, one of which is getting turned into a movie. We had gone to her first book signing as a date when we first started dating. I started reading her first one, but struggled with some of the-- too prosey for my taste-- writing. Haven't picked it up since. Do I give that one another chance, try one that isn't her debut novel, or wait until the movie comes out? Her sister also just wrote a novel and while I'm sure the writing isn't exactly the same, I am hesitant to start it for that reason. I don't want to have to tell them at the next family get-together that they make it to. 😆
Oof, reading books by people you know is tricky. Don't blame you for hesitating! Personally, I'd wait for the movie as long as you can avoid a conversation explaining why you haven't finished the book. 😬
Oof. This is so hard! My first boyfriend’s dad was an author and I was given his first book for free. I read it and didn’t love it, but pasted on a smile and just didn’t say much other than the few things I liked. Then I realized he had written 13 more books in a similar style and I was going to be given them for free… We broke up. (Not because of his dad though, lol!) we both had an amicable break up before I even received book 2, so I didn’t have to worry about this particular moral dilemma. Definitely talk to your husband about it though and see how important it is to her that you read it. I read that first book because my boyfriend was so proud of his dad’s work and I wanted to make a good impression.
The popular books everyone thinks are overrated: I love The popular books everyone thinks live up to the hype: I don't like Maybe this is why I don't have any friends
I actually totally agree that Bible pages really _do_ feel nicer; they have a softer, more silky/velvety texture.. unless you get a thick-paged one. BUUT I also agree that thicker pages are much more ideal and far less nerve-wracking / far more relaxing / for reading in general, because then you don't have to worry as much about how quickly or how carefully you're turning those pages or not. 🙂🙂🤭🤣🖤💖
I can actually see the tropes/predictability thing both ways-I can see going into something knowing exactly what you're going to get and getting exactly what you wanted being very appealing, but I can also see going into something wanting to be surprised by the unknown to be the most exciting thing. I think it just depends on individual reader preference, or [for me ]exactly what I'm reading and why &/or my exact mood at the time! ^--^
I agree on a couple things ; 1. books that are like 700 pages long for no reason is ridiculous especially when they have content that isn't even necessary to the story, second adults or anyone talking about YA books as this is spicey as an adult it is creepy. I am currently reading the 4th book of a YA book and I had to just skip a whole chapter and a half because the explicit content that the author created had me, absolutely cringing to the point that I told my husband this is porn not, YA - what am I reading? urrgh!!! not to mention this book is huge and this chapter we could have done without, it was unnecessary and complete vulgar for it to be YA (and no not a prude, just was way too much). And finally to add I feel Leigh Bardugo is overrated.. don't bash me just my opinion lol. I like her Shadow and Bone series but wasn't thrilled about it as everyone that recommended it to me said I would be.
Honestly the people that get heartbroken by The Song of Achilles do so because they are not familiar with the Iliad. Which is insane. I can’t believe that there are people who don’t know (spoiler alert for a 6000 year old story) Patroclus dies. It’s still a very emotional story. But the people that get broken by it are so because of shock.
I was always sceptical of TJR books because everyone was crazy about them. But then I read Evelyn Hugo and joined the crowd. Like one youtuber said it - it's like she sprinkles pages of her books with crack. She is not overrated, the rating is telling the truth 😄
My hot take (that I have nourished for the entirety of my existence): You don't need to bend books. I hate it when someone bends my books, like if you want to read my books, and you bend it past 90°, I am not gonna give you another book of mine again. 90° is far, far more than enough and doing even a degree more gets on my nerves. I feel like people are tryna break to book or crease the spine. And I hate creases on the spine. I will never lend you a book if you crease its spine, or any part of the book tbh.
I think it's weird for any YA to have spicy in it honestly because they are normally written by adults. Like why? I can't even watch a teen show with a spice scene, why would you want to write a whole book with it? I mean, teens do this stuff, but there's no need to write the specifics, just write an adult book if you want spicy so much
I present to you an even hotter take - Song of Achilles is not only not that sad, but also not that good. It's just a bad rip-off of the Iliad but with "romance" that's not even that romantic.
I'm someone that actually prefers Daisy Jones and The Six to Evelyn Hugo. But out of the 6 Taylor Jenkins Reid books I've read, Evelyn is my 2nd favorite.
I agree its good to chill out about numbers, but the more books you read the better your reading comprehension will get. There are so many amazing books out there and realistically I will only get to enjoy a certain tiny % of them before I die so yeah I am gonna read as many as I can before I do.
Honestly I agree with the person saying Divergent is better than hunger games. And you hitting Chain of thorns aggressively gave me second-hand anxiety.
SAAMMEE!! 🤭🤍 🤣🙂 (For me, I think it's because of which MC that I find the most likeable personally, and the world that I would personally most prefer to actually live in if they were real. ^-^)
@@StephanieCThoughts exactly what I think about hunger games. I found it extremely overrated. It was very mediocre for me, whereas Divergent trilogy got me into reading.
I truly believe that authors will age down their characters to YA and keep the spice because YA sells better than Adult. But YA sells better than Adult because of the influence that Social Media has on book selling. You don't see as many 40+ content creators as you do under 40 or even under 30 to promote the Adult genre as much as YA.
I mean, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book unless someone was really wanting a story like this, but I recently read The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. After 1,008 pages that engrossed me, left me wanting more and now I'm totally obsessed with the series, I guess I agree with its length 🤷♀️🤣
I agree with not paying attention to how many books you read. I personally have been struggling with reading lately mostly because I’m distracted but I feel having a specific amount of books I should is to stressful, I want to be entertained not stressed by the amount of books I have to read I also somewhat disagree with the ballad of songbirds and snakes take. I have love hate relationship. I love the writing and storytelling, and the only thing I don’t like about it is snow. And I know snow is meant to be the bag guy but in the very beginning I kinda sympathized for. It was the end that threw me for a loop. I had to literally put the book down for a few hours to cool down before finishing it. What snow did at the end made me very angry and it’s the only reason why I have a love hate relationship with it
I kinda agree with Divergent is better than with Hunger games. But for me that's only considering the first book. When I consider the whole series, I feel like Divergent series went bad after 1st book while Hunger games stayed the same.
Definitely enjoyed this video! Thanks!!! 💜💜💖 And absolutely agree that we should all be able to just agree to disagree sometimes and live in harmony with each other anyway!🤍😊💖
I absolutely loved The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes! I gave it 4 stars. It's sometimes fun to read a book from the villian's perspective and I wasn't rooting for Snow at all, which I was scared would happen. However, I do agree that I wish we had a Haymitch prequel.
To be fair... it is possible that you can read a spicy book and/or root for two characters to get together even without personally getting off on it yourself. I'm on the Ace spectrum myself, so reading spice in books is rarely about actually getting my rocks off on it for me. And there is some argument to be made for, at least older teens, being allowed to enjoy spice in their books too I guess? ..😅 Buuut, yyeeahhh, if you are reading it to get your own jollies off on it and you're an adult-you probably shouldn't be reading YA! 🙃🙃😶👀😐🤦♀️🙃😅 (Although, to be fair, you could also be imagining yourself &/or what you might have liked back when you were a teen OR aging the characters up in your own mind so imagining if they weren't/aren't actually teens too-which is I supposed, or at least could be, a bit less creepy as well; since these are entirely fictional characters, and it's okay to reimagine fiction in your own mind as what if it had in some way or another been different than it actually was. Buut stiiilllll. 👀🙃😅👀)
4:00 "Lord of Mysteries"....... But it's an officially translated webnovel... So it doesn't really have standard length chapters. It has 1400+ chapters but took me 140 hrs to read distributed across a month and a half.
The only time I personally have mismatched books is if that was just how the cards fell, like for some reason or another I just didn't have a choice[ or I started with book 1 in softcover but then didn't want to wait that long to read the next books as the came out], OR _if_ I actually didn't like a certain cover badly enough that I refused to buy it and bought it in a completely different edition instead just to avoid having that cover. (I did that for book two in Sarah Rees Brennan's Demon's Lexicon trilogy. Because the U.S. editions changed after the first book, and I really loved the original cover of book 1 so much, I have books 1 & 3 in hardcover but book 2 in U.K. paperback. 🤣🤭💖)
SONG OF ACHILLES IS NOT THAT SAD!!!! I READ IT AND I WAS LIKE WHERE IS THE TEARS?? YALL LIED TO ME AND MIND YOU I'M A CRIER. why I typed in caps is beyond me
The "highly hyped woman author suddenly gets huge backlash for being 'overhyped'" phenomenon is absolutely misogyny! Those authors aren't hyping themselves as the best thing to happen to their genre or literature, nor are they claiming to have perfect bodies of work. They're pretty much just being personally targeted for other people's love of their work--usually women/femme/queer fans--who are themselves being met with the equally misogynistic backlash that all women/femmes face whenever they love something and make it popular. I've seen a lot of Colleen Hoover hate, which sure, I have zero interest in her books, but I also have zero interest in a James Patterson novel, and you don't see anyone throwing stones at him. Hoover's books are definitely work critiquing (some of them sound questionable) but that doesn't mean she and her readership deserve to be trashed. It's a vicious mix of hatred for things marketed toward/popular amongst women (and women perceived people) and hatred for women's success.
To speak about BookTok. I don't use TikTok but alot of TikTok I feel is another reuse of the "new thing bad" yet again. Plus now politicians are trying to ban TikTok. Like yeah it social media in general does have problems but the internet is like us humans, complex and multifaceted. Also haven't delved into any criticism against TJR but I have heard some discussions about her writing 2 books with Latina protagonists and the bisexual rep in Evelyn Hugo. Again I haven't delved into it or read any of TJR's books but this is what I have heard
I agree with The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes one. Even though I enjoyed the story, I just wish it'd put more focus into the Hunger Games itself or giving more insight on their impact on the rest of society. Still gonna watch the movie adaption though because The Hunger Games has always been my favorite series lol
Cruel prince... Oeff no not for me, it was to easy to figure it out and it was to cringe and fake to me.🙈🙈 Sorry. It was a really good concept! It could have been so much better.
BROOO you have no idea how weird I felt reading Warcross when the romance happened. I know they’re technically adults but it’s basically a student teacher romance and 🤮 I’m not about to be a 30 year old reading about teens making out I guess that’s my hot take 😂 the romance ruined the book for me
I feel like people hate booktok because they just hate tiktok overall, and thus anything associated with it. Or they just do very surface level analysis of booktok.
The song of Achilles is well written, but if you know the basics of the Trojan war, you know how it ends. Like, it is written beautiful and it is emotional, but it is definitely not the saddest book ever.
I recently read the Cruel Prince and maybe it was because it was my first read after Mistborn, but I just wasn’t impressed 😞I really wanted to love it! It just felt immature.
I'm always skeptical of massively hyped books but I caved recently and read the hating game. It was the last straw. The only reason i did not dnf was it being an audiobook I could listen to while doing something else. It was a cheap office romance, the characters were ridiculously childish to the point I felt like I was reading a horny teens diary, the whole relationship development felt rushed, the big plot twist ended up having no impact whatsoever, the mmc turned out to be weirdly creepy though he's glorified to no end, the only plotline unrelated to the romance remained unresolved and it ended as undiluted smut. The Hating Game is not actually a good book.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you wanna conquer big books you gotta portion it out! Get your daily dose in and you'll find you're craving for tomorrow to come so you can keep reading. And make the portions small! 50, 75, or 100 pages depending on your free time. It works, I swear!
what you said made me really think: Why are the authors who were once popular have the community turn their backs on them be mostly women? I don’t know the answer, maybe there are more women publishing books now and I kind of understand some of the reasons maybe they looked back or reread that book and they don’t like it anymore or maybe that author has a problematic aspect to their book, or they have a stance on certain issues that the masses doesn’t agree with. I know the reason for J K Rowling getting backlash for the things she said when she could have kept her opinions to herself, and a few authors I have tried that fell flat for me but I don’t like when the entire community gangs up on someone for having a different opinion. I think it’s also the overzealous generation that want to always be politically correct that is ganging up on authors works that may/may not be offensive now. 😅 I hope when my sister and I eventually publish books that it won’t be offensive to anyone but you run the risk by writing so we can only do our best and try to stay informed but I also don’t want to be afraid to say what I need to say too. I should definitely do some research on this
i must say the 3rd book of hungetgames should just not be... it literaly undos all of katnnis\gale sacrifises but killing gale and killing her sister... the reason she joined the game in the first place was to save her siste.. her dying in such stupid way... just resets everything from book 1 and 2... it would have been the same if she didnt replace her sister and her sister died in book 1 in hunger game, it would have driven katnnis to go ham on the govement as well... prim's death undos all the reasons she chose to be a tribute. if prim didnt die and the ending was her enjoying a free world that katnnis wanted for her, than it would be truely better than divergant... but as she died: all of katniss sacrifices were for nothing (yea she might saved the world but she only did it for her sister and to survive, her death was not even heroic enough especilly cuz it all started with her) and after book 1 the plot kinda goes down.... divergant is interesting more, even tho they share the same genre XD but as for whos better: they are the same imo just becuz they killed the sister in THG.
Oh my gosh Jesse, I feel the same way I hate long books especially when they are longer then necessary it feels more like a chore . Hey also by the way I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow I really didn’t enjoy it but I’m reading The New Girl by Jesse Q Sutanto overall great video you made me laugh and put a smile on my face which is what I needed today ❤
imo annotayting books is sacreligious, its someones work of art, but ppl be scribelling in it like crazy.. best way is to just take a notebook and write down the sentances you liked from the books you read.. image you make a drawing and share it with ppl and they just take a marker and be marking things permamnatly in your drawing as they like :< its rude
For long books that deserve to be long I have to go with The Chorus of Dragons series by Jenn Lyons. Each book was 500-700 pages long but I never felt like the books were dragging on or like I was getting bored of it.
yeah romance books these days are all pretty much the same.. just switch to romance manga or fantasy books that have romance in them, at least theres a plot there xD or read romance books that came out before the 2010s
Whether annotating works or not and how it works depends on the person doing it. Some do it because they like it, some like me do it because going over the content twice as they annotate helps them remember things, some do it just because. Either way, it's a subjective thing and is bound to change. I never used to annotate - I even got horrified at the mere thought of writing in my books. But that has changed because of a ton of reasons and now, I love tabbing and annotating. I even bought a couple of physical copies just so I could annotate them 😁
OMG your reaction to the hardback hot take is my favorite 😂😂😂 as an arthritic person, I tend to gravitate towards hardbacks more because I can put them down while I read. But with paperbacks, I'm more often than not struggling because it feels to my pained bones that I'm trying to hold down a flapping seal 😂
Bro I straight up read a book last year where a good 50 of its 200 pages were literally text conversations describing the GIFs two thirty year old characters were sending each other. Like this was a romance for ADULTS and it was like that. Books that are written worse than fanfic are getting published left and right and thats why so many of them are bloated. Like the authors never learned how to edit down and the editors don't care ig. EDIT: thank you for speaking out against misogyny, that actually surprised me since booktube is normally so allergic to feminism
"enemies to lovers" is so very rarely actually enemies to lovers anymore, it's now just a catch all for any time characters don't immediately agree with each other and it's 100% used as a marketing buzz word to sell books
Basically, it's conflated with Hate-to-Love, which is a different trope. ((Not sure if that's the actual trope name tho🤣)) But, basically, two characters can absolutely hate or dislike each other even without being enemies outright(just because you don't like someone doesn't automatically make them a full-on enemy)-and just because two characters are enemies doesn't always mean they necessarily always automatically hate or dislike each other at all(in fact it might totally eat at them and rip them up inside that they're enemies) sometimes it really just means that they have jobs or philosophies that are at odds with each other(at least when they are enemies specifically because of a personal betrayal or other equally personal vendetta). You need something a little more than just not liking or just not getting along with each other to make two characters actual enemies.
You can have both enemies-to-lovers and hate-to-love all at one same time, but you can also have either one by itself. And that's a distinction that seems lost sometimes.
Yeahh.. Great example is the spanish love deception methinks
@@lostaj7287 Yes!!
Exactly what I was going to say! i love actual enemies to lovers, so the misleading marketing is disappointing. No, the FMC hating the MMC for a misunderstanding and him surprise, being in love the whole time isn't enemies to lovers. Banter and bickering where they argue but find each other hot right away is also not enemies to lovers.
As someone who loved daisy Jones and the six, I will agree it's because of the audiobook bringing so much personality to the characters.
Yeah I just finished it yesterday actually and I very quickly wished I had just gotten the audio book
I have to disagree… as someone who can’t stay focused with audiobooks and therefore doesn’t read them, I could not put down Daisy when I read it years ago.
voice might be giving them personalities but the thing is... for the most part, it might not be the personality the author is intended so voicing books by giving characters personalities might contradict the author intentions and make unnecesary fanwars between readers about characters real personality.. those who voice books need to just read without giving any emotions or personlity to anything
@@yukichan177 an audio book of a dialogue heavy story read with zero emotion would be unlistenable. The people who ready audio books are either the authors (who are bringing their intentions behind the writing that might be different than how readers would interpret them) or voice ACTORS who are acting out a story. Everyone who reads out loud well brings emotion to the reading. Audio books are their own category of art/lit.
Saying Jesse's outro along with him is my passion, and has been my passion for the past 8 years.
Yes for calling out the misogyny that some authors are getting. Have been dealing with a bad pain week and appreciated the giggles in your jokes and editing talent. ❤
He makes an interesting and fair point about how female authors always seem to get disproportionate hate compared to male authors, and how it often seems people always find some excuse for it almost just because a female author gets popular. I absolutely support calling that b.s. out, too!
However, what I've heard is that supposedly people are unhappy with something about how Taylor Jenkins Reid writes Latinx characters?. 🤔🤔
@Jaginaia Electrizs oh yeah the call out for Taylor is valid because the way she represents Latinx characters ain't cool with us, while I enjoyed Evelyn Hugo I can see and understand where folks are coming from and while I didn't read her latest it sounded like she did the same thing folks were calling her in on before. So 🙆♀️
hot take: dog-earing pages is fine! stopping to highlight or whatever breaks the flow of the story! once i've experienced the book as a whole i can go back to the folded pages as a highlight reel to keep the feelings alive a little longer!!
No. No no no no no no
No. That's what book darts are for
felt the same about the Song of Achilles. I didn't cry or anything, but yeah, it was sad. I think maybe I'm desensitized to sad books at this point.
Every time my sister sees me folding the cover of a paperback around so I can hold it more comfortably she give me a death glare😂
I would LOVE a Haymitch spin-off.
i heard allisonpaiges describe short books as 'books that respect your time' and i felt that in my soul
Long book recommendations! I am someone who actively avoids long books, but Kate Morton's books are the exception to that rule for me. She writes multi-generational family mystery type books with different point of views from different time periods. Those aren't usually my cup of tea, but her execution is so phenomenal, every word feels well placed and intentional, every sentence well-crafted, and when i pick up her books i feel like i'm in good hands. i don't have to worry whether I'll be able to understand the intricacies of the plot because she does such an amazing job with plot progression and pace. And her plot twists, oh man, they are the stuff i live for, they blow me away. My favourite book of hers is "The Lake House" (592 pages), and I've just started reading "The Distand Hours" (562 pages).
Also! My unpopular opinion is that I loooooathe modern book marketing that relies on tiktok-able or instagramable images of the cover and a bunch of tropes surrounding it with little arrows pointing to it. And there's never a summary to be seen. I don't care if it's enemies to lovers, forced proximity, spicy, female protagonist, I DON'T CARE GIVE ME A SUMMARY! Tell me what the book is about or I will vow to never read it simply out of spite. This is not ao3 (i say this as a fic writer, but by god has ao3 rotted book publishing's collective brain), stop treating it like it is! I don't care about your tropes, i don't care about your blurbs, i care about the SUMMARY!
10 months later and STILL so many arrows. It's like I've already read the book before I read it.
ALSO marketing a book based on its trope is my biggest pet peeve like ill be watching a video to find some recommendations and its all "this is small town romance, friends to lovers, grumpy sunshine" and im like okay but WHATS THE PLOT
I felt the same about Song of Achilles. I finished the book and thought, "Whaaaaaat was everyone TALKING ABOUT?!?"
Same!
i very much disagree that the hunger games isn’t as could as divergent. like for me, i think that the best divergent book doesn’t even compare to the worst hunger games book. idk maybe that’s just me. also with songbirds and snakes, i honestly have struggled through it (not even half way) because i’m really not about trying to victimize snow
For Song of Achilles, I finally read it this past week and I was scared it wouldn’t live up to the hype and how much I loved Circe and while it didn’t match that, and I think that’s more because I could identify with Circe more, I think it was a beautiful and heartbreaking story. I thought I would cry more, and then I read the last page and immediately started ugly sobbing. Was it brilliant…no. Was it a good book with the perfect ending…yes.
I agree with the person that Song of Achilles wasn't that sad but I think that might be because I was going in expecting it to be sad. I did cry on the last page tho, lol. But it wasn't devastating imo
HOW IS DIVERGENT BETTER THAN THE HUNGER GAMES i could go on a 3 hour rant about how terrible divergent is and hunger games (at least the first two but imo also the third) is one of the best series written in the 2000s
I agree I want Haymitch’s Hunger Games or Finnick’s
Song of Achilles left me pretty sad but i wasnt straight up bawling my eyes out. id say its a good sad book but the experience of the reader might vary depending upon your emotional stability.
you should read it tho. its a good book.
I love these types of videos!
I can not express the feeling of having Jesse explain exactly how I feel about Taylor Jenkins Reid down to which of the two books I prefer that I've read, and why I think I like Daisy Jones and the Six less than The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. But the characters feel so real, no doubt about it!
I’m sorry I can’t trust someone that says divergent is better than the hunger games😭
*me who thinks that* maybe I should reread the hunger games…..😂
I did enjoy The ballad of songbirds and snakes book but I enjoyed doing origin villain stories a lot like I enjoy seeing where the villains come from what happened was their trauma and their past or that for revenge or did they just lose your way I think it's really cool that we got to explore a villain that I find more scary than most of the other YA because President Snow is just a man doesn't have any powers or special abilities
Exactly. The only thing I hated about that book was the "chase the trend" title that it was given. But I love a good villain origin story that proves to us even the villains have their humanity. (it's been a while since I read the book, so I can't remember exactly how it ended at all, just that I did enjoy it.)
Thanks for posting. Dealing with stress and anxiety rn, so prayers r appreciated ❤️ hope you’re doing well
books that are good long: The Kingkiller Chronicle “Name of the Wind” and “The Wise Man’s Fear"
My biggest "hot take", according to others, is that I think it's okay to dog-ear pages. I do it to mark pages that make me feel strongly in one way or another. Upon rereads, or if I just want to feel a particular way, I can just flip to them and reread those pages.
Now, I need the opinions of others.
My husband's cousin(s) wrote some --at least somewhat-- popular books, one of which is getting turned into a movie. We had gone to her first book signing as a date when we first started dating. I started reading her first one, but struggled with some of the-- too prosey for my taste-- writing. Haven't picked it up since. Do I give that one another chance, try one that isn't her debut novel, or wait until the movie comes out?
Her sister also just wrote a novel and while I'm sure the writing isn't exactly the same, I am hesitant to start it for that reason.
I don't want to have to tell them at the next family get-together that they make it to. 😆
Oof, reading books by people you know is tricky. Don't blame you for hesitating! Personally, I'd wait for the movie as long as you can avoid a conversation explaining why you haven't finished the book. 😬
Oof. This is so hard!
My first boyfriend’s dad was an author and I was given his first book for free. I read it and didn’t love it, but pasted on a smile and just didn’t say much other than the few things I liked. Then I realized he had written 13 more books in a similar style and I was going to be given them for free…
We broke up.
(Not because of his dad though, lol!) we both had an amicable break up before I even received book 2, so I didn’t have to worry about this particular moral dilemma.
Definitely talk to your husband about it though and see how important it is to her that you read it. I read that first book because my boyfriend was so proud of his dad’s work and I wanted to make a good impression.
I was so ready to see a HelloFresh meal in this video 😂
The popular books everyone thinks are overrated: I love
The popular books everyone thinks live up to the hype: I don't like
Maybe this is why I don't have any friends
I actually totally agree that Bible pages really _do_ feel nicer; they have a softer, more silky/velvety texture.. unless you get a thick-paged one. BUUT I also agree that thicker pages are much more ideal and far less nerve-wracking / far more relaxing / for reading in general, because then you don't have to worry as much about how quickly or how carefully you're turning those pages or not. 🙂🙂🤭🤣🖤💖
I can actually see the tropes/predictability thing both ways-I can see going into something knowing exactly what you're going to get and getting exactly what you wanted being very appealing, but I can also see going into something wanting to be surprised by the unknown to be the most exciting thing. I think it just depends on individual reader preference, or [for me ]exactly what I'm reading and why &/or my exact mood at the time! ^--^
Yes!
Times-two!
I have been noticing Taylor Jenkins Reid getting a lot of criticism, lately-aannddd, I think you're basically right about BookTok!
I agree on a couple things ; 1. books that are like 700 pages long for no reason is ridiculous especially when they have content that isn't even necessary to the story, second adults or anyone talking about YA books as this is spicey as an adult it is creepy. I am currently reading the 4th book of a YA book and I had to just skip a whole chapter and a half because the explicit content that the author created had me, absolutely cringing to the point that I told my husband this is porn not, YA - what am I reading? urrgh!!! not to mention this book is huge and this chapter we could have done without, it was unnecessary and complete vulgar for it to be YA (and no not a prude, just was way too much). And finally to add I feel Leigh Bardugo is overrated.. don't bash me just my opinion lol. I like her Shadow and Bone series but wasn't thrilled about it as everyone that recommended it to me said I would be.
Honestly the people that get heartbroken by The Song of Achilles do so because they are not familiar with the Iliad. Which is insane. I can’t believe that there are people who don’t know (spoiler alert for a 6000 year old story) Patroclus dies. It’s still a very emotional story. But the people that get broken by it are so because of shock.
I was always sceptical of TJR books because everyone was crazy about them. But then I read Evelyn Hugo and joined the crowd. Like one youtuber said it - it's like she sprinkles pages of her books with crack. She is not overrated, the rating is telling the truth 😄
My hot take (that I have nourished for the entirety of my existence):
You don't need to bend books. I hate it when someone bends my books, like if you want to read my books, and you bend it past 90°, I am not gonna give you another book of mine again. 90° is far, far more than enough and doing even a degree more gets on my nerves.
I feel like people are tryna break to book or crease the spine.
And I hate creases on the spine. I will never lend you a book if you crease its spine, or any part of the book tbh.
I think it's weird for any YA to have spicy in it honestly because they are normally written by adults. Like why? I can't even watch a teen show with a spice scene, why would you want to write a whole book with it? I mean, teens do this stuff, but there's no need to write the specifics, just write an adult book if you want spicy so much
4:24
"...are gorgeous, by Taylor Swift"
this is when you know that a man is high quality
I present to you an even hotter take - Song of Achilles is not only not that sad, but also not that good. It's just a bad rip-off of the Iliad but with "romance" that's not even that romantic.
I'm someone that actually prefers Daisy Jones and The Six to Evelyn Hugo. But out of the 6 Taylor Jenkins Reid books I've read, Evelyn is my 2nd favorite.
Fluff>spicy 💯💯💯 fluff always had me squealing over their innocent stuff. Spice is nice but I just want to read in peace 😂
Divergent murdered the YA dystopia trend lol it made people realize it was time to move on. Stupidest concept ever.
I NEED Jesse's playlist because all of these Taylor Swift references are amazing!
It irks me when a video title includes the massive number of books someone read in one month. I immediately distrust the content. Is that weird?
Here's my hot take: we need less sagas and series and more standalone books.
Sagas and series are making it so books feel like TV.
Jesse please, where did you find that shirt. I LOVE it!
I would agree about The Song of Achilles. I thought it was lacking in feelings by the time I finished it and I was expecting so much more
Agree 100% with the spicy YA books. I love a good spicy book, but it needs to be ADULT. YA + Spice and I will immediately DNF. Lol
I agree its good to chill out about numbers, but the more books you read the better your reading comprehension will get. There are so many amazing books out there and realistically I will only get to enjoy a certain tiny % of them before I die so yeah I am gonna read as many as I can before I do.
Thiccc books must be done well; if they’re not… it’s going in the DNF zone
I agree. If I finish a big book, it’s automatically at least 3-3.5 stars depending on length bc if I finish it, I can’t have disliked it that much!
Honestly I agree with the person saying Divergent is better than hunger games. And you hitting Chain of thorns aggressively gave me second-hand anxiety.
SAAMMEE!! 🤭🤍 🤣🙂
(For me, I think it's because of which MC that I find the most likeable personally, and the world that I would personally most prefer to actually live in if they were real. ^-^)
Curious what makes you think divergent is better? I liked the first one but thought the other ones were OK. Now hunger games is a favorite
@@StephanieCThoughts exactly what I think about hunger games. I found it extremely overrated. It was very mediocre for me, whereas Divergent trilogy got me into reading.
I agree! Looking back at it I think the hunger games were good but a bit over rated
I truly believe that authors will age down their characters to YA and keep the spice because YA sells better than Adult. But YA sells better than Adult because of the influence that Social Media has on book selling. You don't see as many 40+ content creators as you do under 40 or even under 30 to promote the Adult genre as much as YA.
I mean, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book unless someone was really wanting a story like this, but I recently read The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. After 1,008 pages that engrossed me, left me wanting more and now I'm totally obsessed with the series, I guess I agree with its length 🤷♀️🤣
I agree with not paying attention to how many books you read. I personally have been struggling with reading lately mostly because I’m distracted but I feel having a specific amount of books I should is to stressful, I want to be entertained not stressed by the amount of books I have to read
I also somewhat disagree with the ballad of songbirds and snakes take. I have love hate relationship. I love the writing and storytelling, and the only thing I don’t like about it is snow. And I know snow is meant to be the bag guy but in the very beginning I kinda sympathized for. It was the end that threw me for a loop. I had to literally put the book down for a few hours to cool down before finishing it. What snow did at the end made me very angry and it’s the only reason why I have a love hate relationship with it
I kinda agree with Divergent is better than with Hunger games. But for me that's only considering the first book. When I consider the whole series, I feel like Divergent series went bad after 1st book while Hunger games stayed the same.
Thank you Jesse for mentioning the misogyny happening with the hatred of female writers. I feel the same
The lost symbol by Dan Brown a fantastic long thriller with a billion plot twists!
Definitely enjoyed this video! Thanks!!! 💜💜💖
And absolutely agree that we should all be able to just agree to disagree sometimes and live in harmony with each other anyway!🤍😊💖
I agree with the song of achilles person. It's sad but nothing to write home about in tbh
I absolutely loved The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes! I gave it 4 stars. It's sometimes fun to read a book from the villian's perspective and I wasn't rooting for Snow at all, which I was scared would happen. However, I do agree that I wish we had a Haymitch prequel.
I quite literally hate the cruel prince series with a very decent fiber of my being and it makes me so sad 😂
To be fair... it is possible that you can read a spicy book and/or root for two characters to get together even without personally getting off on it yourself. I'm on the Ace spectrum myself, so reading spice in books is rarely about actually getting my rocks off on it for me. And there is some argument to be made for, at least older teens, being allowed to enjoy spice in their books too I guess? ..😅 Buuut, yyeeahhh, if you are reading it to get your own jollies off on it and you're an adult-you probably shouldn't be reading YA! 🙃🙃😶👀😐🤦♀️🙃😅 (Although, to be fair, you could also be imagining yourself &/or what you might have liked back when you were a teen OR aging the characters up in your own mind so imagining if they weren't/aren't actually teens too-which is I supposed, or at least could be, a bit less creepy as well; since these are entirely fictional characters, and it's okay to reimagine fiction in your own mind as what if it had in some way or another been different than it actually was. Buut stiiilllll. 👀🙃😅👀)
Nice !
4:00 "Lord of Mysteries".......
But it's an officially translated webnovel... So it doesn't really have standard length chapters. It has 1400+ chapters but took me 140 hrs to read distributed across a month and a half.
The only time I personally have mismatched books is if that was just how the cards fell, like for some reason or another I just didn't have a choice[ or I started with book 1 in softcover but then didn't want to wait that long to read the next books as the came out], OR _if_ I actually didn't like a certain cover badly enough that I refused to buy it and bought it in a completely different edition instead just to avoid having that cover. (I did that for book two in Sarah Rees Brennan's Demon's Lexicon trilogy. Because the U.S. editions changed after the first book, and I really loved the original cover of book 1 so much, I have books 1 & 3 in hardcover but book 2 in U.K. paperback. 🤣🤭💖)
I don't understand people annotating books for fun. I just don't. School is over.
Hardbacks are a pain for those of us who have small hands, bestie
SONG OF ACHILLES IS NOT THAT SAD!!!!
I READ IT AND I WAS LIKE WHERE IS THE TEARS??
YALL LIED TO ME AND MIND YOU I'M A CRIER.
why I typed in caps is beyond me
The "highly hyped woman author suddenly gets huge backlash for being 'overhyped'" phenomenon is absolutely misogyny! Those authors aren't hyping themselves as the best thing to happen to their genre or literature, nor are they claiming to have perfect bodies of work. They're pretty much just being personally targeted for other people's love of their work--usually women/femme/queer fans--who are themselves being met with the equally misogynistic backlash that all women/femmes face whenever they love something and make it popular. I've seen a lot of Colleen Hoover hate, which sure, I have zero interest in her books, but I also have zero interest in a James Patterson novel, and you don't see anyone throwing stones at him. Hoover's books are definitely work critiquing (some of them sound questionable) but that doesn't mean she and her readership deserve to be trashed. It's a vicious mix of hatred for things marketed toward/popular amongst women (and women perceived people) and hatred for women's success.
I 100% agree that the hunger games spinoff should have been about Haymitch
To speak about BookTok. I don't use TikTok but alot of TikTok I feel is another reuse of the "new thing bad" yet again. Plus now politicians are trying to ban TikTok. Like yeah it social media in general does have problems but the internet is like us humans, complex and multifaceted. Also haven't delved into any criticism against TJR but I have heard some discussions about her writing 2 books with Latina protagonists and the bisexual rep in Evelyn Hugo. Again I haven't delved into it or read any of TJR's books but this is what I have heard
I agree with The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes one. Even though I enjoyed the story, I just wish it'd put more focus into the Hunger Games itself or giving more insight on their impact on the rest of society.
Still gonna watch the movie adaption though because The Hunger Games has always been my favorite series lol
Cruel prince... Oeff no not for me, it was to easy to figure it out and it was to cringe and fake to me.🙈🙈 Sorry. It was a really good concept! It could have been so much better.
BROOO you have no idea how weird I felt reading Warcross when the romance happened. I know they’re technically adults but it’s basically a student teacher romance and 🤮 I’m not about to be a 30 year old reading about teens making out
I guess that’s my hot take 😂 the romance ruined the book for me
I think Us Against You by Fredrik Backman is necessarily long (it's 435 pages).
I feel like people hate booktok because they just hate tiktok overall, and thus anything associated with it. Or they just do very surface level analysis of booktok.
The song of Achilles is well written, but if you know the basics of the Trojan war, you know how it ends. Like, it is written beautiful and it is emotional, but it is definitely not the saddest book ever.
I recently read the Cruel Prince and maybe it was because it was my first read after Mistborn, but I just wasn’t impressed 😞I really wanted to love it! It just felt immature.
I say it shouldve followed Cinna and his inspiration for the Mocking Jay
I'm always skeptical of massively hyped books but I caved recently and read the hating game. It was the last straw. The only reason i did not dnf was it being an audiobook I could listen to while doing something else. It was a cheap office romance, the characters were ridiculously childish to the point I felt like I was reading a horny teens diary, the whole relationship development felt rushed, the big plot twist ended up having no impact whatsoever, the mmc turned out to be weirdly creepy though he's glorified to no end, the only plotline unrelated to the romance remained unresolved and it ended as undiluted smut.
The Hating Game is not actually a good book.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you wanna conquer big books you gotta portion it out! Get your daily dose in and you'll find you're craving for tomorrow to come so you can keep reading. And make the portions small! 50, 75, or 100 pages depending on your free time. It works, I swear!
But Jessie... What if making my books pretty is my favorite part of annotating? 🥺
I enjoyed The Song of Achilles but I'll have to agree with that hot take, it's not that sad, there are sadder books 🤷♀
what you said made me really think:
Why are the authors who were once popular have the community turn their backs on them be mostly women? I don’t know the answer, maybe there are more women publishing books now and I kind of understand some of the reasons maybe they looked back or reread that book and they don’t like it anymore or maybe that author has a problematic aspect to their book, or they have a stance on certain issues that the masses doesn’t agree with.
I know the reason for J K Rowling getting backlash for the things she said when she could have kept her opinions to herself, and a few authors I have tried that fell flat for me but I don’t like when the entire community gangs up on someone for having a different opinion. I think it’s also the overzealous generation that want to always be politically correct that is ganging up on authors works that may/may not be offensive now. 😅 I hope when my sister and I eventually publish books that it won’t be offensive to anyone but you run the risk by writing so we can only do our best and try to stay informed but I also don’t want to be afraid to say what I need to say too.
I should definitely do some research on this
If you want haymitch content there is apparently a limited show called the quarter quill coming to Netflix in a year or so.
i must say the 3rd book of hungetgames should just not be... it literaly undos all of katnnis\gale sacrifises but killing gale and killing her sister... the reason she joined the game in the first place was to save her siste.. her dying in such stupid way... just resets everything from book 1 and 2... it would have been the same if she didnt replace her sister and her sister died in book 1 in hunger game, it would have driven katnnis to go ham on the govement as well... prim's death undos all the reasons she chose to be a tribute. if prim didnt die and the ending was her enjoying a free world that katnnis wanted for her, than it would be truely better than divergant... but as she died: all of katniss sacrifices were for nothing (yea she might saved the world but she only did it for her sister and to survive, her death was not even heroic enough especilly cuz it all started with her)
and after book 1 the plot kinda goes down.... divergant is interesting more, even tho they share the same genre XD but as for whos better: they are the same imo just becuz they killed the sister in THG.
Oh my gosh Jesse, I feel the same way I hate long books especially when they are longer then necessary it feels more like a chore . Hey also by the way I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow I really didn’t enjoy it but I’m reading The New Girl by Jesse Q Sutanto overall great video you made me laugh and put a smile on my face which is what I needed today ❤
imo annotayting books is sacreligious, its someones work of art, but ppl be scribelling in it like crazy.. best way is to just take a notebook and write down the sentances you liked from the books you read.. image you make a drawing and share it with ppl and they just take a marker and be marking things permamnatly in your drawing as they like :< its rude
white-void jesse is here with the real real
For long books that deserve to be long I have to go with The Chorus of Dragons series by Jenn Lyons. Each book was 500-700 pages long but I never felt like the books were dragging on or like I was getting bored of it.
yeah romance books these days are all pretty much the same.. just switch to romance manga or fantasy books that have romance in them, at least theres a plot there xD or read romance books that came out before the 2010s
Whether annotating works or not and how it works depends on the person doing it. Some do it because they like it, some like me do it because going over the content twice as they annotate helps them remember things, some do it just because. Either way, it's a subjective thing and is bound to change. I never used to annotate - I even got horrified at the mere thought of writing in my books. But that has changed because of a ton of reasons and now, I love tabbing and annotating. I even bought a couple of physical copies just so I could annotate them 😁
OMG your reaction to the hardback hot take is my favorite 😂😂😂 as an arthritic person, I tend to gravitate towards hardbacks more because I can put them down while I read. But with paperbacks, I'm more often than not struggling because it feels to my pained bones that I'm trying to hold down a flapping seal 😂
i mean, i get your point but people did turned their backs on john green
You. Have an interesting life kiddo!🙃
I hate when a book marketing like “have a twisted ending”
noo jesse you have to read the song of achilles
Song Of Achilles underwhelmed me. 👎
Forcing them into yoga positions 😂
"Does a tab a day keep the doctor away?"😅
lmao that segway.
Bro I straight up read a book last year where a good 50 of its 200 pages were literally text conversations describing the GIFs two thirty year old characters were sending each other. Like this was a romance for ADULTS and it was like that. Books that are written worse than fanfic are getting published left and right and thats why so many of them are bloated. Like the authors never learned how to edit down and the editors don't care ig.
EDIT: thank you for speaking out against misogyny, that actually surprised me since booktube is normally so allergic to feminism
JESSEE PLEASE READ THE TWISTED SERIES BY ANA HUANG!!!!! i need ur opinion on it!!!! and i flew through it in 2 months!! (im super slow reading lol)
YES... im bored of enemies to lovers.... it feels the same EVERYTIME.