Recent Reads #38 (while a kitten is climbing on me)

[@billyalarie929]

"they just lacked.... specificity?" oh, Shaelin.. never change.

[@shetallchangade1581]

When you say, And then... It gives so much of hope!

[@cygfreas6934]

oh my god she IS a baby!!! :,)))) kitty cat

[@GalenMicheal]

Aw. That kitty is so cute.

[@Ak-Shat]

Appreciate you 😊

[@xRaiofSunshine]

KITTEN!! SHES SO CUTE 😊 11:00 ish OMG 😂 😂 😂

[@badfaith4u]

Your cat is always welcome in your videos 📚🐈

[@lovemyne22]

Kitty cuteness!!! 😍😍😍😍

[@SSSoto17]

Omg Effie being a little rascal in the background 😍😍

[@ShaelinWrites]

she was in full rascal mode!!

[@avasghost]

okay but the KITTEN i am deceased

[@PageTurnersWithKatja]

Cursed Bunny was so good; clicked as soon as i saw the book in your thumbnail 😆 Love the sound of most of these books, will see if North Wood pops up in my library some time as I'm curious about the style. I'm currently reading All the Lovers at Night.

[@o_o-lj1ym]

These videos are the best and omg the kitten!!

[@kokoro_flow]

Effie is adorable, and her name has such a beautiful meaning! So on-brand for Shaelin. 🐈💖✨

[@toleble7301]

I love that cats love bookshelves because my cat used to chill on top of the books on the last shelf lmao.

[@ShaelinWrites]

bookshelf: *exists* cats: this is my jungle perch :)

[@faeriewren]

Not reading a lot of books lately, but I did binge read the entire first part of a web comic that I now adore as a fluffy comfort media.

[@passantamreltarek9946]

Effie is everything 😍🥺 I agree so much with you about White on White, I wish we got to experience more of the main character's protagonist-ness! Wow, When We Lost Our Heads sounds amazing, it's going to the top of my tbr now!

[@ShaelinWrites]

White on White had suchhhh good vibes I wish it leaned into the protagonist a bit more and it would have been a favourite!!

[@AdamFishkin]

Having spent far too much time among unhinged fandoms, as soon as you said "everything shipping-wise has been delayed" my brain went "oh jeez that's relatable bro it's hard to know what pairings to bother with when none of them have any chemistry..." And that was embarrassing. Very happy that you have a new Heather O'Neill favorite. It must be a springtime boost. I am now interested in "Cursed Bunny".

Hey. Just want to tell you that your one of my favorite content maker! Cheers from Poland!

[@johnhaggerty4396]

To the paperback fiction list below add *Learwife* by JR Thorp, a debut novel that begins where Shakespeare's King Lear ended. Told by Lear's invisible wife, the novel was reviewed in The Guardian online by Aida Edemariam in December 2021: *Learwife by JR Thorp review - out of Shakespeare's shadows.* Thorp is a winner of the London Short Story Award and writes librettos.

[@anniedou4342]

I love recent reads and have gotten so many amazing book recs from your videos! If I may, I think you should try out God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. It's just a beautiful work and one of my all-time favorites.

[@ShaelinWrites]

Ooh it's been on my TBR forever!!

[@kinga9148]

I'm reading Natsume Soseki's The Gate now, it's a calm read with a slow plot, but is also serious. My recent fav, maybe even one of my all time favorites is from a local writer. I am still thinking about the characters and quote them daily. I liked that the language was close to me and not pretentious. It also balanced everything well and was funny, serious, dumb and smart at the same time. It's not likely to ever be translated unfortunately........ but I'm glad I picked it up from the library and I will get my hand on a copy if I ever find it in a store/when it gets republished.

[@fictionfatale3913]

even if you didn't love Summerwater, please read ghost wall! It's so unique and atmospheric. Far better than Summerwater in my opinion.

[@ShaelinWrites]

Ohh good to know, it's been on my tbr for ages!!

[@maya-gur695]

Kitty! And again, I've added to my tbr a some books I haven't heard of before just because of your video! Hoping to find the next book I'll love as much as Eileen! P.S. I just bought Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart. It's general premise (coming of age, alcoholic, single parent, set in the 80's) somewhat reminded me of Eileen, even though Eileen is set in the 60's and the protagonist is a little older.

[@habibadokubo-asari211]

Please can you do a video on comp titles for your novel Honey Vinegar?

[@yvonnerogers6429]

👋

[@thevintageplaylist7191]

"I don't need a plot if the vibes are on point" I never felt this related to a youtuber

[@rev6215]

I'm solely here for the kitten (also had a heart attack like how is this Friday alread??!! Then saw it isn't)

[@Jacob-gu3in]

I was skeptical about the premise of When We Lost Our Heads and wasn't sure if I'd like it, but this has convinced me. I've wanted to read another Heather O'Neill since I read Lullabies for Little Criminals 3 years ago. She's an amazing writer. Also, weirdly I felt kind of the opposite about Infinite Country. I was really engrossed in the story and then that change in the narrative framing took me out of it. It felt like it could have and should have been much longer to accommodate that change and I felt like we should have gotten a more complete perspective of the other 2 kids in the family. Their small section felt thrown together. I ended up at about the same rating though, lol.

[@ShaelinWrites]

If you've been wanting to read more Heather O'Neill, Where We Lost Our Heads is her best (imo, tho I love almost all her books!) There's a huge evolution from Lullabies, which is a much more sad, intimate story, whereas her current writing is a lot wackier and more surreal. I agree that Infinite Country should have been longer, and it's quite rare that I say that since I usually appreciate sparseness. But with more time to develop each of the characters, it could have been a knock out of the park. I think I liked the narrative shift because up until that point, there was nothing really setting it apart from the many other family sagas I've read (that have more well developed characters), so it was exciting to have the book establish something original, up until then, I'd been really waiting for something to really pull me into the story in a unique way.

[@bageba8]

I spy Disorientation on your shelf--can't wait to hear what you think of that one!

[@ShaelinWrites]

Yesss it was one of my most anticipated reads of the year!!

[@onetruth3703]

This might be a really dumb idea, but could you do a series on defining literary devices/terms? I feel like a lot of people watch your videos trying to expand their knowledge on the subject because you break things down in way that makes it easy to understand. I know I have a hard remembering how to define certain terms sometimes, so I thought if you did a series on that, then it’d be easier for people like myself to get a better grasp of each term. Idk. Just a thought.

[@johnhaggerty4396]

Thanks for recommendations: you know the sweat and tears that go into the writing. New paperback fiction. *Still Life* Sarah Winman. Italy 1944. As bombs fall two strangers meet in a Tuscan wine cellar. Lots of sensory detail. *A Hundred Million Years and a Day* Jean-Baptist Andrea. A dinosaur fossil frozen inside an Alpine glacier. Translated from French. *Oval* Elvia Wilk. An artificial mountain in Berlin. Anja and Louise inhabit an eco-house. A pill called Oval changes the brain for the better. *Brother of the More Famous Jack* Barbara Trapido. 1982 reissue, coming of age romance, bohemia London + Rome. Sharp, witty. *Whereabouts* Jhumpa Lahiri. The transforming year in the life of a woman in an Italian city. About belonging + not belonging. *Light Perpetual* Francis Spufford, winner of Booker Prize. Five children killed by German bomb 1944 London. The lives they never had. *Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead* by Barbara Comyns, 1954 reissue of a tragicomic gem from a great English stylist. *Sell Us This Rope* Stephen May. 1907 and young Joseph Stalin is in London, poet, bank robber, spy, meets Rosa Luxemburg. *Five Women* Robert Musil. Three stories about woman by the author of The Man Without Qualities, a masterpiece of German Lit. *The White Dress* Nathalie Leger. Performance artist Pippa hitched from Milan to Jerusalem wearing a wedding dress, filming her journey. *Cold Hand in Mine* Robert Aickman. Master of strange stories, horror, surreal, dread, you never know what's around the corner. *O Caledonia* Elspeth Barker. A dead girl, Scottish castle, a jackdaw, a doll's house. Faultless first novel first reissued from 1991. *Men and Apparitions* Lynne Tillman. Culture politics gender: A novel asking what masculinity means today. Comes with photographs. *Outlawed* Anna North. Queer cowgirls, gender nonconforming robbers, the West 1894. Author graduate of Iowa Writers Workshop. *Madame Maigret's Friend* Georges Simenon. One of many Inspector Maigret novels republished by Penguin. Magnum photo covers.

[@zetjet9901]

3:45

[@BooksForever]

An author needs a cat like a fish needs water.

[@erikaroth6049]

Would you be open to in including content warnings in these for each book? Mainly the ones you have about? I wish I hadn't had to read detailed summaries of s*xual ab*se and in*stuous thoughts in your 5/5 book on Goodreads to know it was in there 😩 it might not be central to the story but it's important to note so that viewers are forewarned

[@SSSoto17]

Shaelin is only required to give trigger warnings about triggers that may appear in their own content, such as videos or writing. If you're interested in reading any of the books they recommend, it's your own responsibility to research a book before you read it

[@ShaelinWrites]

I'd recommend StoryGraph for a reliable source on content warnings. Books there are tagged with TWs and show whether it's graphic/moderate/mild, and it'll be much more accurate and comprehensive than me who is trying to just recall off memory (and my memory is not very good for what I read because I read a lot and often film these videos weeks to months after reading some of the books). There are so many things that warrant trigger warnings, and I honestly don't think I am capable of accurately reporting on all of them in what I read because it could be so vast for some books, so by making it a regular practice on my channel, I feel that I would inevitably inadvertently misinform or mislead people on the content of a book by forgetting or missing something important, which is why I don't feel comfortable with framing myself as any kind of reliable source on TWs in these videos, especially when there are better and more comprehensive resources out there. StoryGraph would be much more reliable because its curated by multiple people, rather than just one person's memory, and you wouldn't have to read any kind of summary to see the TWs either as they are just listed as a list of tags.

[@iiiiitsmagreta1240]

Kitties really are God's perfect idiots