Recent Reads #41 | Heists, Ennui, and a New Favourite Book

[@thevintageplaylist7191]

Love love love your Wrap up videos, they're my fave

[@o_o-lj1ym]

Recent reads is just the best!!

[@ffstopP]

You are sooo smart, Shaelin, it's scary. For someone who claims to have a short attention span you have a phenomenal memory. I enjoy ALL your posts. Stay well.

[@ShaelinWrites]

Haha thank you!! I feel like I have a good memory in general but a terrible memory for what I read, because I read a lot/pretty fast, so books start to blur pretty fast, but I take notes for these videos so I don't remember my thoughts!!

[@raynichol8959]

Great video. Thank you. I’d love to hear your take on a couple of memoirs. Looking forward to your next vid. Cheers.🍷

[@MadailinBurnhope]

"stunned by the passage of time" 😂

[@kinrateia]

Gasp!!! And so soon from the last recent reads!!

[@lesliemoiseauthor]

I love this so much. Thank you for the great idea for my next video. Also thanks for helping me develop my TBR. (Plus some NTBR!). You needed to read Assassin's Apprentice, the first in the Robin Hobb long series.

[@jakebishop7822]

I have tried to get her to read Farseer, and in the past have failed. There may be hope on the horizon though. I will take her reading only Liveship over her reading none of it

[@Lara_Ameen]

As someone who is part Egyptian, I heard about IF AN EGYPTIAN CANNOT SPEAK ENGLISH and have been wanting to read it! I will definitely be checking it out! Most of my most anticipated reads are fantasy books! Mostly YA fantasy! But I read almost every genre/category.

[@ShaelinWrites]

It's so good!! Noor Naga's other book, Washes Prays (which is a verse novella) is also incredible! And ohhh any good upcoming fantasy I should look out for👀 I'm trying to read more fantasy but don't really know much about the genre!

[@Lara_Ameen]

@@ShaelinWrites Thank you for responding! I absolutely love your channel and have been watching since 2018. I have a few upcoming YA Fantasy recs! BELLADONNA by Adalyn Grace (about a young woman who falls in love with Death and gives me gothic romance vibes) and BLOODMARKED (sequel to LEGENDBORN, so read LEGENDBORN first) by Tracy Deonn. Both books are coming out in the next few months! Would also recommend my friend/critique partner’s book, ONE FOR ALL by Lillie Lainoff, a YA historical with incredible disability rep (came out in March). I would also recommend THE HACIENDA by Isabel Canas, an Adult supernatural horror. The prose is absolutely incredible! For literary fiction, I would recommend TRUE BIZ by Sara Novic, which also has fantastic disability rep. I also loved IN THE DREAM HOUSE, a unique memoir by Carmen Maria Machado (and I loved her short story collection HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES).

[@apocalypsereading7117]

really interesting hearing your thoughts on An Apprentice. i've read some Lispector short stories and seems the theme of a man inspiring (sometimes demanding) his female lover's "self-actualization" is something she was was interested in exploring. in most of the stories i thought she did it really well, so i tried her novel The Hour of the Star. in that one a male writer is writing the character of a fictional woman, kind of to see if she "self-actualizes" through his writing. his attitude to her is so chauvinistic and paternalistic it totally put me off! i'm sure Lispector does it deliberately but it just wasn't a good read....

[@ShaelinWrites]

The book definitely seemed very deliberate and well-thought out and I would definitely read more of her work!! I think the way the dynamic read to me, just wasn't a dynamic I find too appealing to read about haha.

[@jakebishop7822]

SHIP OF MAGIIIC!

[@ShaelinWrites]

yesssss

[@sLePpInG]

I started reading Tao Lin short stories on the web and his old website and he was one of the strongest influence in my writing... then I read his books and I was like ????? eee eee eee is one of the worst books I've ever read, and Taipei also left me super dissapointed too. I do recommend watching a vid on yt called "the vegan muffin" based on a short story by him, it's so good. Also really thought you'd love Clarice Lispector, but I agree. Read Agua Viva though, it's all about the prose on that one

[@ShaelinWrites]

Ohh this is so interesting!! I've never read his short fiction (Taipei was my first venture into Tao Lin) but now I'm curious, and will have to check out the vegan muffin. Also I would love to read more Lispector even though this particular book wasn't for me, so Agua Viva sounds perfect!!

[@eduardoo31]

i read a clarice lispector book a few weeks ago in portuguese, a breath of life. it was crazy hahaha it's barely a novel, more like a rambling essay about a writer coming up with a character who takes on a life of her own. she is pretty famous here in brazil for her introspective and perplexing stories

[@rudolphpyatt4833]

Fascinating. And very interesting that two of your favorites from this list were short reads. In that vein, I think you would enjoy Hugh Howey’s Beacon 23. It’s SciFi, but, like all good science fiction, covers some deep themes; and the characterization is superb.

[@leslieens5406]

I anticipate Babysitter by Joyce Carol Oates. A bookstore clerk told me it will be out the last week of August 2022.

[@turtleandbear1179]

at the end you asked what we've been reading, so....... not much fiction, unfortunately, except for Elena Ferrante's L'amica geniale (my brilliant friend). Otherwise, mostly non-fiction like Naomi Klein's This changes Everything, a Japanese language learning book (if you want to count that - i do because it occupies the same time that i otherwise could have spent reading other book) and: please don't judge me: Lenin's State and Revolution for uni. Anyway: really enjoyed this video and love this series on your channel!! and your channel in general😅

[@billyalarie929]

Tbf Tao Lin once wrote a poem of which like 90% was literally “the next night we ate whale” It wasn’t a short poem, either.

[@huiajackson2040]

Auē! I've wondered if it'd find its way to Canada! It's been on the bestseller lists here in NZ ever since it came out in 2019 (goals). The opening scene with the weka and the rabbit is brutal ps - just in case you wanna know, it's pronounced ohh-way (it's a māori word!) :)

[@ShaelinWrites]

Ohh thank you for the pronunciation, I want to talk about it in an upcoming book recs video so now I can pronounce it right! thank you!!

[@huiajackson2040]

@@ShaelinWrites Happy to have helped! The key to pronouncing Māori words is in the vowels so a lot of people struggle even here in NZ (as I know all too well with a Māori name haha)

[@hiyoowihamainza949]

Today I learned how to pronounce "ennui."

[@jackhaggerty1066]

The title alone, *If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English* is engaging, though quiet titles are not necessarily unengaging. Noor Naga is on my buy list : Google's list of Egyptian writers (photos) led me to Basma Abdel Aziz a novelist, psychiatrist & human rights activist. Albert Cossery was an Egyptian born French writer (1913-2008) called the Voltaire of the Nile: again like Basma Abdel Aziz, who can resist this? Recommended: *We Want Everything* by Nanni Balestrini, a 1971 classic Italian novel reprinted 2022 with an introduction by Rachel Kushner. The first person narrator (nameless) describes the labour struggles in the Italian car plants, the mass unrest of the so-called industrial miracle. Kushner met Balestrini in 2016, and her introduction is included in her collection of essays *The Hard Crowd* covering 20 years, in paperback. Ruth Ozeki's admired novel *The Book of Form and Emptiness* is now in paperback. A Zen Buddhist priest she is author of *Timecode of a Face*.

[@jackhaggerty1066]

Talking about Buddhists, let me recommend Gail Sher's *One Continuous Mistake - Four Noble Truths for Writers* published 1999. Gail Sher was interviewed on KZbin but I cannot seem to find the film now. Hers is the ideal book for writers blocked by fear & anxiety.

[@greatperhaps7224]

oh Portrait of a Thief! loved to hear your thoughts about it. i was so thrilled about the concept but disappointed by the execution...... a lot....... it felt painfully repetitive and characters blurred together. hated the ending, too. ***SPOILERS!!!*** yeah of course the head of a giant powerful corporation would friendly thank a bunch of students for stealing art not kill them off so there wont be info leaks. yeah. totally believable. also absolutely hated that most inner struggles that the characters had were resolved by acquiring a shit ton of money. that is, in fact, realistic but also very anticlimactic and feels empty. loved the sapphic enemies to lovers tho

[@ShaelinWrites]

omg right like I *loved* the concept of PoaT, but the way the plot develops is so unbelievable and there was no work done to try and make it feel at least a little convincing. it would have made way more sense if they were already friends at the start, and decided to do the heist themselves, rather than being recruited by someone who would just...never recruit these five random students and then at the end be like "nice job, here's some money even though you didn't really do it👍" lolll

[@greatperhaps7224]

@@ShaelinWrites exactly!!!!

[@arcadelinkauthor]

**adds to TBR**

[@augusthawley5504]

I don't know if I'm actually recommending this book to anyone or not, but if you really want to read one of the most insane things you've ever read in your life, definitely check out Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif. I don't even know how to describe it, when I first finished it I thought I didn't like it but it's been two months and four books and I still think about it at least once a day. It's beyond a fever dream.

[@taqiakhlaqi7975]

"What is the point of an artist, if not to be gay." Shaelin Bishop

[@henrybicket2993]

I can definitely relate to finding most Hetero dynamics hard to understand/ wierd, haha

[@ShaelinWrites]

I just Don't get them

[@AdamFishkin]

Whenever something becomes Shaelin Bishop's favorite book, I have to continually remind myself to move it up in my TBR and someday ... when I can afford more than just groceries again ... pluck it off a bookshelf. And then that reminder gets lost because my attention span is oh dear lord what was I even talking about. High fantasy is a nice thing that, sadly, we can no longer have. I don't even need to explain that. *You all know the reason. And you should all be ashamed of yourselves.* "An Apprenticeship or The Dude Wanting Her To Be Better For Him" sounds like a very boring book. I whole-heartedly agree with your sentiment about heists. A good heist is like a good shower: when you turn on the faucet, you want to get drenched with water .... THAT'S THE POINT.

[@ShaelinWrites]

wait omg I missed something what's the reason we can no longer have high fantasy?? i must know!!

[@AdamFishkin]

It's because whenever a fandom forms around a set of books or something, however those fans interpret the rules of that world and characters will be ... even over objections by the actual authors, who are only human and didn't promise you anything except entertainment ... THE RIGHT INTERPRETATION AND A LAW PUNISHABLE BY DEATH. Just look at the petition to remake season 8 of G of T, or the countless online "think pieces" on how Ep. VIII killed Star Wars, and you have all the evidence you need of the homicidal entitlement that only high fantasy can trigger. ... Or maybe the number 8 has something to do with it. Either way I'm getting old and I want these whiny, axe-wielding kids off my lawn.

[@AdamFishkin]

P.S. You don't see that same wrath applied to historical fiction or dark academia. Nawww, *those* epic tomes get to be as high-horsey and brutally racist as they want, because those things are mere misdemeanors compared to screwing up a magic system. P.P.S. It isn't that I'm not working on my anger issues. It's just that willfully disorganized priorities on a group scale are a pet peeve of mine.

[@FocusBeDrifting]

How do you read so much? I barely read nowadays, I drown myself with KZbin and other means of inhaling information like podcasts etc. Any advice?

[@ShaelinWrites]

I've got a video on how to read more!

[@billyalarie929]

“Other than lord of the rings” 😏😏😏😏😏😏😏😏😏✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨ 👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌

[@billyalarie929]

Ok but seriously I actually can’t stop laughing and this may be how I die