Weekly Entertainment Wrap Up #372 [CC]

Hi YouTube, it's Kathy, and this is my Weekly  Entertainment Wrap Up for February 11th - 17th. This week I read two books, I watched one show, and I listened to one book. [pages turning] If you saw last week's video,  I'm in the exact same location! And if you saw last week's video, I talked  so much that my tiny little coffee went cold before I finished it, so we're going to see if  there can be a little bit more of a balance, because, uh, I can make this inhouse. I  made this on the little cof

fee machine while I was setting up my camera,  and it makes a scary sound, so I just want to honour its, uh,  achievements in making me a coffee. Otherwise I have a feeling that it'll  just make those sounds at random. Also, I remembered to put the sign on  the door so housekeeping doesn't knock but this window is open, so if you  hear random parking lot sounds, or if it just starts downpouring, enjoy. The first book that I finished  this week is All of Us Villains. This is actually a book that 

I've had an ARC for for years. I think it came out in 2021, so I've had  an ARC since at least then, if not 2020, and I'm pretty much getting around  to it now because I'm trying to read some of the ARCs I've ignored in the past. This book is also co-authored by  somebody who was friends with somebody who was bullying other people  in the author community, and I don't know if she was  also bullying people or not, cuz I can't exactly remember, but because her name's on it, I kind of was  like, “

ah, I don't really want to read that?” But that's also not fair to her co-author, who  I don't think had anything to do with that, so I got around to reading it now. All of Us Villains is the first in  a duology and there's seven families in this one specific magical town,  and basically every generation there's this fight to figure out who's  going to have power over the high magick in the world for that generation. Apparently 800 or so years ago, all of  these families were pretty evenly match

ed, but because one of these families tends to  win about two out of three of the fights, it's not so evenly matched anymore, so  we have some people that are at the top and think that they're definitely  going to win this thing, and some people that are at  the bottom and are just like, “this sucks; I wish I had help, and nobody's  willing to help me, and that's annoying.” And when I say competition, I don't mean  something like they're playing checkers or chess or throwing javelins  or somethi

ng like that. No, this is a competition to the death. Only one victor stands. In this book we get four point of  view characters from people who are actually going to be competing, and then  eventually are competing in this tournament, and as we go, we see some of them  doing some truly despicable things, some of them doing some things  just out of wanting to survive, other people realizing their families  are even worse than they actually knew and doing despicable things on their  behalf, and i

t all just really comes down to people wanting to keep and or obtain power. Essentially, from my understanding,  if nobody wins this tournament, then all of them die and then the high  magick is just unattainable for like 20 years or a generation, and these kids are raised  in mind with knowing that they're probably going to be part of this. Some of them  have siblings or cousins that could in theory be the champion for that  generation, but every time somebody in these families has a child, it'

s a chance that  they're going to be sent off to this competition. For the most part, I was enjoying this.  However there were things where I was like, “why would you be excited to be the champion?” Like, I know you've been raised for this for  all your life, although you weren't actually chosen as the technical champion until  just before the competition started so you couldn't have known you  were going to be the champion, but you've always been raised with  the thought in mind that you might

be, and that's why you might be excited,  but I personally would be like, “oh this is what my family does? Cool, I'm  emancipating and getting the hell out of here.” I should also mention that this is a set  in a world where kind of everybody uses kind of the low form of magick and  it's usually in the form of charms that are put into rings or  amulets or that type of thing, and basically you can recharge  these things, so if you buy a ring that lets your coffee taste better,  for example, which

I think was actually something in the book, you  can just get that recharged after you've used up the different charges. You do need to know how to cast the  spell and there are different spells at different higher levels, so you have to  be a better spell caster to cast something at a 10 rather than a 1, that type of thing. So the magick was really interesting.  I enjoyed that aspect it. But it all just really came down to, “yeah let's  kill a bunch of children because curses are cool.” Howeve

r, you know that I enjoyed it  because I was immediately annoyed that my library didn't have the second  copy [book] as an ebook or an e-audiobook so I can't continue and figure out what  happens, because obviously we're halfway through the story once you  get to the end of this book and I just kind of want to know how it goes. Because some people in this  want to break the curse, and I find that admirable, because somebody  should have done it in the last 800 years. And, I mean, I think there 

were some champions that tried, but they just didn't do it, so here we are. The other book that I read this week  is The Little Bookshop on the Seine. This is a book that's definitely based  around somebody doing a bookshop exchange with somebody who works at, or rather  owns, a bookshop that's very much like Shakespeare and Company in Paris. The bookshop itself is actually  called Once Upon a Time, but based on its location it's pretty  much meant to be Shakespeare and Company. And for that rea

son, that's  why I decided to read this, because I was just recently in Paris and  I could think of these different locations while these different characters  were wandering around them. Essentially, what happens is our  main character's named Sarah. She lives in a very small town in America but she's got this friend who  owns a bookshop in Paris, and her friend calls her one day and  her friend is just really distraught because her boyfriend is running off with the  girl that works at the from

agerie next door, and she just needs to get out of town,  and she decides that she wants them to swap bookshops so her friend will  come and stay at her bookshop and run it and she can go to this bookshop and run it. The thing is these are two  very different bookshops. Like, Sarah’s bookshop is very,  very quiet, very, very small town, whereas the Paris bookshop is very not quiet,  very packed, very much people everywhere, huge sprawling rooms, different locations. Like, I really enjoyed the bo

okshop setting  because I've been to the one it's based on but this obviously isn't the exact same  setup because there's different rooms that didn't exist at Shakespeare  and Co, which I found really cool. And because Sarah just got word that  her boyfriend won't be coming home like he said he would anytime soon, she  decides that when he is ready to come home he can visit her and Paris,  because he's a reporter, he travels all over the world for his work, and he's really trying to get his foot

  in the door as a freelance journalist, which is why he takes every job he  can get, which keeps them apart a lot. Like, we don't actually see him on page  I think until at least 50% into the book, although they do have conversations over  the phone or Skype or that type of thing. He is not physically in person with her  until at least halfway through this book. She also finds a lot of challenges because the  way that staffing is done is really different, how busy it is, all of the  different a

ccounting systems. Like, it's very, very difficult for her,  and she feels like she's having a hard time because she doesn't have the same  support system as she has back home. However, she finds a new one while  she's in Paris, which I find very cool. You do have to just strain credulity  a little bit to read this book because she mentions that she has  never even been on a plane before but within a week of her friend being like, “hey  come to Paris and I'll go to your bookshop,” she's on a pla

ne and she's going  to Paris, and I'm just like: Firstly, do you even have a passport? Like you might have a passport. You did  mention that you met Ridge's mother once and I'm pretty sure his mother's in Canada,  so in theory you could have a passport from going to Canada, but you didn't  mention that, which is just super annoying. Secondly, you are not allowed  to just go to Paris and work. That's not how that works. You need to get a work visa. You can't do  that within a week. Like, what the

hell? And then the same for your friend. It's obviously not legal for her to  just come to the states and work. You also can't just, like, open-endedly be  like, “Oh I'm going to be here for, you know, as long as it takes. Oh maybe  I'll stay an entire year.” No, that's that's how you get  kicked out of the country. I know the rules are very different  for very different places, but as a Canadian I can only spend 90 out  of 180 days in a row in the Shenzhen area, which Paris would be a part of,

and  that's as a tourist, not as somebody who's actually working in the country. So yeah, being somebody who's traveled  a lot more than this character, I just have to turn off the side of my brain  that knows that a lot of what she's doing is just not possible. But it was a  fun story. I read it over two days. At this point we all know what the  TV show I watched this week was. We finished the 14th season of Taskmaster. We  watch all of the 15th season of Taskmaster, and we watch the first two

episodes  of the 16th season of Taskmaster, which means we only have eight episodes  left until there's no more Taskmaster until the next season goes up,  which, I don't know when that is. I think they're filming it soon, and I think that  Chad actually put in to see if we could maybe be in the studio audience, which would  be awesome, but I don't know when they're filming that, so I don't even know if  will be able to fly into the UK to do that. Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure that even  Insta

gram knows that I like Taskmaster because I just saw yesterday a post where  some library somewhere in the States is doing Taskmaster-esque things in  the library, and the first task was a truck of books and it was just like  put these in alphabetical order by author but wearing these headphones, and  the headphones just had, like, somebody reading out random  letters of the alphabet, and I laughed pretty hard because  obviously I used to work in a library. I used to do what they were doing  for

a living, minus the headphones, and I watch a lot of Taskmaster, so  obviously something on Instagram knows me and I'm a little bit frightened by it, honestly. Oh, it's not quite cold  yet, but it's getting there. As for the audiobook I listened to this  week, I finally ticked off another thing for my 40 Before 40 TBR, and  that's Beloved by Toni Morrison. I actually knew nothing about  this book before going into it besides knowing that Toni Morrison is highly  regarded and that everybody shou

ld read at least one Toni Morrison book.  That's basically all I knew. I didn't know anything about the plot of this. This takes place in the late 1800s and we get a  little bit of time jumping between the present and what happened in the past in  these different characters’ lives, but it's essentially about this  woman named Sethe who was a slave and then decided to flee from that situation  to go join her mother-in-law who was freed. She sent her children ahead of her, her  and her husband who

were supposed to leave at the same time but she couldn't find him. She was heavily pregnant and decided to run. There were some trials and  tribulations while she was running and then some very tragic  things happened along the way. And in the present day, we're  probably about 15 years later, and somebody from the past comes to visit. What I definitely didn't know and what  would have sold me about this book if I'd known it ahead of time  is this is a haunting story. I mean that literally. Lik

e, it's also haunting  to read, because people are going through some very tough things and it's a period of  history that some people like to just pretend never happened, but definitely still  has impacts on people's lives today, but also there's literally a haunting. I was really scared going into this book because  anytime there's a book that people really revere and it's, like, one of  those books everyone should read, I'm really scared I'm either not going  to get it or I'm not going to lik

e it and then just be, like, not smart enough  for it, but that wasn't the case this time. I really enjoyed this one. Oh yeah, finished it before it got cold! Before I end this, I wanted to mention that my  next Weekly Wrap Up will actually be in the UK and we'll be visiting my cousin  Joey and her husband Peter, and he is actually doing a very  interesting art challenge right now. Peter actually also made the digital  art at the end of all of my videos, but for the entire month of February he's

  painting an original painting [every day], and if you want to win the  one that he makes on day 29, which is going to be made under  very interesting circumstances - and I know what those are because I'm a  part of them and I'm very excited for it - you can actually enter a raffle. I'm going to link his channel down below. But everything for the raffle actually goes  to the Huntington's Disease Association and he's almost reached his goal  of £1,000, which is just fantastic. That's it for this

week! If you've read, watched, or  listened to any of these, let me know about it down in the comments below. On the way down to the comments,  if you hit that Subscribe button that would be very nice of you. If you don't feel like leaving a comment but  want to make sure that I know you were here just leave me an emoji or a smiley face  if you happen to be on your keyboard. Some people have asked if there's a  way to financially support this channel so I set up a Ko-fi account, which  is a dig

ital tipping service. The link for that, as always, is down below. You can like and share this as you see fit, and I will see you very soon. Bye! [outro music]