Best Books Ive Read in 2023! (July - December) TheDiscoKing 2026-09-23 | Best Books Ive Read in 2023! (July - December)
Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2025-04-30 | Mircea Cărtărescu's 'Solenoid' is funny funny ha ha he he. Longlisted for something.8/10Solenoid: Solenoid submerges us in the mundane details of a diarist's life, and then spirals into a bizarre, existential account of history, philosophy and mathematics. Grounded in the reality of communist Romania, the novel grapples with frightening health care, the absurdities of the education system and the struggles of family life, while investigating other universes and forking paths. In a surreal journey like no other, we visit a tuberculosis preventorium, an anti-death protest movement, a society of dream investigators and a minuscule world of dust mites living on a microscope slide. Combining fiction and history with autobiography – the book is partly based on Cărtărescu’s experiences as a teacher – Solenoid searches for escape routes through the alternate dimensions of life and art, as various monstrous realities erupt within the present. Thanks for watching, and remember: he's a funny bug.Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview
International Booker Prize 2025 SHORTLIST RANKING + WINNER PREDICTION TheDiscoKing 2025-04-19 | We just gonna rank this shortlist real quick and get me some money real quick thank you Sportsbet.thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2025Shortlist Reviews: Heart Lamp - youtube.com/watch?v=d5etHIOlO0YA Leopard-Skin Hat - youtube.com/watch?v=FZBZxVHfYXA&t=8sOn the Calculation of Volume Volume I - youtube.com/watch?v=8pNxpUSH0xc&t=64sPerfection - youtube.com/watch?v=Rwgslzqr8Ig&t=18sSmall Boat - youtube.com/watch?v=p5sAK0EtabwUnder the Eye of the Big Bird - youtube.com/watch?v=9VdU0xz3AdU&t=23sThanks for watching, and remember: Solenoid review coming eventually please I know I'll do it I'll do it I promise.Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview
Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2025-04-16 | Heart Lamp is a punishing reading experience. Winner of the International Booker Prize 2025.4/10Heart Lamp: Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq’s years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women’s rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression. Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it’s in her characters – the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost – that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well as India’s most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come. Thanks for watching, and remember: if I don’t translate the words, the audience is forced to learn them! Perfect! Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview
Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2025-04-09 | Vincent Delecroix’s ‘Small Boat’ hits its themes in usually evocative ways. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.6/10Small Boat: November 2021: an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the UK capsizes in the Channel, causing the deaths of 27 people on board. How and why did it happen? Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died. The narrator of Delecroix’s fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies? Thanks for watching, and remember: I only guessed two of the shortlist, how embarrassing is that, I’m an absolute professional and I’m making mistakes like that.Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview
Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2025-03-27 | Saou Ichikawa's 'Hunchback' is snappy and extremely effective. Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.8/10Hunchback: Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spine curvature and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. Within the limits of her care home, her life is lived online: she studies, she tweets indignantly, she posts outrageous stories on an erotica website. One day, a new male carer reveals he has read it all – the sex, the provocation, the dirt. Her response? An indecent proposal… Thanks for watching, and remember: beta males subscribe.Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview #akutagawa
Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2025-03-24 | Hiromi Kawakami’s ‘Under the Eye of the Big Bird’ is melancholic and sparse, with an amazing first half. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.7/10Under the Eye of the Big Bird: In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of the Mothers. Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings - but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world. Unfolding over geological eons, Under the Eye of the Big Bird is at once an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it and a meditation on the qualities that, for better and worse, make us human. Thanks for watching, and remember: Computer, generate 8 foot tall futanari versions of Bryce Dallas Howard and Eva Green. Reprogram to give them severe maternal instincts but make them think that having s*x with someone is the same as protecting them. Alter their perception to make them think that I am their son. Disengage safety protocols and run program.Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview
A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2025-03-21 | Anne Serre’s ‘A Leopard-Skin Hat’ somehow feels like the longest book on the longlist. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.4 or 5/10A Leopard-Skin Hat: A series of short scenes paints the portrait of a strong-willed and tormented young woman battling many demons, and of the narrator’s loving and anguished attachment to her. Serre poignantly depicts the bewildering back and forth between hope and despair involved in such a relationship, while playfully calling into question the very form of the novel. Written in the aftermath of the death of the author’s little sister, A Leopard-Skin Hat is both the celebration of a tragically foreshortened life and a valedictory farewell, written in Anne Serre’s signature style. Thanks for watching, and remember: haha I’m Keiran Culkin I play myself what’s that is that an Oscar yes please I’ll take that.Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview
Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2025-03-18 | Dahlia de la Cerda’s ‘Reservoir Bitches’ is edgy, fast-paced, and pretty fun. Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.6/10Reservoir Bitches: In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, 13 Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, cheat, cry and lie their way through their tangled circumstances. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to survive, telling their stories in bold, unapologetic voices. At once social critique and black comedy, Reservoir Bitches is a raucous debut from one of Mexico’s most thrilling new writers. Thanks for watching, and remember: Emilia Perez.Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2025-03-08 | Vincenzo Latronico’s ‘Perfection’ would be just as valuable without lecturing. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.6/10Perfection: Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, affordable, plant-filled apartment. Their life as young digital creatives revolves around slow cooking, Danish furniture, sexual experimentation and the city’s 24-hour party scene – an ideal existence shared by an entire generation and tantalizingly lived out on social media. But beyond the images, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon. Work becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. Frustrated that their progressive politics amount to little more in practice than boycotting Uber, tipping in cash, or never eating tuna, Anna and Tom make a fruitless attempt at political activism. Feeling increasingly trapped in their picture-perfect life, the couple takes ever more radical steps in the pursuit of an authenticity and a sense of purpose perennially beyond their grasp. Thanks for watching, and remember: I have no idea why the audio is weird in this video, must be radioactive or something.Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview
The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2025-03-04 | Ibtisam Azem’s ‘The Book of Disappearance’ has a quiet and earnest approach that shines through an unacceptably bad translation. Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.6/10The Book of Disappearance: Alaa is haunted by his grandmother’s memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland after the Nakba. Ariel, Alaa’s neighbour and friend, is a liberal Zionist, critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza yet faithful to the project of Israel. When he wakes up one morning to find that all Palestinians have suddenly vanished, Ariel begins searching for clues to the secret of their collective disappearance. That search, and Ariel’s reactions to it, intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question. Between the stories of Alaa and Ariel are the people of Jaffa and Tel Aviv – café patrons, radio commentators, flower-cutters – against whose ordinary lives these fissures and questions play out. Thanks for watching, and remember: is the book going to get a patch update? Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview
On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2025-02-26 | Solvej Balle’s ‘On the Calculation of Volume I’ gives you a detailed emotional interpretation of something that can’t happen. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.5/10On the Calculation of Volume I: In the first part of Solvej Balle’s epic septology, Tara Selter has slipped out of time. Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were yesterday. She comes to know the shape of the day like the back of her hand – the grey morning light in her Paris hotel; the moment a blackbird breaks into song; her husband’s surprise at seeing her return home unannounced. But for everyone around her, this day is lived for the first and only time. They do not remember the other 18ths of November, and they do not believe her when she tries to explain. As Tara approaches her 365th 18th of November, she can’t shake the feeling that somewhere underneath the surface of this day, there’s a way to escape.Thanks for watching, and remember: put your little hand in mine, there ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climbbbbbb babe. Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #bookerprize2025 #bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #booktube #booktuber #bookreview
Reviewing ACOTAR while eating a chilli TheDiscoKing 2025-02-23 | Enjoy the epic conclusion to the Chilli Trilogy. Three chillis are thrice the fun and I felt my lifeforce fading in this video! If romantasy is a combination of fantasy and Romans like people have told me, Tamlin must be the Emperor fairy who can turn into a lion who can turn into a human with a six-pack, as Caesar could. If I was mean in this it was the chilli talking my apologies. Enjoyyyy."When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world. At least, he’s not a beast all the time. As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.." IB 2025 coming soon maybe haven't decided yet! Thanks for watching, and remember: I have to send you away for your own good you fool but I love you but I’m a brute but I have a softer side of me that you will find out when I kidnap you. Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco #acotar #booktube #booktuber #booklover #sarahjmaas #fantasy #bookreview
My Favourite Films of 2024! TheDiscoKing 2025-01-16 | Hello folks! 2024 gave us many a banger, here are my favourite films from last year! Jurassic fitnesssssss.Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Worst Films of 2024: 0:25Everything Else: 3:21Top 10: 4:36Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco Thanks for watching, and remember: nang. #movies #anora #thesubstance #dune #booktube
Best Books I Read in 2024!! TheDiscoKing 2024-12-29 | Hey folks! Let's go rapid-fire, best books I read in 2024! Lemme know what your favourites were this year in the comments below! BOOOOM!Booktubers featured: @BobTheBookerer Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing Instagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydiscoThanks for watching, and remember: BOOOOM, BOOOOOOOOOM#booktuber #booktube #bestof2024 #bookerprize #book #whatiread #books #bestbooks
stuff I read in November and December! TheDiscoKing 2024-12-27 | Hey folks! I'm sick and my nose is blocked in this one but I was still able to talk for over half an hour on the books I read in the last two months! Hope 2024 was good for everyone!Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKingInstagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydisco0:55 - The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić1:16 - Tinkers by Paul Harding3:55 - Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger5:30 - The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald6:30 - The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro11:28 - Selected Poems by Lesbia Harford12:13 - Intermezzo by Sally Rooney 13:13 - Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano15:15 - The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke17:06 - A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke19:00 - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro26:12 - The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller28:28 - Missing Person by Patrick Modiano30:23 - The Piano Teacher by Elfriede JelinekThanks for watching, and remember: I have a cockatoo on my head.#booktuber #booktube #decemberreading #bookerprize #book #whatiread #ishiguro #rooney
Fitzcarraldo First Decade Collection BOOK HAUL! TheDiscoKing 2024-11-28 | Hey folks! Fitzcarraldo Editions have released special hardbacks of some of their books to celebrate their tenth anniversary and I spent too much to get my hands on some of them!Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKingInstagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydiscofitzcarraldoeditions.com/first-decade-collectionThanks for watching, and remember: don't throw scissors.#booktube #books #unboxing #bookhaul #fitzcarraldo
stuff I read in September and October! TheDiscoKing 2024-11-10 | Hello everyone, here is a very delayed wrap-up for September and October reading! I found a new favourite author and finally read the Ali Smith book I was instructed to read by Youtube comments. There’s also a bunch of other books no one cares about. Yeehaw!Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Books0:33 - This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud0:43 - Playground by Richard Powers0:58 - The Most by Jessica Anthony2:31 - How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman5:07 - To The Is-Land by Janet Frame5:28 - Autumn by Ali Smith8:08 - Han Kang books 8:30 - It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken11:46 - The Exploded View by Ivan Vladislavic16:13 - Offshore by Penelope FitzgeraldThanks for watching, and remember: yes I know the mirror is crooked. #booktuber #booktube #octoberreading #bookerprize #book #whatiread #alismith
Booktuber Trivia Livestream 2! TheDiscoKing 2024-11-02 | Who'll win this time? @KDbooks @nathansnook @kiranreader @benreadsgood @BobTheBookerer @NerdyNurseReads @yenasung @rororeads @GemofBooks #booktube #trivia #booktuber
Reading Han Kangs books! (Nobel Prize in Literature 2024) TheDiscoKing 2024-10-17 | The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to South Korean novelist Han Kang for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” In this video I go over my thoughts on her three main books: The Vegetarian, The White Book, and Human Acts!-------------------------The Vegetarian: 1:01For a Nobel Prize-winning horror novel, ‘The Vegetarian’ sure is boring.5 or 6/10The White Book: 8:16‘The White Book’ is not as unique as it thinks it is.5/10Human Acts: 11:21‘Human Acts’ overcomes its author’s slow writing style by being energetic, specific, and brutal.8/10-------------------------Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Thanks for watching, and remember: I love meat. #nobelprize #nobelprizeliterature #hankang #nobelprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #book #thevegetarian
2024 Nobel Prize in Literature WINNER REACTION! TheDiscoKing 2024-10-10 | Hey folks! We have a new exciting recipient for the Nobel Prize in Literature! Unfortunately there was also a game of football on at the same time. Featuring a guest appearance from my dad, The Disco God Emperor!The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to 53-year-old South Korean novelist Han Kang for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. Her works include The Vegetarian, The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons.Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Thanks for watching, and remember: we won the footie 3-1.#nobelprize #nobelprizeliterature #hankang #nobelprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #book
2024 Nobel Prize in Literature PREDICTIONS! TheDiscoKing 2024-09-22 | Hey folks! In this video I give my predictions for this year's Nobel Prize in Literature! Will it be a total rando nobody has ever heard of? Will it be Murakami? Will the winner be an Aussie? Please?Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Thanks for watching, and remember: C'MON ALEXIS WRIGHT C'MON LET'S DO IT LET'S GO#nobelprize #nobelprizeliterature #booktube #book #nobelprize2024 #booktuber #bookreview #bookreviews
second-hand book haul! TheDiscoKing 2024-09-19 | Hey folks! I went to the University of Sydney book fair and splashed out on some second-hand books! Many Aussie books and other weird stuff! Thought I'd try making a 'book haul' video because people seem to like those!Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Thanks for watching, and remember: I'm shaving my head, this bowl haircut is despicable.#bookhaul #booktube #booktuber #bookreview #bookreviews
Booker Prize 2024 SHORTLIST REACTION! TheDiscoKing 2024-09-17 | The Booker Prize 2024 shortlist has been announced! And it got a...loud...reaction out of me. Let me know what would be on your shortlist in the comments!BOOKER PRIZE BOOK REVIEWS: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLo9xicbRCZwbjUdwknbsIShU79-et_9bBooks you could read instead of the shortlisted ones: - My Friends: goodreads.com/book/show/127488823-my-friends- Wandering Stars: goodreads.com/book/show/174147294-wandering-stars- Praiseworthy: goodreads.com/book/show/123263848-praiseworthyLinktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Thanks for watching, and remember: I will be urgent in disposing of my Orbital copy.#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #bookreview #bookreviews
Booker Prize 2024 LONGLIST RANKING! TheDiscoKing 2024-09-13 | I've finished reading the Booker 2024 longlist. Some good books, and lots of bad ones too! Here is my rapid-fire ranking! LONGLIST REVIEWS: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLo9xicbRCZwbjUdwknbsIShU79-et_9bLinktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Thanks for watching, and remember: never reading the longlist again.#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #bookreview #bookreviews
Playground by Richard Powers - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-09-12 | Richard Powers’ ‘Playground’ is okay. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.5/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Playground: Rafi and Todd are two polar opposites at an elite high school where they bond over a 3,000-year-old board game. Elsewhere, Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs; Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. All of these people meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, marked for humanity’s next great adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out into the open sea. As the seasteaders close in, how will Evie play the ever-unfolding oceanic game? Will Ina engage in acts of destruction? Todd and Rafi, now estranged, still find themselves in competition: Todd unravels while working on an idea to redraw the boundaries of human immortality, while Rafi and the residents must decide if they will greenlight the new project on their shores and change their home forever.Thanks for watching, and remember: 13/13 BAYBEE#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #richardpowers #bookreview #bookreviews
‘This Strange Eventful History’ by Claire Messud – BOOK RANT TheDiscoKing 2024-09-11 | Claire Messud's 'This Strange Eventful History' is obliterated by its author's self-importance. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.2/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking This Strange Eventful History: June 1940. As Paris falls to the Germans, Gaston Cassar – honourable servant of France, devoted husband and father, currently posted as naval attache in Salonica – bids farewell to his beloved wife, aunt, and children, placing his faith in God that they will be reunited after the war. But escaping the violence of that cataclysm is not the same as emerging unscathed. The family will never again be whole. As the Cassars move between Salonica and Algeria, the US, Cuba, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and France – their itinerary is shaped as much by a search for an elusive wholeness, as by the imperatives of politics, faith, family, industry, and desire.Thanks for watching, and remember: don’t forget the salts.#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #clairemessud #bookreview #bookreviews
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-09-05 | Rachel Kushner’s ‘Creation Lake’ has a clear point, but the genre use is not justified enough. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.5/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Creation Lake: Sadie Smith – a 34-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics, bold opinions and clean beauty – is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists led by the charismatic svengali Bruno Lacombe. Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and at first finds Bruno’s idealism laughable – he lives in a Neanderthal cave and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. But just as Sadie is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.Thanks for watching, and remember: boobies.#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #rachelkushner #bookreview #bookreviews
stuff I read in July and August! TheDiscoKing 2024-08-31 | Hello everyone, here is yet ANOTHER unscripted double album for two months of reading! These are all the books I read in and around this year's Booker Prize longlist! I read the NYT's favourite book ever and some weirdo nonsense, fun stuff! Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscokingBooks0:34 - Dear Life by Alice Munro2:48 - Purgatory by Raúl Zurita4:02 - My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante7:02 - Bunny by Mona Awad7:55 - Claire Keegan stories8:18 - The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (25%)Thanks for watching, and remember: let Booker be done.#booktuber #booktube #augustreading #julyreading #book #whatiread #elenaferrante
Wild Houses by Colin Barrett - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-08-29 | Colin Barrett’s ‘Wild Houses’ is a small-scale debut that does enough. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.6 or 7/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Wild Houses: As Ballina prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between small-time dealer, Cillian English, and County Mayo’s fraternal enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum. When the reclusive Dev answers his door on Friday night he finds Doll – Cillian’s teenage brother – in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. Jostled by his nefarious cousins and goaded by his dead mother’s dog, Dev is drawn headlong into the Ferdias’ revenge fantasy. Meanwhile, 17-year-old Nicky can’t shake the feeling something bad has happened to her boyfriend Doll. Hungover, reeling from a fractious Friday night and plagued by ghosts of her own, Nicky sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.Thanks for watching, and remember: I LOVE Home and Away.#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #colinbarrett #sallyrooney #bookreview #bookreviews
My Friends by Hisham Matar - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-08-27 | Hisham Matar's 'My Friends' is graceful and moving. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.7 or 8/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking My Friends: One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh. There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would jeopardize their safety. When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.Thanks for watching, and remember: SORRY I DIDN'T REALISE PEOPLE LIKE THE BLAZER, ILL PUT IT BACK ON#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #hishammatar #myfriends #bookreview #bookreviews
Enlightenment by Sarah Perry - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-08-24 | Sarah Perry’s ‘Enlightenment’ has robotic non-characters, bizarre pacing, and a soufflé writing style. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.3 or 4/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Enlightenment: Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits—torn between their commitment to religion and their desire to explore the world beyond their small Baptist community. It is two romantic relationships that will rend their friendship, and in the wake of this rupture, Thomas develops an obsession with a vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor, and Grace flees Aldleigh entirely for London. Over the course of twenty years, by coincidence and design, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as the mystery of the vanished astronomer unfolds into a devastating tale of love and scientific pursuit. Thomas and Grace will ask themselves what it means to love and be loved, what is fixed and what is mutable, how much of our fate is predestined and written in the stars, and whether they can find their way back to each other.Thanks for watching, and remember: cough cough sniffle sniffle#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #sarahperry #bookreview #bookreviews
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-08-22 | Tommy Orange’s ‘Wandering Stars’ has a distinctly amazing structure. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.7 or 8/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Wandering Stars: Following its unforgettable characters through almost two centuries of history, from the horrors of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1865 to the aftermath of a mass shooting in the early 21st century, Wandering Stars is an indelible novel of America's war on its own people. It is also the tender, shattering story of many generations of a Native American family, struggling to find ways through displacement, addiction and pain, towards home and hope. Readers of Orange's classic debut There, There will know some of these characters and will be eager to learn what happened to Orvil Red Feather after the Oakland Powwow. New readers will discover a wondrous novel of poetry, music, rage and love, from one of the most astonishing voices of his generation.Thanks for watching, and remember: bing bing we’re halfway through the longlist.#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #tommyorange #wanderingstars #therethere #bookreview #bookreviews
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-08-20 | The structure of Charlotte Wood’s ‘Stone Yard Devotional’ forces the reader to view the book not as a series of enticing vignettes, but as an unstoppable tide of mundanity. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.5/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Stone Yard Devotional: A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past. With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished?Thanks for watching, and remember: of mice and women.#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #charlottewood #bookreview #bookreviews
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-08-12 | Yael van der Wouden's 'The Safekeep' is mysterious and intriguing with a great main character, if a little maudlin for the subject matter. Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025! Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.6 or 7/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Booktubers mentioned: @NerdyNurseReads The Safekeep: It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season. Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem.Thanks for watching, and remember: Australia smoked Netherlands in the Olympics, weak, very weak#womensprize #bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #thesafekeep
Orbital by Samantha Harvey - BOOK RANT TheDiscoKing 2024-08-07 | Samantha Harvey's 'Orbital' is overwritten, uninspired and pointless. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.3 or 4/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Orbital: Six astronauts rotate in the International Space Station. They are there to do vital work, but slowly they begin to wonder: what is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity? Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents, and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it.Thanks for watching, and remember: a book must have cringe. That is imperative.#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #boxing #orbital
‘Held’ by Anne Michaels – BOOK RANT TheDiscoKing 2024-08-03 | Anne Michaels' 'Held' is an incomprehensible, boring collage of surface-level musings. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.3/10Held: 1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory - a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast - as the snow falls. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river - alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. Held is a novel like no other, by a writer at the height of her powers: affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom and compassion.Thanks for watching, and remember: clouds are everything.#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #annemichaels
‘James’ by Percival Everett – BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-08-01 | Percival Everett's 'James' is fast-paced and never boring, but too straightforward. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2025. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024. 6 or 7/10 James: When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.Thanks for watching, and remember: Huckleberry Finn is a children’s book?#pulitzerprize #bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #percivaleverett #huckleberryfinn
‘Headshot’ by Rita Bullwinkel – BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-07-30 | Rita Bullwinkel's 'Headshot' is nihilistic and lean. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.6/10Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Headshot: An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors’ pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win.Thanks for watching, and remember: catfight catfight catfight.#bookerprize #bookerprize2024 #booktube #booktuber #boxing #headshot
1K SUBSCRIBER CELEBRATION! TheDiscoKing 2024-07-23 | Thanks to everyone who's watched my content and subscribed, and all the other Youtubers that have promoted me! You're the best! 1K BAYBEEEELinktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscokingThanks for watching, and remember: Nigel sounded way too earnest.#booktube #booktuber
What I watched at the Sydney Film Festival 2024! TheDiscoKing 2024-06-27 | Hey folks, this is a recap of what I saw at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival! I saw many movies from Cannes, Sundance, and Berlin! See y’all in the State Theatre next year!Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscokingPepe – 1:23Black Box Diaries – 4:36About Dry Grasses – 7:31I Saw The TV Glow – 10:22Dahomey – 14:20The Girl With The Needle – 16:08All We Imagine As Light – 18:04The Seed Of The Sacred Fig – 20:11Caught By The Tides – 24:21Grand Tour – 26:02The Substance – 27:06La Cocina – 30:21Thanks for watching, and remember: at least Asteroid City wasn’t there.#sydfilmfest #filmfestival #2024movies #isawthetvglow
stuff I read in May and June! TheDiscoKing 2024-06-24 | Hello everyone, here is another unscripted double album for two months of reading! I'm a week early but you think I care? No sir! Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscokingBooks1:01 – The Details by Ia Genberg3:12 – Aniara by Harry Martinson6:27 – Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke9:55 – Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright10:16 – Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders12:09 – Vertical Motion by Can Xue13:02 – Aliss at the Fire by Jon Fosse15:11 – The Sea by John Banville17:58 – The Ghost Road by Pat BarkerThanks for watching, and remember: we need another Aussie Booker winner.#booktuber #booktube #mayreading #junereading #book #whatireadinjune
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-05-30 | Alexis Wright’s ‘Praiseworthy’ is bonkers. Winner of the Stella Prize 2024 and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2024 AND the Miles Franklin Award 2024.8/10Praiseworthy: The town of Praiseworthy, in Australia's north, is home to Cause Man Steel, who sees an end-of-the-world crisis looming. His solution is to round up all the donkeys in the nearby area, arguing that they will be important when civilization collapses. He and his wife, Dance, who has become fascinated by moths and butterflies, and his sons, Aboriginal Sovereignty, who wants to commit suicide, and Tommyhawk, who wants to become white, have to live under the 2008 Australian Federal Government intervention program, which attempts to regulate how Indigenous Australians act and behave.Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Booktubers mentioned: @BobTheBookerer Thanks for watching, and remember: I hate donkeys. #booktube #bookreview #stellaprize #alexiswright #milesfranklin #nobelprize #literature
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-05-07 | Jenny Erpenbeck’s ‘Kairos’ is, for better or worse, incredibly chaotic. Winner of the International Booker Prize 2024. 6/10Kairos: Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Thanks for watching, and remember: Hans did a lot of whinging for an octogenarian.#internationalbookerprize #bookerprize #booktube #bookreview #kairos
my new favourite book TheDiscoKing 2024-05-03 | Hello everyone, this is my review of a book I read in April that I absolutely loved, and that I wanted to give its own video!Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscokingThe book: goodreads.com/book/show/88442Thanks for watching, and remember: IB winner soon!#booktuber #booktube #favouritebooks
stuff I read in April! TheDiscoKing 2024-04-30 | Hello everyone, here is an April recap for my reading! This month gave me a new favourite book, some good books, and Neil Gaiman. Very coooool.Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscokingBooks: 0:52 - Tampa by Alissa Nutting6:17 - Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong6:23 - Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener6:29 - Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee11:28 - will talk about later!11:51 - The Sandman: Book One by Neil Gaiman (and American Gods too)16:19 - Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior16:29 - What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma 16:35 - Kairos by Jenny ErpenbeckBooktubers mentioned: @KDbooks @NerdyNurseReads @BobTheBookerer Thanks for watching, and remember: Neil Gaiman is the epicentre of all cringe. #booktuber #booktube #aprilreading #book #whatireadinapril
What Id Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-04-23 | Jente Posthuma’s ‘What I’d Rather Not Think About’ is less of a novel and more a series of sad (and usually effective) anecdotes. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024. 6 or 7/10What I’d Rather Not Think About: What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them? This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple What I’d Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Thanks for watching, and remember: halfway thru the shortlist!#internationalbookerprize #bookerprize #booktube #bookreview
Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-04-20 | Beyond its first thirty pages and despite numerous attempts, Itamar Vieira Junior’s 'Crooked Plow' doesn’t do much interesting to me. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024. 5/10Crooked Plow: Deep in Brazil’s neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother’s bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thediscoking Thanks for watching, and remember: the plow was quite straight, really.#internationalbookerprize #bookerprize #booktube #bookreview
Booktuber Lists His Favourite Video Games! TheDiscoKing 2024-04-12 | In this video, the disgusting gamer recommends some story-based narrative video games to appeal to fellow Booktube watchers and bookish-minded individuals! Also Fall Guys.https://linktr.ee/thediscoking4: store.steampowered.com/app/12055203: store.steampowered.com/app/2126802: store.steampowered.com/app/3817801: store.steampowered.com/app/632470Thanks for watching, and remember: gaming is a sin to be purged.#booktube #videogames #review #videogamereview
Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener - BOOK REVIEW TheDiscoKing 2024-04-09 | Gabriela Wiener’s ‘Undiscovered’ is self-important, monotonous, borderline incoherent, and cringe. Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024.2/10Undiscovered: Alone in an ethnographic museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener is confronted with her unusual inheritance. Peering through the glass, she sees sculptures of Indigenous faces that resemble her own - but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener. From the brutal trail of racism and theft Charles was responsible for, to revelations of her father’s infidelity, she traces a legacy of abandonment, jealousy and colonial violence, and questions its impact on her own struggles with desire, love and race in a polyamorous relationship. Booktubers mentioned: @BobTheBookerer Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKingInstagram: instagram.com/funkydaddydiscoThanks for watching, and remember: see y’all at the shortlist!#internationalbookerprize #bookerprize #booktube #bookreview
