Visions Of My Heart (Garikai Nhongo)

Welcome back everyone! I'm excited to be back to posting reviews and I hope to be a little more consistent now that I have free time. This review is a little bit different because it's for poetry. You may recall when I reviewed The Great Repression last year, which was the first time I'd ever truly sat down and read a book of poems. So welcome to the second poetry book on this blog!

Vision Of My Heart: 101 Tales Told In Verse is a book of short poems by the author Garikai Nhongo. He reached out to me all the way back in February and kindly provided me with a copy of his book in exchange for an honest review. The poems reflect the journey through love and heartbreak, as well as the overall journey of life.

When I first started the collection of poems, I did so with an open mind and tried to put my heart in the place of the author, since poetry is quite personal. Unfortunately, for me, I found it difficult to get through the poems for a few reasons. First, the poetry was done through rhyming verses which gave the pieces a lack of fluidity; some rhymes felt forced and others didn't rhyme correctly or at all. It made it difficult for me to immerse myself in the journey. Second, the poems began to feel oddly enough repetitive; I'm not sure why it felt that way to me, but it did.

For the sake of my honest review, I will let you know that I actually couldn't complete the book. It's rare for me to give up on a book because I understand the importance of the complete story and full picture. But, for the case of this book of poetry, I just didn't find that my heart was in it. Despite that, as I mention whenever I review something that didn't capture my interest, I always encourage you to give it a try since it may capture something in you.

Rating: 1/5

Reason: For me the rhyming held back the connection to the stories and at times were forced or not present. Also, I didn't finish the story so I can't rate it any higher.

You can try a copy here

 

Until next time,
Happy Reading Fellow Bookworms :)

 

 As always comment your thoughts and follow all of the associated pages (listed in the sidebar). I am not currently accepting requests as my list is quite long!

 

A copy of the book was provided to me for honest review purposes.

In Real Life (Joey Graceffa)

It's May and the sun is shining! That makes me extremely happy because April was crazy with exams and trying to find a job for my co-op placement. Now that all of those responsibilities are done, and I've taken some time out for myself to regroup, I think I'm ready to exit the reading slump I've been in. Every term after exams, I'm left not wanting to read anything due to the fact that I just spent a month reading study notes. But I'm back, starting with a book I bought myself after Christmas!

In Real Life: My Journey to a Pixelated World by Joey Graceffa is an autobiography about his childhood, family, and transition into a full-time YouTube position. For those who aren't followers of Joey, I'll give you a brief description. Joey Graceffa joined YouTube back in 2007 with his friend Brittany, before beginning his own channel in 2009. Through the success of his channel, with over 6 million subscribers, Joey has achieved many great successes and experienced some pretty amazing things - one of which was being on The Amazing Race... twice!

Being a fan of Joey, ever since I started following his channel about 4 years ago, I was really excited to read his autobiography to get a deeper glimpse into the world he already shares. I was surprised by how many of his stories I didn't know yet despite watching his daily vlogs on YouTube. For those who watch his vlogs, you know that he is extremely bubbly and positive throughout most of his video time, which is why this book was a nice change. Having the opportunity to learn more about the hardships he went through in childhood, made me look up to Joey even more than I already did. Joey inspires me to strive for full positivity despite any weights that try to pull you down.

There is a section of photos that has some
incredible throwbacks for the Joey fans

In Real Life is a nice breath of fresh air to realign your perspective on things, especially for the younger readers who might be reading this review. If you are in high school or elementary school, Joey fan or not, I do recommend reading his autobiography because he gives some great advice! To Joey, if by some crazy chance he sees this, thank you for sharing more of your life with your viewers and the lessons you've learned along the way.

Rating: 4/5

Reason: For me I would give it a perfect. But, in terms of readership, if you aren't already a fan of Joey I fear that this would be lacking something. Also, I would say it's a very narrow audience in terms of age - I would recommend ages 12 - 24.

Pick up a copy! 

Until next time,
Happy Reading Fellow Bookworms :)

 

 As always comment your thoughts and follow all of the associated pages (listed in the sidebar). I am not currently accepting requests as my list is quite long!