If the red pill is be careful study to awaken the mind, he did take the blue pill; "I know these words aren't real" "non-conformist ignorance is bliss"
@@The_Custos I have to agree with this. Either keep it plain and simple and don't name your chapters (or don't have chapters at all) or deliberately make your chapter titles sound cool with no fear of hiding the fact that's what your doing! Put your subtext in your damn text...the chapter titles should only enphasize what your story already says on its own...it shouldn't replace the story itself!
Unironically this sometimes? Like it's not possible for me to actually avoid titles but there will be occasions of "oh hey this thing looks neat" and I'll just plop down to see it with as minimal information as possible. It's a bit of a mixed experience at times but I feel like the good times were a lot better than times where I went into a book/show/movie with a lot of preset information and expectations.
I've got a book from a series I picked up second hand, like the cover, and archery, and am very faintly amused to see what happens when I read it before the first book. Will it stand on its own merits?
Forewords are sometimes interesting, but if I am not interested on the first page I skip it. Prologues are important, part of the story, which is the point of all fiction.
@@foodsupply5071 idk how much of the Stormlight archives you’ve read but it gets worse 🫨a lot of the interludes are fairly important, but only noticeably so with hindsight (imo)
I don't have that issue with interludes, but epigraphs for sure. Some of them are just too split up it's impossible to follow them. The Musings of El in RoW are the worst offenders.
My husband will read the last chapter first...then the book from start to finish. I don't understand even after 33 years together...we just don't talk about it 🙂
Doesn't want to be surprised by some plot twist. Or perhaps there's a sense of security in it. Like when you are tired you may want to watch a movie you have already seen because it's familiar and wont surprise you. You know if it ends good or bad.
I used to do that, mainly because it felt as the I were giving myself some incentive to read the whole thing. If I already know how it ends, then I can focus more on the journey to it.
I'll read like the last paragraph so that I can understand the tone of the ending and anticipate it. I don't want some kind of tragic heartbreak when I'm expecting something happy and vice versa.
I actually remember reading that book as a kid, first Sanderson book I've ever read, and it's like being introduced to Star Wars through Andor. It's really good, but so far outside the grain of his usual works that it makes for a weird intro. I didn't actually realize the Sanderson I learned about years later (through Mistborn) was the same dude who wrote this.
Recently, on r/fantasy, someone asked for the smartest reasons people had DNF'd a book. Someone posted the following, which made me question their reading compression, and I quote: 'Because it had a prologue. To add salt to the injury, it also had an epilogue.' Since they thought that was a smart reason to not read a book, they probably would skip the prologue in Canterbury Tales. 😂
I genuinely don't understand the hate for prologues and epilogues. It's more content. Don't readers wanna read? "Ugh, there's more book in my book. Might as well not read it." Huh?????
@@monster-enthusiastI don't understand hate either, but if your work can't stand without a prologue, that's a problem with the work, not with the user. You ever skip a tutorial for a program? What about failed to read the owners manual before using an appliance? This is literally the same thing. If an ice cream machine is impossible to maintain without a degree and a decoder book, nobody will ever buy a McFlurry. A badly designed UI won't be helped by a tutorial walkthrough. If referencing an appendix or map is required to understand the plot, something is wrong, or you're reading a scientific paper not a novel.
@@LibertyMonk I disagree. Prologues get put there for a reason. It's a feature, not a bug. It's more like set-up, or context. Visual mediums have prologues too. Like in Supernatural, it starts with the main characters as a baby and toddler, then it cuts to the opening credits and then starts the story when they're adults. It's a short, maybe minute long scene, that's by all intents and purposes, a visual prologue. But it's a necessary scene. It sets the tone and builds anticipation. And sometimes a prologue is just flavor text. You could call it chapter one, but it's still the same sentences. And sometimes the prologue is called a prologue simply because the titular event that happens in it is just divorced from the active timeline so it would feel clunky to have as a chapter one because they don't happen right next to eachother. Some stories don't need a prologue, but some are legitimately better with a prologue. It's a narrative tool. The tool itself isn't flawed, it just needs to be used in the right story.
@@monster-enthusiast not to be *extremely* pedantic, but the opening prologue of supernatural is not a "maybe minute long scene", it's 4 and a half minutes.
But if you read the Lord of the Rings’s prologue you really can’t understand it until you read the book so it’s really not worth it to read the prologue.
I don't read songs in books. Even in Tolkien's books. I don't read poems in novels, either, but songs are just poems that are supposed to have music, but don't, because they're in a book. Also in Ringworld Throne, I only read one of the two plotlines. It was still a coherent story, and the other plotline was boring. I'll let you guess which was which.
@@genericallyentertaining Nah man, it’s the most important part. I only read the bibliography and ditch the rest of the book. Jokes aside, depends on the book.
There was a time when I genuinely didn't read prologues because I thought of them as being equivalent to appendix style material, supplemental but not necessary and I wanted to jump as quickly into the action as possible...but I was like 8 when I thought that? I literally just didn't have enough world knowledge to know better.
One time i started to read the prologue of Brave New World. It turns out that it was a commentary of the author explaining some things that he would have changed. I almost spoiled myself the ending, so now I'm terrified the prologues of every book
Story time. My ex girlfriend actually didn’t read prologues. She actually thought they were the same as forewords. I legit told her that and it blew her mind.
The gematria for ananas (pineapple in Hebrew) is 161 but for pineapple writen in Hebrew it is actually 260 😄 (if you don't translate the a as an alef). פיינפל = 260
@@meimeow2300 well, then the rest are wrong. And that's not a very good way to transliterate, considering the vowel a isn't on the n consonant, it's better to have a separate representation. But that's fair, you're right, why would someone do all this work just to get the gematria for a transliteration though?
Honestly Stormlight is the only one I thought of where you could at least skip the prelude (the first prologue) and still be ok, at least for now. Maybe not when book 5 comes out. And honestly you might be able to use context clues and be ok skipping the prologues for each of the books too. Not saying you should obviously, but your comment got me thinking.
What's this habit of not reading prologues came about, anyway? I saw this in a couple of places, on social media and such, being un-ironically said. "Oh, I don't read Prologues." Why? Show me on the doll where did the Prologue touched you.
I've never really read prologues or epilogues. Until today, I don't think it had ever been explained to me what a prologue's or epilogue's purpose was. I've always considered them as unrelated to the rest of the contents.
That's like half of every Stormlight Archive book that he's skipping... You could probably skip at least one of the three prologues of the first book and still be ok. The first one doesn't even make sense until like book 3, but it does set some of the tone and fantasy elements of the series
I genuinely thought he was going to make a reference to most religious people when he was talking about picking and choosing which parts of a book to read.
It's a wrong gematria on every account I managed to think of (the actual gematria of the Hebrew word for pineapple is 161), but it is nice that such a thing was even referred to. Yes, I'm nitpicking, but I do that with every gematria I encounter, more or less.
@@נעם-קליין Fair. I'm not familiar enough to know the actual stuff off the top of my head, but I think gematria is really neat. And also being brought to a pretty typical protestant church as a child with all the wild speculation and all that... it was pretty satisfying to find out that 666/616 has an actual meaning.
I once saw a discussion that books shouldn't have prologues because their style is so different from the rest of the book that it gives a wrong idea of what to expect.
Epic fantasy trained me to just keep reading -regardless of whether I love it or hate it. Eventually I'll either come to enjoy it or be too cowardly to quit.
@@thatonepossum5766 maybe, but I recall a couple of occasions in which the prologue of a book was a full-on short essay about said book and its author. It was a new-ish edition of an old book by a dead author, so it was an editor or an scholar the one wrote what they called "prologue" on the index
This is actually John Bishop’s reading strategy for Finnegans Wake in his study “Joyce’s Book of the Dark”, and also the divinatory practice of Sortes Vergilianae, so sorry-not-sorry?
On one hand yeah, the contents of the prologue could also be the contents of a Chapter 1. Even if there’s a timeskip, there’s nothing wrong with a timeskip between Chapter 1 & 2. On the OTHER hand, the story can feel cleaner if the opening events of the story are from a different perspective, which is then placed into a prologue. A third-person prologue to a first-person story, for example. Or it could be a cold-open revealing the villain (like a Slasher claiming a random victim). Or a number of things, really.
If you want to sample a pie, don't just nibble the crust. That's my logic for reading a few pages in the middle when considering a new book. But of it's a pie worth eating, enjoy every crumb.
thank god i read the prologue so I can know about the protagonist's great great ancestor who is never brought up again. truly a crucial part of the story.
@@Green-3c34y65vrbuidk man. Might just be a you problem. The Eragon prologue introduces one of the main bads, one of the main goods, Saphira, and sets up the rescue plot line. The Game of Thrones prologue introduces the main bads and sets up what life is like at the wall so we feel the weight of Jon’s decision to go there. The Harry Potter prologue sets up, Voldy, the prophecy, plus a bunch of elements of worldbuilding, like transfiguration and wizard’s lack of understanding of the muggle world. The Way of Kings prologue is the inciting incident for everything else and introduces several important characters. The Eye of the World prologue is probably the closest I can think of to your “great great ancestor who is never brought up again,” but that’s just because apart from some worldbuilding elements it doesn’t become critical until after the first few books.
Honestly though, you should always skip 'Introduction' - the long, self-indulgent commentary on the book you're about to read which ruins all major plot points. Why is it accepted that we preface every classic book with a section that spoils the whole story?
Yeah, I almost always skip introductions at first, then go back and read them at the end. The exception is if you're reading a difficult philosophy book or something that requires a lot of context to understand, in which case they can be really useful.
Because the assumption is that you don't read (or even that you shouldn't read) those books for plot, but for their inherent literary value. It's this conviction that enjoying the plot is for the immature readers. Is this an idiotic concept? Yes. But that's the highbrow literature society for you.
Speaking of videogames, I always played Deus Ex 1 without doing the prologue (where you learn the game mechanics) and once I made the step and when I reached the end of it I see the main villain of the game and my character talks to him, I was shocked.
When I was in middle school, I read The Keys to the Kingdom. I slogged through the prologue, wherein Garth Nix uses a lot of terms that he hadn't yet defined, so I understood almost none of it. Halfway through the book, I was able to go back, reread the prologue, and understand it. All in all, the experience has me questioning why he thought the prologue was a good idea to begin with.
I’m gonna admit, I struggle to read interludes frequently. Particularly if they’re sandwiched between bits of a story I’m really interested in getting to.
I once downloaded a pirate copy of Eye of the World (I already owned a physical copy but wanted to carry a copy on my e-reader) and it didn't have the prologue. I thought it was much better that way. I still don't see how the crap about Lews Therin added anything to the story.
I read prolouges but I do skip forewards. I want to form my own opinion on the piece and I find it can really influence it before I've even started reading the book.
Ok ok ok i have the ultimate story here. Picture this: highschool english class, students in desks with varying levels of enthusiasm but all prepared to do whats necessary in order to get a passing grade. We were reading a book as a class and got assigned chapters 1, 2 and 4 for homework by the end of the week. I, uneducated fool that I am, assumed we were going to read chapter 3 in class. Theres no way we would just skip a chapter right? WRONG! This english teacher was absolutely unhinged. We skipped chapters, partial chapters, prologues; nothing was left untouched without passing his arbitrary judgement on whether it was "necessary". And I wish I could say this was just 1 random novel but noooo. Every piece of course material had to pass his edit. HE CUT OUT A WHOLE ACT OF A SHAKESPEARE PLAY!!! The nerve *shakes head*. Suffice it to say, none of us ever had a clue what was happening and then got less than good marks when we couldnt fully explain themes or write essays about intent (or even plot). It was complete insanity. Literally all i did to study for the exam was take the materials he said we would have to write essays on and actually read them cover to cover. Aced the exam because i actually had a vague idea of what was going on......
This video doesn't make any sense. (To be fair, I started at 00:29 and skipped 00:45-00:55, 1:12-1:26 and 2:01-2:23. Also, I muted the video and watched with Japanese subtitles. I don't know any Japanese.)
Ok. To be fair though, I didn't read prologues for YEARS because the Warrior Cats (yes I know) series was one of the first I ever read entirely on my own and the prologue SPOILS THE MURDER MYSTERY at the center of the first book. I have never felt so betrayed and for actual years afterwards I viewed prologues with such distrust I skipped over them entirely. In hindsight I wonder how much CRUCIAL information I must have missed in the books I read from ages 6-10.
Never skip prologues. Unless you're talking about the Ravens prologue that has been printed in every copy of Eye of the World since the early 2000s. In that case, always skip prologues.
I love how he took the blue pill as if it was the red pill, showing the character didn’t understand the Matrix.
If the red pill is be careful study to awaken the mind, he did take the blue pill; "I know these words aren't real" "non-conformist ignorance is bliss"
Blue pill was on page 666 of the matrix script when read backwards
And before anyone gets on my back I have no idea it probably isn’t
At 1:45
Also he didn’t know the information given in the title of the book.
He takes whatever pill he wants, he's truly escaped the Matrix.
I actually only read prologues and epilogues.
Its called a Speedrun sweetheart look it up
This is a hilarious concept for a book with only an epilogue. Just a conclusion with no context. xD
@@thatonepossum5766 at what point would it just be a short story tho?
Yeah, same. That's how I read 500+ books a year. Never understood how people could read less than 400 and call themselves productive...
Sometimes a prologue skipper is nothing but a person in the process of changing....
🤣
There is no redemption for such as them
Nooooo, please don't 🤣
dalinar!
I don’t read chapters
I don't read
We found the Discworld fan.
I only read chapter titles
Followed by I only read book titles
I don't read boring pov chapters.
I don't
I never read titles. I don't want to be spoiled
Sometimes I wonder if chapter titles are really significant, metaphoric, etc, or they just thought it sounded cool. Often they seem a bit clichéd.
@@The_Custos I have to agree with this. Either keep it plain and simple and don't name your chapters (or don't have chapters at all) or deliberately make your chapter titles sound cool with no fear of hiding the fact that's what your doing! Put your subtext in your damn text...the chapter titles should only enphasize what your story already says on its own...it shouldn't replace the story itself!
You jest but I always skip the show intros for this reason (except Neil Geiman shows, obviously)
Unironically this sometimes? Like it's not possible for me to actually avoid titles but there will be occasions of "oh hey this thing looks neat" and I'll just plop down to see it with as minimal information as possible. It's a bit of a mixed experience at times but I feel like the good times were a lot better than times where I went into a book/show/movie with a lot of preset information and expectations.
@@The_Custos They can definitely spoil things if you saw it on content page
Personally I like to engage with media with as little context as possible, as such I never read the first book in a series
I never read. Don't know how
I've got a book from a series I picked up second hand, like the cover, and archery, and am very faintly amused to see what happens when I read it before the first book. Will it stand on its own merits?
Pretty sure Wings of Fire would still make sense lol
Skip forewords, never skip prologues
Don't forget to skip the celebrity introduction.
Except if it's LotR. You don't need to know the history of Pipeweed to enjoy the story.
NGL I read a foreword recently I enjoyed more than the book that followed.
@@ano_nymAll 420 pages on pipeweed.
Forewords are sometimes interesting, but if I am not interested on the first page I skip it. Prologues are important, part of the story, which is the point of all fiction.
"I also don't read the index, but I might just glance at a table of contents."
Meanwhile I'm here having to go back and read interludes because I have the memory of a fruit fly
It was like that for me in the way of kings prologue with the heralds. There was so little context that nothing would stick.
@@foodsupply5071 idk how much of the Stormlight archives you’ve read but it gets worse 🫨a lot of the interludes are fairly important, but only noticeably so with hindsight (imo)
I don't have that issue with interludes, but epigraphs for sure. Some of them are just too split up it's impossible to follow them. The Musings of El in RoW are the worst offenders.
I have a friend just like this. "If Sanderson wanted me to read Edgedancer he would have put it in the main book".
I love edging though. Awoooga
Well he would have if it was important. So you can skip it. Still good book though, so skip it at your own cost.
If Sanderson wanted me to read Words of Radiance he would have put it in Elantris
My man Sanderson books don’t need any more pages they already scare people off
Interlude 9 of Words of Radiance is Chapter 1 of Edgedancer.
My husband will read the last chapter first...then the book from start to finish.
I don't understand even after 33 years together...we just don't talk about it
🙂
Doesn't want to be surprised by some plot twist.
Or perhaps there's a sense of security in it. Like when you are tired you may want to watch a movie you have already seen because it's familiar and wont surprise you. You know if it ends good or bad.
I used to do that, mainly because it felt as the I were giving myself some incentive to read the whole thing. If I already know how it ends, then I can focus more on the journey to it.
i get him. i watch spoilery reviews before deciding to watch a movie.
Maybe its like in When Harry Met Sally "That way if I die before I finish it, then I know how it ends."
I'll read like the last paragraph so that I can understand the tone of the ending and anticipate it. I don't want some kind of tragic heartbreak when I'm expecting something happy and vice versa.
Wait they're going to Canterbury? I thought they were all on a giant tree ship traveling to meet a robot monster with daggers all over its body.
Thanks for the reminder that I still need to read that book!
@@genericallyentertaining NP I would tell you what it was called, but I don't read titles.
@@elessarbredo you ever feel hyper and eerie and on?
I thought they were being taken to bloom fontaine.
With a crow anime boy and his young wizard sidekick?
So this is who they were talking about in alkatraz vs the evil librarians
Now here’s the Sanderson reference nobody ever gets
I actually remember reading that book as a kid, first Sanderson book I've ever read, and it's like being introduced to Star Wars through Andor. It's really good, but so far outside the grain of his usual works that it makes for a weird intro.
I didn't actually realize the Sanderson I learned about years later (through Mistborn) was the same dude who wrote this.
Shit I actually got this reference
Recently, on r/fantasy, someone asked for the smartest reasons people had DNF'd a book.
Someone posted the following, which made me question their reading compression, and I quote:
'Because it had a prologue. To add salt to the injury, it also had an epilogue.'
Since they thought that was a smart reason to not read a book, they probably would skip the prologue in Canterbury Tales. 😂
I genuinely don't understand the hate for prologues and epilogues. It's more content. Don't readers wanna read? "Ugh, there's more book in my book. Might as well not read it." Huh?????
@@monster-enthusiastI don't understand hate either, but if your work can't stand without a prologue, that's a problem with the work, not with the user.
You ever skip a tutorial for a program? What about failed to read the owners manual before using an appliance? This is literally the same thing. If an ice cream machine is impossible to maintain without a degree and a decoder book, nobody will ever buy a McFlurry. A badly designed UI won't be helped by a tutorial walkthrough. If referencing an appendix or map is required to understand the plot, something is wrong, or you're reading a scientific paper not a novel.
@@LibertyMonk I disagree. Prologues get put there for a reason. It's a feature, not a bug. It's more like set-up, or context. Visual mediums have prologues too. Like in Supernatural, it starts with the main characters as a baby and toddler, then it cuts to the opening credits and then starts the story when they're adults. It's a short, maybe minute long scene, that's by all intents and purposes, a visual prologue. But it's a necessary scene. It sets the tone and builds anticipation. And sometimes a prologue is just flavor text. You could call it chapter one, but it's still the same sentences. And sometimes the prologue is called a prologue simply because the titular event that happens in it is just divorced from the active timeline so it would feel clunky to have as a chapter one because they don't happen right next to eachother.
Some stories don't need a prologue, but some are legitimately better with a prologue. It's a narrative tool. The tool itself isn't flawed, it just needs to be used in the right story.
@@monster-enthusiast it’s a bug
@@monster-enthusiast not to be *extremely* pedantic, but the opening prologue of supernatural is not a "maybe minute long scene", it's 4 and a half minutes.
I don't understand ppl that skip prologues.......
You can't argue with the crazy.
Hey if GRRM wanted me to understand that the white walkers are the main threat he would had them show up in chapter 1 not the prologue
But if you read the Lord of the Rings’s prologue you really can’t understand it until you read the book so it’s really not worth it to read the prologue.
The most important prologue a person can read is the next one. Always the next one.
My brain feels yuck until I go back and read what I skipped.
I don't read songs in books. Even in Tolkien's books. I don't read poems in novels, either, but songs are just poems that are supposed to have music, but don't, because they're in a book.
Also in Ringworld Throne, I only read one of the two plotlines. It was still a coherent story, and the other plotline was boring. I'll let you guess which was which.
... me too. I rarely see songs that I like the lyrics to in books. Even so, because I don't know exactly how it would be sung, I give up. XF
I don't read poems in poetry books too. Poetry makes me doubt my sexuality
Reading poetry makes me feel like a brainlet because I can't read in verse.
Then there are people whose favorite part of The Lord of the Rings is A Elbereth Gilthoniel
The road goes ever on and on
I would be funny if he always read the bibliography and acknowledgements thoroughly.
Are you saying you don't????
@@genericallyentertaining
Nah man, it’s the most important part. I only read the bibliography and ditch the rest of the book.
Jokes aside, depends on the book.
There was a time when I genuinely didn't read prologues because I thought of them as being equivalent to appendix style material, supplemental but not necessary and I wanted to jump as quickly into the action as possible...but I was like 8 when I thought that? I literally just didn't have enough world knowledge to know better.
-- "Sir, you robbed a bank!"
-- "Non-euclidean entities that are overfold"
spheres are non Euclidean geometry
One time i started to read the prologue of Brave New World. It turns out that it was a commentary of the author explaining some things that he would have changed. I almost spoiled myself the ending, so now I'm terrified the prologues of every book
My dad usually skips the prologue, but when he was reading TWOK I was like uhhh you might want to give it a try this time.
Yeah both prologues are important for that. And chapter 1 which is a flashback and therefore also a kind of secret third prologue.
Story time. My ex girlfriend actually didn’t read prologues. She actually thought they were the same as forewords. I legit told her that and it blew her mind.
To be fair, 'prologue' and 'foreword' are both 'before-word': only prologue is Greek (pro-logos) and one is English (fore-word).
Who TF skips prologues? And an epilogue is just a post-credits scene.
In LotR it's just nerd bait.
1:02 The Hebrew gimatria for pineapple is actually: 1+50+50+60=161
הוא כנראה חשב על פיינפל
Unfortunately the gematria for pineapple is in fact 161
Thank you! Also, Stalin is close but not quite there and the Grinch.... Yeah, nope. Just checked Nestle and it's a bit further than Stalin.
Well I guess he skipped learning about gematria too.
The gematria for ananas (pineapple in Hebrew) is 161 but for pineapple writen in Hebrew it is actually 260 😄 (if you don't translate the a as an alef).
פיינפל = 260
@@meimeow2300 this is a strong argument. Respect.
@@meimeow2300 well, then the rest are wrong. And that's not a very good way to transliterate, considering the vowel a isn't on the n consonant, it's better to have a separate representation.
But that's fair, you're right, why would someone do all this work just to get the gematria for a transliteration though?
I thought you were Peter Spankoffski from Nerdy Prudes Must Die in the thumbnail at first
Picking and chosing which parts to read. What are you? A lexicographer?
The prologue is basically Chapter 0.
So, he starts reading The Way of Kings on page 100, after the three different prologues?
Except that the third prologue is called chapter one...
@@ericF-17 True, and the first one is "Prelude to the Stormlight Archive". So technically not a "prologue" either.
Honestly Stormlight is the only one I thought of where you could at least skip the prelude (the first prologue) and still be ok, at least for now. Maybe not when book 5 comes out. And honestly you might be able to use context clues and be ok skipping the prologues for each of the books too. Not saying you should obviously, but your comment got me thinking.
You forgot that they skip Shallan chapters too
She's cool too.
I will never understand people who skip Shallan chapters.
Ngl reading most Shallan chapters felt like a job and not an entertainment to me. No other pov makes me think that
And the Felisin and Mhybe POVs in Malazan.
@@groofay don't remember me of that
i have to agree with stripey shirt here, he has a sense of his own priorities and he doesn't compromise his values to please the people around him.
What's this habit of not reading prologues came about, anyway? I saw this in a couple of places, on social media and such, being un-ironically said. "Oh, I don't read Prologues." Why? Show me on the doll where did the Prologue touched you.
I've never really read prologues or epilogues. Until today, I don't think it had ever been explained to me what a prologue's or epilogue's purpose was. I've always considered them as unrelated to the rest of the contents.
That's like half of every Stormlight Archive book that he's skipping... You could probably skip at least one of the three prologues of the first book and still be ok. The first one doesn't even make sense until like book 3, but it does set some of the tone and fantasy elements of the series
I can't imagine skipping an epigraph, that's always the best part
And here I am also reading the page about the publisher and all the legal stuff such as copyright.
The only time I skip prologues is when it's just the authors son talking about his favorite Saturday morning cartoons.
I feel like I’m missing a reference here 🤔
Name and shame! Also just curious
That's vital to the lore though
I always skip poems when I am reading prose. I dont see the point and havent felt like I ever missed out on anything.
Definitely don't do this for LOTR.
@@The_Custos bruh that's the worst one for this lmao
They set the theme, come on.
The mythical ideal reader for Invisible Monsters Remix
As a child, I used to skip everything written in parentheses
I genuinely thought he was going to make a reference to most religious people when he was talking about picking and choosing which parts of a book to read.
GEMATRIA MENTIONED
GOATED
It's a wrong gematria on every account I managed to think of (the actual gematria of the Hebrew word for pineapple is 161), but it is nice that such a thing was even referred to.
Yes, I'm nitpicking, but I do that with every gematria I encounter, more or less.
@@נעם-קליין Fair. I'm not familiar enough to know the actual stuff off the top of my head, but I think gematria is really neat. And also being brought to a pretty typical protestant church as a child with all the wild speculation and all that... it was pretty satisfying to find out that 666/616 has an actual meaning.
I once saw a discussion that books shouldn't have prologues because their style is so different from the rest of the book that it gives a wrong idea of what to expect.
This was me until I started reading epic fantasy. I don't know why, I guess my child brain didn't think they'd be important.
Epic fantasy trained me to just keep reading -regardless of whether I love it or hate it. Eventually I'll either come to enjoy it or be too cowardly to quit.
I know id certainly be a happier person if id skipped the epilogues when i read Harry Potter.
I sometimes read the prologue after reading the book because, specially if they're newer editions of old book, they could have a lot of spoilers
Sure you’re talking about the prologue and not the foreword? I don’t think I’ve _ever_ seen a prologue that spoiled, but I’ve seen it in forewords.
@@thatonepossum5766 maybe, but I recall a couple of occasions in which the prologue of a book was a full-on short essay about said book and its author. It was a new-ish edition of an old book by a dead author, so it was an editor or an scholar the one wrote what they called "prologue" on the index
This doesn’t fit with the video, but I just finished the audiobook of The Final Empire, & it was amazing. Thank you for talking about it!
This is actually John Bishop’s reading strategy for Finnegans Wake in his study “Joyce’s Book of the Dark”, and also the divinatory practice of Sortes Vergilianae, so sorry-not-sorry?
I’ve got this guy beat. I don’t read books. And when I have to, I read the cliff notes.
virgin : i don't prologues
vs
chad : i ONLY read epilogues
On one hand yeah, the contents of the prologue could also be the contents of a Chapter 1. Even if there’s a timeskip, there’s nothing wrong with a timeskip between Chapter 1 & 2.
On the OTHER hand, the story can feel cleaner if the opening events of the story are from a different perspective, which is then placed into a prologue. A third-person prologue to a first-person story, for example. Or it could be a cold-open revealing the villain (like a Slasher claiming a random victim). Or a number of things, really.
If you want to sample a pie, don't just nibble the crust. That's my logic for reading a few pages in the middle when considering a new book. But of it's a pie worth eating, enjoy every crumb.
Did that when I was young and naive... left me totally confused after the book ended. I had to go back and read the prologue at the end lol.
Someone once told me "you can't judge a book by its cover" and I took that as a personal challenge.
thank god i read the prologue so I can know about the protagonist's great great ancestor who is never brought up again. truly a crucial part of the story.
in what book does this happen
@@bubbleslovely129 every single book I read as a child
@@Green-3c34y65vrbuidk man. Might just be a you problem. The Eragon prologue introduces one of the main bads, one of the main goods, Saphira, and sets up the rescue plot line.
The Game of Thrones prologue introduces the main bads and sets up what life is like at the wall so we feel the weight of Jon’s decision to go there.
The Harry Potter prologue sets up, Voldy, the prophecy, plus a bunch of elements of worldbuilding, like transfiguration and wizard’s lack of understanding of the muggle world.
The Way of Kings prologue is the inciting incident for everything else and introduces several important characters.
The Eye of the World prologue is probably the closest I can think of to your “great great ancestor who is never brought up again,” but that’s just because apart from some worldbuilding elements it doesn’t become critical until after the first few books.
That's what David Eddings' prologues were like. Extremely skippable.
That's a book problem, not a prologue problem
Honestly though, you should always skip 'Introduction' - the long, self-indulgent commentary on the book you're about to read which ruins all major plot points. Why is it accepted that we preface every classic book with a section that spoils the whole story?
Because it's also accepted that nobody reads them
Yeah, I almost always skip introductions at first, then go back and read them at the end. The exception is if you're reading a difficult philosophy book or something that requires a lot of context to understand, in which case they can be really useful.
@@OutsiderLabs You could say the same about prologues and page 260.
Because the assumption is that you don't read (or even that you shouldn't read) those books for plot, but for their inherent literary value. It's this conviction that enjoying the plot is for the immature readers. Is this an idiotic concept? Yes. But that's the highbrow literature society for you.
@@olgagicala7886 what exactly is "inherent literary value" in this context?
I used to be this type of person where I would skip prologues and epilogues but I don't do that anymore.
They were each selected to take part in the Shrike pilgrimage
i don't read prologues because i can't read
i know enough about people to know that this EXACT person is absolutely not too weird to exist
Speaking of videogames, I always played Deus Ex 1 without doing the prologue (where you learn the game mechanics) and once I made the step and when I reached the end of it I see the main villain of the game and my character talks to him, I was shocked.
Invisible monsters by chuck palahniuk moment
This feels like Llamas With Hats but less murdery
I'm the opposite, I usually only read prologues.
bro idk even skip the copyright section
Reading the lyrics of song in a book is strange too. Sometimes it's hard not to skip.
When I was in middle school, I read The Keys to the Kingdom. I slogged through the prologue, wherein Garth Nix uses a lot of terms that he hadn't yet defined, so I understood almost none of it. Halfway through the book, I was able to go back, reread the prologue, and understand it.
All in all, the experience has me questioning why he thought the prologue was a good idea to begin with.
Like the videos you are putting out :)
My favorite part was the shoutout to Mad Cow Disease
didnt mind till he started talking matrix lol
i always reads the ending, gets confused, and reads it from the beginning. just because i hate plot twist.
Okay i read prologues but if im too lost ill skip so i can move on and go back to get better understanding
I will only skip the Introduction if it’s scholarly or I’ll skim it 😅😂 often times it’s not even written by the original author.
Good decision. Spoilers abound.
That's the foreword though. The short is talking about prologues, introductory chapters to the story.
@@thernymous in fiction it’s a must read. In scholarly work not so much
I always skip prefaces though
Rofl! Your videos are hilarious man!
I’m gonna admit, I struggle to read interludes frequently. Particularly if they’re sandwiched between bits of a story I’m really interested in getting to.
I guess this could help when reading Cain's Jawbone! Cheers!
I once downloaded a pirate copy of Eye of the World (I already owned a physical copy but wanted to carry a copy on my e-reader) and it didn't have the prologue.
I thought it was much better that way. I still don't see how the crap about Lews Therin added anything to the story.
At least he doesn't skip flashbacks, right?.... Right?!
It never occured to me that is is something someonw would do. I do colour inside the lines do I..
I read prolouges but I do skip forewards. I want to form my own opinion on the piece and I find it can really influence it before I've even started reading the book.
Ok ok ok i have the ultimate story here. Picture this: highschool english class, students in desks with varying levels of enthusiasm but all prepared to do whats necessary in order to get a passing grade. We were reading a book as a class and got assigned chapters 1, 2 and 4 for homework by the end of the week. I, uneducated fool that I am, assumed we were going to read chapter 3 in class. Theres no way we would just skip a chapter right? WRONG! This english teacher was absolutely unhinged. We skipped chapters, partial chapters, prologues; nothing was left untouched without passing his arbitrary judgement on whether it was "necessary". And I wish I could say this was just 1 random novel but noooo. Every piece of course material had to pass his edit. HE CUT OUT A WHOLE ACT OF A SHAKESPEARE PLAY!!! The nerve *shakes head*. Suffice it to say, none of us ever had a clue what was happening and then got less than good marks when we couldnt fully explain themes or write essays about intent (or even plot). It was complete insanity. Literally all i did to study for the exam was take the materials he said we would have to write essays on and actually read them cover to cover. Aced the exam because i actually had a vague idea of what was going on......
I played the uncharted games starting from 4 and ending with 1 so i feel called out
I did actually think prologues were optional when I was a kid lol
Prologue is the best part of books
kinda fun fact: The hebrew gematria for pineapple is 161 so he was pretty close
I only read the bottom half of all pages.
Skip the whole book for that matter.
This video doesn't make any sense. (To be fair, I started at 00:29 and skipped 00:45-00:55, 1:12-1:26 and 2:01-2:23. Also, I muted the video and watched with Japanese subtitles. I don't know any Japanese.)
Skipping prologues in a The Wheel of Time audiobook saves you a whole hour and half! Only 40 more hours to go!
Ok. To be fair though, I didn't read prologues for YEARS because the Warrior Cats (yes I know) series was one of the first I ever read entirely on my own and the prologue SPOILS THE MURDER MYSTERY at the center of the first book. I have never felt so betrayed and for actual years afterwards I viewed prologues with such distrust I skipped over them entirely. In hindsight I wonder how much CRUCIAL information I must have missed in the books I read from ages 6-10.
Prologues are great! Until you get to book 10.
Both times I would cruise through books 1-8, limp through 9, then crash at 10.
people who think every book is ergodic:
I skip Harry Potter's POV chapters, he's such a whiny brat. Making such a fuss over one letter.
Anything in parentheses lmao
"It's called taking the blue-pill"
Never skip prologues. Unless you're talking about the Ravens prologue that has been printed in every copy of Eye of the World since the early 2000s. In that case, always skip prologues.
I don't read the comments.
Uhh hate to burst your bubble but the Gematria for Pineapple is 161... which you might have known if you read the prologue about Gematria 🤭
He could be Hungarian and really hate Damu Roland. (You're really not gonna get it if you're not from Hungary.)
Heralds protect us from this evil!!!!!!
CANTERBURY TALES REFERENCE ‼️‼️‼️