So true. Mannn, the man is non-stop! How does he write like he's running out of time? Write day and night like he's running out of time! Every day he fights like he's running out of time, is he running out of time? Awwww, How does he write like tomorrow won't arrive? How does he write like he needs it to survive? How does he write every second he's alive?! 😁
atleast one episode of her putting on her writers cap of these cross overs would be fantastic. I wonder if anyone could recognize her favorite authors influences in HER writing also.
Brandon has a separate team in his company, whose sole work is to check and make sure he keeps the continuity and makes sure he doesn't change any cannon events in the Cosmere.
13:50 I did that. I grabbed a book based on title alone while knowing literally nothing else. Unfortunately, the book was called November 9 by Colleen Hoover. I picked it because that's my birthday. That book was one of the worst books I ever read. As someone who does not gravitate to the romance genre, and usually avoids it, I had no idea that Colleen was a famous, and famously bad author.
Yeah, I understand almost not wanting a series to end, because if the author forces an ending (especially if it's bad) you can really see the undulating quality of the series overall.
Minor spoiler for Yumi and the midnight painter - I read undulating in the book and smiled. I think Sanderson specially used to annoy Merphy. I loved it.
4:13 this is literally what takes up half of my reading time, stopping reading and thinking how the characters would react and interact with others, glad to see I am not the only one.
Imagine if Rand Al'Thor just popped into the Sword of Truth universe and did nothing but follow Richard around and at every event just tell Richard, "I did it better".
Author's take on that first question about Tolkien taking inspiration from outside: YES! One of my favorite things to do is take a real life experience and write it into the intensified circumstances of whatever I'm working on at the moment. It's especially fun when you can take said experience, plug it into say a Fantasy setting, then later down the road use that same inspired event in a different work, perhaps even different genre! Many standout childhood memories haunt several of my books, but the way they are packaged is completely different from one to the next. When writers talk about NEEDING to get a scene out, for me that feeling almost always pairs with an event from my life twisted into whichever work it will go into.
I like unfinished series as long as each book feels finished. I don't like waiting for a series to be written if the individual books don't end or have cliffhangers.
This was really fun!! Tbh my bad take(?) is to be your own audiobook and read everything out loud all the time. It seriously helps you focus on the content line by line but also annoys everyone in the near vicinity
Honestly, i have found that reading a line out loud that i previously did not understand, does help sometimes, But doing it for the entire book, causes my brain to zone out too, to such a point where i have to ask someone to explain what i just read. So, it has its advantages and disadvantages... 👍
Some of these seem quite mild. Here's mine: I like info dumps. I don't think I've seen much support for it so its probably a bad take. Viewing large chunks of the world from a comprehensive perspective allows me to immerse myself into it much more deeply. In my opinion it makes up for the fact that we aren't following the main character from birth and don't learn about the world like they do
same. i don't really sit down and read for long periods of time, but more so short bursts every day or every few days, so when info is laid out over the course of the whole book, i tend to forget things, but when its in the form of an infodump, i remember it better because that one scene itself is memorable
Yea honestly I often love info dumps, but I think the biggest problem isn't doing them at all but how much you rely on them. A few times in a book or a series, especially in the beginning, isn't that bad, but if you continue to use them as the book goes on, it becomes more questionable.
I could see the crossover books being done like the Canterbury Tales, where the main characters are all on a journey somewhere and to pass time they talk about things that happened to them, and maybe react to thing that happen on the trip as though they are still in their world. Perhaps in the end they all end up at a convention and turn out to have been super fans. 'I remember when I was young the local witch enticed me to go to school to learn magic. But when I was there I released a horrible monster that kept following me so I ran all over the world to try to find a way to defeat it' --Ged 'So did you defeat the minion of the dark one?' --Rand 'Oh, turns out I was running from my shadow' --Ged
20:18 as someone who's horrified of people skipping arcs in One Piece, this is a whole other level of insanity. Absolutely perfect for this video but jesus, that knocked the wind out of me
OMG my comment made it into a Merphy video! My life is complete 😂 I have actually heard of consistency editors for larger authors, which makes total sense if the author can afford it and I don’t think it’s a “bad” idea at all. (I would also totally be on board with the fan labor of love idea!) I just counted this as a “bad take” because age-related errors tend to bother me WAY MORE than any other type of plot hole, even though they usually don’t affect the story much…
I love your excited passion about writing in books. I love buying a book from past centuries and see someone who is long dead has scribbled in there. It makes me feel connected across time. Mind you, handwriting in the past was so much nicer.
Just wanted to say that I found your channel this week based on the algorithm recommending your review on A Silent Voice, and got hooked when watching your Avatar vids! I also haven't read a book in over 4 years so I'm inspired to start the Mistborn series soon...I really don't know how I got here but I'm glad I did!
Regarding reading the end of the book first if I'm getting stressed out by the book I'll peak at the end, the back of the next book in the series or a wiki spoiler page to prepare for it so I can mentally prepare for it and just be in the moment for the reading experience for the rest of the book, because good or bad, I've satisfied that anxiousness from not knowing.
Near same... I also Google the plot sometimes when i get anxious. And read the last page, And a page from somewhere in the middle too for good measure. 😉
For the the crossovers I just had a thought of Worf, Star Trek, jumping into Pride and Prejudice and challenging George Wickham to an honour duel to the death.
I just wanted to say : THANK YOU Discovered your channel recently and you totally rekindle my love for reading ! You made me bought 15 books last month (and I already read half of them). So thank you ! Can't wait to read more !
The book hoard as artistic expression really speaks to me as I’m sure it does to others. My partner sometimes talks about being a book collector more than a book reader, but we are definitely getting back into reading this year.
I 100% agree with your "bad take". I actually am a bit nervous about Stormlight ending and kind of ruining my feelings towards the first three books. Hopefully it's an unfounded fear... But it's there.
@@jasminezed7839 I liked it, but my ranking goes, WoR, TWoK, O, then ROW. It's the only one I've only read once, so I might change my mind when I get back to it next year when I do my reread in preparation for book 5.
@@tgibridays Reasonable. Right now I think my ranking would be the same as yours, but with OB and ROW switched. I honestly have no idea what book five is going to do at this point, but I'm excited for it to come out!
Characters showing up in crossovers and spouting off about adventures they had in another unrelated book is basically what happens in every Michael Moorcock novel. It's actually a lot of fun.
Having the notes for your kids to read is so heart warming. I bonded so much with my step dad over reading so that just made me think of him love the vid!
The spreadsheet thing sort of sounds like something a writer can do themselves in terms of putting every character in a list with their age, birthday, place of birth, major life events, family members, etc. I know Oda goes onto the One Piece wiki because he often forgets things like move names but fans keep track of most of that stuff. I know TV shows have stuff like series bibles which I've always assumed is filled with references to character histories and the like.
As she was reading that I was just thinking every writer needs an autistic fan who’s obsessed with their work to keep track of that stuff. I cut out the middle man by being autistic XD _I very much know the joy of the spreadsheet_
13:30 girl, I actually really feel you here. I hate goodbyes, and sometimes, whether it’s just that or I’m nervous that the ending gonna stink, I just don’t finish. Let me live in the happier times at the beginning of the book rather than the emotionally tormenting sad ending where half the characters die and the other half are physically and emotionally scared for the rest of their lives 😭
23:16 reminds me of a thing I saw at school when I was a kid: We had this thing at my elementary school where periodically some older kids (high school or maybe college, I'm not sure) would come to our school and put on a performance for us that would typically have some kind of moral or message to it. One day they came and the performance they put on was just completely unhinged. The plot of it was that some people had a balloon, and they drew a pirate's face on the balloon, which somehow turned the balloon into a living, sentient being. The pirate balloon assessed the world he was new to and decided that his thing was that he wanted books, so the humans, glad he was interested in such things, brought him books and he started fucking eating them! The humans protested fervently against the pirate balloon eating books, but he could not be stopped, until he had eaten so many that he popped, alas, his folly led to his demise. The moral of the story was that you, too, should have a hunger for books, but not a literal hunger but rather a figurative hunger that is satiated by reading them and not by eating them. I swear I did not make any of this up.
I wish more hardcovers were like that too, but specifically I like that it is a glossed paper so you can CLEAN IT!! I just read Happy Place and it’s white and yellow, it got SO STAINED just from touching it that I feel bad selling it.
As a horror author, if I had a chance to get trad published through gladiatorial combat I would definitely cheat! My favorite quote about combat is: if you're not cheating, you're not trying!
Bad take: listen to your audiobooks one chapter at a time at random. Let me explain, several years ago I had a large capacity MP3 player. I hit random, wanting to listen to a music album randomly. Instead, the player random played everything I had on it. Why not? LOTR was on there in 3 or 6 minute segments plus a couple hundred other audiobooks. So, 3 minutes of LOTR at random followed by a chapter of Neal Stephenson, Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, Bart Ehrman, Jasper Fforde, Moan Chomsky, etc. It took me a little over a month to listen to everything at random, prbably 10 hours a day.
I've had blurbs pulled from my reviews as pull quotes, and I often find out strange the ones they use. I have noticed they're frequently pulled from the last paragraph of the review, as if that's the only part of the review that was read-which is entirely possible because the last paragraph is all that review aggregator websites show.
I don't have a book for a mousepad but I do have an old seed magazine that is pretty thick that I use as a base, and then I have some cardboard on top of that ,and a mousepad on top of that - I use it for when I'm playing games and want to kick my feet up and lean back (aka away from the desk), so I have a stable pad on my lap
To the point about narrative at 20:18, Tolkien managed to do it. Nothing happens in the LotR that Bilbo and Frodo and then Sam don't know to relate. Every single thing is related either through their direct knowledge or through things that they can plausibly have been told. It's why the details of Gandalf's fight with the Balrog are sketchy, and Aragorn's battle of wills with Sauron through the Palantir, etc, etc. The level of detail matches the person who told the hobbit writer- Gandalf was reticent, Aragorn humble, Gimli scared of the Paths of the Dead and Legolas bored, etc, and it affects the telling. It's why the highest detail is for the journey to Mordor, next is the things Merry and Pippin directly did or witnessed, and then a third level of detail for everyone else.
I never noticed how frequently the word “undulating” comes up before I heard about Merphy’s beef with it lol. Now I can’t read a book without seeing it.
For whatever reason I hate any damage to my books. No creases on the spine. Not bent corners or pages. When I finish a book I want to put it back looking exactly like how I picked it up. Idk why. Just like them pristine.
Im actually completely with you on the take of enjoying unfinished series, though for me, it's also because I find speculating to be a ton of fun. Well crafted worlds can feel so amazingly alive, and a lot of the wonder that brings can fade for me when the curtains close. On a bit of a tangent, I think it's also why I love open-endings, and dislike it when stories take pains to wrap things up too neatly.
When I was young (like very young), I thought being a serious reader mean you SHOULD ALWAYS read a book in ONE sitting, no matter the length. And I always felt like a failure for not reaching this impossible goal.
Me too!! My mom even mentioned it in some parent conference write-up to my first grade teacher. She was like "bookmark functionality has yet to sink in." 😂
So on the topic of sometimes choosing random books to read - when I was a teenager I lived in a small-ish town which had a "Teen" section (I think this was before "Young Adult" became a section) in the library. I don't remember how large this section was, maybe a hundred books or so, but I decided that I was going to read through the section in alphabetical order. I found some interesting books that way. I didn't end up getting through many, though, because I ended up moving to a different town.
Merphy, if you haven't read Jasper Fforde yet, I think you'd love his books. His main character is a Literary Detective, who travels into other stories (eg hiding in the attic of Jane Eyre's manor house, using the book to know when it's safe to move around without bumping into any main characters). His Nursery Crimes are even sillier (The Gingerbread Man as a deranged serial killer is hilarious).
Agreed about annotations. My most prized book is a copy of The Screwtape Letters that my grandpa annotated. It’s literally falling apart at this point so I never use it to read from though.
I 100% agree with the whole not ending series thing!!! I've read so many great series that didn't end well. I also love the feeling of not knowing and carrying that feeling with me forever
I think you sort of missed the point of the “random” reads comment. They were describing truly random picks, but your response was “yes, if it includes a nautical theme I like, I’ll often consider reading a book!” “This book has a theme I like, maybe I should read it” is….. the norm.
I like the audiobook one. Like it would be nice of they implemented ambient noises and maybe a little backing music into the narration. Obviously keep the basic narrated versions too, but as someone who likes to listen to music while i read (it helps block out the world and makes my brain focus) i'd love this. Plus my favourite characters having their own theme music is just a cool idea to me.
About the 9:03 comment, there actually is a physical book that uses that idea of exploring different sequences of chapters and multiple endings: Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar, and it's amazing!
I actually just picked up my first Brandon Sanderson book blindly! I’ve always been overwhelmed by all of his series, but I liked the title, so I just bought it! I’m loving it so far, I’m a quarter of the way through and I’ve already recommended it to people!
I also have that self imposed rule of skipping to the last page and reading the last sentence or paragraph. I don't remember when or exactly what book it started with or even why I do this. All I know is that now it is a MUST.
Ebooks could easily have a score, a pre-reading shopping and recipe list for certain cued smells and touch experiences, and such immersive optional parts.
I don't know whether this has already been said, so apologies if this is so, but Dutch hardbacks and most German hardback novels don't have dust jackets and I love it!
I find that long running series are like rivers. The longer, broader, and deeper the story is, the more broken, spreading, and complicated its outlet becomes.
15:25 / oooh when I started reading Stormlight - I disappeared from reality for 5 days and I was reading it (note - English is not my first language and Stormlight 1 was among first books I read in eng.) I made tones of notes at first, and around 200 pages a day was my top, but I just had to keep reading it 😁 I can start several books at once, but depending on the mood I’ll want to read only one of them till the end, then move to the second one.. switching between several stories is not my thing 🤷♀️😁
11:53 - That's completely true. I think a lot of people really don't realize just how much "could have been trimmed down" is an almost entirely subjective opinion, in a majority of case. Loll
So in reference to the take with where they skip other POV I have thought about this for the wheel of time before. I think it would be super interesting if there were different collections for different major POVs. Like the Tale of the Dragon follows only Rands pov, the the rise of the wolf king follows only Perrins, and so on.
Love to see someone from the other side of the world show such love for Fredrick Backman (I'm swedish like him!!) He was one of my great inspirations to start writing myself.
Hard agree on the blank page and pen inclusion for all fantasy books! What better space to let out all the amazing stuff that’s being poured into us than the back of the book❤
I wrote a book, well 2 actually, at the age of 14. Fast forward to now, I'm 31 and between working 2 jobs, doing jiujitsu, lifting, hiking and backpacking and reading it's so hard for me to find time to write, my dream is to not have to work any jobs so I can just write full time but that will never happen... in the meantime, I'm almost finished finally with the final draft of the novel i wrote 17 years ago! I feel so elated lol
that crossover characters idea is genius, you will get a totally different perspective from the original work, and if it done well enough, change your whole understanding of the original, imagine that, something like a better ending
So, the reason why hardcovers have beautiful cover underneath the dust jacket is because while you are reading it, you read it WITHOUT the dust jacket to not destroy it. Therefore you will enjoy the cover like that, and then when you are done you put the dust jacket on and can display the other cover you are not used to. And if you have accidentally destroyed a little the hardback by reading it, the dust jacket will cover it. 😊 And reading hardback without the dustjacket on is the only right way! 😅 (Please don't fight me on this🙈😅)
tell that to the libraries who tape them on, i didn't even know reading without one was an option til highschool when i finally got my own hardcover and it kept slipping through the dust jacket
@@nisc2001 oh gosh 🙈 what a sin! But, did they at least put this seen through plastic/cover thingy on it? Our libraries in Slovakia put it on every book so it won't get ruined so soon, so in that case I do understand. But yea that is shame :(
I get the idea of not having an ending can be alluring but when you get something like Mob Psycho 100 which is great all the way through and has a perfect ending for the series and how that hits it's just perfection.
I don't know how long you keep watching the comments after a video posts. I just recently found your channel through the Junji Ito and horror episodes. In the most recent of those you asked if people do want reviews of Ito's works outside of the big, well known works, and i can say that i genuinely do. I find your analysis of his work very fascinating.
OMG YES, completely agree about Fredrik Backman! I've read two of his books so far and his characters and his writing hit me in the feels in such a unique and special way. 🥺💕 Also the discussion of spreadsheets and continuity editors made me think of tabletop RPG streams. Not only does Critical Role have an official Lorekeeper on the payroll, but additionally there's a group of fans who maintain spreadsheets of all different kinds of statistics for the campaigns. 😆
Talking about the “pruning” of plots, etc. I just finished listening to Magician by Raymond E Feist (> 33 hrs) which I read when it came out in 1982. The audible version was an authors preferred edition that the publisher allowed him to put back out in 1989 that contained the approx 50,000 words that they forced him to edit out when it was originally published. Back in the day releasing a hard back book that was 800-1000 pages would have cost a ton. But thank God with e-books books can be as long as they want to be and we can have books from any author that’s out there. I want (need) books that are as long as possible and series that contain as many volumes as possible. My appetite for fantasy has been insatiable since the discovery of The Sword of Shannara in 1978 on a bookmobile that would come through my neighborhood in the summer. But then it was one book in a series every 1-1.5 yrs and cost $35-40/book, but now thanks to Kindle Unlimited they’re so many available that I’m able to get through >120 books a year for about $150/yr
😂 that first one is why I'm about to spend 5 days in the mountains with no modern conveniences. Gotta experience some epic walking and commune with the trees, man. 🌲
Speaking as an old fantasy reading dude, it really should be known how much JRR Tolkien was impacted by his experiences in WWI, in particular being on the Western Front and Battle of the Somme. Realise this and you can see if reflected in his writing.
I think Luffy or the Strawhat pirates in any serious dystopian world would be an amazing crossover. One piece x 1984 Basically if the introduction of a character would result in the engoodening of a story + a whole genre shift I’m down
I completely agree with the "dust jackets are a waste" I fully think publishing should just do away with dust jackets and make only beautiful hardback books.
Regarding the bad take at 9:15 (ish), there is actually a book (not the choose your own adventure) that can be read in multiple orders (one of which is established by a direction chart made by the author), although I don't think it's as versatile as proposed in the bad take. It's called "Rayuela" from Julio Cortazar ("rayuela" is also a children's game that consists in a drawn "road" on the floor that makes you pass over it jumping and sometimes skipping some of the tiles/boxes)
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Brandon Sanderson would be writing a new book DURING the gladiator fight. That dude writes like he knows the exact date of his death.
So true. Mannn, the man is non-stop!
How does he write like he's running out of time? Write day and night like he's running out of time! Every day he fights like he's running out of time, is he running out of time? Awwww, How does he write like tomorrow won't arrive? How does he write like he needs it to survive? How does he write every second he's alive?! 😁
@@meganhuffmanwrites ua-cam.com/video/RY9KVtuXZCE/v-deo.html
That's such an accurate way to describe it 😭
Hilarious because it's true 😆
Like he's running out of time?
Past Merphy: "I'm not a fan of absurdism".
Current Merphy: "I need to write these crossover fan fictions" 😂
What reading One Piece does to a person.
The power of One Piece and Discworld 😂 and I havent even read Discworld
@@adoniscreed4031that sounds like something someone would say about one piece😂
Time to go read discword !
The power of the books that hold up her laptop
Please someone write that Marvin crossover tho
We're gonna need 2 things:
1. a part 2 of bad takes
2. a whole video on your favourite one - examples of characters just popping into other worlds
You mean part 3. I'm pretty sure there a video like this already or something similar to it
That could be a whole series of shorts.
atleast one episode of her putting on her writers cap of these cross overs would be fantastic. I wonder if anyone could recognize her favorite authors influences in HER writing also.
Brandon has a separate team in his company, whose sole work is to check and make sure he keeps the continuity and makes sure he doesn't change any cannon events in the Cosmere.
That's mostly Karen's job. She has spreadsheets. And spreadsheets for the spreadsheets.
All the great worldbuilders have that. Matt Mercer has Dani Carr.
Merphy cracking up is the sweetest thing 😂❤
And contagious!
🤣
I love that the joke was a literal knee slapper for her.
It will literally turn someone’s bad day around
13:50 I did that. I grabbed a book based on title alone while knowing literally nothing else. Unfortunately, the book was called November 9 by Colleen Hoover. I picked it because that's my birthday. That book was one of the worst books I ever read. As someone who does not gravitate to the romance genre, and usually avoids it, I had no idea that Colleen was a famous, and famously bad author.
Yeah, I understand almost not wanting a series to end, because if the author forces an ending (especially if it's bad) you can really see the undulating quality of the series overall.
*claps furiously*
Minor spoiler for Yumi and the midnight painter - I read undulating in the book and smiled. I think Sanderson specially used to annoy Merphy. I loved it.
Any time I see that word in an ebook i smile and highlight it.
Every time I read that word, I read it in Sean Astin's voice.
When I read that take, I thought Sanderson's ear in particular would be sore, he uses "undulate" like twice in every one of his books.
Tress also used undulate like 4-5 times lol
I just finished it today... Omg so many 'undulating's' 😂
4:13 this is literally what takes up half of my reading time, stopping reading and thinking how the characters would react and interact with others, glad to see I am not the only one.
If you were to fight GRRM in the circle, he wouldn't cheat. He would just get his incredibly skilled sellsword to fight on his behalf.
And then the incredibly skilled sellsword would not exactly cheat but definitely fight dirty
Imagine if Rand Al'Thor just popped into the Sword of Truth universe and did nothing but follow Richard around and at every event just tell Richard, "I did it better".
😂
LOVE this
Bahaha this one wins
And he keeps going until Goodkind starts crying about how bad his prose is.
I mean, that's basically what lews therin does in the wheel of time to rand.
Author's take on that first question about Tolkien taking inspiration from outside:
YES! One of my favorite things to do is take a real life experience and write it into the intensified circumstances of whatever I'm working on at the moment. It's especially fun when you can take said experience, plug it into say a Fantasy setting, then later down the road use that same inspired event in a different work, perhaps even different genre!
Many standout childhood memories haunt several of my books, but the way they are packaged is completely different from one to the next. When writers talk about NEEDING to get a scene out, for me that feeling almost always pairs with an event from my life twisted into whichever work it will go into.
I like unfinished series as long as each book feels finished. I don't like waiting for a series to be written if the individual books don't end or have cliffhangers.
This was really fun!! Tbh my bad take(?) is to be your own audiobook and read everything out loud all the time. It seriously helps you focus on the content line by line but also annoys everyone in the near vicinity
This is how I finally fished reading Lord of the Rings. Some books are just better spoken.
This is me lol
@@orbitingpluto3213 you’re absolutely right
Honestly, i have found that reading a line out loud that i previously did not understand, does help sometimes,
But doing it for the entire book, causes my brain to zone out too, to such a point where i have to ask someone to explain what i just read.
So, it has its advantages and disadvantages... 👍
Some of these seem quite mild.
Here's mine: I like info dumps. I don't think I've seen much support for it so its probably a bad take.
Viewing large chunks of the world from a comprehensive perspective allows me to immerse myself into it much more deeply. In my opinion it makes up for the fact that we aren't following the main character from birth and don't learn about the world like they do
I love info dumps, too. It's great. Give me all of the world building. All of it.
same. i don't really sit down and read for long periods of time, but more so short bursts every day or every few days, so when info is laid out over the course of the whole book, i tend to forget things, but when its in the form of an infodump, i remember it better because that one scene itself is memorable
Yea honestly I often love info dumps, but I think the biggest problem isn't doing them at all but how much you rely on them. A few times in a book or a series, especially in the beginning, isn't that bad, but if you continue to use them as the book goes on, it becomes more questionable.
I could see the crossover books being done like the Canterbury Tales, where the main characters are all on a journey somewhere and to pass time they talk about things that happened to them, and maybe react to thing that happen on the trip as though they are still in their world. Perhaps in the end they all end up at a convention and turn out to have been super fans.
'I remember when I was young the local witch enticed me to go to school to learn magic. But when I was there I released a horrible monster that kept following me so I ran all over the world to try to find a way to defeat it' --Ged
'So did you defeat the minion of the dark one?' --Rand
'Oh, turns out I was running from my shadow' --Ged
9:02 You know, we did have choose your own adventure books in the 90s. Loads of "videogames" exist with those premises as well.
I am endlessly pleased that Merphy has joined my fight. Her laugh is so contagious. I love this community. ❤
That is basically what Hoid does....shows up in random books and gives out of context stories that we only get it!
Lestat coming back from going into the Twilight world: you'll never guess what we're doing over there. And we sparkle.
20:18 as someone who's horrified of people skipping arcs in One Piece, this is a whole other level of insanity. Absolutely perfect for this video but jesus, that knocked the wind out of me
OMG my comment made it into a Merphy video! My life is complete 😂
I have actually heard of consistency editors for larger authors, which makes total sense if the author can afford it and I don’t think it’s a “bad” idea at all. (I would also totally be on board with the fan labor of love idea!) I just counted this as a “bad take” because age-related errors tend to bother me WAY MORE than any other type of plot hole, even though they usually don’t affect the story much…
I will do my best to try and clone myself and then start a business offering my services to authors. It could be a real money maker!
@@Lynn-CA We data-obsessed folks would certainly appreciate your services Lynn!
I love your excited passion about writing in books. I love buying a book from past centuries and see someone who is long dead has scribbled in there. It makes me feel connected across time. Mind you, handwriting in the past was so much nicer.
Just wanted to say that I found your channel this week based on the algorithm recommending your review on A Silent Voice, and got hooked when watching your Avatar vids! I also haven't read a book in over 4 years so I'm inspired to start the Mistborn series soon...I really don't know how I got here but I'm glad I did!
Regarding reading the end of the book first if I'm getting stressed out by the book I'll peak at the end, the back of the next book in the series or a wiki spoiler page to prepare for it so I can mentally prepare for it and just be in the moment for the reading experience for the rest of the book, because good or bad, I've satisfied that anxiousness from not knowing.
Near same...
I also Google the plot sometimes when i get anxious.
And read the last page,
And a page from somewhere in the middle too for good measure. 😉
I think this video needs a sequel. I had so much fun watching it.
For the the crossovers I just had a thought of Worf, Star Trek, jumping into Pride and Prejudice and challenging George Wickham to an honour duel to the death.
I just wanted to say : THANK YOU
Discovered your channel recently and you totally rekindle my love for reading ! You made me bought 15 books last month (and I already read half of them). So thank you ! Can't wait to read more !
The book hoard as artistic expression really speaks to me as I’m sure it does to others. My partner sometimes talks about being a book collector more than a book reader, but we are definitely getting back into reading this year.
I 100% agree with your "bad take". I actually am a bit nervous about Stormlight ending and kind of ruining my feelings towards the first three books. Hopefully it's an unfounded fear... But it's there.
I take it you didn't like ROW?
@@jasminezed7839 I liked it, but my ranking goes, WoR, TWoK, O, then ROW. It's the only one I've only read once, so I might change my mind when I get back to it next year when I do my reread in preparation for book 5.
@@tgibridays Reasonable. Right now I think my ranking would be the same as yours, but with OB and ROW switched. I honestly have no idea what book five is going to do at this point, but I'm excited for it to come out!
Characters showing up in crossovers and spouting off about adventures they had in another unrelated book is basically what happens in every Michael Moorcock novel. It's actually a lot of fun.
Merphy is deadass the best booktuber to ever touch this earth. She made me pick up reading after years of not reading
Having the notes for your kids to read is so heart warming. I bonded so much with my step dad over reading so that just made me think of him love the vid!
I think we need a depress-off between Marvin and Kaladin. Not sure who would win that fight, but everyone would be sad.
The spreadsheet thing sort of sounds like something a writer can do themselves in terms of putting every character in a list with their age, birthday, place of birth, major life events, family members, etc. I know Oda goes onto the One Piece wiki because he often forgets things like move names but fans keep track of most of that stuff. I know TV shows have stuff like series bibles which I've always assumed is filled with references to character histories and the like.
Alas, not everyone acknowledges the wonder of the spreadsheet!
As she was reading that I was just thinking every writer needs an autistic fan who’s obsessed with their work to keep track of that stuff. I cut out the middle man by being autistic XD _I very much know the joy of the spreadsheet_
13:30 girl, I actually really feel you here. I hate goodbyes, and sometimes, whether it’s just that or I’m nervous that the ending gonna stink, I just don’t finish. Let me live in the happier times at the beginning of the book rather than the emotionally tormenting sad ending where half the characters die and the other half are physically and emotionally scared for the rest of their lives 😭
23:16 reminds me of a thing I saw at school when I was a kid:
We had this thing at my elementary school where periodically some older kids (high school or maybe college, I'm not sure) would come to our school and put on a performance for us that would typically have some kind of moral or message to it. One day they came and the performance they put on was just completely unhinged. The plot of it was that some people had a balloon, and they drew a pirate's face on the balloon, which somehow turned the balloon into a living, sentient being. The pirate balloon assessed the world he was new to and decided that his thing was that he wanted books, so the humans, glad he was interested in such things, brought him books and he started fucking eating them! The humans protested fervently against the pirate balloon eating books, but he could not be stopped, until he had eaten so many that he popped, alas, his folly led to his demise.
The moral of the story was that you, too, should have a hunger for books, but not a literal hunger but rather a figurative hunger that is satiated by reading them and not by eating them.
I swear I did not make any of this up.
I remember Ronald McDonald would do that for my elementary school
I wish more hardcovers were like that too, but specifically I like that it is a glossed paper so you can CLEAN IT!! I just read Happy Place and it’s white and yellow, it got SO STAINED just from touching it that I feel bad selling it.
"Broken spines are cool"
-Merphy Napier, 2023
Batman villain Bane approves.
As a horror author, if I had a chance to get trad published through gladiatorial combat I would definitely cheat! My favorite quote about combat is: if you're not cheating, you're not trying!
Bad take: listen to your audiobooks one chapter at a time at random. Let me explain, several years ago I had a large capacity MP3 player. I hit random, wanting to listen to a music album randomly. Instead, the player random played everything I had on it. Why not? LOTR was on there in 3 or 6 minute segments plus a couple hundred other audiobooks. So, 3 minutes of LOTR at random followed by a chapter of Neal Stephenson, Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, Bart Ehrman, Jasper Fforde, Moan Chomsky, etc. It took me a little over a month to listen to everything at random, prbably 10 hours a day.
This sounds fun.
Don't use a book as a mouse pad if it has a glossy cover. The arrow will never go where you want it to go.
I've had blurbs pulled from my reviews as pull quotes, and I often find out strange the ones they use. I have noticed they're frequently pulled from the last paragraph of the review, as if that's the only part of the review that was read-which is entirely possible because the last paragraph is all that review aggregator websites show.
I don't have a book for a mousepad but I do have an old seed magazine that is pretty thick that I use as a base, and then I have some cardboard on top of that ,and a mousepad on top of that - I use it for when I'm playing games and want to kick my feet up and lean back (aka away from the desk), so I have a stable pad on my lap
To the point about narrative at 20:18, Tolkien managed to do it. Nothing happens in the LotR that Bilbo and Frodo and then Sam don't know to relate. Every single thing is related either through their direct knowledge or through things that they can plausibly have been told. It's why the details of Gandalf's fight with the Balrog are sketchy, and Aragorn's battle of wills with Sauron through the Palantir, etc, etc.
The level of detail matches the person who told the hobbit writer- Gandalf was reticent, Aragorn humble, Gimli scared of the Paths of the Dead and Legolas bored, etc, and it affects the telling. It's why the highest detail is for the journey to Mordor, next is the things Merry and Pippin directly did or witnessed, and then a third level of detail for everyone else.
I never noticed how frequently the word “undulating” comes up before I heard about Merphy’s beef with it lol. Now I can’t read a book without seeing it.
yep. That's all of of us
I don't even know what it means man all I know is that she has beef with it and that's all I need to know anyway 💀
"Books aren't edible enough". Intense flashbacks to when I was 12 and my best friend tore out the last page of a book I was reading and ate it
For whatever reason I hate any damage to my books. No creases on the spine. Not bent corners or pages. When I finish a book I want to put it back looking exactly like how I picked it up. Idk why. Just like them pristine.
It's art!
The one about Tolkien is true. And Jemisin went to visit volcanoes to do the world building for Broken Earth.
"Step into the circle with Robert Oberst"
Daniel: "Heh??
Im actually completely with you on the take of enjoying unfinished series, though for me, it's also because I find speculating to be a ton of fun. Well crafted worlds can feel so amazingly alive, and a lot of the wonder that brings can fade for me when the curtains close.
On a bit of a tangent, I think it's also why I love open-endings, and dislike it when stories take pains to wrap things up too neatly.
When I was young (like very young), I thought being a serious reader mean you SHOULD ALWAYS read a book in ONE sitting, no matter the length.
And I always felt like a failure for not reaching this impossible goal.
Me too!! My mom even mentioned it in some parent conference write-up to my first grade teacher. She was like "bookmark functionality has yet to sink in." 😂
@@emmaelizabeth3373 "Bookmark functionality has yet to sink in" is my new favorite line. 😆 I think a lot of us were those kids.
So on the topic of sometimes choosing random books to read - when I was a teenager I lived in a small-ish town which had a "Teen" section (I think this was before "Young Adult" became a section) in the library. I don't remember how large this section was, maybe a hundred books or so, but I decided that I was going to read through the section in alphabetical order. I found some interesting books that way.
I didn't end up getting through many, though, because I ended up moving to a different town.
Merphy, if you haven't read Jasper Fforde yet, I think you'd love his books. His main character is a Literary Detective, who travels into other stories (eg hiding in the attic of Jane Eyre's manor house, using the book to know when it's safe to move around without bumping into any main characters). His Nursery Crimes are even sillier (The Gingerbread Man as a deranged serial killer is hilarious).
The way you talk about immersing and imparting yourself through notes has changed the way i interact with reading, thank you.
I want to read Murphy's fanfictions of this beautiful crossover concept.
I legit love when I see undulating in book now because of you. Lots of the time I'm keeping count.
Agreed about annotations. My most prized book is a copy of The Screwtape Letters that my grandpa annotated. It’s literally falling apart at this point so I never use it to read from though.
Hearing someone describe a Choose Your Own Adventure book like some strange, mythical tome makes me feel sooooo old.
Merphy should dress like Velma Dinkley more often. Nerding out on books with Velma is so much fun.
Would love to see that ngl
I 100% agree with the whole not ending series thing!!! I've read so many great series that didn't end well. I also love the feeling of not knowing and carrying that feeling with me forever
As a person who enjoys drawing... yes, I totally understand the glitter pen and blank pages -point. I totally would love it.
I think you sort of missed the point of the “random” reads comment. They were describing truly random picks, but your response was “yes, if it includes a nautical theme I like, I’ll often consider reading a book!”
“This book has a theme I like, maybe I should read it” is….. the norm.
I like the audiobook one. Like it would be nice of they implemented ambient noises and maybe a little backing music into the narration. Obviously keep the basic narrated versions too, but as someone who likes to listen to music while i read (it helps block out the world and makes my brain focus) i'd love this. Plus my favourite characters having their own theme music is just a cool idea to me.
4:41 Characters sharing out-of-context nonsense: "My girlfriend turned into the moon."
That's rough buddy.
About the 9:03 comment, there actually is a physical book that uses that idea of exploring different sequences of chapters and multiple endings: Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar, and it's amazing!
I actually just picked up my first Brandon Sanderson book blindly! I’ve always been overwhelmed by all of his series, but I liked the title, so I just bought it! I’m loving it so far, I’m a quarter of the way through and I’ve already recommended it to people!
Soooo which one did you pick up? 👀
I also have that self imposed rule of skipping to the last page and reading the last sentence or paragraph. I don't remember when or exactly what book it started with or even why I do this. All I know is that now it is a MUST.
Ebooks could easily have a score, a pre-reading shopping and recipe list for certain cued smells and touch experiences, and such immersive optional parts.
I don't know whether this has already been said, so apologies if this is so, but Dutch hardbacks and most German hardback novels don't have dust jackets and I love it!
I find that long running series are like rivers. The longer, broader, and deeper the story is, the more broken, spreading, and complicated its outlet becomes.
15:25 / oooh when I started reading Stormlight - I disappeared from reality for 5 days and I was reading it (note - English is not my first language and Stormlight 1 was among first books I read in eng.) I made tones of notes at first, and around 200 pages a day was my top, but I just had to keep reading it 😁
I can start several books at once, but depending on the mood I’ll want to read only one of them till the end, then move to the second one.. switching between several stories is not my thing 🤷♀️😁
Simple solution to the dust jacket problem. Get a book of similar size that is not pretty and display the dust jacket on that book
11:53 - That's completely true. I think a lot of people really don't realize just how much "could have been trimmed down" is an almost entirely subjective opinion, in a majority of case. Loll
So in reference to the take with where they skip other POV I have thought about this for the wheel of time before. I think it would be super interesting if there were different collections for different major POVs. Like the Tale of the Dragon follows only Rands pov, the the rise of the wolf king follows only Perrins, and so on.
Oooh I like the crossover idea, I wanna put Marvin and Kaladin together and see who can out-depress the other 😂
Now I really want to see the conversation between Gimli and Carrot!
Your videos always being a smile to my face. So engaging and fun.
Love to see someone from the other side of the world show such love for Fredrick Backman (I'm swedish like him!!) He was one of my great inspirations to start writing myself.
Hard agree on the blank page and pen inclusion for all fantasy books! What better space to let out all the amazing stuff that’s being poured into us than the back of the book❤
I wrote a book, well 2 actually, at the age of 14. Fast forward to now, I'm 31 and between working 2 jobs, doing jiujitsu, lifting, hiking and backpacking and reading it's so hard for me to find time to write, my dream is to not have to work any jobs so I can just write full time but that will never happen... in the meantime, I'm almost finished finally with the final draft of the novel i wrote 17 years ago! I feel so elated lol
that crossover characters idea is genius, you will get a totally different perspective from the original work, and if it done well enough, change your whole understanding of the original, imagine that, something like a better ending
4:27 Now I want an entire video of ideas on this.😂8:39 John Gwynne would get so many earflicks...
9:21 My congratulations, this has already been invented, it's called video games. I recommend starting with Disco Elysium and Bookwalker.
So, the reason why hardcovers have beautiful cover underneath the dust jacket is because while you are reading it, you read it WITHOUT the dust jacket to not destroy it. Therefore you will enjoy the cover like that, and then when you are done you put the dust jacket on and can display the other cover you are not used to. And if you have accidentally destroyed a little the hardback by reading it, the dust jacket will cover it. 😊 And reading hardback without the dustjacket on is the only right way! 😅 (Please don't fight me on this🙈😅)
tell that to the libraries who tape them on, i didn't even know reading without one was an option til highschool when i finally got my own hardcover and it kept slipping through the dust jacket
@@nisc2001 oh gosh 🙈 what a sin! But, did they at least put this seen through plastic/cover thingy on it? Our libraries in Slovakia put it on every book so it won't get ruined so soon, so in that case I do understand. But yea that is shame :(
@@zuzanaochmanova2652 yeah, the dust jackets tended to have a plastic covering
I get the idea of not having an ending can be alluring but when you get something like Mob Psycho 100 which is great all the way through and has a perfect ending for the series and how that hits it's just perfection.
I don't know how long you keep watching the comments after a video posts.
I just recently found your channel through the Junji Ito and horror episodes. In the most recent of those you asked if people do want reviews of Ito's works outside of the big, well known works, and i can say that i genuinely do. I find your analysis of his work very fascinating.
I was going to put a lengthy comment but then the book fell out at the end and i spat out my coffee. That literally made my morning. 😂
I love these kinds of videos from Merphy. They're always gold.
OMG YES, completely agree about Fredrik Backman! I've read two of his books so far and his characters and his writing hit me in the feels in such a unique and special way. 🥺💕
Also the discussion of spreadsheets and continuity editors made me think of tabletop RPG streams. Not only does Critical Role have an official Lorekeeper on the payroll, but additionally there's a group of fans who maintain spreadsheets of all different kinds of statistics for the campaigns. 😆
Talking about the “pruning” of plots, etc. I just finished listening to Magician by Raymond E Feist (> 33 hrs) which I read when it came out in 1982. The audible version was an authors preferred edition that the publisher allowed him to put back out in 1989 that contained the
approx 50,000 words that they forced him to edit out when it was originally published.
Back in the day releasing a hard back book that was
800-1000 pages would have cost a ton. But thank God with e-books books can be as long as they want to be and we can have books from any author that’s out there.
I want (need) books that are as long as possible and series that contain as many volumes as possible.
My appetite for fantasy has been insatiable since the discovery of The Sword of Shannara in 1978 on a bookmobile that would come through my neighborhood in the summer. But then it was one book in a series every 1-1.5 yrs and cost $35-40/book, but now thanks to Kindle Unlimited they’re so many available that I’m able to get through >120 books a year for about $150/yr
😂 that first one is why I'm about to spend 5 days in the mountains with no modern conveniences. Gotta experience some epic walking and commune with the trees, man. 🌲
Speaking as an old fantasy reading dude, it really should be known how much JRR Tolkien was impacted by his experiences in WWI, in particular being on the Western Front and Battle of the Somme. Realise this and you can see if reflected in his writing.
I love when Merphy encounters one of those ideas that completely blows her mind or befuddles her. The ensuing reactions are always entertaining.
I think Luffy or the Strawhat pirates in any serious dystopian world would be an amazing crossover.
One piece x 1984
Basically if the introduction of a character would result in the engoodening of a story + a whole genre shift I’m down
I put my hate reads upside down on my shelf just to spite them 😌
Love the crossover idea. that could get interesting.
I completely agree with the "dust jackets are a waste" I fully think publishing should just do away with dust jackets and make only beautiful hardback books.
Regarding the bad take at 9:15 (ish), there is actually a book (not the choose your own adventure) that can be read in multiple orders (one of which is established by a direction chart made by the author), although I don't think it's as versatile as proposed in the bad take. It's called "Rayuela" from Julio Cortazar ("rayuela" is also a children's game that consists in a drawn "road" on the floor that makes you pass over it jumping and sometimes skipping some of the tiles/boxes)
For anyone interested, the wiki page about the book: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(Cort%C3%A1zar_novel)