ROASTING The Saint of Bright Doors (Vajra Chandrasekera)
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
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Why does Katie struggle so much to say that Will is ruggedly handsome? Is it that truth hurts or is it jealousy?
Perhaps it is because we so rarely see some of his rugged hands.
What do you mean that's not what ruggedly handsome means?
Cady being miscief and mystetious is maling her on par😊 no need to be aftaid of wills rugged and handsomeness.
The thing about writing floaty dreamy prose, in my opinion, is that the author needs to have an iron grip on the concept and direction of the actual story. It’s like a magic trick: you get distracted by the lovely prose and miss the actual machinations. This sounds like the author fell down on the second part.
The second half is nearly incoherent.
This is a masterclass in how context matters in our reading of books. This book was so clear and concrete to me as a South Asian, all the notes about abstractions made it seem like you’re missing this point in Sri Lankan history. Fetter was a deeply sympathetic character to me considering how he was reacting to this world.
I understand your frustration though- I was equally frustrated when I read Lord of the Rings.
The only note I agree with is that the twist could’ve been foreshadowed (lol) better throughout the book.
Otherwise I loved it and found it deeply personal and meaningful
That’s really cool to hear because that’s how I felt it was supposed to feel, but that cultural lens was missing. It’s like the opposite of captain america’s “I got that reference”. -Kt
Yep, it was also clear to me(or as clear as it could get cause I haven't read the book myself) when they were talking about the things they thought didn't make sense. I chalked it up to cultural lenses as well😗✨
not gonna lie, it's a little tiring for people to be like "Oh it's supposed to be abstract." like not every story needs to be abstract, and The Fountain was abstract, and THAT still had a coherent plot.
Yeah the Fountain was at least rooted in a human story about death and grief and the fantastical elements could be seen as real or just extensions of that base story.
This book has none of that grounding so it ends up lacking any investment
That's exactly how I feel about The Boy and the Heron. I love Hayao Miyazaki, but the plot and themes of that movie weren't well portrayed.
You still need coherent character developement, a story or atheme to follow along.
You need to be able to folllow some of that
@@marocat4749
Exactly. But the real issue is people's lack of media literacy skills. People don't wanna think about how a story works they just wanna follow and good stories need audience participation.
@@joyc.e.7511thank god I am not the only one who thought that movie was weak. Love the visuals and surrealism but that movie was all over the place
Princess Mononoke is my favorite Ghibli movie and IMO the best one
The “slither in his balls” thing sounds like the “Antman should turn small, climb into Thanos’ ass and expand” solution for Endgame 😭😂
The opening of this video is straight fire. Tell 'em, Will!
Chandrasekera excels at short fiction. It's possible that the same dreamy prose and metaphors that work well in short spurts may not be best presented in long form. Also I feel that a lot of his work runs tangent to sociopolitical trends in his part of the world and is constantly in dialog with it. There is no primer for outsiders. And you can make of that what you will. Some reviewers who have an inside perspective have mentioned that the novel plays heavily with well known Buddhist stories and ideas that may not be easy for a Westernized reader to pick up on. Also, I think this may be a work that is not exactly genre. It seems more literary in that it is in constant conversation with a greater context and therefore relies on knowledge of that context in order to fully function. I think that approaching it as a standard genre work may be the wrong way about it
This I agree with and it makes total sense -Kt
If Katie ever publishes a book, she will make us all hungry with her food-metaphors. :)
A sexy smutty fae chef that creates food to lure thirsty mortalyin and fallyin love with, someone who does challenge him on that, a verified gormet.
Food metaphors and food?! I have seen enough foodanime that foodporn is a subgenre.
And the chef falls in love with the goid taste and constructive helping criticism of the mortal he lured in.
Ok it already sounds thirty.
1:14:15 italian here! personally i’d say that the language used by dante is to this day very easy to understand (for the most part). some passages are a bit tricky but i’d say that’s due to the ‘poetic’ structure of it and some words that fell out of use. we usually study it with annotations on the side/provided by the teacher, but that’s mostly to explain stuff that would have been obvious to dante’s contemporaries. i would say that even without those you can still understand the themes and the ‘feelings’ it wants to evoke. anyways these are just my two cents on the topic lol. loved the video (as always)!!!
I just love the way you guys analyse books. I'm not gonna lie, I almost had a stroke trying to understand the synopsis of this book😂 but your discussion was fascinating (as always).
Katie's soot sprite shirt is amazing! 😮
That opening felt rather cathartic and I never read this book.
So I'm at 1:16:13 of the video and I have no idea wtf this book is about 💀😐
*cut to me lighting a pitch fork to march behind Will* 😅
It's like Harrow The Ninth which is told from (spoiler's) POV and Harrow doesn't know what a pommel is and the narrator is always like, it's called a pommel, Harrow.
Not Will spitting facts in the cold opening 😂
Not even two minutes into the video, and the opening clip is such an exact representation of the warring factions in my own mind whenever i read a book i dont love lmfao. Thank you for the coherently rageful bitching catharsis 😂
This book sounds like if a writer with a knack for (high) literary prose decided to pants an entire manuscript, refusing to outline or organize in any step of the process lol
If this channel was really cool, you guys would read "Triceratops and Bottoms" by Lola Faust.
I just finished the book, and I have a goal of reading every Hugo award winner and nominee. I was very angry that the ending changed narrators, and it felt like a long time to get to an unresolved ending.
I didn't know this book existed until I saw this video
I know this videos will be good just from Wills angry rant
Strong start with "everybody's fapping"
Omg, I love Will's angry rants.
Those prose put me right to sleep, this book should be prescribed for insomnia.
The passage at 43:10 I read in the voice of David Attenborough. That kind of language only belongs in documentaries.
Rewrite for funsies. 😅Changed to past tense because I would rather not read present tense:
He wove a mimicry of a pot from coconut leaves. In the semblance, he fused the magic of sympathy and evocation, echoes of objects with a real function in a fleeting, harmless form. The coconut leaves might resemble a canopy evoking shelter without providing it; a spear representing protection without the capability for violence; fences conjuring boundaries without enforcing them.
The pots he made now represented fullness and containment. He placed them in a grid, reinforcing each other and declaring a site temporarily sacred. Ground zero of a marriage, or a funeral.
Mother-of-Glory had assigned him a similar task at his grand-uncle's funeral, the very one he had murdered while she watched. Taking a little knife and a pile of coconut leaves, he had fashioned fences around the closed coffin.
He remembered admiring her gall, but at the time he had thought the exercise about himself, training him against displays of guilt. It was in hindsight that he understood it was for her. What he admired then turned out to be not gall, but spite--tremendous, petty vindictiveness--her triumphant excision of an old grudge. Her victory was so secret that she didn't even mention it to him until years later.
He didn't withhold a smile.
Michelle Yeoh is a fantastic actress! The Hollywood audience, like the booktok audience, is just used to being beat over the head with The Meaning™. No nuance or subtlety.
Cmon guys Its not a hard name to pronounce, break it down into syllables. Were supposed to ppl who read and we still make excuses for not prounouncing a name bc it uses phonetics were not used to
Well, Syllables aren't always pronounced the same in every language.
Even surnames from England. Like Featherstonehugh is pronounced Fenshaw.
I agree. Even if you hated an author's book, it's just such an easy thing to at least put in effort in pronouncing their name... Especially in a public review.
This sounds like an easy thing to do, but isn't in practice. Katie searched beforehand for a guide to pronounce his name, and couldn't find one. Non English words are often not pronounced how they're spelt phonetically, for a number of reasons. Different languages also have sounds that if you didn't grow up with that language, you simply won't be able to replicate without practice, and even then you'll have a strong accent. I speak Spanish and hear this constantly. Mispronouncing names is viewed as inherently disrespectful, which I understand to an extent, but also just the reality of having an unusual name. And I don't even mean unusual as code for non English, there's a ton of English names that aren't pronounced the way they seem.
--Will
@@adrianpillai6645 i understand, but thts really not necessary to bring up fanshaw esp considering english has a reputation of difficult orthography. Languages rendered into anglo spelling often are not as difficult as perceived or presented by those being obtuse. VAZH'RA Chan'dra'se'kera. Like other languages outside english (italian, greek, tamil - as i can assume you know by your surname - waving hi from seaasia :) are very often spoken as they present, yes there are exceptions but we can pronounce schwartzenegger, gallifinakis, and other long surnames. If not, we find ppl from those cultures and ask. Lets pls not be purposefully obtuse by typing out featherstonehugh.
@@kantakouzini This kind of disproves your point though - on the press kit on his website Vajra has a pronunciation guide, and it isn't pronounced at all how you're showing above (Katie must've not known to look there; if you just google pronunciation for his name nothing comes up.) English simply isn't a consistent enough language in the way where if you're not familiar with how a given language is being translated into it you can't just guess correctly. For example, without looking it up, how would you pronounce Pazsitzky? The layman isn't going to know that the zs makes an sh sound there.
For schwartzenegger and gallifinakis; those are both the names of celebrities. I guarantee that before they were famous, both of them had people mangle them on a regular basis. And if asked to break them down syllable by syllable people would have trouble.
I love the bits where you look at the prose. One day I won't be broke and I'll join your parasocial darlings. In the meantime, I'm glad I have Will's rants.
I love Katie's food metaphors
Hey guys! I watch ALL your videos and love how you decimate novels/ authors. (Especially Will)😅😅.
I have a novel I believe you would love to roast! It has a bunch of characters you won't be able to pronounce (Chinese) and is based on non humans (mantises). If you ever want to tear it apart, I'd be honored. Let me know, and I can send you copies!!
Keep up the great work, super entertaining stuff! 👏👏👏
I loved this book lmao. I really like the magical (?sur)realism elements and I really enjoy sympathetic magic.
I wish the themes had been stronger though.
I haven’t gotten that far into the book so i might be wrong but i view Fetter as less of a character but a concept/idea.
Fetter's mom = cultural traditions and beliefs, grounded by ancestral knowledge, pure in intention (good or bad, flawed or divine). The actions of the the family affect that of the current generation.
Fetter's dad = the modern temptation of individualism. Driven by desire, plagued by a need to know with the flawed understanding that knowledge and replicatable / control are the same thing.
This "allegory" of a story can apply to coming of age, the demystification of parents and their importance in our lives, sexuality - traditional vs (bi)curiosity. Leaving home etc.
My reading of this may be heavily influenced by my own circumstances, being if mixed race, moving far away from my 'home' to make a family if my own etc.
Ultimately, i do think the book interesting but is let down by its writing. Not because it isnt beautifully written, some of the prose is beautiful. But because it is so overwritten.
This book is like a parable fairytale and it would have been more impactful (for me) if the author was more invisible in the story. Its sort of like "shaky cam syndrome" that was in so many films. Your jerky movements make me nauseous and stop my immersion in the story because director is going, hey this scene is edgy, and exciting.
0:50 wow that’s a side of Will have never seen!
the writing feels like a stream of conscious writing, but being in the head of someone you are not that interested in. reminds me of A Deadly Education. but not in a way where its complimentary. I loved being in Ell's head and she could have talked and talked about whatever and i'd be happy to listen. but i'm not happy with this narrative. i just don't vibe with the character. so its the writing but the the style or approach i guess.
If you mean Michelle Yeoh, well, she was perfect in "Everything, everywhere, all at once", and it's American production, and don't you dare shit on it.
For me, this book has two main problems: one, the mechanics behind the supernatural stuff are never explained: the Bright Door phenomenon, Fetter’s ability to float, etc. We get nothing, not even a vague and metaphorical explanation. Two, there’s no falling action or resolution. The big bad dies in literally the last chapter. There’s no answer about what’s going to happen with this sudden power vacuum, or the hate crimes that ARE LITERALLY HAPPENING AS THE GOOD GUYS ARE TALKING ABOUT WHAT THEY’RE GOING TO DO NEXT. It’s basically the “We did it, Patrick! We saved the city!” bit from SpongeBob except this time, it’s completely serious.
Also the protagonist is trained as an assassin from birth and after the first chapter he only assassinates like one guy.
Please, please, please read a Christopher Moore book.
He could have had to kill his dad due his dad with his reality altering creating way too much close alternate realities that bleed into this one with his weird time altering powers, and the doors is how he figures that out and the universe is doomed if he keeps doing that, so he kills him for that and takes over the cult with the acting skills learned as whichdoctor? And his revolutionary friend,
I havent read it, but as concept it could work, if you focus on that. Or him not wanting to kill his dad adventures and him learning from revolutionaries and the scholars how the doors coming on as it is collapsing the universe, by seeing some collapse. If the doors are that it could be a good motivation to take over from the cult or the cult and kill his dad. And become a leader figure by nessesary with people from adventure in his council?
Which i know, thats not the book.
Comment for the algorithm
Ghibli shirt!!
That plot summary just blew my mind, pun intended! Either all those people praising it are a lot smarter than I or they just don't want to admit that they don't understand this pretentious bs either. In a way, it reminds me of how people gawk and praise some modern "art" as deep and meaningful when it's just menstrual blood on wool - it might be a statement but it's not art. Sorry to be gross but it kind of fits with him crawling up his gonads.
So... what was this book about it? 💀🤣
39:25
I stand by my thoughts on this book being a pretentious POS
It sounds pretentious, but keep in mind that the author is from Sri Lanka, and the Sri Lankan to English translations might be more formal sounding than if it was read in the native language.
@@vvitch-mist20 The book isn't translated, actually, and was originally written in english.
--Will
@@unresolvedtextualtension
Thanks for the correction, and wow. That kinda sucks, it's really hard to read, like it needed smaller paragraphs and less verbage.
Ooooh yeah it has nothing to do with the actual word choice or anything 😂. It’s EVERYTHING else hahahaha
I decided to read the synopsis on Amazon before watching this video and I already hate it.
Nah, Dante's Inferno is just a fanfiction to the Bible. Like,, literally with self-insert and AAAALLL the fanfiction tropes. He just put the people who he didn't like in hell and made himself a Mary Sue loved by all his idols. This is so funny.
I pronounce every word in a foreign language like it's in Spanish
You guys really spent over an hour trying to take down one of the best books ive ever read. Maybe stick to reading harry potter
If this slop was "one of the best books" you've ever read, that says more about you than it does about the book.
Haha this book is fucking fantastic, wtf are you talking about? You sound a little crazed