Book Burning: Turtles All the Way Down (1/2) 

This guy feels like a really chill English teacher

Due to the way literature was treated in my high school, I never directly realized literature studies is supposed to be about form. Everything was always about summarizing what the text meant, not uncovering HOW it delivered this meaning.

Book burnings are the best time of the season.

This is a good movie.

MANY APOLOGIES for the audio issues. I and Alayna had some trouble with both of our setups and after many many subpar outputs, I just decided to go with as good as we could get it. I did hire Sir Meow to help mitigate the issues in the audio of my voice and he did a fabulous job. I also realised way too late into the project that the intro lasts 7-and-a-half minutes, which I admit is way too long and I blame myself for having my nose buried in my video editor and not pulling back to really assess the video structurally. Unfortunately, I'm way too exhausted and this video has already put me far into the red, and the thought of pulling it apart to re-structure the intro was just too much that late into production. Feel free to skip the intro if you haven't already. I welcome all negative criticism. I hope you enjoy the video despite its many problems.

I found you because of one other owl that reviews games (but not recently). At the time I wasn't writing, so I kinda forgotten about you. But now I feel this channel is a treasure cove of useful advice for an aspiring author. Thank you for existing.

Being a sufferer of OCD and Schizotypal Disorder _and_ in a relationship with someone with OCD, and knowing that Green himself says he has it as well, I honestly think that the reason Aza's invasive thoughts are segmented from herself was a way to better convey the sickness to people who are both young and unfamiliar with how it works. It's readability and conveyance of meaning over accuracy. The realistic way to represent obsessive thinking would be to make invasives subject-less as simple, anxious statements, and/or as being Ava's brain talking about an anxiety in first-person. While the way Green wrote it better illustrates OCD's aspect of suffering and the aspect of compulsion, making a voice literally compel Aza to do something she doesn't want to, it leaves its actual inner workings unclear, and - accidentally - implies that OCD is more akin to a schizoaffective disorder (where thoughts *do* seem to come from someone or something seperate to you, being classified as hallucinations). I do agree, however, that the italicisation does a good job of making her thoughts feel, well - unwanted, and overpowering.

I just now realized I've been with this channel since I was 16. Happily 21 now, and it's always a pleasure to have your analysis appear in my feed!! Keep doing you at the timeframe that works best!

I’ve tried to get into writing multiple times over the past few years, though I consistently have self-doubts and a weird perfectionist stance on my work, causing no progress to be made. Watching your videos help give me confidence that, above all else, I should at least try to write because, even if they’re highly critical of my story, someone out there will be willing to read it for the sake of wanting something new to consume. (I’m not sure if this makes any sense or not, but it’s how I feel about this).

I love this birb. -I love the fact that he reviews BOOKS and not movies like Everyone else-

HE'S FINALLY BACK! AND HE'S ALIVE!

What about if the invasive thought didn't use you but I instead like "I changed the band aid" "Did I though?" Just a thought could be wrong

"Hey, we all gotta make a living somehow fam."

37:30 There is actually a very simple way to overcome the disconnect of these bits with the theme of self-authorship. You can leave the text italicized, you could even put it in quotes, whatever - it's completely okay for the two voices to be distinct from each other. The only issue is that one voice is in first-person while the other is in second. All you have to do to fix this is have both voices say "we" instead of "you", "me" and "I". Then, neither is actually in control - they would refer to themselves as a collective rather than two, distinct and unequal individuals. Perhaps, though, it would be better for the character to slowly transition from using "you", "me" and "I" to "we" - the second voice should probably be the first to do this, in this case, and not all at once. It would get confusing to read, but it would hammer the point home, and really help point out a part of why, I imagine, OCD is impossible to overcome - it's not something separate from who you are, as the author tries to point out according to your reading, but they are something that are an integral part of who you are (I'm referring here to 29:45). My mind is a cloud, at the moment, a very fluffy and soft one, and as such I have no idea if I'm actually responding to an issue you actually raised, or if I completely misinterpreted something, anymore. All I know is that I responded to something you said, but probably not to what you meant by it.

I discovered your channel yesterday and I'm already a fan. This video is quite educational and the your critique is like no other I've seen on youtube (booktube). It feels like I've been searching for a channel like yours and I'm so happy to have finally found one. Instantly subscribed. Please keep doing what you are doing

Another great video!!! I really did enjoy it, and its great to see more from you. Your breakdowns always get my thinking of ways to improve my own writing, and like always they're enjoyable to watch. Seeing that the video is just short of an hour long was great news, only made better by the fact that we'll be getting a part two soon enough.

I really like Johns novels but it is hard to read them all because of that story similarity, but I very much love his characters and that’s why I read his books more then for the stories.

HEY the new format looks way nice in this video! Glad to see you back and around.

Loved that close read section and the sections in general!

This is the stuff I subscribe for. Keep up the good work!

Great discussion. Even if its an author I've never ready anything from or know much about your commentary always gives interesting perspectives. Awesome video as always ^v^!

A video? I have been waiting for this!

You guys are back holy shit!

I have lived in Australia for more than 10 years and you still have the best accent I’ve heard

55:33 As someone who tends to write the way they think I can actually provide an easy reason for the sentence to be written that way. It's a form of writing designed to simulate the effect of an after thought. In other words it reads in that order because that's the order in which the thoughts entered the narrators mind. An effect that perhaps becomes more pronounced were one to add a "come to think of it" at the end, however I can understand why such an addition would be cut for the sake of being a tad more concise.

This is great! I've been waiting forever for a new video from you. Keep up the great job, and I hope your next project has less audio trouble and such so that it doesn't take quite as long before we get to see it.

Hurrah for the return of CloudCuckooCountry, and random musings!

Thank you! I love your content!

I've been looking forward to this.

This was absolutely fantastic, really helpful for constructive criticism.

I've never read any of his books but I love John Green from his videos

You know, I want to be pissed at the clickbait, but the unashamed nature of it as well as the hour of content made up for it.

I guess I must be weird because I loved both Looking For Alaska and Paper Towns when I was in high school and I'd be lying if I said some elements of that book weren't weirdly influential on some of my horror writing...I don't know exactly why.

This is going to help me edit my own work. Thanks!

That's not a turtle on your thumbnail, that's a gosh darn Tuatara.

FYI The voice in italics is fairly accurate, especially how you "bargain" and "reason" with the thoughts. Not fun. But also impressive if the author genuinely hasn't experienced something like OCD.

After... Months.... Finally, a new Book burning video Thank God! 😀

yay book burning

Moral of the story, if we ever write something, hire Cuckoo as our proof reader as well as a general literary assistant xD

New Video :D !!!! and just as good, as always.

Do you know how hard it is to watch this video of you saying you don't like his books when these books practically rescued me from a spiral of depression and not get mad cause I consider myself a nice person that respects other people's opinions. I'm crying from frustration. These books mean the world to me. Anyway I'm not watching the second part cause my therapist says I need to stop actively pursuing things that make me sad unintentionally on purpose.

You're back :D

I don't read his books but watch his youtube videos and can I see some of the stuff in his books in talks about in the videos.

I kinda like the "and hotter" at the end of the passage, as a sort of aside to an aside, a thought from a thought. It doesn't add much, but it's a kind of informality that suggests more of a headspace than a directly narrative one. Maybe it's attempting to communicate a sense of extreme heat via recency bias and the comma (and arguably hotter having a more extreme connotation than drier), though I don't know if the rest of the scene really conveys that well. If I got a stab at fixing it, I might honestly remove "drier" from the equation since people can understand the shorthand of extreme heat evaporating water without understanding the exact mechanics of it.

Weird how a title like book burning is totally changed in 5 years!

Not to argue, just to present a contrasting experience from the "other side of the isle"... but John Green single-handedly showed me that stories don't have to be extraordinary sci-fi or fantasy worlds to be good. Sad to say, my views of what made a "good story" was woefully narrow back then. After reading Paper Towns for the first time, I suddenly learned that compelling characters and heart-felt stories are just as important as interesting world building and cool stuff blowing up. I CERTAINLY wasn't interested in modern day American teenagers and their generally ordinary lives before then, as their stories weren't strange and outlandish enough to be """cool""". I don't want to be too hard on Me From The Past, and maybe I'm exaggerating just a little, but suffice it to say that I am extremely grateful that I learned how to broaden my horizons. Don't get me wrong though: fantasy and science fiction (and stories with creative world building in general) are still pretty much my favorite kinds of stories, but I've learned that there are many, many kinds of good stories out there. And it was John Green who taught me that. I've read all of his books despite being "not the target audience", because in my opinion, a well-written book intended for younger readers is still better than a less interesting book written for my exact demographic. I dunno... does that make any sense to you?

John green is the maroon 5 of novels

Will you be reviewing Hank Greens first book release “ An Absolutely Remarkable Thing “ ? Im interested in comparing the two brothers writing styles etc. Great video by the way, glad Shammy recommended you.

An interesting interpretation of OCD for me was in Children Of Mind. It took it to a grander societal level.

Eyyyyyyy another great in depth book burning. I would leave a more substantial comment, but it is nearly 3 am here.

I'm an engineer. Why do I like this so much? I know squat about college level literary analysis. I know calculus and crystal chemistry. Well done Bird man.

I don't know if you take book requests, but i was wondering if you would do a review, or share your thoughts on Impulse by Ellen Hopkins.

This is kind of tangential to the vid, but when I browse Goodreads, I generally find myself gravitating towards 2-3 star reviews for kind of the reasons you drummed up in your point about unabashed reviewers. I tend to find 2-3 reviewers more honest and open to pointing out the good and the bad instead of slavishly tongue-bathing the author or unashamedly slagging off everything they do. On another note, four months since the last one? What happened? Just took that long to read and make the vid? Curious is all.

Hey, i want to know your opinion on the book five nights at freddy's the silver eyes! Want to know if it's worth reading!

Your channel is criminally under-viewed and it’s a tragedy. The worst part is that I can at least partly understand why; I can’t really share your channel with anyone and expect them to enjoy it. Hopefully my love and (eventual) patronage will be enough for you. Thanks for creating these!

Since you mentioned that you liked well-characterised narrators, have you read Worm by any chance, and have you any thoughts on it?

Great video. Just curious, but do you have any intentions to read Hank’s novel?

I wonder if it means anything that I never noticed that any of these books were written by the same author, let alone that any of them were written by John Green.

Lol I don't read but I still love your channel!

Fucking finally! I'v missed this.

Without having read the book: in Green's version of the paragraph with the boat landing on the shore I imagine the river and beach clouded in fog and the characters observed from a distance, in your's it's closer and more... material. I think that the difference between the two could partly be explained by, in Green's version, the river is given agency over the characters while in your's their behavior comes from siting in a canoe with each other for a while, indicating some sort of distance between the characters. Having not read the book I don't know which one would fit best, and from your explanation it sounds like your's fits better with the circumstance and tone, but in Green's the reduced agency seems like it would fit with the themes. I don't know. It seemed to be an interesting difference. And you are right in saying that the initial paragraph's style done through a whole book would make reading a bit of a task.

Much book, such burning, wow

Almost closed the video after you called film and video games a lesser storytelling format /s Seriously though, this analysis was really well done. It covered almost every base in entertaining and interesting detail. I'm really self-conscious about the structure of this comment because of it, so good job I guess :P

Didn't Hank also write a book or 2?

As a stupid teen that can not read a book most of the time and I like you videos and I would like to say I can't wait to see part to.

I thought the book you were talking about looked like a dr seuss book...idk why, just the picture in the thumbnail i guess lol

New video? Fuck yeah! ✊😤✊

Just saying, this is one of my favorite channels. Book burnings only sweeten the pot.

well i will pull out the pitchforks and the the torches

Of course Shammy recommends me a channel that criticises books and that piques my interest because I haven't really found any book-based channels on youtube and the first video I see is a John Green Book Burning that's two hours long. God damnit, there's my night gone

dunkin' on Night in the Woods. RIP one of my favorite recent games.

53:35 If typos validate you, try the elysian prophecy. I just finished it and it's good but I spotted about 10 mistakes

Yeah, but god :)) forgive me, he got you. Either intentional or not, the subject of this novel is a perfect alibi for the ideas interrupting the story... just like Aza's OCD interrupts her life constantly. If he realized his problem with integrating ideas more subtly and decided: fuck it, I'll make this problem into the theme of my next book! - that would be pretty fucking brilliant... if he didn't, still, fate is on his side :) It's a meta-level bs I am eating now, I know... but I could not help but have that "ayyyy lmao" moment

Four years late, mostly because I was worried if I was exposed to these things when I was younger I'd imitate them and I knew I didn't need that. As someone with OCD there are a couple of things I want to say, especially because Aza's is very similar to my own (my obsessive thoughts are about germs and illness; before therapy I would use a tub of clorox wipes in a day and wash my hands raw). This is more about the accuracy of OCD as a subject matter over the quality of Green's actual writing. 15:16 is an incredibly accurate depiction of how you want to do certain things but your thoughts fight you, and will win out if you don't have a good coping mechanism or exposure to the situation in a controlled setting (exposure therapy in other words). I haven't had a significant other yet but I know this will definitely be an issue that comes up for me. 19:26 while gratuitous, does hold true when discussing "being in" the thought spiral. It really does feel like you're in your own head and being trapped by your thoughts, at least from my own limited experience. 32:33 I've had thoughts exactly like this. It's not exactly as much of a back and forth but the general idea is still there. For example, "Did I clean this already? I think I did, I should just leave it be. But then if I didn't...I'll clean it just to be safe." I agree that it was also likely done for getting general audiences on board. It's hard to explain why I cleaned something I didn't need to besides just saying I couldn't stop thinking about it otherwise and I think to some readers that would seem contrived when it's perfectly accurate.

shammy sent me! dove through ur older videos and enjoyed a lot of them. whens that new content coming fam?

Have you done a vid on stephen king?

I tried to read _The Fault in Our Stars_ , but I was having enough problems with it that I stopped reading only a few chapters in. (Maybe even the first chapter.) I'm not even sure why. There were some problems, sure, but nothing earth-shattering. If I had to say, I think that it reminded me of books that followed the pattern you describe at 4:39 - books that I loved at first, but later on, looking back, I realized they're actually kind of bad, or at least started having serious doubts as to whether they're good. And honestly, that's one of my least favourite feelings. So I think when this book started throwing up red flags, I bailed so as to avoid that feeling.

Ah fuck. Instant like. God these vids are great

Night in the woods, nice

Interesting though this video was, I must confess that my only experience with John Green has been looking through Sci-Fi books on Amazon and being recommended Will Grayson Will Grayson. Which was confusing, to say the least.

48:50 OOOF that double and

It might not be your thing, but will you ever review The Hunger Games Trilogy?

Yay!

I watched 8 minutes, liked, subscribed. Good bye

Came to see why a lizard was in the thumbnail. Returned to correct that the 'lizard' appears to be a tuatara

me to

Come again?

English subtitles for this video must be approved by CloudCuckooCountry, so the People can see my grand, valient efforts in timed captions.

It’s THAT John Greene? WTF!?

Take a shot every time he says tuatara

Yeah, won't be reading before review since the book's topic hits too close to home.

I’ve been baited. I was expecting some Libraries to catch fire C.C. >:(

35:40 Yeah, that framing is a problem. What would make more sense would be for the OCD-related thoughts to be written in the same voice as the narrator. Even if she's aware that it's more likely those anxious, obsessive thoughts leading to compulsions, it should still be in her voice. And if the anxiety is bad enough during a given instance, which can happen, there shouldn't even any kind of mental debate about it. Only upon reflection should she go "oh, yeah, that was probably the OCD."

2:45 Your Shammy is showing.

A enjoyable video but why did you draw your self as a Dr. Seuss character in your thumbnail?

I loved Metamorphosis. I never saw the theme of the book as too abstract; I took a different reading having to do with living as a disabled person instead of just a straight critique of capitalism. The intense feelings that the narrator felt are things that I have also felt. the way the family treats the narrator resonated with me because of the inherent and patronizing disgust that many able bodied people have towards disabled people. Just my thoughts.

Want a much better book that deals with themes of mental illness much more subtly and effectively? Try reading House of Leaves.

You don’t think that the interruption from the present to return to the past or the rambling, recursive sentences might be a literary device that parallels the interruptive & recursive nature of OCD? (like the spiral art?) Maybe I’m giving Green too much credit, maybe it is bad writing, but personally, I think the writing evokes the *experience* of OCD. Using format to create feeling is more of a device that I see in poetry than in prose or novels- but Green writes poetic prose. It may be generous, but I like to imagine Green still met his objective- even and perhaps especially with you- evoking the experience of irritation and discomfort at the rambling/recursive narration. I don’t have OCD, but as a psychiatrist I’ve heard a lot of people describe their suffering with OCD and the narrative tone really carried this flavor . I don’t think you are supposed to be comfortable reading it- it’s frustrating and obvious and repetitive to no good end- and also feels like you have no choice - which is entirely the experience of many kinds of mental illness… I think you may have missed the narrative device that aimed to pull you into the experience of the narrator- I bet Green could write more concisely- your notes definitely would make the paragraph easier to read- but I wonder if it is supposed to feel annoying. Goodness knows mental illness feels that way 😂

@55:55 Remove the “and”, nothing more, is one way to achieve better flow and punch in my opinion.

24:00 well clearly James Joyce is pretty good, but I wouldn't go calling it the best literature ever, you know.