The Golden One - January 26, 2020


Book Reviews. Don Quixote. Gotrek & Felix

Hosted by
Marcus Follin
Mentioned
Moby Dick Don Quixote Malus Darkblade Skaven Slayer Godrex Felix Troll Slayer Demon Slayer C.J. Samson Warhammer Godrek Zeus
What Martial Art Should You Train？ Onward and Upward! Goals For the Year and Updates on the Channel

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

150.51

Word count

1,858

Sentence count

151

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I review Don Quixote by Cervantes and Godreux, two of my wife's gifts to me from her, as well as a book review of Moby Dick, by the same author.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Greetings, my esteemed subscribers. I thought to check in with two book reviews, but before I begin to talk about the books at hand, I would just like to say that I am technically, I've technically not started the 2020 YouTube season. I still have some things to do before I can fully commit to, you know, regular frequency in uploads on YouTube. But I aim at getting back to my regular routine in a week or so, maybe two weeks. I'll see.
00:00:30.000 But after that, I have plenty of good, enlightening videos. So, yeah, back to some longer forest videos, etc. It will be good times, a lot of enlightenment to be shared. So, yeah, stay tuned. You can also follow me on Telegram, first link in the description box below.
00:00:48.640 So, no, anyway, as you might have discerned from the title, I have read Don Quixote and Godrek and Velix, both gifts from my loving wife.
00:01:00.800 And I read Don Quixote earlier in, no, not earlier, last year, in the autumn.
00:01:06.160 However, this is one of the few books I have not finished reading. I stopped at the page of 110. I will explain in a bit why I didn't finish reading it.
00:01:19.580 And just to put things into perspective, I did actually manage to finish Moby Dick, even though I didn't enjoy it in the least.
00:01:26.520 I made a video on Moby Dick, so you can go and check it out. Just search on the channel for my book review of it.
00:01:35.040 And basically, before I begin to criticize the book, it feels bad.
00:01:41.640 I genuinely wanted to enjoy the book, and I do realize its importance for Spanish literature, Spanish history, Spanish culture, etc.
00:01:52.880 And, of course, if you are interested in Spanish culture, etc., you should read it, especially if you're a Spanish yourself.
00:02:00.400 You can read it in its original language. I do recommend you to read it.
00:02:03.620 For me, though, I couldn't bring myself to enjoy it.
00:02:10.060 First and foremost, of course, you have to understand it in the context of its time.
00:02:17.260 Don Quixote is, in my view at least, basically a parody of previous chivalry literature.
00:02:24.900 And if you have, as when it was written, if you've only read about gallant knights who are perfectly moral and they do everything correct,
00:02:35.520 yeah, then it might be refreshing to read about some complete mess-up who just goes around being made a fool out of.
00:02:45.260 So I understand, in the context of its time, that a parody of this sort might have been very fun to read.
00:02:51.900 However, in the current year, in the West, current year of 2020, you know, we've grown up with nothing but irony, basically.
00:03:02.620 Knightly Valor hasn't really been something that we have seen all too much in culture today.
00:03:08.520 So when I read something, yet another thing, based on irony and parody and someone is being made a fool out of,
00:03:16.560 it isn't really something that appeals to me.
00:03:19.360 Laughing at others isn't really something that appeals to me either.
00:03:24.200 You know, a bunch of people sitting around laughing at someone at his expense, not my style, not something I enjoy in the least.
00:03:32.700 That is, in my humble opinion, of course, for ironic guys.
00:03:36.420 Now, I'm not saying that Don Quixote is for ironic guys, you can definitely enjoy it.
00:03:40.100 And I will admit, I chuckled to myself two times in the book because of some banter in it.
00:03:45.520 But overall, I do not appreciate the ironic nature of, you know, laughing at someone.
00:03:51.200 And ultimately, I will compare it to Godrex and Felix, which contains a lot of banter, a lot of humor, their dialogues, Godrex's constant humorous dismissal of everything that is created by manlings. 0.99
00:04:07.660 Manlings, so men.
00:04:09.560 Very fun, but ultimately, these two guys are forces of nature.
00:04:13.500 And you can relate to them and it's serious in different matter, even though it's a humorous fantasy book.
00:04:19.760 So, in terms of enjoyment, I, yeah, I read this and I enjoyed it all.
00:04:27.820 You know, I looked forward to reading it.
00:04:30.340 This, I had to force myself to read 110 pages.
00:04:33.720 Then I quit because I, you know, yeah, 100 pages was enough.
00:04:38.180 But I don't want to read a thousand pages of a parody and Don Quixote going around, going around, being made a fool out of.
00:04:47.600 So, it's not something I enjoy.
00:04:49.980 And, yeah, I think I've said enough on that.
00:04:53.400 However, I will say, though, that this particular edition is full of notes, footnotes.
00:04:59.420 So, you will get a lot of information by just reading it.
00:05:03.320 So, if you are, if you want a good understanding of Spanish history, etc., yeah, it's a good starting point.
00:05:08.740 And, yeah, just random page here.
00:05:12.140 Footnote.
00:05:13.440 Tarquinius Superbus was the last king of Rome, a horrible despot.
00:05:18.180 Etc., etc.
00:05:19.040 So, you have a lot of these references to other cultural things.
00:05:23.300 Sort of similar as to Moby Dick.
00:05:25.360 You see these constant references to other things, which is nice.
00:05:29.300 Something else here, a reference to Jupiter, or Zeus in Greek, was a supreme Roman god.
00:05:36.000 So, you see a lot of these things.
00:05:38.480 I don't know how other editions are, but in that context, I think this was good, at least.
00:05:43.100 But, anyway, I know I don't feel good by saying I don't enjoy it, but at the same time, I don't want to be pretentious.
00:05:53.320 Same thing as I said when I talked about Moby Dick.
00:05:55.640 I don't want to pretend to like things just because they are a Western classic.
00:06:00.440 And it pains me, of course, if I am supposed to be a patron of Western art.
00:06:05.500 But now I have admitted that I'm in fact not.
00:06:09.160 I prefer newer things.
00:06:11.420 But, you know, a book being a classic, it doesn't entitle it to being enjoyable.
00:06:15.720 Simple as that.
00:06:16.800 And for me, if I want to recommend something, I don't want someone to spend so much time reading through this when they can read through something else that can give them motivation to hit the gym or something.
00:06:29.960 And that is also a comparison.
00:06:32.660 Usually when I read books, it's to gain unique insights about a certain topic or it is to gain motivation to make either epic videos or to hit the gym or to train martial arts, etc.
00:06:45.680 So I want to gain something.
00:06:47.060 I want to get a cool visual imprint in my mind, then act upon it.
00:06:52.420 So I view it as training motivation.
00:06:54.160 And if I compare this to this, yeah, this makes me want to hit the gym, to be a force of nature.
00:07:01.300 This doesn't.
00:07:02.460 This is just me sitting on the sideline laughing at a poor fellow.
00:07:07.900 And now I do feel horrible for not enjoying it.
00:07:11.120 But it is what it is.
00:07:12.200 I'm not going to pretend to enjoy certain culture when I do, in fact, not.
00:07:17.860 And I can't in good conscience recommend something for most people.
00:07:22.540 Then again, I do recommend it if you want a good introduction to Spanish literature.
00:07:27.080 And again, it has survived for 500 years and it's been one of the most sold books ever.
00:07:32.260 So it's probably me who is special here.
00:07:36.040 Most people will probably enjoy it.
00:07:37.840 But for me, I just have to be honest, I didn't enjoy it.
00:07:41.000 Now on a similar topic regarding heroes, I talked about Malus Darkblade in a recent video.
00:07:47.920 You can check it out.
00:07:48.640 It's a forest video log, so I'm sure you will enjoy it.
00:07:52.720 And I say there that, you know, Malus Darkblade is an anti-hero.
00:07:56.400 He's a villain. 0.52
00:07:57.840 He's thoroughly vicious. 0.89
00:08:00.100 But at the same time, he is a force of nature.
00:08:03.340 It contains a lot of humorous elements.
00:08:05.760 But ultimately, he is someone who can take what he wants.
00:08:09.700 And you can sort of relate to his struggle for power, at least.
00:08:14.260 So you can sort of envision yourself as him in a certain way.
00:08:19.200 Of course, he's supremely vicious, as I said.
00:08:21.600 So you can't really relate on a moral level.
00:08:23.800 But at least on some sort of level, at least.
00:08:28.640 Same thing, of course, here.
00:08:30.140 Two forces of nature that goes around doing epic deeds.
00:08:33.840 And I've started reading the second Witcher book.
00:08:38.220 I read the first book very good.
00:08:40.420 I will make a separate review on this because I have a few things to say.
00:08:45.100 But basically, no matter what the book contains, this is also about a powerful protagonist.
00:08:52.400 And you don't always need to have a powerful protagonist.
00:08:57.980 I've read some books by C.J. Samson, the Shard Lake series.
00:09:02.080 I will make videos on those, too.
00:09:03.820 And that guy is actually a hunchback. 0.94
00:09:05.700 But he's still intelligent and he still gets the job done.
00:09:08.820 And he's still a professional.
00:09:11.000 So, point being, I do like a protagonist that is actually good at what he does.
00:09:17.620 Instead of just being the punchline of a joke.
00:09:22.480 Now, another thing I would just like to point out with this.
00:09:26.420 It contains three books and some short stories.
00:09:30.120 So it's an omnibus.
00:09:31.580 Troll Slayer, Skaven Slayer and Demon Slayer.
00:09:34.160 And the second book, Skaven Slayer, is an interesting thing that I might share with you.
00:09:41.880 So, Skaven are, as anyone who has played Total War or Warhammer, familiar with Ratman, basically.
00:09:48.960 It looks like this.
00:09:50.880 In the Empire. 0.71
00:09:52.780 An Empire being, basically, Germany during the 1600s in a fantasy setting.
00:09:59.260 So, the threat of the Skaven, so the Ratman of the Under Empire, it's a secret. 0.92
00:10:06.660 It's an open secret.
00:10:07.640 So, the authorities, they're actively trying to deny that there are any Skaven.
00:10:12.580 And if anyone says they exist, they are being labeled as a heretic and an outcast, basically.
00:10:19.160 They're being shunned and, you know, people distrust them, etc.
00:10:23.240 So, when our man Felix here is talking about it, he has to do it in hushed tones.
00:10:30.200 And when they are, they're patrolling the sewers because they are looking for a job.
00:10:35.100 So, they have to take it up and they encounter the Skaven. 0.94
00:10:38.980 Most people don't see Skaven and they think they are extinct.
00:10:44.000 But if you point their existence out and if you point out the threat they are posing to the Empire, yeah, you get shunned.
00:10:51.920 So, it's quite interesting parallel to, you know, pointing out dangers but being shunned because you do so.
00:11:01.240 I'm sure many of you can relate to such a thing.
00:11:04.780 So, anyway, enough of this rambling.
00:11:08.800 I just want to, yeah, I can recommend this if you are new to Warhammer.
00:11:13.220 It can be a good starting point.
00:11:14.380 If you are already familiar with Warhammer, it can be a good continuation.
00:11:18.580 So, yeah.
00:11:20.220 And, again, I'm sure you will enjoy this.
00:11:24.260 Good starting point for Spanish literature, of course.
00:11:28.200 But, I will be honest, I didn't enjoy it.
00:11:29.940 But that is just me.
00:11:31.620 If you have read Don Quixote and if you have any unique insights, yeah, feel free to comment below.
00:11:38.640 So, thank you for watching.
00:11:40.240 X-X-O.
00:11:40.720 X-X-O.
00:11:50.680 Thank you.