rereading six of crows, is dune worth it? & drawing characters as i talk about books i read in april

30 seconds into the video and i've already made a mess was it a smart idea to wear a white blouse nope hello everyone welcome to another video today we're gonna talk about books but we're just gonna do it a little bit different than usual i think i guess as you may know i enjoy fooling around with some drawings and painting and this year i had a goal for myself to draw more often just casually so lately i've sometimes been drawing characters from books that i'm reading actually a few weeks ago i started this drawing of howell from house moving castle which is one of the books that i read and i will be talking about today but i haven't gotten around to finishing it so i thought wouldn't it be fun if we do it together you know we just cozy up together talk about the books that i read in the past month while i also work on this drawing maybe that's a little bit more interesting than just staring at my face while it talks i stuck a paper on there because i also use this as a diary i have absolutely no idea how to continue there are still light pencil lines on this i think the first thing that i need to do is just make the lines a little bit thicker which actually brings me perfectly little segue into today's sponsor which is skillshare cause i have actually been learning a lot of great new things since using skillshare if you don't know skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes on design photography productivity you name it anything you want to learn so going back to this piece i knew that i wanted the character to stand out more from the background and because i've been following this class by josiah brooks on illustration i now know that i should probably play around a little bit more with the line thickness so that's what i'm gonna do we are learning new things here anyway the great thing about skillshare is that it's also super affordable with less than ten dollars a month if you pay annually and if you're like um i think i want to try it out for free first you can by clicking the link in the description because the first 1000 people to click the link in my description will get a free trial of skillshare premium membership so you can explore your creativity okay now let's put this into practice and start i should probably start by erasing all these pencil lines and then we can start talking about the first book that i want to talk about that's on top here and that is take a hit jenny brown by talia hibbert as you may know i don't usually read a lot of romance books not i have anything against romans i mean i love romance when it appears in other stories but i haven't had a lot of luck yet with just full-on romance books until i found out the books by talia hibbert the brown sister series the first one is get a life chloe brown and the second one is take a hint danny brown and let me tell you these books have converted me into romance reader dumb this one is about danny who is this phd student who's like very much like i don't want a relationship it just ruins everything you know feelings oh yikes no we're not doing that we're focusing on our career and then one day there's this fire drill going on at her university and one of the guards heroically rescues her from the elevator like carrying her in his arms basically as you can see on the cover here some of the students took pictures of it and it went uh viral without spoiling anything they kind of find out that it's kind of beneficial to both of their lives to you know have people think that they are in this very famous relationship that's getting a lot of tension all over the internet so they're like you know what let's just continue faking this relationship and reap the benefits but of course we will not fall in love but of course we all know how these things go it's a fake dating romance which i love one of my favorite tropes and it was just so nice like this book is exactly everything that i want from a romance and that is that it's kind of like equal parts cute but also still steamy but also like genuinely you end up loving the characters and getting to know a lot more about what they're doing and what their lives are like it's never cringey it's never over the top but also like the tension remains there throughout the entire book which is just wonderful there's no annoying like miscommunication or things that go wrong that just makes you want to like tear your hair out because the characters are acting stupid none of that happens it's just good fun all the time i should probably start drawing instead of waving this eraser around all the time i know that a lot of people that read the brown sisters books really like taking in denny brown this book a lot more than the first book in the series and personally i didn't really notice a difference like i liked both of the books an equal amount so just like get a life chloe brown i gave take a hint danny brown four stars i thought it was just a good time a good time sometimes you read a book that's just a good time and that's what this was okay moving on to another book that was really just a good time and that is the book and that i'm basing this drawing on um house moving castle by diana wynne jones this is the book that the ghibli movie was inspired by um if you don't know you know the japanese animation ghibli movies i love them and house moving castle is actually one of my favorites of those movies um and i heard a lot of great things about the book so i was like you know what i should finally pick up the book and i am so glad that i did i feel like there's a specific sub genre of fantasy that is very different from the typical like epic fantasy you know if you read books if i read books like the popular darker shade of magic other popular books like brandon sanderson wheel of time they're like epic fantasy house moving castle is one of those brand of books that to me kind of fits more in the fantasy books like the night circus that are just cozy fantasy but you're definitely fantasy this story takes place in just a completely made-up fantasy world i mean our main character meets the witch and gets turned into an old lady after which she then goes on this journey to find the wizard in a castle on feet that moves around there's a fire demon in the earth that keeps the castle moving definitely a lot of fantasy elements but it still feels super different from like epic fantasy because it just feels more fairy tale like way more cozy we just follow the story of this girl sophie who is trying to break the curse to get back into her normal like young woman body throughout the book i'm just realizing now that i'm trying to explain the plot that there isn't really a clear plot other than just weird things are happening there's a specific kind of atmosphere that is to ghibli movies you know if you've ever watched a ghibli movie you probably know what i'm talking about i don't know how to describe it but it's just this magical but rooted in reality feeling and that feeling is exactly what you get from this book it just has the ghibli it has the ghibli feel so i totally understand why they took this story to turn it into a movie because what i will say the story is very different from the movie it starts out the same but it deviates completely completely new story so that's actually super fun because you get to experience a completely new story if you read this book if you like fantasy because you're like really into epic fantasy i don't think this is gonna you know like fulfill all your needs but maybe you should just try it out you know maybe you also like different kinds of fantasy and if you're the type of person that's like i don't know if i like fantasy you know those epic fantasies aren't really my thing then maybe this might actually be the type of magical fantasy that you've been looking for i think i ended up giving it four and a half stars the only thing that wasn't super fulfilling is that the characters although they are very fun to read about all remain a little bit shallow but that's all everything else great then let's talk another about another book that i finally finished after it's been on my tbr for four years or something it is my boy neverwhere by neil gaiman an author that i've only read caroline from him but i really want to read more of him because he feels like the kind of author that i would like also again that's another example i think neil gaiman of fantasy books that are more kind of like cozy magical instead of like epic you know so i picked up neverwhere which is the only new gaming book that i own that i also started like three four years ago and never finished but i finally finished it listened to it on audiobook and i was like if i listen to it on audiobook then maybe i'll like it more and i'll be able to get through it quicker but at last jokes on me i still didn't like it premise of neverwhere is pretty cool we have our main character richard he's well we'll get to that he has a very normal life very mundane nothing interesting really happened just like you know nine to five off his job a very rich girlfriend but it's kind of dubious whether they actually love each other or not and then one day he rescues this girl called dor and since the moment he's rescued her suddenly people kind of start forgetting about him and people don't know oh my god i just realized that this sounds very similar to the plot of the invisible life of addy larue context this is one of the schwab's favorite books we know that the darker shade of magic series is kind of inspired by this book because it takes place in this world below london london below which is like a magical version of london underneath london so you can see the inspiration but i also just realized that you probably got inspiration for the invisible life of eddie larue because the main character is like forgotten by everyone around him nobody knows who he is now the only place that he can go to is london below where the girl he rescued is also from and it's just this below london place with kind of like magical red people among other things and he just goes on this quest to helping this little girl and also getting back to like london above and going back to his old life and he goes through all these like little adventures it's one of those books where there's a lot happening all the time but i just didn't care i just didn't care and i think one of the main reasons is that i absolutely despised the main character richard where do we even begin he's just kind of annoying and i know he's supposed to be okay he's supposed to be kind of annoying very naive constantly doing things wrong all the time and that's his thing i'm aware that's the kind of character he's supposed to be that's not necessarily a flaw in the book because of course your main characters need to be flawed but this man's particular flaws just really greeted me and one of the big things that i noticed with this book is that main character's motive are just diametrically opposed to the motive that you have as a reader and that is that our main character richard all the time he was in london below was like i need to go back i need to go back to my wife who doesn't love me i need to go back to my boring boring lifestyle and as a reader you're like no stay here stay in london below it's way more interesting i don't want to see you succeed and that's kind of a problem when at least to me if i as a reader don't even want to see the main character succeed because i don't agree with his motive you know you kind of stop caring about the story pretty quickly so i think that's the main reason why this book just didn't vibe with me even later into the story when a lot of interesting things were happening and the main character's motive also changed a bit i just couldn't get myself to care because i was never really attached to any of the characters that just happens to me sometimes when i'm reading a book usually fantasy books that are really cool like the concepts are really cool cool things are happening all the time but if the author failed to make me care about the characters then that just doesn't matter it just doesn't matter anymore i'm making very wobbly lines here [Music] dude i'm already on like the second to last book and i've only just created a thicker line around how on my drawing this is not really going very fast i think i need to color in his hair i don't want to do that because i hate drawing hair i'm really bad at it and i'm pretty happy with how it turned out now like it never looks like this so i'm afraid to color it in but his hair is black so we just gotta do that and it will also create a little bit more contrast which this illustration needs right now before we move on to the last book that i did not plan on reading this month but i did read which was a re-read of six of crows i want to talk about the book that i read in march in march i didn't upload a reading wrap up that's because i only read one book in the entire month of march so i thought you know i'll just take up that book into my april wrap up and the book that i spent the entire month of march reading was dune by frank herbert i started reading it because i was watching ryan the last dragon and the person i was watching it remarked that it was kind of reminded them of like dune with all the sand and then i re-watched the trailer for dune and i was like oh man i'm excited for this movie looks so cool and i was like you know what i want to read the book right now impulse decision i was like i'm gonna read this 600 page epic sci-fi fantasy dance story right now and so i did and it took me a month oh i'm either gonna ruin this by coloring it in or it's gonna look better and that's a risk you're always taking anyway and while i was reading dune i decided to make a drawing and i was like you know what maybe i'll record this so i can show it in a video so i don't know this is like interesting to anyone i know that like speed drawings are especially interesting to watch if you're like a really good artist and i know that i'm not like a professional artist but like i enjoy doing that so here's a speed drawing of me drawing a character from dune while i give you my review of dune let me know if this is interesting or if you would rather look at my face the whole time okay we're just experimenting today so june is a sci-fi fantasy story that takes place on this planet called dune humans have colonized this planet because there's this organism that lives there that only grows on dune which is called spice and it is the vital drug for space travel enhancing your powers etc so everyone wants the spice so everyone wants to rule over dune and we follow our main character paul who is the heir to the family that is currently ruling over dune but through a long chain of events and backstabbing and betrayal he and his mom have to flee like the capital city and go just right into dune into the sand fields where they meet with the free people that live in the sand that are not in the city they're called the fremen and they start living with them they learn how to live with this world how to um fight the giant worms that live there how to make sure that they can survive without water this is what's on the back of the book but it takes like half the story for the story to actually start happening like the first half of the story i'm gonna be honest was pretty boring to me it was mostly just political intrigue which already isn't my favorite thing but i will admit that i actually kind of enjoyed it in dune it's just that it takes way too long for like the important first plot points to happen so you're reading the book and constantly you're just like okay but like when is the story gonna start when is the story gonna start and then halfway into the book the story finally starts taking off and then it gets really cool in my opinion the best part about dune was the world building you can tell that frank herbert really put a lot of effort and love into giving you every little detail about this world but it was never in a way that annoyed me like i loved learning about how the ecology of the world works like how the lack of water influences how the people view the world and the religions that they have super interesting which is gonna make a lot of fantasy and sci-fi fantasy fans very happy personally that's never enough for me to really love a book but i definitely very much appreciated it i also really appreciated how they handled the chosen one trope it's one of those books where it takes a very religious turn which i personally find a lot more interesting than just making the chosen one a hero and i find that i don't see this enough like i've only seen it in dune and shadow and bone so far there's a lot of really cool action scenes in this book and after i finished it after a month i really felt like i was there like sometimes you read a fantasy book and you just it it all feels so real it feels like i've seen a movie but i've just been reading a book all this time but i feel like i just know this world of dune so well and i really appreciate that but i will say i really struggled through the first part because it just took so long for the story to actually start happening and also the characters were never really the strongest point of this book which i know is not wasn't really the point of the book like it was supposed to be a very world building heavy story but again not usually very much my taste oh and the last thing that i want to say is i know a lot of people have been saying that you can read this book as a standalone even though it's part of a seven book series um do you like the ending is so open-ended i didn't feel fulfilled after reading this book but i didn't like it enough to want to like continue seven more of these thick books but i do still have so many questions and i personally didn't think that the story really wrapped up nicely at the end like it's definitely an open ending like it's definitely the first book in a series at least in my experience um so overall my thoughts are positive i think i gave it three stars i'm really happy that i read it i really appreciate it for what it is but i'm not like blown away by it you know okay i finished the hair i think it does look better it does look better i'm i'm glad that i made this decision next up what are we gonna do what are we gonna do while we talk about six of crows i can add a little bit of detail but i'm afraid i'm gonna like ruin it the goal was to just draw casually i'm just gonna take a risk here maybe i ruin it maybe it'll get better we'll see anyway so my plan was never to reread six of crows this month but as you may be aware the show shadow and bone dropped which i really loved it definitely wasn't perfect but oh was my little fan girl heart happy and the great thing about the show is that it doesn't actually follow the story of six of crows it's just a pretty cool story with the same characters so after i finished the show for like a one and a half time i watched a few episodes again i was like okay but i want more right now i really want more and the six of crows storyline pretty much perfectly like continues where the show ends so i was like well if i want to continue the story i could just reread the book and i've been holding off and rereading six of crows for years because i'm gonna be honest usually when i reread an absolute favorite of mine i am a little disappointed because i never enjoy it as much as the first time around firstly because obviously it's gonna be less shocking than the first time around you already know everything that's gonna happen and secondly most of my favorite books i read when i was a lot younger and i'm just afraid that i've fallen into the pit of i'm an adult now and i don't like my books anymore that's my fear and i don't want that to happen so i just don't reread the books but i'm happy to say that i reread my favorite book of all time six of crows and i still liked it let's talk about it and while i possibly butcher this drawing as it is right now six of crows is a fantasy story a fantasy crime story that takes place in this fantasy crime city based on like 19 18th century amsterdam and we follow six main characters who go on this heist to break a very important figure out of prison which is of course an impossible job but they're gonna do it anyway because they're criminals and thieves and thugs anyway they just need the money but mostly the stories use the vessel to getting to know the characters and all their backstory etc and the relationships that they have with each other and just like the first time this was so much fun i am indeed ruining it oh well can't go back now so one of the reasons that i love this book is because it's exactly my thing i love being in ketterdam i love this story where you follow these criminal characters these underdogs these thieves going on like a crime mission on a heist i just always love those types of stories they make me happy every single time just like the first time around after just reading the first chapter i was already hooked because it's just exactly my thing and yet again i also really liked the characters although how am i gonna tell this story my general remarks are the same as the first time that i read it i love the characters i love the high story i love how it all comes together i love the action scenes there's a lot of epic moments i like the banter between the characters it's all still there and i still love it however the first thing is that over time this book has kind of gotten i've gotten to know this book and describe this book as like a book that's like super character focused and i totally understand if some people find it boring because there's barely any plot and it's just focused on the characters backstories rereading it i realized that that is there's a lot of plot in this book i don't know where i've gotten this idea that six of crows is just a character driven story with no plot and just flashbacks no like throughout the book things are happening like all the time and it's very action-packed so i don't know where i've somehow over the years created this idea that it is a plotless book because the plot really carries the story as well as the characters it's the perfect balance the second thing is that my appreciation the character shifted a little bit i like nina a little bit more and i i do realize now that kaz it when i first read this book i was like oh my god cass whoa ripping people's eyes out oh my gosh that was like the one of the worst things i'd ever seen happening in above i was like wow this man is so evil he's such an interesting like mysterious morally grey character wow and now i reread it and i'm like okay he's kind of a caricature a little bit like a little bit like we're just constantly told how terrifying he is and like how smart and everyone's like afraid of him this does feel a little bit over the top a little bit like i didn't quite buy it the second time around yeah i ruined this painting i really did oh wow why did i do this lately when i draw characters i've been adding these little like swirlies on the cheeks and the fingers and it usually looks really cute but not here oh well final verdict of six of crows i still love it it is still a five star away for me um and i want more books with like crime fantasy like this because i like that i will say the last thing i want to say about this book the first time i read it i of course hadn't read that many books yet i remember when i first read this this was like the height of morally gray characters for me because it was just the first time that i really read a book where that was just kind of happening and we had all these like darker themes and more morally grey characters not just like goody two shoes heroes and i thought it was like super like whoa like morally gray and now that i've read a lot more of those kind of books i realized that this is really not that i mean it is there but it's really not that i mean i've read the popular now i'm not gonna blame the book for that i mean i know that that was never the intention of this book but it's just interesting to kind of notice like how you view different books over time based on other books that you've read the more other books you read the different perspective you get on new books that you read and i think that's interesting so yeah i still love this i'm currently still absolutely freaking obsessed with shadow and bone and the christopher's and everything else if you want to know like my full thoughts on the show i actually made like a whole video essay on it i will link it up the screen so you can watch that if you're into that i think we're gonna finish up this drawing i did not really get that much farther than where i started this is what it looks like now is it better than before a little a little doesn't matter i had fun being a little creative today let me know what you thought of this style of a rating wrap-up if you like this video give it a like and if you like to see more of my face make sure to subscribe so you don't miss anything and hit the notification bell also follow me on twitter and instagram if you want if you want i really hope you enjoyed this video and i will see you soon in another one goodbye [Music] you

Channel: The Book Leo

Views: 43,650

Rating: 4.9662118 out of 5

Keywords: book, books, booktube, reading, booktuber, peruseproject, paperbackdreams, review, book review, dune, six of crows, soc, shadow and bone, take a hint dani brown, howl's moving castle

Id: Gag5-6ZzO6c

Length: 28min 39sec (1719 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021