Chatting With Nutts - Episode #67 ft Johanna

Chatting With Nutts - Episode #67 ft Johanna
#books #booktube #bookcast
Welcome to the 66th episode of Chatting with Nutts! My guest this episode of Chatting With Nutts iis one of my favorite content creators in the booktube community and someone who has been supportive throughout my journey, @Johanna_reads ! ! We hope you enjoy this conversation on Chatting with Nutts as we talk about the current topics in fantasy as well as what we are reading and have already read that blew our minds.
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[@Johanna_reads]

Thank you so much for having me as a guest! I'm watching some of the chat comments I missed, and I'm laughing out loud! 😂

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Chat was on fire hahaha thanks as always for being gracious with your time. We appreciate you

[@esmayrosalyne]

Ah, my favourite dude bro and grandma of booktube coming together, what a grand time ❤ I relate HARD to your struggles with not visualising while reading, Jimmy. And I never knew it was weird until I joined the book community and realised I was the odd one out, lol. Still, I enjoy my books so it's all fine by me 🤣

[@thefantasynuttwork]

We stand in solidarity lol

[@Johanna_reads]

Esmay, I don’t think you’re in the minority on that! I’ve heard from tons of people who don’t visualize what they read. Just as you said, it doesn’t seem to affect enjoyment. Dude bros and grandmas alike! 😂

[@esmayrosalyne]

@@Johanna_reads The more I talk about it, the more I hear other people saying the same thing. Yet, I still wish I could visualise and get fully absorbed!! Appreciate you, Johanna 🥰

[@Sammyspack]

I hope the new doctor can help you asap with the staph infection. I will send good thoughts your way as I’m sure it frustrating and you just want to get back to life without pain/ discomfort. Thank you for a great show Jimmy and Johanna

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Appreciate it!

[@shutdownseti2493]

Been watching this in pieces so excuse my multiple comments but yes, Jimmy! Mary Gentle! I've had her books on my shelf for a while and I need to read them! If you read Ash next year I'll read it at the same time. I reckon you'd love KJ Bishop's The Etched City. Weird fantasy that is suuuuuuper underread. It's so brilliant.

[@marcweber8509]

Bridger's videos remind me of these old 90s commercials that ran on sunday mornings 😂 great content though!

[@verosnotebook]

Watching recording and enjoying it very much. Just heard you mention Kasuo Ishiguro. He is a great author. I’d recommend his ‘The Remains of the Day’ - it is beautiful, especially for the language. A slow savouring. And the you can see the film with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson 😊 Finally, hope the specialist sorts out the infection quickly. Take care

[@shutdownseti2493]

Backing this recommendation. Remains of the Day is the perfect culmination of the style Ishiguro was sharpening with his first two novels. Perfect depiction of unreliable narrators who lie to themselves perpetually until they have that final epiphany all too late.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

I’m so intrigued by this!

[@Thecatladybooknook_PennyD]

3rd vote for Remains.... but I'm currently reading thru his oeuvre and really liked A Plain View of Hills also.

[@verosnotebook]

@@Thecatladybooknook_PennyD Good to know. I want to read more of his too. Read Klara and the Sun, which was good but not to the level of Remains. Have Never Let Me Go, When We Were Orphants, and the very intriguing The Buried Giant...

[@Thecatladybooknook_PennyD]

​@@verosnotebookThe Unconsoled is my next one... not sure when tho.

[@ericblinn7894]

Iron Claw commercial before watching the rerun of this. Haha perfection

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Lmao

[@marcweber8509]

I'm also currently a little over halfway into Beartown. It's really good! He does the small town feel so well and also the passion for the sport. I don't give a damn about icehockey but it's so engaging. And adressing the elephant in the room: he is very very sensitive about how he is portraying certain things and the trauma it inflicts upon the people involved. I respect very much how he doesn't flinch away and treats the subject matter with the nuance it demands.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

He’s definitely very respectful

[@Wouter_K]

Such a wonderful conversation again. Did I just hear you saying you are going to do a Nutt awards to evaluate the year? Perhaps with a golden Nutt button for each category and only the books with a regular Nutt button being potential nominees? No pressure. Then, regarding Blood over Brighthaven. I think calling it YA would be a bit of a rough treatment. I enjoyed the book and can really understand Johanna's points about it. I think it is a book in the recent tradition of being really on the nose with societal themes such as women's rights, (modern) slavery and inequality. That took away from my enjoyment as well and is also why I'm hesitant to get into R.F. Kuang. I think the themes in themselves are very important but I do not enjoy being lectured throughout an engaging story. I think it is that on-the-nose-ness that gives a somewhat YA impression. If you can get past that though, it is a very well fleshed out story and the themes are being handled with adult nuance as well (as far as acknowledging there are no easy solutions).

[@agentswarley]

I hope you get better, soon (and for good) Jimmy!! As always, thanks for sharing the stream after the live, especially with the news about the accused booktuber. I realise that it must be sometimes difficult to leave lives up, as it’s an on the spot conversation and reaction to comments without the ‘luxury’ of editing. But there is no way anyone could have known. And so I want to thank you that I get to enjoy this podcast even after the live. It’s my favourite thing on KZbin :) On books: Backman definitely has a very specific style. Anxious People is the most stylistic, imo, very overdrawn, yet simple plot. It’s more like a play with the characters in the focus and a convenient, yet absurd, story around them. I wouldn’t recommend it as a starting point. I would definitely disagree with him being the male Hoover. For me, he somehow captures facets of humanity, perspectives, human behaviour and emotions to a level only few authors achieve.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@artbyandia]

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favourite authors. The book of his most people seem to agree is great is The Remains of the Day so maybe that would be a good place to start. I liked all of his books that I've read so far (I have 3 left), except for the short story collection. Never Let Me Go is good too, though. My favourites are An Artist of the Floating World and Klara and the Sun.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

I’ll definitely try them oht

[@mandyhuybregts3235]

I can visualize books into detail. I also hear narrators and every character has his/her own voice. Which i love, but sometimes hate. Because if something heartbreaking happens in a book, i need tissues and i will hug my cat and snot all over him cause i'm having feelings 😂😂😂

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Cats are the best support system

[@mandyhuybregts3235]

@@thefantasynuttwork well you should go and tell him that. He HATES me after i've finished a sad book 🤣

[@asajohannesson2012]

I read The Winter Road last year , I think. I really liked it.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

I’m excited to try it

[@Paul_van_Doleweerd]

Hah, I just started the Folding Knife myself. So far so good.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

I’m really enjoying it

[@Paul_van_Doleweerd]

@@thefantasynuttwork Starting at the end of the story is cool, frames the whole thing as a kind of a flashback. I have read the siege trilogy, so not my first one of his so I know what to expect as a writing style. and I have read some Tom Holt (sorry Allan 😆)

[@johanjoseph4802]

Literally woke up to this ep Ending. Gonna listen to this in 2x speed now 😂🤌

[@samm8190]

That’s the way to do it!!!!!

[@thefantasynuttwork]

2x is the way!

[@thatsci-firogue]

I've also been thinking about books I've picked up because of you and Allen and I'm not sure either of you won this year but Allen definitely won last year haha I'd been recommending The Culture to you since I found your channel and all it took was a few sentences from Erikson lol. Similar with Lies of Locke Lamora, all it took was Merphy Napier haha.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

It’s a collection of influence hahah

[@thatsci-firogue]

@@thefantasynuttwork keep telling yourself that hahaha

[@benjamincrowhurst5998]

Gotta join you on this Mitchell train, big lad. Musically inclined is a hell of a sell 👀

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Please like it! Hahahah

[@sarah.ever.after84]

Jimmy have you read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles? Since you say you like a contained setting you might like this one. It has a really interesting juxtaposition of a man being held prisoner in a hotel with the chaos of the Russian Revolution outside.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

I haven’t but that sounds so interesting!

[@veszeljko7645]

my brother in christ i'd be smoking an ounce with Pust Kruppe and the goddamn mule any day of the week

[@skippen]

"I've been in the trenches." Jimmy just digging up stuff that's older. :D Meanwhile, I have heard and read all of these authors.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

I bow to your supreme knowledge your grace

[@skippen]

@@thefantasynuttwork knowledge or agedness? :D

[@osoisko1933]

I'm sad I had to work tonight and missed this. Fml

[@thefantasynuttwork]

You were missed brother

[@AndreDeSimone-dy1cz]

Minor criticism, do you set how many ads are on these once they're a video? I literally get an ad every 2 minutes when I watch these. Power through because I love them though

[@thefantasynuttwork]

So KZbin has changed the way ads work, any episode before this one should not have had ads in the middle. But essentially KZbin has removed my ability to not run mid roll ads. It’s very frustrating

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Update: now the video has no ads unless at beginning, at least I think?

[@AndreDeSimone-dy1cz]

It's all good. Just didn't know if you knew without feedback. Also, for actual book stuff, Anxious People is my favorite book of all time. It's not the best book and the humor won't hit for everyone, but that's the only book to make me sob in years. Worth the quick read

[@thefantasynuttwork]

@@AndreDeSimone-dy1cz I genuinely appreciate you letting me know. I also will definitely read Anxious People, forget these haters 😆

[@jeroenadmiraal8714]

I tried reading Crying of Lot 49 and I just couldn't get through it and that made me feel bad because it wasn't even 200 pages.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

It was the longest short book I’ve ever read

[@sowercookie]

I've been thinking a lot about this recently, why woman authors get dismissed so often especially when female dominant genres are huge, because I've seen a few videos of people absolutely tearing into a woman author's book and I was like "It can't be THAT bad?" So picked up some of the "terrible" books...and they really weren't that bad! I liked a lot of them actually! I hope it's not just for clickbait, that would be so petty... Some people definitely have a bias against books written by women/enjoyed by women, or plot lines and themes that appeal to women (god forbid you have romance or sex in your book, the way some people react to it...) I think Johanna's on the money, there's this insidious idea that you have to become more masculine or grimdark to be taken seriously.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Well said, thanks for sharing!

[@jeroenadmiraal8714]

Coetzee is a Dutch name. Pronounced Coot-zey. I should know because I'm Dutch.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Thanks!

[@samm8190]

Jimmy I’d love to watch old recap videos (especially since that’s the only place where a lot of books got reviewed) Is that something patrons have access to?

[@thefantasynuttwork]

It isn’t no but if you go to my wrap ups playlist you’ll see them there still

[@samm8190]

@@thefantasynuttworkHaha. Thanks Jimmy. 😅

[@helgestrm9670]

Speaking of violent fiction that gets read as immature I have a problem with the word edgy. I feel like alot of booktube are overly prudish about certain things and are very weird about how they throw around the word cringe to label alot of things. To me quippy british humor is cringe. Marvel is cringe. Empire of the Vampire? Prince of Thorns? The former knows exactly what it is. It is fully inspired by Underworld, and The Vampire Diaries and reads like warhammer in how serious it takes itself with no apologies for what it is. That is not edgy to me. I feel like you've missed the point if you think that. Also Prince of Thorns trilogy is deeply woven with themes of compassion and empathy just like Malazan is. I dare say our own Philip Chase would agree with me. In fact the reaction to it is just like what happens in marvel movies. Every time there is a moment of deep pathos it has to be interrupted by a joke to relieve tension. And I feel like audiences need that today and if it dares to linger too long it gets labeled as melodramatic and edgy. Why cant there be a market for both. And ask yourself, why do you cringe by things you label edgy? What is it about that that makes you uncomfortable or embarrassed.. and embarrassed for who exactly? Its so weird to me how prudish people are. I just hate the word edgy so much. At least say if it is intentionally edgy as a satire, unintentionally like its funny or knows what it is and leans into it like pulp.. like explain ANYTHING :p It makes me upset and disappointed when some of my favourite booktubers handwave away something as edgy without ever defining what that even means to them. Especially when it's about sincere works. It just screams prude to me. I have alot to say on this, but none of it is polite. But then again, I don't feel like alot of booktube is polite back in how it laughs at certain things. Jay Kristof in Empire of the Vampire is a prose artist with the same skill and voice as Abercrombie. Some people might not like that voice, but it's genuinely sad how fuck all is said about the work by dismissing it as "edgy" and "cringe". I always without fail think that whenever those labels are thrown around it says alot more about the readers own insecurities and judgmental attitudes than what they are critiquing. More people rated EotV than Jade Legacy. I don't care if people didn't like the book, but if booktube is supposed to be reader oriented the book and works like it deserves to be judged on the merit that it is for alot of people and those people want to know the quality of the work and not just have their tastes dismissed as trash by people who are supposed to be reviewers. Sure, say you didn't like it, but if all there is to say about something is that its edgy or cringe.. mate, thats a pretty cringe thing to do. ( not you btw, im just venting about the scene as a whole). Sorry for the rant :)

[@benjamincrowhurst5998]

I am a huge fan of this comment haha

[@thatsci-firogue]

I don't have a problem with Kristoff being edgy, his books just come across like he's trying too hard to me. I do love Mark Lawrence's books tho.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

This sounded so accusatory until the last disclaimer hahaha I was like wtf I didn’t say any of that 🤣

[@helgestrm9670]

@@thefantasynuttwork yeah i noticed that too at the end, hence the disclaimer.. my bad :p sincerely didn't mean it that way. 😅 reading it back it reads more angry than i wanted it to be as well.. It's just passion. You're friends with Alan, you get it 🤪

[@thefantasynuttwork]

@@helgestrm9670 it’s all good hahah

[@marcweber8509]

Jimmy, do you think Lot 49 is more cerebrally weird, like deliberately constructed just to trip you up and add weirdness for weirdness' sake? Or in what I'd consider a more authentic, organic and very dreamlike surrealistic manner that David Lynch for example is to pull off.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Hmm it feels like it has purpose

[@veszeljko7645]

the stream went of the fuckin rails by the end i had no idea Johanna was at the forefront of the Atlanta's trap scene that's crazy jimmy what the fuck

[@thefantasynuttwork]

☠

[@MattonBooks]

I’m reading the Silmarillion in Jan. Just sayin’…

[@thefantasynuttwork]

No way I can do Jan 😭

[@MattonBooks]

@@thefantasynuttwork May also be February, TBH. 😜

[@MattonBooks]

@@thefantasynuttwork Far more likely actually. I’m vlogging LotR, and only just finished FotR, and won’t start Silmarillion until I finish the trilogy.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

@@MattonBooks I did the trilogy last year and it was still magical

[@MattonBooks]

@@thefantasynuttwork Oh indeed. Haven’t read it in about 10 years, and I’m vlogging my re-read, constantly gushing about so much of it. 😅

[@lieslherman]

The discussion of women=YA and men=A really fascinating, and I think you might be onto something about it being tied a bit to JKR's success; I don't think it was entirely her, but if you look at the books that all ended up getting really big and then getting adaptations, we had Twilight, and Hunger Games, and Divergent, and though clearly not YA, I'd even kind of lump in 50 Shades of Grey... And if those are the stories that inspired you, you're likely to write like them, so we get a new generation of authors who saw women getting success writing one way, and men getting success writing LOTR and GoT and Witcher. The topic gets quite complicated when we dig into what even IS the difference between Adult and YA (complexity of prose, explicitness of themes, age of characters?), because we have all these (mostly female) authors lately with 'Adult debuts' that I continually see getting criticism of "reads like YA" on, and like... How much of that is tied to us knowing the author is female? Is it because the prose reads too juvenile? Too many romantic themes? But in the end, I do think that the divide exists (or at least still exists) because people vote with their wallets; clearly there are many women of all age groups that like YA books for a variety of reasons (and obviously very romantic books), and trends go where the market goes. As much as it pains me, we just don't have many examples of YA by men done well (I can only really think of Sando's stuff and Eragon) so men aren't inspired to write it, and publishers probably wouldn't know how to market it. I don't know if it'll ever change until we get a huge bombshell hit that inspires a new generation of boys to write similar stories, but... Idk. Teen boys in general I don't think read as much as teen girls, either, so it probably requires a cultural shift as well? Gosh who knows. I'm SO sorry this ended up being such a chonky comment--I apparently really had a lot of thoughts about this!! Thank you for this discussion guys, I really enjoyed it.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

Don’t feel bad for the comment being long, it was great and I loved hearing your thoughts!

[@veszeljko7645]

As someone who wanted to read as a teenage boy the YA section didnt appeal to me because it just wasnt representing me. I had to move to Adult fantasy very quickly since that is where I found things that spoke to me. I am not sure what that says about me or about our culture but from my own limiter bubble of nerdy teen boys, YA section never felt like it was written for us. Which, again, is fine, since a lot of adult fantasy writren by men can easily be considered YA when it comes to prose complexity, themes etc. They just dont market them as such since as you said, publishers probably dknt know how to market a YA book wtitten by a male author so they lump it into Adult instead and push further this stigma around YA and female authors in general

[@lieslherman]

@@veszeljko7645 Exactly... Becomes a catch 22. Boys end up reading adult because there's nothing in YA that has themes that attract them, so publishers don't think boys read YA and don't pursue books to publish and market in YA for them. Makes it feel far less like an age range and instead its own genre... On the plus side though, Middle Grade has an *excellent* balance of books for all different kinds of kids, so at least it's only YA. And, it is a relatively new category in the scheme of things, so it's probably just publishers trying to figure things out... Because you're right--there likely is stuff in the Adult section that could be put in YA instead, they just wanted to make sure that the right audience found it.

[@shutdownseti2493]

Hey Jimmy, just want to say I think you should give Pynchon another go! I think you should read Gravity's Rainbow. And I want to say: you're not meant to understand everything. I think one of the key themes of Gravity's Rainbow is the fruitlessness and powerlessness that comes from wanting answers or wanting to understand that which we cannot make sense from. Pynchon knows what he's writing is confusing and obfuscated. Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow paint these psychedelic pictures of feeling helpless and watched, lost in a plot of paranoia. I think there's a narrative around "difficult" literature that causes people to miss the forest for the trees sometimes because of how valued the concept of "understanding" something is. You'll see it all the time if there's a movie that relies on some sort of subversive plot twist or ambiguous ending, and there's a slew of "X movie ending EXPLAINED" videos or threads on social media, or comments in the discourse where people felt that they liked the movie simply because they could understand it, their discussion around the quality of it becomes less about its value as art and more about their pride in understanding what happened. And this is why a lot of "difficult" literature scares people, or upsets them in many ways. You'll see somebody talking about how much they hate Ulysses by James Joyce because they couldn't understand it, but the thing is: *nobody* has *ever* "understood" Ulysses on their first read. They're not meant to. There's a reason Joyce said he wanted it to keep scholars busy for 100 years. No matter how smart somebody may be, they're not going to come away with a fully understanding of Ulysses on a first read, that's just the facts. So with understanding off the table, what is left for the potential reader? The experience. Ulysses doesn't become great after you understand it, you realise its greatness in the experience of something so wide and seemingly impenetrable. Because when you can't fully understand it, the experience of it becomes understanding what it's doing rather than what it's saying. You see how Joyce switches style for every chapter. You can't parse any of Stephen Dedalus's stream of consciousness in chapter 3, but you can feel the frantic and chaotic hell of his mind as he sits there on the beach. You can't determine whether chapter 13 is the real perspective of young Gerty or the lusty projection of Leopold's own desires, but you can absolutely catch on to its cheap romance novel send-up style and the comic triteness of matching Leopold's literal climax with that of fireworks over the beach. Likewise you might not understand what the hell chapter 14 is saying, until it dawns on you that the language is literally evolving through time up, from latinate prose to contemporary Irish slang. You might be very, *very* far from a complete understanding of the nuances and overall picture of the novel the first time through, but understanding is not the goal, the joy is found in the experience, in the playfulness of the form, in the humour, in the complete joy and reverence for the possibilities of what language can do. So rounding back to Pynchon, try reading Lot 49 not with the expectation that you need to understand what's going on, but with the experience that you are Oedipa Maas falling down a conspiratorial rabbithole in which everything seems connected and nothing makes sense. You become enveloped with the ideas and themes and aesthetic pleasures of what the novel's doing rather than being caught up trying to comprehend aspects you're not meant to. And then read Gravity's Rainbow, a novel that is at once so full of humour and slapstick ridiculousness that you don't need to be a genius to comprehend why the banana breakfast scene is so funny, or why a custard pie fight in the sky is so silly, but is also so deeply profound regarding love, and race, and sexuality, and identity. Tyrone Slothrop bumbles through the narrative trying to uncover just why he is somehow caught up in a plot where his erections predict bombings, but the thing is: he never finds an answer. In the last stretch of the novel, Slothrop literally disintegrates and scatters and leaves the novel in a state where his entire driving force of paranoia and understanding never concludes, is never understood. Because the novel is above searching for understanding, it's about where we go after understanding is no longer an option. Read Gravity's Rainbow, and don't go into it expecting to understand every line or what's happening when nothing seems to make sense, let yourself just get lost in it, and you'll find the experience so much more enjoyable. You'll get swept up in it. And hell, check out the audiobook for it as well, George Guidall's narration is fantastic, and he brings out a lot of the fun and humour where the more "understanding"-driven reader might miss it, thinking it's all so serious and needing it to be understood. Anyway, that's my little rant. I think you shouldn't let your confusion get in the way of potential enjoyment. Once you shift perspective a little bit, the idea of "difficult" literature leaves you. These novels are made to be enjoyed and felt as deeply as any other. They're just not always meant to be understood. And I think that is what gets in the way of so many readers. They let their need to understand something govern how they experience it. These novels say that, hey, it's okay that we don't understand everything. But we can experience it.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

I will definitely try it. I’ve got no real issue with difficult books as a whole

[@shutdownseti2493]

@@thefantasynuttwork Definitely! I don't think you do, I love how widely you've been reading this year, but even Super Serious Literary Only Readers struggle with this stuff sometimes, when they read a big "difficult" book and struggle to understand what they were meant to enjoy about it because they took it too seriously, so they end up feeling confused or conflicted or lament how hard it was, what an achievement to read something so difficult, which is very much Not the Point, I think (not that you've done these things). So sorry about all my little literary rants on occasion when I watch your videos 😅 I just want more people to go into these great books with a more enjoyable mindset, because I really think at the end of the day, you can just read these types of big tough books with a bit more ease once you take the weight off your shoulders, the burden of needing to understand everything. The types of people who do "understand" these books and maybe talk about it a lot have read them multiple times and studied articles and essays nd companion books just to reach that point, it's by no means the goal of the experience. Sorry I did it again lol

[@thefantasynuttwork]

@@shutdownseti2493 no need to apologize!

[@andrewhanson405]

I agree with you completely on Eleventh Cycle. I was pretty pumped for it, based on the buzz that was surrounding it, but found it to be one of the worst novels I have ever read.

[@thefantasynuttwork]

It was really bad lol

[@thatsci-firogue]

Jimmy, if you watch The Wall for the love of Hood do not, DO NOT, watch Nostalgia Critic's "review" / remake of it. Unless you want to see someone drastically missing the point of the film he's simultaneously "reviewing" and parodying (in the most unfunny way possible).

[@thatsci-firogue]

Sadly R Scott Bakker's Disciple of the Dog immediately came to mind for most disappointing novel of the year for me. Ultimately, just not very interesting and pretty predictable. I'm talking i saw this coming from Chapter One levels of predictable. The protagonist Disciple Manning got pretty annoying at times.