Mini Book Haul || Christmas Reads || Wind and Truth || December Wrap Up

[@BookishChas]

Awesome update Tom! Christmas Carol is such a great book! I’ll be reading North Pole Express next year for sure. Glad you enjoyed Wind & Truth.

[@TomOrange]

I hope we get a third Sam Shovel book for next year. If not ill have to find another christmas read

[@BookishChas]

@ yeah I hope so too. If not, I recommend the Hogfather lol.

[@B-RollBooks]

Tom, thank you for an entertaining 2024! It's been such fun following your reading journey.

[@TomOrange]

Thats for coming along! Hope 2025 is even better

[@BrianBell7]

Cool haul and excellent thoughts, Tom! Happy Belated Birthday and Happy New Year!

[@TomOrange]

Thanks Brian! Happy New Year!

[@esmayrosalyne]

Congrats on finishing that chunker! Looking forward to the review, I am feeling more and more conflicted on it the longer I am away from it., but it is still a massive achievement on Sanderson's part. Happy New Year, Tom. Hope you start the year off on a high note 🥰

[@TomOrange]

Happy New Year! I am seeing a lot of criticism for it and while I totally understand it all it just worked better for me overall.

[@esmayrosalyne]

@@TomOrange really happy to hear that! I am very bad at not letting others' opinions influence me lol

[@Johanna_reads]

I’m catching up on your videos today. 😊 That’s really interesting what you said about epic fantasy and series like Stormlight. I did my best to unpack my understanding of what epic fantasy means in my Long Price Quartet review (distinguishing high fantasy from epic fantasy). I thought I did well, but I got the impression some viewers just thought I was pedantic. 😅

[@TomOrange]

Its something that I should probably think a little bit more about but I do think there is a difference. Ill have to check out your review to see what your thoughts are.

[@Johanna_reads]

@ I’d be honored if you did and let me know your thoughts! No pressure though. 😅

[@LotsOfBooks]

Pickens injury was unfortunate. Needed him in fantasy 😂 The offense is very flat without him catching moon balls

[@TomOrange]

Unfortunately moon balls are the only thing our offense can do. Going to interesting to see what happens in the playoffs

[@LotsOfBooks]

@ I think they can definitely beat the Texans in the first round and if they got the Ravens instead ya never know. Those division matchups are always wild.

[@TomOrange]

@@LotsOfBooks With how they played tonight against the Bengals they might not win again until next season.

[@LotsOfBooks]

@ it is over. That was atrocious. Russ is fully washed. Texans still suck but they’ll get blown out by the Ravens like that though

[@noname3609]

reading WAT and I love it. ❤

[@TomOrange]

Glad you are enjoying it!

[@ChanelChapters]

National lampoons is a classic

[@TomOrange]

100% is. My personal favorite is The Year Without A Santa Clause.

[@Chance.Dillon]

Oh you’re a Steelers fan?! Damn… I’m jealous.

[@TomOrange]

Born and raised man! Im lucky to have watched two super bowl wins

[@TedReadInstead]

Great wrap-up, Tom. As you started describing "The Answer is No" and voicing your opinion about the absurdist humor, my first thought went to "Hitchhiker's Guide" before you said it. Haha! That humor doesn't do much for me, either. And it's odd because I do laugh at movies like Airplane! and other spoofy humor but for reading, I just can't get into it for some reason. Looking forward to your 2025 videos! I will pass over the WAT video only because I'm still in Oathbringer and I don't want to get any spoilers. I'll come back and watch your video when/if I'm done with this HUGE gargantuan series! Sometimes I wonder! LOL!

[@TomOrange]

A lot of what I will call “Hollywood humor” just is such a hard miss for me. It just dosent click for me very much. Hope you enjoy yourself stormlight read!

[@TedReadInstead]

@@TomOrange I agree 100%. Not sure if you've read Project Hail Mary, but it has some pretty good humor that had me laughing out loud at times. :)

[@FanieViljoenFilms]

Tom, thanks so much for the shout-out! I really hope your readers enjoy diving into Sacrifice to the Flies, my dystopian murder mystery with a twist. As for my name, I know it can seem a bit unusual at first glance! It’s pronounced “Far + knee” for Fanie and “Fill + you + n” for Viljoen. Fanie is derived from Stephan. Best of luck with your channel in 2025-I'm thrilled it showed up in my recommendations. There’s so much to explore here-I’m not sure where to start, but I know it’s going to be an adventure!

[@TomOrange]

Anytime! Happy New Year

[@ToddsBookTube91]

Merry Christmas Tom! I got a pocket book of poetry one of those Barnes & Noble editions, Fairy Tale by Stephen King, and a 25 dollar gift card to Barnes & Noble!

[@TomOrange]

Merry Christmas! That’s a nice haul!

[@AnonforGod777]

Homie loves orange

[@TomOrange]

I sure do

[@spartaguswoodall3062]

I read A Christmas Carol this year because you and a couple other Booktubers said y'all read it every year.

[@TomOrange]

I hope you liked it!

[@hiko.murs.]

I'm half way through Wind and Truth. I also have this feeling that it will not be my favorite which is also okay.

[@TomOrange]

It totally is. In the end it’s just a book

[@finnmyers7137]

For me it ended up landing right in the middle. I really enjoyed it. I totally understand why some people didn’t like it though.

[@MrRoro_su]

Reba is so fun

[@TomOrange]

It really is! It just a nice fun show to watch a few episodes here and there

[@MrRoro_su]

❤❤❤

[@thegreatwaugh]

Great wrap-up! Is there a reason you are skipping dragon ball gt? I’m not very familiar with it, but I just assumed you were trying to read through all the series.

[@TomOrange]

So dragon ball gt was an anime only series. I believe now it technically has a manga. It’s made up of screenshots from the show formatted into the manga structure. So it’s kind of its own thing in the dragon ball universe

[@RANTSRUS]

You talking about Wind and Truth by Sanderson made me wonder. Cause I've read alot of gigantic books this year. You hear people complain because a 2-hour movie is too long (I am not in this category) but how long is too long for a book even if its epic fantasy? I was just curious of your take on this. Me personally, one thing I've noticed with longer books is the whole excuse to let the plot breathe and for the author to weave a story into a masterpiece it needs an encyclopedia worth of pages. Unfortunately, what I've personally noticed and this is just my opinion and probably not a very good one is that it's an excuse to not have tight storytelling. Sanderson is a good example. I feel as though I don't start liking his books till I get to page 200. And for Booktube God bless you for reading a book that size with other books along with it. I'm not saying there are times when it is needed. I'm just saying George RR Martin is correct when he says kill his babies isn't a bad thing but also cutting out unnecessary filler that sounds pretty and you love but doesn't streamline the story would be nice as well. Some plots are nice but not needed. Maybe cut them to. Save them for a novella or something. Just saying if something doesn't push the narrative forward it doesn't need to be there and too often even with great authors they tend to get lost in the weeds when they are given the ability to create books with large word counts. Another great video. Really enjoy your channel. Hope you had a very Merry Christmas and also a good New Years.

[@TomOrange]

So this is a very interesting question and one I have asked myself a few times. Unfortunately I do not think there is one correct answer when it comes to how long is too long. It really feels like it comes down to the individual book. I also think what the goal of the book plays into this as well. I feel like a 1400 page long thriller may be harder (not impossible) to pull off versus a 1400 page fantasy book. Using Wind and Truth as an example here I do feel like it was longer than it needed to be to tell the story its telling but I never really felt that way about The Way of Kings and its also a very long book. I really wish I had a better answer than it depends but thats kind of what it comes down to lol. Hope you had a Merry Christmas and have a great New Years!

[@RANTSRUS]

@@TomOrange For the most part I'd agree with you on that. There are some books I feel deserve if not need a longer page count. I want the author to be able to convey the story properly and have the freedom to do so. A Song of Ice and Fire is a good example of a book that needs a long word count. That world is just too expansive for 400 pages with all those POV characters. That said, I think we all have had that moment one or two times at least where we start a gigantic book get about 200 pages in and the narrative hasn't even really begun yet and at that point it already feels too late to stop. So you got to trudge through it till the getting gets good and lets say it has a good last third of the book, at least with me I tend to forget the trudge to get there and just remember how great the final third is. I used to do series and movie reviews on here and so many movies I'd review would be so slow and then pick up at the very end and so many other reviewers would be like its great and I'm like yea it was at the end but you totally forgot about the first part of it. I'm glad Stormlight doesn't feel like that to you though because that is the next series I'm going to start after I finish The First Law Trilogy. I wanted to pick up Stormlight after I read Mistborn but I was so burned out by then with Sanderson I just couldn't at the time.

[@radudumanovschi3387]

One of the romance authors whose books I was anticipating kinda disappointed. I gave the book a 3 star (disappointing books get this rating). Today I finished Zodiac Academy 1 (3.75 stars). It was a good time

[@TomOrange]

Hate to hear about the disappointed! Hope your next read is great

[@oversharer]

Yeeeeeaaaaa give Russell Wilson that bag!! Guaranteed Steelers playoff elimination every year!! George Pickens? More like, George Pickme off the ground while I cry after every play!!

[@TomOrange]

See you understand. The only problem is Im not sure what the answer at qb is. The draft class is super weak and so is the free agent class. Maybe we can use the franchise tag on him? That way its only a one year deal.

[@OnlyTheBestFantasyNovels]

Ah, one of the three other people on the entire Internet who liked Wind and Truth. We're such a small group the word minority is too big to describe us. I agree about Dragonball's influence, I'm not sure about manga today or shounen as whole but it definitely had a heavy influence on the manga that was popular in the 2000s-2010s. Happy new years to you!

[@TomOrange]

Happy New year! Now that I’ve started watching and reading some reviews is does seem that we are a limited number. It has its flaws but it’s still a Stormlight book. Maybe as I sit with it longer I’ll be more harsh but I don’t think so

[@AnonforGod777]

Whats your favorite 2 Stephen King books? Ill delete this comment if I find the answer

[@TomOrange]

Pet Semetery and Misery