1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:26,320 And welcome! Greetings! Salutations! 2 00:00:26,320 --> 00:00:31,200 And welcome to another episode of Wednesday Night Book Club with your host Andy Rice. 3 00:00:31,200 --> 00:00:36,200 That's me, part of Fried Rice Podcast. Let's get fried! 4 00:00:36,200 --> 00:00:44,160 With me as always is AI-generated classical music because I'm here alone. 5 00:00:44,160 --> 00:00:52,320 Last week we discussed very briefly more of just a pilot episode of the novel Mad... 6 00:00:52,320 --> 00:00:56,320 Rose Madder. I almost said Mad Hatter. But Rose Madder. 7 00:00:56,320 --> 00:01:00,320 Which I don't know if I mentioned last time, but that's a color. 8 00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:04,320 Rose Madder. It's like a type of pinkish red. 9 00:01:04,320 --> 00:01:10,320 And I really like that. I like learning that there's a color called Rose Madder. 10 00:01:10,320 --> 00:01:13,320 And I don't understand why it's called Rose Madder. 11 00:01:13,320 --> 00:01:20,320 Like I know that we have a color Rose, so maybe this is just the more aggressive version of it. 12 00:01:20,320 --> 00:01:35,320 Sorry about that. 13 00:01:35,320 --> 00:01:42,320 But just like everything in life, I like to get high before doing whatever it is I'm going to do. 14 00:01:42,320 --> 00:01:49,320 So, last week was Rose Matter. This week, the book that I read, and I'm going to say that again, 15 00:01:49,320 --> 00:01:57,320 I read it even though I listened to it on audiobook. Again, come at me bros if you think that that's not the same thing. 16 00:01:57,320 --> 00:02:05,320 If you think that somehow using your eyes as opposed to your ears somehow makes you a better person when it comes to consuming literature. 17 00:02:05,320 --> 00:02:07,320 You know what? Come at me. 18 00:02:07,320 --> 00:02:14,320 And I'll have a toe-to-toe debate with you on any book that we both consume at the same time. 19 00:02:14,320 --> 00:02:15,320 You come at me. 20 00:02:15,320 --> 00:02:22,320 The only thing that you would have on me is that you'd be able to tell me how things like names are spelled in a way that maybe I wouldn't, 21 00:02:22,320 --> 00:02:25,320 but I'll be able to tell you how they're pronounced. 22 00:02:25,320 --> 00:02:29,320 Okay. Let's go back to Harry Potter for a moment when you were a kid. 23 00:02:29,320 --> 00:02:33,320 Who knew how to say Hermione's name? No one. No one fucking knew how to say it. 24 00:02:33,320 --> 00:02:39,320 In my mind, I read those books and I thought, okay, here's H named girl with curly brown hair. 25 00:02:39,320 --> 00:02:44,320 Because I knew her name wasn't Hermone or whatever, whichever I, however I thought. 26 00:02:44,320 --> 00:02:46,320 To say it back in the day. 27 00:02:46,320 --> 00:02:55,320 And so, yeah. So reading, yeah, you'd be able to write her name down, but like, audiobook would tell you, oh, Hermione. 28 00:02:55,320 --> 00:02:59,320 And you'd be like, oh shit, yeah, okay, that's a weird name, but at least I know how to say it. 29 00:02:59,320 --> 00:03:01,320 You had to wait till the movies, motherfuckers. 30 00:03:01,320 --> 00:03:06,320 But so did I, because I don't think they had audiobooks for Harry Potter at the time when I was reading them. 31 00:03:06,320 --> 00:03:13,320 And to be honest, I wasn't really into audiobooks back in the day, because I just preferred to read, I guess. 32 00:03:13,320 --> 00:03:18,320 And I wasn't driving around and I didn't have as much kind of idle time to spend listening. 33 00:03:18,320 --> 00:03:22,320 So I do understand that there are benefits to both. 34 00:03:22,320 --> 00:03:28,320 You know, like listening to an audiobook while driving through traffic, there's something, there's almost nothing better. 35 00:03:28,320 --> 00:03:32,320 Because it's like watching a movie in your head to just kill the time. 36 00:03:32,320 --> 00:03:42,320 But trying to tire yourself at the end of the night, you know, get a book and have your eyes kind of do the repetitive motion of going back and forth and reading the lines and having that information in your head. 37 00:03:42,320 --> 00:03:49,320 That's also great, because, you know, it helps you fall asleep and put some cool images in your head before you go to sleep. 38 00:03:49,320 --> 00:03:51,320 So I'm assuming your dreams are pretty cool. 39 00:03:51,320 --> 00:03:58,320 At least I always try to, at night, trick my brain into having cool dreams, and I don't think it ever works. 40 00:03:58,320 --> 00:04:06,320 So like I'll deliberately watch like a cutscene from Final Fantasy, like a Final Fantasy game, 9, 8, 10, whatever. 41 00:04:06,320 --> 00:04:18,320 Just one of the older ones, I'll watch the cutscene and I'll try to, you know, put myself in those situations. 42 00:04:18,320 --> 00:04:20,320 Because it's like I would want nothing more. 43 00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:26,320 If you want to talk about dream place I'd want to live would be like in a Final Fantasy world. 44 00:04:26,320 --> 00:04:30,320 Because you don't have to fight monsters if you don't want. 45 00:04:30,320 --> 00:04:33,320 I think I would maybe. 46 00:04:33,320 --> 00:04:37,320 There's ways to bring people back from the dead, if Phoenix down. 47 00:04:37,320 --> 00:04:39,320 So like that's pretty cool. 48 00:04:39,320 --> 00:04:41,320 You have potions that just heal you. 49 00:04:41,320 --> 00:04:43,320 So like, oh, you're shit, you're all fucked up. 50 00:04:43,320 --> 00:04:44,320 Here's a potion, right? 51 00:04:44,320 --> 00:04:47,320 You're done, you're healed. 52 00:04:47,320 --> 00:04:49,320 And you know what? 53 00:04:49,320 --> 00:04:56,320 That's a discussion for a completely different series that I'm working on. 54 00:04:56,320 --> 00:04:59,320 It has to do with video games, obviously. 55 00:04:59,320 --> 00:05:09,320 So you know what, let's just move past this and actually talk about the completely unrelated to anything I've been talking about so far book that we're watching, that we read this week. 56 00:05:09,320 --> 00:05:14,320 And it's Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff 2016. 57 00:05:14,320 --> 00:05:17,320 So Lovecraft Country. 58 00:05:17,320 --> 00:05:21,320 It is a story about a black family in the 50s. 59 00:05:21,320 --> 00:05:27,320 And, you know, Jim, just that I think Jim Crow era laws were just ending. 60 00:05:27,320 --> 00:05:33,320 And this is like just pre civil rights, you know, so like it's that in between time. 61 00:05:33,320 --> 00:05:36,320 I think there were still Jim Crow laws, obviously, in the south. 62 00:05:36,320 --> 00:05:37,320 We see that throughout here. 63 00:05:37,320 --> 00:05:43,320 But as you know, in the north, it wasn't, you know, it was more accepting. 64 00:05:43,320 --> 00:05:54,320 And you follow them on a Twilight Zone esque science fiction horror HP Lovecraft inspired adventure, which I could just not get enough of. 65 00:05:54,320 --> 00:06:03,320 So if you're familiar with the TV show, which I think probably more people have seen the TV show than read the book, I would imagine. 66 00:06:03,320 --> 00:06:13,320 And there are pros and cons to the TV show, I think, and to the book, which I'll get into. 67 00:06:13,320 --> 00:06:15,320 And I'll try not to keep this too long. 68 00:06:15,320 --> 00:06:31,320 Again, these are just I read a lot and I want to get these thoughts down more for my own records, if anything, because like I go back to I look at these books that I've read and I try to think how do I get like vague vibes on how I felt about them. 69 00:06:31,320 --> 00:06:35,320 But like I want to, you know, just for my own knowledge, be able to come back and see what I felt about these things. 70 00:06:35,320 --> 00:06:48,320 So the novel Lovecraft Country, let's just get into it. Atticus Turner, his dad Montrose, his uncle George Berry, his wife, Hippolta Berry. 71 00:06:48,320 --> 00:06:51,320 Then we have Letitia and Ruby Dandridge. 72 00:06:51,320 --> 00:06:57,320 They are neighbors of Atticus and Ruby is their sisters. 73 00:06:57,320 --> 00:07:05,320 And then you have Samuel and Caleb Braithwaite, who are the antagonists of the of the whole thing. 74 00:07:05,320 --> 00:07:10,320 So Atticus Turner in the show is played by Jonathan Majors. 75 00:07:10,320 --> 00:07:17,320 So that's a problem because he got canceled recently and the actor who played Montrose Turner passed away. 76 00:07:17,320 --> 00:07:19,320 So they did. He did write it. 77 00:07:19,320 --> 00:07:27,320 Matt Ruff did write a sequel to Lovecraft Country, which I just started last night called Destroyer of Worlds or Destroyer of Worlds. 78 00:07:27,320 --> 00:07:30,320 And so far, the beginning is epic. 79 00:07:30,320 --> 00:07:43,320 It's like a flashback of a slave escaping a plantation in a very cool kind of brutal way, which I liked a lot. 80 00:07:43,320 --> 00:07:51,320 And I think it's going to follow more of the well, I mean, obviously, it's going to follow more Turner's because he which is Atticus and Montrose his last name. 81 00:07:51,320 --> 00:07:54,320 So this must be their their ancestor. 82 00:07:54,320 --> 00:08:04,320 And so the I haven't really got into it yet, but the chances of us getting a TV show based on Destroyer of Worlds low. 83 00:08:04,320 --> 00:08:09,320 If it unless they're going to just recast, they'd have to just recast the whole thing. 84 00:08:09,320 --> 00:08:19,320 So if they did that, sure. But anyway, this book sort of feels like a TV show in a way. 85 00:08:19,320 --> 00:08:29,320 Each chapter is a connected yet separate story following its own character doing its own thing. 86 00:08:29,320 --> 00:08:33,320 It's not like Atticus is really only the he's like the main through line. 87 00:08:33,320 --> 00:08:39,320 And he's kind of the main character in the first one in the first part of the chapter called Lovecraft Country. 88 00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:45,320 And after that, it gets into each character has their own journey. 89 00:08:45,320 --> 00:08:51,320 And I and I would even say Atticus isn't even my favorite character in here, which we'll get to. 90 00:08:51,320 --> 00:09:00,320 So Lovecraft Country, it opens up with Atticus trying to make his way to he gets to Chicago. 91 00:09:00,320 --> 00:09:10,320 And then he he he takes his uncle George and then unbeknowingly he takes or he also takes Leticia and they go to try to go to Ardham, 92 00:09:10,320 --> 00:09:20,320 which is a place of they get a mysterious letter from from Montrose Atticus is dead and they have to go to Ardham. 93 00:09:20,320 --> 00:09:25,320 And unfortunately, here's the thing. I never I haven't read the H.P. Lovecraft books yet. 94 00:09:25,320 --> 00:09:33,320 And I feel like I need to. I found on Audible they have the complete H.P. Lovecraft collection. 95 00:09:33,320 --> 00:09:38,320 And it's I think 51 hours long, which is pretty, pretty hefty. 96 00:09:38,320 --> 00:09:47,320 And with Audible, which I love, is that no matter the length or collection, like if they put something into one book, you can buy it for one credit. 97 00:09:47,320 --> 00:09:50,320 So if you're on Audible, here's a trick. 98 00:09:50,320 --> 00:10:00,320 If you so credit costs about eleven dollars last time I checked and you have to be you get three a month or you get one a month. 99 00:10:00,320 --> 00:10:06,320 I think you get one a month and you you could buy more, though. 100 00:10:06,320 --> 00:10:08,320 And I think you buy three at a time. That's what I'm thinking. 101 00:10:08,320 --> 00:10:13,320 That's what I'm thinking about, because I'll you know, I'll buy probably three, you know, three a month. 102 00:10:13,320 --> 00:10:29,320 Right. And so when you but you want to spend your credits wisely because there's books out there that are, you know, 40, 50 hours long and their collections and you get a lot more bang for your buck that way. 103 00:10:29,320 --> 00:10:38,320 If you find a book that's on sale that you really want to read for like six bucks, just buy the book as opposed to spending a credit because your credit is worth eleven. 104 00:10:38,320 --> 00:10:44,320 So anything above eleven is worth spending a credit on. 105 00:10:44,320 --> 00:10:47,320 And there's a lot of books that are over eleven on there. 106 00:10:47,320 --> 00:10:51,320 So it's pretty, you know, like that's just my way of thinking. 107 00:10:51,320 --> 00:10:53,320 Do your own thing. 108 00:10:53,320 --> 00:10:55,320 Support who you want to support, whatever. 109 00:10:55,320 --> 00:11:04,320 So he picks up George and then George tells him about. 110 00:11:04,320 --> 00:11:10,320 So they have George runs the Safe Negro Guide, which is a traveling guide for. 111 00:11:10,320 --> 00:11:15,320 I don't want to say Negroes the whole time because they say it all the time in the book. 112 00:11:15,320 --> 00:11:18,320 And I know that's that's how they refer to back in the day. 113 00:11:18,320 --> 00:11:21,320 And I don't want to just keep saying black people or African Americans. 114 00:11:21,320 --> 00:11:25,320 I don't even know what to say here. So I just man. 115 00:11:25,320 --> 00:11:34,320 This is not again, of course, the first book I choose was Rose Matter and domestic abuse, which I know nothing about. 116 00:11:34,320 --> 00:11:37,320 And now I pick Lovecraft Country about racial tensions in the south. 117 00:11:37,320 --> 00:11:41,320 Again, I'm a fucking expert over here. Right. 118 00:11:41,320 --> 00:11:53,320 So maybe I should pick a book next time that I'll just pick a book about a fat guy that lives alone and thinks he can he can start a podcast and that no one's ever going to listen to. 119 00:11:53,320 --> 00:11:58,320 If I can find that book, then I'll I'll be able to tap into something. 120 00:11:58,320 --> 00:12:11,320 But so his uncle's telling him this this story about this guy that he knows who's doing some work for the Safe Negro Guide. 121 00:12:11,320 --> 00:12:16,320 And he's making his way to Chicago. 122 00:12:16,320 --> 00:12:18,320 Maybe I know that they're on the way to Chicago. 123 00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:25,320 Whatever he's making his way somewhere and he's in the south and he's about to get to a town and he's like, I got it. 124 00:12:25,320 --> 00:12:31,320 I got to take a piss. I can't stop in this town because though I know it's going to happen. 125 00:12:31,320 --> 00:12:33,320 They're going to tell me no. And it might get worse from there. 126 00:12:33,320 --> 00:12:40,320 So he finds like a little forested area, which we've all done, you know, and he goes and he urinates. 127 00:12:40,320 --> 00:12:45,320 And when he gets back, he didn't hear that a police car had pulled up behind him. 128 00:12:45,320 --> 00:12:50,320 There's a police deputy there, obviously a racist one, doesn't know why black guys here even says to him. 129 00:12:50,320 --> 00:12:55,320 He goes like, why? So you decided it. Where are you from? Right. 130 00:12:55,320 --> 00:12:58,320 Oh, you decided to drive 100 miles out into my woods to take a piss. Right. 131 00:12:58,320 --> 00:13:04,320 And so then he tells him about what I had never heard about. 132 00:13:04,320 --> 00:13:08,320 And I don't know if that's a critique on the on the education system. 133 00:13:08,320 --> 00:13:11,320 But like this was never talked about. 134 00:13:11,320 --> 00:13:19,320 But if we're just going to be for just one moment, if we I'm just going to cut myself off for a second. 135 00:13:19,320 --> 00:13:26,320 The amount of knowledge that I received about how poorly black people were treated. 136 00:13:26,320 --> 00:13:35,320 Like and the amount of atrocities that happened to them, we only got skin surface of that in school. 137 00:13:35,320 --> 00:13:39,320 Like in my mind, I was like, yeah, it's bad. We treated them poor. 138 00:13:39,320 --> 00:13:49,320 Like, and I say we, but I'm just saying like Americans at the time, white Americans at the time treated them poorly, like really, really badly, like subhuman like animals. 139 00:13:49,320 --> 00:13:54,320 They they they would lynch them and, you know, whatever. Right. 140 00:13:54,320 --> 00:13:58,320 Like it was like a whole bunch of horrible things. 141 00:13:58,320 --> 00:14:13,320 But I didn't know just how bad it was because I had never known until watching the the Watchmen TV show opening that there was the Tulsa Wall Street massacre. 142 00:14:13,320 --> 00:14:19,320 And that's when black people had their own Wall Street on in Tulsa that was doing great and very successful. 143 00:14:19,320 --> 00:14:25,320 And then you had a bunch of white guys with guns come in and kill indiscriminately and burn it all down. 144 00:14:25,320 --> 00:14:31,320 Right. And why didn't we learn about that? That's that happened in America. 145 00:14:31,320 --> 00:14:36,320 That's one of the most like that's a that's a savage, horrific thing that happened. 146 00:14:36,320 --> 00:14:43,320 That's such a big event that would have been covered right by I would hope all the newspapers in the world. 147 00:14:43,320 --> 00:14:47,320 Right. How we hear about that shit all the time now. 148 00:14:47,320 --> 00:14:54,320 If a group of people were running somewhere, kill everybody and then burn their shit down, we would know about it. 149 00:14:54,320 --> 00:14:57,320 I mean, I know that's modern day and everyone knows everything. 150 00:14:57,320 --> 00:15:02,320 But even back then, that would have been something that would have been reported on, I would hope. 151 00:15:02,320 --> 00:15:06,320 But anyway, I didn't learn about it until freaking the TV show Watchmen. 152 00:15:06,320 --> 00:15:11,320 And then now cut forward to Lovecraft Country, the TV show, which I had seen before. 153 00:15:11,320 --> 00:15:21,320 So, I mean, I've known this now, but it's still what a shocking concept is a sundown city or or a sundown county in this case, 154 00:15:21,320 --> 00:15:30,320 which means that if you catch a black person outside after sundown, that it's OK to lynch them on the spot. 155 00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:35,320 And that is absolutely fucking insane. 156 00:15:35,320 --> 00:15:41,320 And so in the story, this guy, he gets done, you know, taking a piss. 157 00:15:41,320 --> 00:15:45,320 He gets out. He sees the cop and the guy's like, why, you know, why are you doing this? 158 00:15:45,320 --> 00:15:56,320 And he tells the guy, George's employee, the Safe Negro guide, he he tells him, yeah, this is a sundown county. 159 00:15:56,320 --> 00:16:02,320 And you've got about seven minutes by my watch till sundown. 160 00:16:02,320 --> 00:16:05,320 And the guy said, well, I'll get out of here real quick. 161 00:16:05,320 --> 00:16:07,320 I'll just not if you're going south or not. 162 00:16:07,320 --> 00:16:14,320 And then so the guy has he literally in six minutes, he has to go just under the speed limit so he doesn't get pulled over. 163 00:16:14,320 --> 00:16:18,320 And he's it's the most nerve wracking like situation. 164 00:16:18,320 --> 00:16:22,320 You have the cop just tail, you know, just tail him. Right. 165 00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:25,320 You have this guy just going just under the speed limit. 166 00:16:25,320 --> 00:16:31,320 He just breaks out of the county line right as the sun is setting. Six minutes. 167 00:16:31,320 --> 00:16:36,320 The cop gets out of the car, stops his car, gets out, pulls his gun out and just starts firing at the car. 168 00:16:36,320 --> 00:16:40,320 Doesn't kill the dude. But like, of course, he just starts firing at the car. 169 00:16:40,320 --> 00:16:45,320 Like, that's just the sadistic kind of nature of all that. 170 00:16:45,320 --> 00:16:54,320 Sickened me, fascinated me. I don't know if it's a weird, you know, feeling or it's just like this really actually happened. 171 00:16:54,320 --> 00:17:04,320 We had people so cruel, so fucked up that they that they would want to just kill a guy that they found. 172 00:17:04,320 --> 00:17:12,320 It's like, what? How do you even breed that amount of hate into somebody? How does how does that even happen? 173 00:17:12,320 --> 00:17:17,320 I mean, what am I? I'm not going to solve racism. I'm just a fucking like I said, fact, I do the podcast. 174 00:17:17,320 --> 00:17:25,320 Let's so they anyway, that's just a as George and Atticus and Leticia are traveling to Artem, 175 00:17:25,320 --> 00:17:34,320 which, again, sorry, they got a letter that Montrose, Atticus is dead and Atticus had just gotten out of the army. 176 00:17:34,320 --> 00:17:41,320 So he hasn't seen his he just got out. He's heading back. He got a letter. His dad's in some place called Artem. 177 00:17:41,320 --> 00:17:46,320 He misreads it as Arkham, which at first I was thinking Batman. 178 00:17:46,320 --> 00:17:52,320 But I'm now I'm thinking the Batman writers just named Arkham Asylum after H.P. Lovecraft, something or other. 179 00:17:52,320 --> 00:17:56,320 So which I still don't know what Arkham is because I haven't read H.P. Lovecraft. 180 00:17:56,320 --> 00:18:04,320 But maybe there will be an episode down the line where I cover Destroyer of Worlds and the entire H.P. Lovecraft collection. 181 00:18:04,320 --> 00:18:06,320 That'll be a long episode. So just prep for that one. 182 00:18:06,320 --> 00:18:10,320 And I will preface it all by telling you how much I love audiobooks. 183 00:18:10,320 --> 00:18:22,320 So Atticus and Leticia and George are heading to Artem and they pass through this this town. 184 00:18:22,320 --> 00:18:30,320 So they're checking the Safe Negro Guide and there's a diner in this little town that's friendly to black people. 185 00:18:30,320 --> 00:18:37,320 And so they're pulling up and they notice that the it's a different name for the building. 186 00:18:37,320 --> 00:18:40,320 But he's like, hey, you know, maybe they just changed the name. 187 00:18:40,320 --> 00:18:43,320 They're still being cautious. They go inside. 188 00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:53,320 It's a white guy at the counter, a guy at or and there's a white guy behind the counter and the white guy at the counter slams his fist down when he sees him, gives him a dirty look and leaves. 189 00:18:53,320 --> 00:18:56,320 They're starting to get an uncomfortable feeling. 190 00:18:56,320 --> 00:18:59,320 They I think they order some food or whatever. 191 00:18:59,320 --> 00:19:08,320 But then they notice that as they're sitting down again, something I had to learn through a book. 192 00:19:08,320 --> 00:19:15,320 But they're talking about George asks Atticus, do you know why the White House is white? 193 00:19:15,320 --> 00:19:20,320 And Atticus says, of course, it's after the I'm going to butcher this. 194 00:19:20,320 --> 00:19:27,320 But after some sort of engagement, the White House like burnt down. 195 00:19:27,320 --> 00:19:29,320 I don't know if it burnt down all the way, but it definitely burned. 196 00:19:29,320 --> 00:19:33,320 And so they had slaves repaint the entire house white. 197 00:19:33,320 --> 00:19:53,320 And as they're sitting there, they notice that the place they're sitting in is a freshly painted restaurant, which means that the and then like I'm and I'm thinking like, oh, and then when it hits you where you're just like, oh, shit, that means that the friendly to black people owners of that restaurant had their place burned down. 198 00:19:53,320 --> 00:20:05,320 And then now it's in the hands of somebody else. Then they look outside and there's a firetruck full of angry residents, white guys, and they are now in a chase. 199 00:20:05,320 --> 00:20:09,320 And so they get out of there. 200 00:20:09,320 --> 00:20:13,320 They make the she Leticia does something. 201 00:20:13,320 --> 00:20:23,320 I can't remember. She does a distraction. And then they all escape. And as they get to Artem. 202 00:20:23,320 --> 00:20:27,320 Well, that's when things okay. So then then they get to Artem. 203 00:20:27,320 --> 00:20:35,320 And that's when you find okay. So the whole crux of this Lovecraft country, the whole like plot of it is that there's a family called the Braithwites. 204 00:20:35,320 --> 00:20:51,320 They are mon they're sorcerers, alchemists, whoever, however, they want to describe themselves in natural philosophers, you know, however they decide that they want to refer to themselves as but they are a society of men. 205 00:20:51,320 --> 00:21:07,320 The two of them plus a society of men the order of the ancient dawn are they do have powers to some extent. And what I like about this book is that the powers that they have are not too extreme. 206 00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:23,320 They they're cool and they and they're in there, you know, fantastical and but they're not like, like no one's just flying around those just like doing super powered shit like one of them has immunity. 207 00:21:23,320 --> 00:21:36,320 So he's using like ancient that the atom, the, they say this word 1000 times why can't I think of a bit Adam language, the man there's a different word for it. 208 00:21:36,320 --> 00:21:46,320 Anyway, the language of Adam ancient Adam language, and he has those symbols on so he's basically immortal slash invincible. 209 00:21:46,320 --> 00:21:53,320 I think people but what makes him invincible which I like isn't that you can riddle him with bullets and he and it won't affect him. 210 00:21:53,320 --> 00:22:00,320 It's that you're no matter who you are what you're trying to do you will never be compelled to hurt him. 211 00:22:00,320 --> 00:22:07,320 So you'd never be able to pull the trigger you wouldn't be able to raise the gun or hit him or whatever right it's like a cool. 212 00:22:07,320 --> 00:22:11,320 It's a different type of immunity which I, which I like. 213 00:22:11,320 --> 00:22:30,320 You find out that Atticus is the descendant of a slave of an escaped slave who left right as the one of the founders of the order of ancient dawn one of the bigger sorcerer guys was trying to do this ritual and ended up blowing everybody up. 214 00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:41,320 And so she got out of there, pregnant with that dude's probably rape child, because, you know, I know slave willingly go sleep with the master right like that's a. 215 00:22:41,320 --> 00:22:48,320 That's definitely a rape, which they don't discuss but 216 00:22:48,320 --> 00:22:56,320 they find out that Atticus is a descendant, a direct descendant, and so they captures dad just to, you know, lure him out here. 217 00:22:56,320 --> 00:23:09,320 And when he gets out there. He, they stupidly leave a book of all the rules of the order of the agent on, and I think that that was a racist. 218 00:23:09,320 --> 00:23:36,320 I think that that was an underestimation because I believe that they probably thought, maybe these dudes couldn't read, or that they wouldn't be interested in reading. And that was a that was a slight, unless I'm thinking about it, Caleb Braithwaite, the son left that book on purpose, which could have also been the case because there's a lot of twisty twisty stuff going on, but 219 00:23:36,320 --> 00:23:45,320 And so dad, he wants to use Atticus in a ritual that will give him unlimited power to beg. 220 00:23:45,320 --> 00:24:06,320 And so there's a baller move, just the best, like one of the coolest parts, and that's when Atticus is in the room, like the dining room with all of the order of the ancient don't at least that chapter whatever all these like rich important powerful white men, and he. 221 00:24:06,320 --> 00:24:21,320 And all the stuff, and he gets up, and he goes, My name is Atticus Turner. And if I'm not mistaken, I'm, you know, like he says, I'm an ancestor, I'm a of the, of the guy. 222 00:24:21,320 --> 00:24:23,320 Who's the guy. 223 00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:26,320 It was. 224 00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:36,320 I don't know the not Braithwaite but the other dude that was that was the main the main source of the weather gun blew himself up doesn't matter. 225 00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:47,320 He, if I'm a and if I'm a descendant that means that I'm the highest ranking person in here, which means that you all have to listen to me so I want all of you to get up right now leave your food and just go. 226 00:24:47,320 --> 00:25:05,320 And it's like a moment. They get up, and they leave, and he just, I mean the balls and the amount of like, just fuck you for Maddicus Turner and that point was so cool, because he knew he was right, but he wasn't 100% and it could have backfired. 227 00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:07,320 But he did it. 228 00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:11,320 And he kicked ass at it and 229 00:25:11,320 --> 00:25:28,320 he loved him for that. So, the one that doesn't leave is a young man, and that's Caleb right white, and that is Samuel's son, who's very important coming up. So, he changes. 230 00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:33,320 Atticus changes something and so when they do the. 231 00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:54,320 The ritual, it ends up backfiring and and killing everybody and burning the place down, except for Atticus, and they had warned all the help so they like the staff, so like the staff got out and leticia and George, oh and they rescued Montos, Montos from from down in a cellar, whatever 232 00:25:54,320 --> 00:26:10,320 that's, I mean that's like side stuff, and then they escape, and they all go back to Chicago, and that ends the first kind of like Lovecraft country and I thought it was great I thought it was very cool, and it sets up this, this, that's more I think of the HP Lovecraftian version of it all I'm assuming 233 00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:11,320 again I haven't read it. 234 00:26:11,320 --> 00:26:13,320 But, yeah. 235 00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:36,320 Then we get into kind of the ghost story, which is, which is fun it reminds me of the episode of Angel, when Cordelia moves into her new apartment, and she meets her poltergeist roommate who scares her in the beginning, but then moving forward throughout the seasons, they become buddies, and he kind of helps her out in certain situations 236 00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:58,320 and it's great, although the ramifications of that which I think are still probably present in this is that, that ghost, I mean he's probably watching you shower and stuff, right, like if you bring someone over if Cordelia ever brought over a man and and started smashing which I'm sure she did. 237 00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:02,320 You know that ghost was there, like, 238 00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:21,320 why would he not watch, I guess if you're a ghost and you don't have a lot of things to do. Also if you were a poltergeist, and if you could physically adjust things around the world, could you technically play some video games or watch TV because if that's the case, being a poltergeist is not the worst way to spend an afterlife. 239 00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:41,320 If you can just kind of, I mean I know that I'm following this up by saying how pervy he is that he looks at people and shower and that's not why I'm saying it more, let's just forget that I said that, let's maybe I edit that out later, but let's just say that I'm mainly focusing on the video game part, but that would be fun, right, if, 240 00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:53,320 whatever, I don't, anyway, so Letitia is looking to buy a, she gets an inheritance from her mother and she decides to use it. 241 00:27:53,320 --> 00:28:06,320 She wants to buy a house to rent out and so she gets this crazy deal from this shady-esque sort of realtor guy, this white guy who says he'll help her out. 242 00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:22,320 And she buys this very cool in a white neighborhood big house, it's 14 bedrooms and it's called the Winthrop House and that's named after Hiram Winthrop who is her live-in ghost. 243 00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:40,320 So she has to kind of deal with the ghost for a little bit, right, and they, but, and that's just, I mean it's just like a back and forth, it's cool, you get like the relationship between her and Ruby a little bit, Ruby doesn't want to mess around, 244 00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:54,320 like Ruby's pissed that she spent the inheritance on a house and didn't tell her and then she's like, oh you bought a fucking haunted house, really? And so Ruby doesn't really want to have anything to do with this house and Ruby's just like in a space in her head where she doesn't know what she wants to do with life. 245 00:28:54,320 --> 00:29:15,320 And so Letitia though on the other hand is like, no I want to fucking start this house, I want to, I want to have people live in here, but this is where we see the nasty side of moving into a white neighborhood which is, it was very difficult to do as a black person at the time, right? 246 00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:26,320 It was impossible without people doing the things that happen here which is throwing bricks through windows or trying to, and then fucking up the car that was outside their house. 247 00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:42,320 So they throw this big party and they bring over a bunch of big dudes to park the car, get out, make sure that people know that they're these big dudes and then leave the car out in front to make sure that they knew that they were still there. 248 00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:55,320 Some like cool tricks but then they start harassing her and then they throw manure, like they show up and they throw a bunch of shit at her house. 249 00:29:55,320 --> 00:30:12,320 But then when these three little, these three young dudes, they break in to try to burn the place down and the ghost, the ghost like fucks them up and puts them all in the basement. 250 00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:33,320 So her and the ghost and Letitia end up becoming like friends, so almost exactly like the Cordelia thing, but like they end up becoming, they work together, so it's like they're, they both understand that, and I think she threatens him at some point to be, if she's like if you kill me I'm going to be a ghost and I'm going to haunt you, so like deal with it. 251 00:30:33,320 --> 00:31:02,320 So anyway, they become friends and that's that chapter. It's fine, it's not my favorite, but it does set up the house which is important because that's like where they all, because up in the, up in the like the, one of the rooms there's a, oh god what's it called, a, shit. 252 00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:10,320 It's called a Arbor, Arboretum? No, that's, sounds like a burrito from Taco Bell. 253 00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:17,320 Shit, anyway they find this, this, oh I'm such an idiot. 254 00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:41,320 It's a 3D representation of our solar system that spins around on its own with all the planets, you know, so whatever that is called, they find one of those in the, like the, one of the floors, one of the rooms of the Wintham house, and it fascinates Horace who is 255 00:31:41,320 --> 00:32:04,320 Hippolyta's son and Hippolyta herself, and they, I don't know if they find a key right now, but yeah I think they find a key, two keys that Hippolyta holds onto when they're like looking at it, which, so, but they, oh yeah yeah yeah, so Caleb Braithwaite then 256 00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:27,320 he's back in the story, he blackmails the Montrose and his brother, and they have to break into a museum to steal a book, and the book is hidden in this really cool booby trap that they figure out using their, like being clever about it, so it's like suspended in this like zero gravity kind of chamber and they, they don't lose anyone, thankfully. 257 00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:56,320 They're able to pull the guy back because they worked as a team, whereas a pose, like I think there's a dead person in there that tried to do it on his own, but they realize that like, if you, if you are trying to hide something there, you're going to be able to want to come back and get it, so there's got to be like a switch to turn this thing off, and so they found the switch and they turned it off, and they go, they get the books, and they think that they're trying to be secret about it by doing it the day before. 258 00:32:56,320 --> 00:33:09,320 They were supposed to do it so that that way they could switch the book out and give Caleb a different book and not the book of names, which is this crazy powerful book that they just found. 259 00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:38,320 But the reason they're even, the blackmail behind it all is that Caleb stole their, Abdullah's book, which is this, then you find out about Abdullah who was the ancestor of George and Montrose, and she escaped slavery, I think like slavery ended, and so she then went about, I think it took her 15 years or so, but she then started writing 260 00:33:38,320 --> 00:34:05,320 down, because she has a photographic memory, every job and every act of punishment against her, and she added up the total. I think she charged $12 a day for her labor, and then like $20 every time someone whipped her, or $30 or whatever, and she, it was all calculated on whatever, and she would, each year the family would get together, 261 00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:17,320 after she passed, they would get together and recalculate the interest to see what it would be worth today, or today and there today, so the 50s. 262 00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:46,320 Which, I mean, I love that concept, and like I wonder if there really are any families out there that have done something like that, that would be interesting to know, and like to see if they ever got reparations for that, because I know that people feel differently about all these sorts of things, but if a family, even 200 years ago, used slave labor to make their family have 263 00:34:46,320 --> 00:35:10,320 generational wealth over the next 200 years, and now we have rich 1% people that have directly benefited from that, then shouldn't the slaves that were there and did the work for it, shouldn't they get a portion of that? Their descendants get a portion of that, because it's like, 264 00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:35,320 I understand that people say, well, why do they deserve our money? Like that, oh, I don't understand that, I'm just saying that's stupid, like, because it's not, the generational wealth part of it is like, it's not really your money, it's money passed down from people that you're related to 200 years ago, but it's, but they, you know, they also, it's, they didn't do the work for it. 265 00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:49,320 If that happened today, it would be a moral outrage, people would be like, no, absolutely not, you don't get this money, maybe you didn't work for it, you know, you took slaves and you forced people against their will to make this shit. 266 00:35:49,320 --> 00:36:18,320 Anyway, again, fuck, I'm not gonna cure racism, I'm not even, why am I even, let's just move on, but I do think the idea of it is interesting, I would like to know if there's things like that out there. So, after they leave with the, so they leave the secret room at the museum, they have the actual book of names, and Caleb is there because the detectives were thinking that these two dudes were gonna, that these guys were gonna fuck them over, 267 00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:41,320 which, I mean, which they were, but, you know, for good reasons, and they take the book, and the guys get out lucky without having to, I guess, get arrested or get killed, which could have been, could have been something, could have been a real thing that happened because they, of course, just, I guess people back then just really enjoyed killing people, just killing black people. 268 00:36:41,320 --> 00:37:02,320 And again, this is a book, it's a drama, it's a fictionalized version of events, so none of these people really existed, but at the same time, there's no way that this isn't a pretty realistic depiction of probably some events that happened back then. 269 00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:20,320 This probably wasn't an everyday thing, but I can't imagine that this stuff didn't happen. Maybe they're like the, when Latisha tried moving into a white neighborhood, that shit probably happened every day, and the sundown county, holy fucking shit, I didn't even know that existed, but anyway. 270 00:37:20,320 --> 00:37:49,320 Then we get to the one part of the book where I'm, this is, I'm gonna say con, like pro-con, because it's my favorite chapter, but I feel like the TV show did it better, and that doesn't happen very often for me, where I think a movie or a TV show does better than the book, because, you know, when you're reading a book, I think, and I have coworkers that I work with that don't read books. 271 00:37:49,320 --> 00:38:18,320 I don't think they've ever read a book, and they ask me why I think books are better than movies, and of course you can say that like building something in your own head, you get more freedom, it's a more realized vision, you know, sometimes, and using your own imagination, I think, is a lot more fun to do, because it makes your brain work a little bit more, to get the same, like, instead of just cutting down on the, 272 00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:45,320 because when you're watching a movie, that takes care of sound and visual, right there, so you don't have, your brain's not working to create those things, it's just working to process them, so, but what I really think the thing that makes, that makes TV shows and movies not as great, is that you don't get to see the thoughts of the characters, right, you don't get their internal monologues. 273 00:38:45,320 --> 00:39:14,320 Like, the reason I like Hunger Games, the book over Hunger Games, the movie, I think, and the only reason I'm using that is because that, I heard about Hunger Games, the movie coming out, back in the day, when the first one came out in theaters, and I found on Kindle Hunger Games, and so I started reading it the night, like the Thursday night before the movie came out, and it's such a fun, quick, like, action-y, action-packed read, that I finished it at like 8 a.m. 274 00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:36,320 I just went all night, I just did an all-nighter on Hunger Games, and I was like, fuck, that was fun, and so I went and saw the 10 a.m. showing of Hunger Games, which was the quickest and most complete version of a, reading a book to watching a movie that I think you can even do, is do a whole all-nighter read a book and then go see a movie, 275 00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:59,320 and I will say that I was watching the movie just thinking, huh, it's really missing something without her thoughts the whole time, where it's just her just kind of quietly going through the fourth, and I understand that's what they're going for, and if you just watch the movie, there's nothing wrong with it, because you're like, oh, she's a hunter, it's all this cool stuff, but having her thoughts really makes a difference, it flushes out her characters. 276 00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:26,320 I think Katniss in the movie is a little cold-hearted and unapproachable and unlikable, but I think in the book, there's reasons for that, and she's not even that unlikable, like she doesn't come off as unlikable in the book, because you see the reasonings behind her actions, and so we get to, after for some reason a Hunger Games tangent, 277 00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:42,320 we get to, Hippolta disturbs the universe, which is absolutely a phenomenal, just very cool thing, so Hippolta, George's wife, she has not been a major character in this book so far. 278 00:40:42,320 --> 00:41:04,320 She's just kind of, in the show I believe she's kind of like an overweight, middle-aged, just woman, just black woman, and nothing's like special, you wouldn't think like, oh, in this show is she going to do anything, or even in this book, but she likes to travel, and she's a contributor to the Safe Negro Guide, 279 00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:16,320 and she really, even later on in the book she says, you know George, you know how I get, I just want to get in my car, and I just want to drive, and I just want to get out there and explore, which I get, that's so cool. 280 00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:37,320 So she has these two keys that she found in that solar system map, 3D map, and it has an address on it, and it's an observatory, and she does like this flashback where she was a little girl, and she's always been fascinated with space, 281 00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:52,320 and they were announcing that they had found Planet X, which her and her father had been looking for ever since she was like a kid, ever since they discussed the idea of there being a Planet X, her and her dad would go look for it with their telescope. 282 00:41:52,320 --> 00:42:07,320 She, when they announced that Planet X has been discovered, she gets a stat, like she's a little bummed because she didn't find it of course, but you know, what were the odds, so, but then she goes, maybe I can name it. 283 00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:27,320 So she went through all the names and she discovers the best one would be Pluto because of, and it makes sense in the book, he explains the god Pluto versus, she had like two gods lined up, and I think she went with Pluto, and so she wrote it down, she sent it in the mail to the observatory that was dealing with this. 284 00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:51,320 A few months later or weeks or whatever, there's a newspaper and they're saying that the planet is now called Pluto, and she heart, like it's, you know, elated, but then she sees that it's a different girl, some girl that lives in England, and the only reason that the little girl in England got it was because her family was rich enough to afford a telegraph, 285 00:42:51,320 --> 00:43:18,320 as opposed to her young, Hippolyta, having to go to the school, you know, get one of their envelopes and put it into the mail service, so it just got there too late, and it's just kind of heartbreaking and sad, and not necessarily, you know, I mean that's just the disparage of wealth between, you know, I guess, whites and blacks, but like that, 286 00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:37,320 that's just like, that would hurt my heart a little bit, it was really sad, so cut to her as like a young woman in college, and she kind of breaks into this observatory, which is cool, she reminds me of a friend that I have named Michelle, who is one of those like rule breakers, 287 00:43:37,320 --> 00:44:00,320 where like, she'll go places she's not allowed, and then sweet talk her way into letting them keep her there, and that's exactly what Hippolyta does, she goes to this observatory, and she just sweet talks herself to this like cute white boy who lets her in, and he lets her look through the telescope, and it's amazing, 288 00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:21,320 so she makes it an effort to, anytime she comes across an observatory, out on her travels for the Safe New York Guide or whatever, she tries to like break in, I'm using quotes here, break in, she doesn't really break in, she goes and she knocks on the door and she asks, can I look, and then they, sometimes people will quiz her on like how much do you know, 289 00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:48,320 and she's super knowledgeable about space, so they'll be like impressed and let her in despite her skin color and all that stuff, and I mean, and you just think, God, if she was just in a different time, if she was like existed today, she would be like, she would be an astronaut, you know, like it would, or like she'd be working for NASA, and it just sucks that she has to like con, you know, quote unquote her way into these, into these places or whatever, charm her way in more, 290 00:44:48,320 --> 00:45:14,320 so she goes to this astronomical observatory that was owned by Hiram Winthrop, the house owner, who was one of the ancient, the dawn of the ancient, order of the ancient dawn guys, and he, so she goes in, she sneaks back to the guards, past the guard shack, and she goes up there, 291 00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:43,320 and she sees this telescope, I guess, but it's not, it doesn't like go out and just like, it doesn't show anything, there's no opening for the, for the telescope to move around or do anything, right, so she sees this group of numbers, and she starts, she types in, like I think one or two or whatever, and it opens a doorway to another dimension, another planet, right, 292 00:45:43,320 --> 00:46:04,320 and she starts typing in numbers kind of indiscriminately, looking through the hole, seeing all of these different places, and she's fascinated by it, and she eventually, she, she says that she looks in the back of the book and uses the answer key, which I think is she had numbers that she had written down, or that had been written down, 293 00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:29,320 so she just types those numbers in, and it opens up on this beach and this planet, and so she steps out, because, and it, I mean, and I love that when she's going through, she puts her finger through, but it's kind of like painful and resistance, and then she realizes that you can't do this in half measures, if you're going to go through, you have to go through, so she steps through very bravely, very cool, 294 00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:53,320 and now she's in this like beach area, and she looks up, and there's a cottage, like a gated, like, like place with stairs leading up there, and she, and like, whoa, what are the chances that on this different dimension there's a thing, so she goes up there, and she meets a woman named, oh god, it wasn't Pearl, well Ida, 295 00:46:53,320 --> 00:47:08,320 she meets a woman named Ida who tells her the tragic story about how she ended up there, which was that, that Winthrop, to punish her, 296 00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:30,320 like her, her son, or sorry, her daughter Pearl, her son, her daughter Pearl eloped with Winthrop's son, which was an interracial marriage at the time, 297 00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:56,320 and in order to punish Ida and the other employees, he puts them in a completely different dimension, in this little house that gives them, basically has a Star Trek replicator type thing where you just type in a number and it gives you this bag of food that could be ranging from something decent-ish to absolute foul, 298 00:47:56,320 --> 00:48:18,320 like bugs, like larva coming out or whatever, grubs that you'd have to eat, and the punishment was that they're putting, like Winthrop put them there so that they would never see anyone ever again, it's like, this is a fate worse than death, because you're going to be all the way out here by yourselves with no one else, 299 00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:47,320 and eventually the other ones die and now it's just Ida, and so Ida helps Hippolta escape, and when, oh, and then when Ida, when Hippolta asks Ida to come with her, like Ida's, Hipp, Ida's like, no, like this is like kind of her home now, 300 00:48:47,320 --> 00:49:15,320 she doesn't want anyone to know her location because she doesn't want anyone to be able to find Pearl, but then later on you find out that Pearl and her husband died in a racist fire, which, wait, no, am I wrong here? 301 00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:36,320 I believe, yeah, they're the ones that died, they're the ones that got, when we get to that chapter, but anyway, okay, so Hippolta comes back and she, but she leaves her comic book on the ground, the one that her son writes, her artist son Horace writes these comic books, 302 00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:57,320 and she accidentally leaves it as she's leaving because these white guys find her and then they end up dying through various means, and so that's the end of that, but the reason I like the TV show better in this particular situation is the episode is called I Am in the show, 303 00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:23,320 and it is crazy how much like, so she actually, so in the book, she only, like she looks through the door and she sees these different portals, but in the show she walks through them, and she meets these, 304 00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:38,320 like she learns all this stuff, she sees all these things, it's been a while since I've, it's been a while since I've watched it, and I'm gonna probably watch the show, or at least this episode again, but she becomes like an Amazon, 305 00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:56,320 she like discovers who she is in a way that's crazy, like she almost gets like access to unlimited knowledge, like the universe opens up in this infinite way in front of her, and she like understands it, like of all the characters that could have went through there, 306 00:50:56,320 --> 00:51:15,320 like Atticus wouldn't have gotten the same, Horace might have gotten some sort of revelation, but her being the one that could understand it, being the smartest one there, she like really, like I've watched this, this episode of television, I Am, 307 00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:34,320 of Lovecraft Country, might be my favorite television episode of just any series, and I'm putting a lot of them up there, there's, you know, you have the Once More Feeling Buffy episode, you have the musical episode from Psych, 308 00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:55,320 I know those are both musical episodes, that's not gonna be a theme, but you know, there's some Breaking Bad episodes that are pretty up there, you know, but something about I Am, this episode, it's just, it hits me, it reminded, you know what it was, and maybe it won't hit me the same, because I've seen everything everywhere all at once, 309 00:51:55,320 --> 00:52:16,320 but this was the prototype to everything everywhere all at once, I feel, like this walked, or this ran so everything everywhere could fly, because that is one of my favorite movies that I've seen in a long time, one of the most impactful, just kind of like gets you in the feels, 310 00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:34,320 and it's just exciting to watch kind of movies, loved it, but I Am, I feel like is even more, it's like less silly than everything, so it feels more grounded, it feels more real, and she like learns a lot of stuff, 311 00:52:34,320 --> 00:52:55,320 it's just, it's so good, so like even if you don't want to watch a whole series on this, which I think you should, don't just skip to episode seven, there's only 10 episodes, so like just watch it, it's a great series, it's what got me to read this book actually, 312 00:52:55,320 --> 00:53:13,320 I did, I've never even heard about this book, and I watched the show, and then when I finished the show, I had to read it, and I'm glad that they're different, they're so different, the book and the show, like, I even think they say that the show is inspired by the novel, right, there's episodes that don't exist, 313 00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:38,320 there's storylines that don't exist in the book that are in here, because the novel is only a handful of chapters, one, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, so there's at least two more episodes, and some of these chapters are very like quick, so I would imagine that they contain, that they sort of doubled them up, doubled up on some of them, 314 00:53:38,320 --> 00:54:01,320 so then we get into the next chapter, Jekyll and Hyde Park, and that is a great title, I'm always a fan of great titles, and that one is so good, so Ruby, we haven't really checked in with her much, she runs into Caleb Braithwaite, 315 00:54:01,320 --> 00:54:22,320 as she's making her way to Letitia's party, but because Letitia's house is haunted, she doesn't really want to be there, so she ends up like, kind of just absconding with Caleb, but she doesn't know who Caleb is, she's never met this guy, he's just kind of a cute white guy who is into her a little bit, it feels like, and so he takes her out at a good time, 316 00:54:22,320 --> 00:54:43,320 and then he makes her a proposal, and she decides to, she agrees to it, and then she wakes up the next morning as a white woman, and it takes her a while to get, like to get used to it, because it scares the shit out of her, she didn't know what she was signing up for, 317 00:54:43,320 --> 00:55:08,320 but once she adjusts to it, she starts to get addicted to it a little bit, like, because the way she's treated out in public, like by people, is different, one of the first encounters is she goes to the store of this woman who rejected to hiring her, 318 00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:27,320 and she sees that the woman is there, and so she puts a scarf in that woman's purse, and then tells the police that she stole, stole it or whatever, and they, like, believe her instantly, because she's a white woman, an attractive white woman, with red hair, 319 00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:48,320 and she starts, so she starts using, so she starts working for Caleb, and they come up with this whole thing where she lives in this house, and she's both the maid and the occupant of the house, so she's Hillary, she calls herself Hillary Everest at first, because Hillary is the man who climbed Mount Everest, 320 00:55:48,320 --> 00:56:07,320 and she has always wanted to be a sherpa, it's always been kind of a dream job, because she thought, well, why wouldn't you want to work a job where you get to look at those views every day, and later she changes her name to Hillary Hyde, to kind of, because it is sort of her bad persona in a way, 321 00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:32,320 so she has to go to this meeting where you see all the different, like, the different lodges of the Order of the Ancient Dawn, and they are all meeting up, and that's when Caleb comes out and says that they should all join forces, that, like, hey, we're all doing our own things, we're keeping secrets from each other, 322 00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:44,320 it's time that we just pooled our resources and started something bigger than us, and, like, you know, and then, but I think I should probably be the one to run it, is kind of what he's doing. 323 00:56:44,320 --> 00:57:09,320 So, later, Ruby goes down into the basement, and she discovers that the white woman that she keeps turning into is down there, in a, being, like, frozen, you know, like, kept alive, and she is being used her blood to make that potion that Ruby keeps taking, 324 00:57:09,320 --> 00:57:30,320 and there's, like, a lot of that potion in there, so she, yeah, it's like she stays, though, like, she likes it too much, I guess, and she stays, and that's, I mean, like, she's just, so, Ruby's kind of a, does that make her a flawed character? 325 00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:52,320 So, I was thinking about, like, Ruby's probably the most unlikable one in the group, and I think she's written that way, but why? I don't think that she is wrong for not wanting to stay in an actual haunted home, like, if you're legit afraid of ghosts that actually exist, then, yeah, I don't see, like, that's a problem, 326 00:57:52,320 --> 00:58:21,320 and, yeah, I would imagine that if you found a potion that turned you into somebody that the general public views as equal, as opposed to sub-equal, then, like, why not, I mean, but it does, it does change, you know, like, is it a betrayal of being black, or is it, like, a cheat code that she shouldn't be using, she should be using? 327 00:58:21,320 --> 00:58:35,320 I don't know, but it's definitely a, I don't know, it's sad, because, like, she knows that she shouldn't like it, but she does. 328 00:58:35,320 --> 00:58:57,320 So, we get then to the next chapter, Narrow House, where, and by the way, moving forward, I'm not going to go chapter by chapter for every book, it's just that this one happens to be built, like, TV shows, like, episodes, so, you know, like, most books can just be thought of as, like, you know, these chunks or whatever, but this kind of does this. 329 00:58:57,320 --> 00:59:12,320 But we get to the Narrow House, which you just find out is about the guy who built that observatory, I think it's his daughter and the guy that she ran off with. 330 00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:37,320 They both were killed, they get burned down to death, and so Montrose, who is sent there by Caleb with Atticus to go find, to go find Henry Winthrop, the son of the guy who built the house, they find out that he died, and they were there to get the notebooks, 331 00:59:37,320 --> 01:00:02,320 and Montrose sits there and he, they, they, like, the ghost tells Montrose, like, his entire story, and Montrose sits there, because he, like, wants, Montrose is like, I want to help my son, like, these people are trying to kill my son, they're using him for this stupid sorcery stuff, you should know you're the son of this guy. 332 01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:31,320 He's talking to the ghost of Henry, or, or, he's talking to the ghost of Henry Winthrop, and the ghost is malevolent at first and violent and accusatory, but then when, when, when Montrose says he wants to save his son, that's when, that's when the ghost shows him what happened, and it's a sad, you know, how they, how they died, how they, they tried to make it, but they died. 333 01:00:31,320 --> 01:00:58,320 And they, across the, there's another address, so they were like 213 West Elm Street, but on 213 East Elm Street, there's a guy, and the neighbors have a sign pointing at his house saying, nigger lover, and because he helped that family out, and so, like, it's this, you see it everywhere, and they get killed, and, 334 01:00:58,320 --> 01:01:06,320 and so, like, Atticus walks in, and Montrose is just sitting there, and he's got these ashen-covered notebooks, so he does find them. 335 01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:29,320 And then we get into, I would say, maybe my, probably my least favorite chapter, I don't know, but Horace, he's a kid, you follow him around, it's him and his buddies talking about different, like, stuff that they've heard happen to different people about, you know, like, hey, don't trust this guy, you know, like, they'll, like, like, racist things that have happened. 336 01:01:29,320 --> 01:01:51,320 Oh, yeah, so, but the main part of it is that the detectives find Horace, and they ask him about his comic book, and when Horace accidentally, unintentionally tells them that his mother had the book, they put a spell on him, because they're part of the order, of, that he can't say anything. 337 01:01:51,320 --> 01:02:11,320 And so he, anytime he does, he gets this, like, he gets sick, he gets this, like, itchy feeling, he just can't, right? And so, he tries, like, he tries to, there's this devil doll that somebody finds, and it tries to attack him. 338 01:02:11,320 --> 01:02:21,320 But, and that's, and that's what, like, I didn't really care, like, there's a devil doll chasing around, it's like, almost feels like Chucky, I guess. 339 01:02:21,320 --> 01:02:45,320 But, Ruby, who Horace has always liked, he is able to, using Scrabble letters, spell out enough that Ruby is able to help, like, Ruby is able to then help, like, piece everything together. 340 01:02:45,320 --> 01:03:05,320 So Ruby goes and tells Caleb, Caleb then helps undo the curse, and now we are in a point where it's Caleb versus Captain Lancaster, who is the guy who runs the Order of the, the Order of the Ancient Dawn. 341 01:03:05,320 --> 01:03:18,320 And now we get to the last, the last chapter, which is, all, all the family gets together, they share what's happened. So I love that that happened, because all of this has been happening kind of behind each other's backs. 342 01:03:18,320 --> 01:03:36,320 So Atticus and Montrose and George and Letitia tell you what happened at the Ardham Lodge, the ghost stuff that happened to Letitia, you know, the breaking in and getting the book, which Hapalta doesn't like, but then, that George went and did that, but then George doesn't like that. 343 01:03:36,320 --> 01:03:50,320 Hapalta went to a different universe, different planet, without telling him. Ruby does not tell them that she's been turning into a white woman. That's, she's ashamed of it, I think, and she doesn't tell them. 344 01:03:50,320 --> 01:04:12,320 And then Montrose tells him about the narrow house, which is the name of the, they changed their name to Narrow, I think, Henry and Pearl. And then Horace tells them about what happened to him, and they all come up with a plan to really come out on top. 345 01:04:12,320 --> 01:04:27,320 And so, oh, one of the things that Caleb did to get the book of names was that he gave them what, Abdullah's book, they were owed like 300 and something thousand dollars. 346 01:04:27,320 --> 01:04:42,320 And so, Caleb just gave them that money, as a, like to pay back their debt, as sort of to like make him seem like a good guy, but I like that Montrose was like, no, you don't come off as a good guy for paying what you owe, you know. 347 01:04:42,320 --> 01:05:07,320 So, that was pretty cool. And the, so everyone gets together, they, Caleb has a plan, Lancaster has a plan, but they get Winthrop's ghost to help them, and they end up, 348 01:05:07,320 --> 01:05:30,320 Lancaster gets lured into a room, he gets swallowed by this like shadow monster thing. And then Atticus changes some letters of that, of that Adam language, and he, so he alters, that's what it is, alters Caleb's thing, his immunity. 349 01:05:30,320 --> 01:05:51,320 And so, they drive, they drive him out, out of state, Caleb, and they go like, hey, so, you don't have immunity anymore, or it's a different kind, you're not allowed to come into these, I'd stay out of these areas, they hand him a safe Negro guide, and they go, I'd stay out of these, out of these areas. 350 01:05:51,320 --> 01:06:05,320 And unless you're, you'll get real sick, and if you try to use magic, and that's the worst part, if you try to use any magic, you're gonna get sick or whatever. And so, he reaches back into his brain, he finds he can't do magic, and he thinks, you know, it's like, why would you do this? 351 01:06:05,320 --> 01:06:22,320 And he's like, it's cruel or whatever, and then they drove away, which I love. So he gets his comeuppance, they buy the house, the Winthrop house, outright, with that $300,000 or some of it, and then they put a safe in their house, and they win. 352 01:06:22,320 --> 01:06:37,320 So, they beat Caleb, none of them die. Ruby, during the final mission, does disguise herself as Hillary, and helps them, and never tells them that that's what she did. 353 01:06:37,320 --> 01:06:57,320 So, as of right now, in the story, if there wasn't right now, because there is a sequel, so there is gonna be more to it, I don't know if they're gonna continue on these threads or not, but as of right now, she might still, because she has full access to an unlimited supply of that potion. 354 01:06:57,320 --> 01:07:13,320 And, or at least a bunch of it, so, and she has that house, so I don't know what's gonna happen with Ruby. So, how did I feel about the book? I really liked it. I think it's got some pretty gruesome parts. 355 01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:30,320 It teaches you a lot about, like, the Jim Crow era south, and just, but in an interesting way that's not just like a history book, you know, where it's just facts. 356 01:07:30,320 --> 01:07:55,320 Like, this is a fictionalized version, so he's allowed to play around with themes and stuff, and since it's based in the supernatural science fiction-y kind of universe, like, it just gives it this eerie backdrop of, you know, the racism is bad enough, but there's also monsters lurking, you know, and it's not just racist. 357 01:07:55,320 --> 01:08:15,320 And so, yeah, I, if I'm gonna, so let's see, what's my rating? I should've thought of this before. If I was gonna give this a rating of, what was a big theme throughout all of this? I don't wanna say out of five racisms, what would I give this? 358 01:08:15,320 --> 01:08:37,320 But, let's see, okay, out of, okay, out of Cthulhu arms, I don't know how many arms Cthulhu has, I'm gonna say there's five Cthulhu arms. So out of five Cthulhu arms, I'm gonna give this a four. 359 01:08:37,320 --> 01:08:47,320 I think it was great, I think it's definitely worth a read. I think it's a little short, I think you could've done more with some of the chapters. 360 01:08:47,320 --> 01:09:04,320 But, it's enough to get me super excited, maybe a 4.5, maybe 4.5 Cthulhu arms, if we're gonna be honest, because it really, it was engaging. But the show, it's worth both, worth watching and reading, so, or listening to. 361 01:09:04,320 --> 01:09:20,320 So yeah, oh, let's do next week's movie, because I didn't say that, I didn't say that this time, did I? One second, I'm just gonna pause this. 362 01:09:20,320 --> 01:09:40,320 Okay, so the first, the book I'm gonna be reading next week is brought to you by Austin from Fried Rice Podcast. He recommended that I read Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, a book I have not read. 363 01:09:40,320 --> 01:09:57,320 I have read Heinlein's work before, I've read Starship Troopers, which I quite enjoyed, and so this is about, I think, a guy, a Martian moving to Earth with powers and stuff, a little bit of reverse John Carter, it sounds like. 364 01:09:57,320 --> 01:10:24,320 So, it's interesting, it was either that or George Orwell's 1984. So, if you would like to recommend a book for me to read next, we have a, we have a voicemail, I won't answer it, it doesn't even ring, just, if you wanna leave a voicemail, you could, 365 01:10:24,320 --> 01:10:44,320 702-829-0117, again that's 702-829-0117, if you call that number, listen to our fun little Fried Rice Podcast voice recording and leave a, leave what book you wanna read, chances are I'll read it. 366 01:10:44,320 --> 01:11:00,320 I will definitely take requests, so if you wanna hear my thoughts on it, let's do it. This has been Wednesday Night Book Club, let me just get this outro music real quick. 367 01:11:00,320 --> 01:11:04,320 There we go. 368 01:11:04,320 --> 01:11:10,320 So intense, thank you AI. 369 01:11:10,320 --> 01:11:14,320 Jesus Christ, it's so bad. 370 01:11:14,320 --> 01:11:22,320 Alright, well, we'll see you next week, this has been a lot of fun. 371 01:11:22,320 --> 01:11:41,320 Have a good night guys.