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I learned about The-up-and-under from this interview! Much appreciated.

A good prose style is recognizable due to it being unique. This why Hemingway, Nabokov, Woolf, etc. all stand out as they have recognizable, individual prose styles that are unique but also poetic.

Tolkien is my favorite; so, I like longer sentences, a higher number of adjective/adverbs, and fewer Latinate words. It would be interesting to see how these numbers compare to some non-fantasy great writers (like Dickens, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Austen, etc.).

haven't read any of Tolkien's other books yet, but I just started reading the silmarillion today. this video definitely helped reset my expectations, so thank you!

Dead Cities alum here. I remember those days with fondness and miss them in earnest. It was always fun to see new Stover readers come on and start exploring their...own attempts and use of creative invective. 😎

Definitely agree with Craig's assessment of Raithe as the embodiment of "human nature" in the book, insofar as it relates to how a real, single person would react to all of this. While the Blind God and Kollberg are the embodiment of humanity itself, that's more of a collective thing, and it isn't actually necessarily evil either. The Blind God and the mass of humanity does what it can to survive and thrive. Raithe is completely driven by his human emotions.

Posted this on Twitter(X) but decided to comment here too: Within the span of 30 minutes we get a reference to one of the best quotes Tommy Lee Jones uttered in MIB(of all things) a comparison between Caine's and Cersei Lannister's not-dissimilar motivations and a contrasting of libertarianism and Scottish Enlightenment values. Wow!

My theory, the Valar misinterpreted the visions of Arda. They saw that Arda must be a garden paradise for the Ainur and the Elves. However, they failed to see that Men and Dwarves have the affinity to create, invent, and develop their society compared to the happy go lucky immortal elves. So, my guess is, everytime a human or dwarf manages to discover a life changing invention, like steam, gunpowder, or whatever it is that pushed society to the industrial age, they secretly assassinate that person. There's a reason they decided to intervene against Morgoth and Sauron even if the Valar allowed them to increase their strength... Morgoth and Sauron was on the brink of industrialization and thus had to either commit genocide again or do it strategically without destroying the landscape.

You'd think there would be because of all the wars that go on through the ages. Sauron is in hiding for a while and orcs are generally abit stupid so I think they wouldn't advance much. Elves live forever so I'd think they would advance as they have the same elves working on things for a long period of time and information isn't passed on like with humans and no need to learn new things because you've known it for thousands of years. Men I think they would have the most reason because they don't live as long and are usually the ones that are under attack the most. And lastly we forget it's a fiction book/films and it would totally ruin everything. Imagine reading about the 1st age or even before where they're fighting with swords and bow and arrows then in the 3rd age it's tanks and rocket launchers 😂 also in real life let's just say we were at the same stage in the year 0 as the first age. It's over 10,000 years later at the end of the 3rd age so they'd be 8000 years further into civilisation as us which would be crazy.

You skipped over a synonym for prosaic that I like... "straightforward".

My favourite by far is Cormac McCarthy. I wish he wrote some fantasy stories too.

Just ordered my ultra deluxe on the barnes and noble site so they still have them

English isn't my first language - and I struggled to read Middlemarch before giving it up - but the sentence you gave at 7:22 seems pretty straightforward to me. What's difficult to understand for native English speakers in it?

I got into lord of the rings because of the films I tryed to read the books I found the hard to read 📚 lots of names that hard hard to pronounce

I strongly dislike modern covers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with liking well made timeless looking and feeling anything. Books are one of the highest levels of human achievement. Along with art, architecture etc. There is something holy about a library with beautiful books floor to ceiling. The same as a beautiful church or building, the same as a beautiful painting, poem or song. I seriously don’t understand how publishers don’t capitalize on the fact that readers LOVE their libraries and many if not most want the best quality book they can buy for their shelf. I understand hard backs but they even feel and look underwhelming and cheap on the shelf. I would buy an expensive over built book 100% of the time if it were an option.

It's not where the words came from that makes Sanderson so bad. It's what he does with them. Look at your example passages. Tolkien's adjective laden description expresses the characters' impressions and experience of their surroundings. Sanderson's narration, on the other hand, is an omniscient info-dump. He's not so much telling a story as telling us *_about_* a story. Also, good story tellers illuminate characters through interactions, while Sanderson resorts to internal monologues instead. When his characters do speak, they tend to spit out character notes. "He's the kind of guy who ..." "You're changing." "She would never ..." "He's a good man."

What some people may or may not know is the fact that whether which copy you buy the text block is exactly the same , the only difference is the sprayed edges , in this case either blue or gold , and then put them in their prospective boards , cloth and leather for the super deluxe version and standard paper boards for the dust jacket standard edition

you are great at speaking on camera.

Which one holds out better for continuous reading?

Tolkien probably had a bad taste about new technology due to his experiences in WWI. That said, the economy of his country depended on industry, making him a bit elitist. So, in many ways, another fictional aspect of the Legendarium is that technology either doesn't progress or else only beings of greater-than-human ability can advance it.

Great job, Prof Craig. Where Tolkien is proposing the usefulness of history runs parallel to the Catholic thought towards the Bible, where it is as much a library of stories - a history of salvation - rather than a dictated ‘word of God’ with a specific message ‘the author wants to say’. Intermingled therein, are the wills, woes and wilfulness of people, and much more. I found the Silmarillion best read beginning with whichever prose or verse draws one in.

4:26 I think of Stephen King as simple but I like him, and people often think older is automatically harder to read but Three Musketeers is fantastic and just about anyone with an 8th grade reading level could get through it w a dictionary, which would barely have to be used

I absolutely love Erikson’s prose.

Not every world has to follow the same direction of development as ours. Technology and science are replacing the lack of magic and supernatural abilities in our world. So, as there is magic and sorcery in the world, they follow a different direction of development...

I read your book Kaikeyi. Such a shame. Worst portrayal of Shree Ram. Hated it! May Ram give you more wisdom, and help you come out of this poor mindset. Jai Shree Ram

This is fantastic! Exactly my kind of nerdy, rigorously intelligent, book-bound thinking aloud.

my most precious edition is the green 1995 paperback edition from 1995. Was the cheapest available, the print smudges when you rub overit. My exs rat from back in early 2000‘s gnawed it, it’s covered in notes from 30 years of reading and the pages are yellow brown, some fixed with tape. Wouldn’t give it away for anything.

Sanderson. I like understanding what i'm reading. Life is complex enough. "Apes together strong"

I’ve just got it and it’s amazing Ive just started to collect books now and this one was a grate start I’m going to get the lot of the rings deluxe Edition Next and after that I will be getting the silmarillion deluxe edition as well

I wonder if these sample sizes were long enough to derive meaningful results.

First time I read it, I read the first three chapters and had to take a nap. Sooooo many names, locations, concepts. I love it. The worldbuilding is second to none. Setting the stage for the entire Tolkien Legendarium.

ah you remind me of the first choose your own adventure book, The Cave Of Time.

Pros before Poes.

do either of these versions contain an index and/or an epilogue? Also, what is the text based on? Is it the same text as the 50th anniversary edition?

Da fuck is "prose"

Wish me luck.........I've watched this, now im off to read that.😀

Tolkien's prose flirts with meter at times without breaking into outright poetry (see the opening of the Battle of the Pellenor Fields), and he also throws in conventions of Germanic poetry. Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli meeting Eomer follows the "Who are you stranger?" -> "I'm <name>, and this is why I'm a badass" convention that you see in Germanic poetry when a foreigner runs across a local patrol, including the whole "stranger should identify himself first" bit of manners. It also begins with a line of straight-up Germanic alliterative verse: "What néws from the nórth, / ríders of Róhan?"

I would love a long video on an in depth analysis of JK Rowling’s writing style writin style from you! Your way of analysing prose is unqiuely insightful and really different from all the other prose-analysis videos I've seen.

This is so STRANGE. Just open and READ IT. No instructions needed

Growing up, I really enjoyed thick descriptive prose. Now I feel like so many things are competing for my attention that I get really irritated with fluff words and descriptions that take forever to get to the point. Your adjectives scale illustrates this well, because even though Rothfuss is long winded, his descriptions don't feel overbearing to me. Very few words are wasted and it keeps me from having to skim paragraphs like I do with other authors.

In respect for you and your efforts, I have watched all three of your "What Makes Prose Good?" videos. I am an author, though not of renown. For a decade I've made my living recording audio-books. I've read aloud narrative voices good, bad, diverse, youthful and mature, so I feel qualified to offer a... well, not a rebuttal, but hopefully a useful response. The first quality of bad prose: has the writer mastered the rules? An example I can never forget: "The dancer spun until her skirt rose to her waste." Yikes! Homophone confusion turns up often because automated spell-checkers miss them, and an error like that will send one's pages straight into the waste basket. Second quality of bad prose: has the writer paid attention? Did he sleepwalk through his own work, allowing all manner of cliches and zombie idioms into his sentences? Orwell condemned such somnolent typing in his famous essay "Politics and the English Language." "We ordered him to tow the line." Here the writer employs a cliche so necrotic he fails to understand one puts one toes on a line in a formation, rather than pulling on a rope. Obviously this writer is not thinking. Third: does the writer seek to communicate, or to impress and deceive? An academic might dress simple ideas in polysyllabic frippery to make them appear profound. "The intersecting interstices of our social contexts...." A propagandist will resort to vague passive tenses and euphemisms to conceal. "Mistakes were made." Who made this mistake? "Ethnic cleansing" sanitizes the murder of entire populations. Again, Orwell railed against such deceits. (For those unfamiliar with Orwell's essay, I've recorded it on my channel.) Logically, good prose will seek the opposite! A good writer has mastered the rules so thoroughly, he can break them for effect. "A circular story -- the ouroboros has swallowed its tale." A good writer seeks to communicate efficiently, clearly, and employs fresh, vivid, memorable idioms. (I once called some particularly awful prose "a metaphor milkshake.") Is the writer awake, and does he aspire to keep his reader awake and entertained? Has our author feasted on prose of quality, and poetry too, and honed a keen sense of aesthetics and beauty? Bradbury, show us your nouns. “Above, like a great baroque peacock striding the bricks and asphalt, the freaks’ eyes opened out, to stare, to search office roofs, church spires, read dentists’ and opticians’ signs, check dime and dry goods stores as drums shocked plate glass windows and wax dummies quaked in facsimiles of fear.” Lovecraft, I call you from your Providence graveyard to teach us adjectives. "“They were pinkish things about five feet long; with crustaceous bodies bearing vast pairs of dorsal fins or membranous wings and several sets of articulated limbs, and with a sort of convoluted ellipsoid, covered with multitudes of very short antennae, where a head would ordinarily be....” Tolkien, thrill us with your verbs. "“Tall and proud he seemed again. And rising in his stirrups he cried in a loud voice, more clear than any there had ever heard a mortal man achieve before: ‘Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter! Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!’ With that he seized a great horn from Guthláf his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder.” I caution against the brute measurement of Latin or Germanic/Saxon words. Saxon words tend to be shorter, and Shakespeare wisely teaches us, "brevity is the soul of wit... more matter with less art." But a good writer keeps Latin in his treasury of words too. Consider the unmemorable phrase, "a town far and lucky." Fine for a first draft, but on reading this aloud the writer might decide to fix the rhythm with iambs. "a FAR and LUCky TOWN." Better! But he might also make the words more evocative with alliteration, "a town far and fortunate." So I would not ask, "does this writer employ more Latin or Saxon words," but "does this writer care enough to elevate his prose?" Is he putting in the work? I'd suggest that your Oxford author meant not "justice" as the strength of prose, but "judgment." Efficient, clear, memorable prose demands judicious and meticulous discernment. Forgive me sir, I must call your methods reductive. There are no shortcuts to producing or even to measuring good prose.

I think it is a pretty big deal that these “deluxe” editions aren’t Smyth sewn. That’s simply unacceptable to me at that price point.

Do you actually read the leather bound editions? I did so with "The final empire" and managed to rub off parts of the gold foil from the back cover while handling the book, which makes me kind of reluctant to continue with "The well of ascension" in the same manner.

I feel your thumbnail privileged pain! The horrors, the horrors! To have a souped-up edition of the Hobbit and not it be what you want it to be! You wish that none of this ever happened? 📖 📚 The Legendarium: it RUINS it!!!! We must staaaarve of quality! A chance to show quality! Book: think of me better if I'm returned...

Does anyone know what font The Way of Shadows is? I can't find it anywhere.

It is not the end of the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien borrowed Celtic and Norse legend, such as a western island of the blessed. Alexander borrowed the same legends.

I was excited to get into Rothfuss, as I couldn't stand reading Sanderson's prose, then I found out Rothfuss is a lying pig.

Maybe the slip cases should be slightly bigger i.e. wider).

Mathom wouldn't be nearly as offensive if the color of the cover was the same as the Hobbit (like the pamphlet in the Silmarillion).

The cloth at the top is called the headband.