Six of Crows – Leigh Bardugo – Episode 39
The Buddies take their first foray into the Grishaverse with Leigh Bardugo’s, Six of Crows. This book had all of the elements of a Buddy Book Club favorite. Adventure – check. Heist Story – Check. Revenge – check. 6th Grade Reading Level – Double Check. That’s really all it takes. The book had the Buddies (heart) rendering up discussions around kickboards, stock markets/gambling, rallying cries and much, much, more. So pack your gloves, saint-named knives, pearl-handled revolvers, and blast your way through Six of Crows with us.
Intro: (0:00-1:40)
Stock Up/Down (1:41-19:15)
Favorite Scene (19:16-23:41)
Favorite Character (24:42-27:39)
Love/Hate (27:40-39:43)
Listener Email (39:44-41:47)
Casting the Movie (41:48-45:31)
Conclusion (45:32-47:49)
Next Book: THE HOBBIT by J.R.R TOLKIEN
Transcript for SEO Purposes 🙂
All right. Welcome buddy Book Club. I’m Dylan, here with my hobbit roommate, Keith. What’s up, buddy? So what now? Half a phobic? They’re not familiar now. Enlightenment. Dirty hands. Dirty hands is half a phobic. Those like to be touched. Okay, I didn’t know that was the technical term for it. Yeah, and that’s correct. Right. Wouldn’t you consider yourself somewhat half a phobic? Don’t like to be touched. Yes, I agree with that. All right, well, here at the Buddy Book Club, we break it down some best sellers, and this week we’re headed to the Geisha verse and diving into Six of Crows by Lee Bardugo. If you’d like to recommend a book for us to read or reach out to us by past episodes, you can visit our website buddybookclub.com. Actually, there’s great content there as well, so definitely check it out or sign to our DMs on Twitter or Instagram. The handle. There is Buddy Book Club podcast. You can listen to us on itunes and spotify, so please download and subscribe. So like I said, we’re doing Six of Crows this week. It’s pretty much about a cohort of Wiley teens that endeavor to get rich by capturing a scientist from one of the most impenetrable places in the world, the Rock. Yeah. Well, there is a point where and as she climbs up the tower, they’re like, how are we going to get out of this place? And I was like, please tell me they’re going through the furnace. You got to get the timing right. And they pretty much did. They went through, like, the stack as opposed to the rolling through the furnace Sean Connery style. But we do have a reader email that alludes to another movie about that very scene, so I’ll save it for that. Oh, okay. Well, I’m excited. Well, let’s get right into it then and jump into some stock up, stock down. Six of crows. Stock up. What do you got? Stock up. Kickboards. So, not sure how familiar you are with kickboards. DMA have you ever partook in using one of those? I was a mediocre back in that day. Yeah, I mean, I learned how to swim at the local YMCA. Okay. Yeah. So you use kickboards? Yeah, of course. Whenever you had the kickboard, though, there was already, like, someone that had used it earlier in the day, and it was like spongy stank, like chlorine. And sometimes you get the one that it was kind of chewed on. A child was on it or something. Yeah, that might just be the wear and tear, but yeah, I also found them to be quite edible, so they were noticeable to me. But go on, what do you have about kickboards? I didn’t care for them. I wasn’t a big kicker in my day. What I did find in this book is that they are very valuable in terms of saving lives. So if you recall, Cass, we’re starting off dark to start CAS’s brother and him get thrown into the bay or whatnot. And with all these dead bodies and the only way Kaz is able to go out is by using his dead brother as a kickboard to kick his way inflowed his way back. So, yeah, I never thought that would come in handy. But Kickboards and Casa dead brother stock up fairly genius by him. I mean, although using the bloated body of your brother is fucked. But yeah, that whole scene was just crazy in general, where it’s just like a floating barge of dead bodies. I mean, you can only imagine. You know, the setting of this book is Amsterdam, pretty much in the Dutch shipping era. She does a good job of bringing stuff from the past, but also kind of blending time periods. But there is some truth to it. But obviously with that comes disease and plague secure Port city. So I like how she worked that in there in terms of how Kaz, aka Dirty Hands, got his origin story and also his name. But yeah, that’s fucked up. You just see the lights of the city. It’s like, all right, the only way I’m getting back is if I grab this body and use it to float myself back. Pretty dark. It’s kind of funny. There are definitely a lot of Ya elements in this book. And then you have like that, or you have like him at some point, like breaking a guy’s arm off. Hey, whoa. Don’t step on the lead. My first stock up ya novels. Okay, there we go. No longer are fun little novels featuring innocent young folk the focus of Ya. Now, you can have these bloated bodies, or you have a teenager eye gouging another person, like, just gouges that guy’s eyes out in front of everyone is like, wait, what the fuck? Excuse me? He gouges one eye and threatens to gouge the other one if he doesn’t give him information. It was like, oh, shit. So, I mean, we have this I feel like Red Rising was pretty graphic. Yeah, Red Rising was not a Ya, but I don’t know how that gets thrown in there. I mean, I feel like the mark to go past it is like, oh, this is fucked up is like enders game where there’s like fights and shit like that. There are like broken arms and stuff like that. But it’s never, as you recall, though, enders game in most Wyatt books. My biggest pet peeve are when they start whining, which this book didn’t really have a lot of that at all. Same thing with spread rising. I just hate when they’re like, everything’s bad. I’d just rather than be like, let’s go kill everyone. Yeah, there wasn’t a woe is me vibe. It was a pull yourself up by your bootstraps vibe. I mean, there was a lot of Oliver Twist ish elements to this. I have some more accessories. It is that one. Yeah. Andy. Is that the same thing? No, different but similar. Yeah, same thing, but different. But it’s like no one’s going to do it for you. You got to do it for yourself. And that’s what it’s like in the barrel. That’s what happens. So yeah. Ya books. Keep it like this. I’m going to support it. What else do you have to stock up. Rallying cries. Stock up. I mean, they’re already pretty high. You got your and I’m sure I’m going to miss a lot, but clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose. Where are you, D man? Where are we here? I actually thought our audio went out. You finished me off. Okay, well, hold on. That’s for later. You always finish me off. I don’t know what you’re doing. Here we are, Marshall. All for one, one for all. There’s just a bunch of these Riley cries that like they stick with you braveheart. So good. Yeah, that’s not I feel like that’s not like a saying that people can it’s not repeatable. I like something where it’s like, all right, we’re going off of this. It’s like, get money. Yeah, you got something to give richard die trying. Something like that. Something good. But there one I really, actually like as well, is no mourners, no funerals. I really like that thing and it’s just like, all right, boys, let’s go get it. Or girls, let’s go get this. No moreners no funerals. That always got me amped up. Any time I heard them say that, that just means you’re about to get action. So big, biggest stock up for rallying guys. Not the day that needed it, but I’m a big fan. Which one resonates with you the most? Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t Lose is by far the number one. And that’s from Friday Night Lights for those I don’t know if you haven’t seen Friday Lights, it’s Thanksgiving weekend. Go binge it. It’s more ya than this book, but it’s a good show. It’s not like a CW show. No, it hasn’t. CW elements. Let’s be honestly, everyone in the show you want to bang, that doesn’t matter. I also watched it when I was younger. If we watch it now, it would be like, oh, those people are 16. Yeah, exactly. Check yourself or you wreck yourself. You remember Jennifer Love Hewitt? That was my number one when I was growing up. Yeah. Ken Hardly Wait. Yeah. So I re watched, can hardly wait and my girlfriend looked up she’s like, yeah, she’s 17 in there. You still think that? I’m like, damn it. Wow, good for her acting at 17 like that. Her acting chops are great in that. Yes, I disrespected her as an actress. I mean, you could say ghost writer or something else that she did later on. She’s a ghost writer. Not ghost rider. Ghost writer. Ghost writer. Nick Cage kid. My next talk up is negging. So for those not familiar, negging is the practice of giving back into compliments and generally making comments that express indifference towards another person in attempts to seduce them. Jasper negs hard on whelan. I’m surprised Wayland didn’t pick up his ball and leave during the whole forming of the cruise situation because Jasper just wouldn’t give him a break. And also, Whelan’s got a lot to offer. Why are you shit talking this dude? Yeah, he might not be the best demolitions expert out there, but the guy can draw. He’s like a Picasso. He’s a wordsmith, he’s a linguist. He’s got it all. Whelan. Instead of calling Jasper a total dick and just not being interested, he’s like, Hi Jasper, let me see if this works. Let me see that pistol you got. You know what I’m saying? So yeah, good for them. Good couple. I think I’d be down to have them at a dinner party. I like that. I see a lot of myself in Wayland as well, just in terms of not being able to read. And also that’s it. That’s the honest thing. And you being from Wayland, which is very close to I also kind of like the name Wayland. Yeah, I don’t like the spelling. You got to do the real spelling there. Wayland. It’s wayland, right? It’s wildland. Did you not listen to the audiobook? I did. And just stupid stockdown. What do we got? Six of crows conmen stock down. I know we talk about conmen a lot. I kind of love meeting some comment. My stock is high on conmen. Wrote a blog on it. But what happened to Kaz’s brother is literally my worst nightmare. If it happened to me, I just would not be able to recover mentally just because I wouldn’t be able to get over getting one up to like that or one over like that. Especially if you think of yourself as someone that can sniff that stuff out. That type of shit would be my worst nightmare. It really would be. And it kind of reminds me of what I did with the stock market this year. So that’s where last year I was like, oh, it’s up 20%. I should put all my money in it. That’s basically what the convent did to him. It was just like, oh, now all your money is gone, so don’t do that. Same thing with betting where I’ve been betting well, and then I should put money onto it and I started being terrible. So that’s how it works. Everything is a con in this world, is what I’m getting to. All right, well, I got so much to say. One, get out of my head because our stock downs are way too similar. Two, did you do this whole stock market push? Like after the whole COVID, everything ramped up. So you bought in at the highs and now they’re low, low. I was like, all right, I got to put more money into the stock market because I just have it on my savings account. Anyway, I’m there with you. I get it. Yeah. So I put it in last year. I don’t even look at you. I just put something, I don’t look at it. I come back the end of the year doing taxes. I see it’s up 20%. I only put a small amount in. What am I doing? Getting zero 5% interest. My bank account, put all of my money just looked at it on that negative 16%. Okay, that’s not too bad. I did that too. And as I was saving up to buy my house, wasn’t paying rent because I was living in my parents place, I was putting in two grand a month into the stock market, and it was just, like, going up. I was like, oh, this is great money. It’s literally free money. And now I looked back, and it’s literally all that money is just gone. It’s like the South Park episode. Put my savings account in the stock market up, and it’s gone. It’s like, Wait, where did it go? It’s like no, it’s gone. One of my stockdowns is playing the stock market. You know what we’re alluding to is Mr. Hudson gives the insiders tips to Kaz and Geordie. And, hey, it’s a good con in the sense you give them some small wins and then you make them drop the load on you, and then you just pick up and leave. Sounds like my Friday night. Yeah, but I was confused. So is this Mr. Hetsun? Is that pekarolans? Peca Rollins? Yeah. Okay, that’s just, like, alter ego, because I kind of thought that Pecarlins was younger, but obviously Mr. Hutsu would have to be older if he was playing this person. But, I mean, I’m with you. I don’t even know what I would do if I got conned like that. But let’s also talk about Caz here after that point. He’s like one my whole focus in life is revenge, which we love. We love any character that’s just, like, focused on I don’t care about anything else. Particular drive. Absolutely screwing this guy over. And even at the end, when he saves, it turns out he saved Pecker Rollins from the prison cell because he wanted to fuck him over on his terms. The fjordans can’t do it. It has to be me. This is like you’re playing Mario Card in the dirt path racetrack and someone lightnings you off the jump and you just say, okay. Yeah. Every single thing I’m doing now, I’m holding the blue shell until you’re in first. I’m doing every single thing I can to fuck you over now. Yeah, I’m parking with my triple red shell and I’m waiting for you to come by me. Yeah, exactly. Which I respect. But the only thing is at the end of the book, so he does everything so far to, like, he’s always got the backup plan. He’s always one step ahead. But then it seemed kind of like the last plan. Nope, that’s actually not the guy’s. Kid, whatever the scientist named Kid was, it’s actually Wilson. And then he still gets fucked over. But also he’s like, you wrote all those nice letters to your son, but is that enough to think that he still won’t kill his son for literally the most important drug or whatever in the world? Like this guy’s an oligarch, builds power and money and obviously not down with his son. Anyways, it just seemed like a weird insurance card to have Weiler, who was kicked out of his house pretty much. Well, they weren’t giving him anything. They need to get the money, though. How are you going to get out of here with your money? Because that’s the whole point. Every Italian job, trapment, all that stuff. It’s like, how are you going to get out of here with the money? And it just seemed like he wasn’t prepared. There’s actual, like, magic going on in this geisha verse, and you don’t have any of that on your side, really? So how do you think you’re going to get out? It just seemed like it wasn’t a great plan by Kaz. Good. Jasper’s, two pistols. We’re good. We’re fine. You’ve got a rifle, too? But yes, it seemed like he said, oh, how did I miss this? How did I get fucked over? It’s like bro. Well, I can see the merchant centered thing or the merchant council thing. That’s basically like you’re getting the sign off from the government. So the fact that they would turn around, he just thought that was official business. Yeah, but it’s a shady government. It seemed a little crazy, but my other stock down because we already talked about it was gambling. Because you said talked about your bets, and maybe it’s not for everybody. Jasper, he has to join in on a life threatening heist just to pay off his own gambling debts. I mean, I want to take a quick minute just to talk about bankroll management. It’s a pretty simple premise. If you can’t afford it, don’t get into it. Right? I think we’re talking about addictive. I understand. If you can’t stop doing cocaine, you just probably stop doing it. Well, yeah, I understand. And if you do have that with gambling, listen to any football podcast and there’s five minutes of ads at the beginning for the Kansas Help line, the New York Helpline, every single forget helpline. That’s really you think the solution? Yeah, of course it is. You’re addicted to meth. Just listen to the commercials about it. Jeez, what’s wrong with you? Well, for starters, in general, jeffrey wouldn’t have gotten this hole if you just had a little bankroll management play what you got. It’s real money. It’s hard earned money. Don’t go and just start blowing it playing three Card Monty. Have a little angle. He’s also just a terrible card player. Yeah, that’s the problem. He doesn’t take an ego hit, which you need as a gambler where you just have to sit back and say, why am I so stupid? Yes, but he does own it, though. He’s just like, you know what? There’s not a card game I don’t want to get into. It gives him that feeling of it’s basically a drug for him, which me too. I was betting on the World Cup nonstop since it started. Well, we’re deep. We’re deep in it. We know those things. Yeah, we’re researching it. So we only down three figures this week. What else? Do you ever stock down? Shit rolling downhill. Wait, okay. So shit rolls uphill. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, I’d much rather have shit rolling up. Pill. That’s how the army does it, right? You complain. Remember the famous Prayer Ryan scene where he says, I don’t complain down. I complain up. You guys complain to me. You don’t remember this? It’s basically Tom Hanks. We never hear you complain about shit things. He’s like, that’s not my job. I complain to the people above me. You complain to me. I complain to them. They complain to the people uphill. So everything is uphill. Complaining, but shit rolling downhill. So Kaz, after he survives the Bay, he gets out and he’s like, I’m going to do whatever it takes. He goes to a gambling den, the lowest rung. And he’s like, hey, give me a job. They’re like, we have a kid that does all this shitty work here. And so he just doesn’t fucked up, this kid. Just like, make it so I can’t walk to work. Cut the feet with class. Yeah. I was like, Jesus Christ. Kind of a cutthroat way to do basically what someone just did to you. Cut footway. Yeah, good point. Couldn’t you think that that kid that you just did that too, is now going to do the exact same thing that he’s doing to Pecker Rollins? All right, I’m going to fucking ruin this guy’s life now. Well, I think it says more about I might be in too deep here, but I think it says more about a societal picture of how people on the bottom tend to fuck each other over and the people on top stay on top. It’s people scrambling over each other to get to the top, but the people at the top are fine. I like, that was intended. But also just the fact of like, how do you grab someone and just like, you tickled someone’s foot like a child or something like that? They’re wiley is fucked. Trying to get out of there. You start stabbing someone’s foot with glass, like, that’s dark. That’s fucked up shit. I like cats. I like sticker. In the first scene when they were explaining CADS, like, all this guy walking with his cane, I pictured Gandalf. I was like, this is a super old person. Yeah, well, he’s Bill Belichick. He just keeps everything close to the vest, doesn’t tell anyone his plans. He’s like, hey, you just do your job. Don’t worry about me. I’ll do what I do. You do your job. That’s all he says. It’s easy to do your job. Guy plans for the wind in the fourth quarter so we can get the punt returned. Yeah, that’s exactly right. CAD also says, I love puzzles, but trickery is my native tongue, which yeah, some people might say that about Baltic, too. I wouldn’t, but some people might say that. Hey, hey. Bend the rules, don’t break them. Yes, exactly. Quick editors note here. Previously, I said that Jennifer Lopeiewett show was Ghostwriter. I guess I was yelling loudly because I got a text from the SGF who said it is actually Ghost Whisperer. The Ghost whisperer. That sounds wrong. Name of the TV show. I can’t be a show. Ghost whispering eye yeah, no, it’s a terrible show where she basically, like, writes to ghosts or something. I don’t remember. It was so bad. But she’s good looking. Yeah, if you’re 13 and you’re in a pinch. And this is pre Internet Ghost Whisper favorite scene, what do we got? I think one of my favorites was the Dock fight, which I just didn’t see that coming at all. And it kind of really set the tone for the whole book that, hey, anything could happen. Anyone could get injured. Anyone could anything could happen at any point. Right. Whereas I feel like before that, I kind of had the traditional kind of arc of like, okay, we’re getting the crew together. Here’s the mission. Here’s the thing. Now we’re going off the journey. It’s like, no, now is a big battle. Wait, what the hell wouldn’t this happen? Are you talking about once they get out and they’re going to their ship in the beginning of the book, they’re going to the boat in this huge firefight? Yes. All the heroes should be on the boat ready to go, and the problems start when they get there. This is like, already things are going apart. You never know what’s going to happen, which I really like. That kind of set the tone. It was a little bit of Usual Suspects. Have you ever seen that movie? Yeah. So, you know, when they go to the boat, it’s like, oh, there’s going to capture this guy, or whatever. And all of a sudden boats blowing up and shit like that. It’s like, oh, they knew we were comic. That’s the climax of the movie. But yes. Who is Kaiser Society? Okay, I thought you were talking about at the end when they’re getting off, because I was like, okay, that’s classic book where everything kind of works out, but then Nina pretty much turns into Phoenix from the Xmen and just, like, levitates off the ground and starts crumbling things and killing people. So, yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. It was my favorite scene. And I knew when they said earlier, which I appreciate a little leading whatever they call it in the literary world, where they said, oh, you don’t necessarily get addicted off your first dose. I was like, oh, Nina’s definitely taking a dose. At some point. She’s going to get dosed up. Stock down. Drugs. Yeah, just stay away from them. Well, just try it once. That’s okay. Yeah, actually, maybe that would be the stock down. It’s like whatever the messaging is of this book is like, if you just do heroin once, you’re fine. That’s what Six of Crows taught me. My favorite scene, and I thought it was kind of a runaway. I was surprised that you didn’t mention it was the Hellgate Prison Break to Free Helvar because it has a bit of a Star Wars Jabba’s Palace vibe to it. But instead of like a rank or they’re fighting some of the world’s most deadly animals. I mean, this jail just seems wild. We thought The Rock was cool. Like, this jail seems absolutely absurd. It’s just they get their inmates to enjoy privileges. It’s like gladiator. Yeah, but they have some level of agency. It seems like they don’t have to do it if they don’t want to. But if they want to, they can sign up to go into the gladiator pit with animals. It’s the world’s deadliest animals. And it’s not like real gladiator in real life where they just, like, fed inmates to animals. Okay, you versus a tiger and you have a stick. It’s like, wait, what? They had the choice to go in and they didn’t know? They spun the roulette wheel. Talk about gambling. They spun the roulette wheel. Whatever it landed on. Also, inevitably, killing that crazy monitor lizard giant thing was awesome. Yeah, that was damage. So I just thought that whole Prison Break was cool in terms of it shows who Kaz is and how he can get these plans together. And also, I just pictured this is like this cavernous prison. I’m going to keep talking movies here, but did you ever see man in the Iron Mask with leo? Yeah. Yeah. So that’s the kind of prison I pictured it as just this weird dungeony, super dark prison. But in the middle, there’s this fighting pit. And I can only imagine as an inmate because one, I would definitely I’d be like, all right, I don’t need any things from the commissary. I don’t need any ramen noodles. I don’t need TV time. I don’t need conjugal visits. Like, I’m just going to watch. I’m not here to and you’re betting on the side. Yeah, bet on the side, exactly. I’m not putting myself up in the football world to get concussions, but damn, I’m going to sit on my couch and have a beer and enjoy it. You’d be one of the rich guys. I want to watch those. Well, I’d be a prisoner for sure due to my gambling and drug addictions like we talked about. Also, the name Hellgate for Prison the Rock is good, but hellgate, prison pretty dang good. Might be better. Might be better. Hellgate, let’s pick our characters. We’ve got a nice crew here. We got cast. Brecker aka. Dirty Hands. We got angel guffa arsuli wraith. We got Wilen VanEck, born with a silver spoon in his mouth that his dad seemingly beat him with, likes to blow shit up. Matthias Helvar are surly, fearedon. Druskeleh. Druscolla. Nina, Zena and Grisha Heartrender, who is a sucker for a good waffle. Jasper, who’s a zemoney sharpshooter, can’t stay away from a five leg. Parlet, just like us, loves a good five like Parley, and also has a touch of the Grecian in him. He’s been touched. He was touched by the grisha. So I figure your favorite character has to come from the crew, but if it doesn’t, I’d be fascinating. I mean, I liked all the characters, so it was really hard to narrow down. Hivar, I think, comes around. He’s kind of like, what’s the name for American History X, where you start to like him by the end? Edward Norton. Yeah, edward Norton, where you’re like, okay, I can see how someone can this racist can be racist anymore. Well, you can see how someone could be brainwashed early on in life where it impact them, so you almost feel empathy for that. Yeah, and I think I’m going to get into this later. But it’s both done such a good job of giving us an understanding of how upbringing and circumstance has so much to do with people’s personalities. And I really think at the end of the day, it kind of tells you, like, give everyone an extra bit of rope or think of everything with a grain of salt, whatever kind of terrible thing I’m trying to say. What are those things called? Hang yourself with rope. I don’t know what you’re saying. Give someone a break. The idea of you don’t really know what their background is. You don’t know what their mindset is. If you’re meeting someone, they probably have something interesting you’d learn from them kind of thing, as opposed to just judging a book by its cover. Besides, Halvar was kind of a little too straight edge for me. That’s fair. That’s fair. I couldn’t have a laugh. Not the guy I want to have a laugh with. Well, I went with my boy Jasper. I think I alluded to him. I liked I just like the cut of his jib. He’s super sarcastic. He’s just someone you’d want to hang out with. He seems like happy go lucky and then he loves a good fight. He loves to gamble. My type of guy. I just seem to like what he was bringing the table. Side note, I know we’ve done a lot of gambling on this. I’m sure that’s gambling and book crossover, the indexing for that is very, very high. Is that the word index? I don’t know. But the word I was thinking of. Earlier was idiom. That’s what I meant to say. Yeah. Side note, we’re dumb beginning. They have a parlay, which is a meeting, but they describe a parlay as a deceptive engagement, which I’m like. That’s correct. That’s what parlays are. They are deceptive. What about you? I’m probably so fucked in the head right now with gambling stuff, considering it’s football season, especially now when it’s Thanksgiving, like, maybe the best gambling week of the year. And if I think if I rewatched the Pirates of the Caribbean, when they’re like, I demand palay. I’d be like, yeah, palais four legs. Let’s go. What do we got? Come on. Mixing some money like dogs in here. Let’s get that juice up. I’m with you. I think Jasper was my favorite, and I think we lean this way. In general, we’re judging favorites, but he just seemed like the best hang. Obviously, everyone’s got a lot of baggage in the crew, but he seemed like his baggage. He was at least laughing about where no one else really was. Everyone knows it’s like a blood oath. In order to do, like, kill or do something, he’s just, like, kind of just like, I’m about to lose both of my pinkies to some gambling hall, whatever, so I better do something because I got to get back in there and play some three card. Yeah. Just sort of seem like a good hang, I think. Like I said earlier, him and Wylin make a nice couple, and I’d like to have them over for dinner party. Just leave your guns at the door. Please read explosive devices. No explosive devices in my house. Let’s jump into love. Hate. Keith, we’re talking about six of Crows. What did you love about it? I really liked all the characters. Like I said, buddy, get out of my head. Seriously, get the fuck out of my head. They all had deep backstories. They’re all likable. Even though I think most books, even if someone’s not flawed or just too perfect or too much of a superhero, I just don’t like them immediately. But all these people had flaws that made sense. They all had a certain upbringing, a certain way of thinking based off of that, and they were all shaped by that. Really appreciated that couple of ones. Just Nina dominating Matt and Tyres in the debate. I really liked that scene. I don’t remember. But he’s like, you guys don’t deserve to be on Earth because you have, like, these powers. And she’s like, what about you guys? You guys are weak pieces of shit. You guys deserve to be on Earth. Like, maybe we should kill all of you guys off. That’s a good point. She’s making a better point than he is. Why would we kill off the people that are not as strong and they’re weaker and not as good as something that doesn’t make any sense? Argument makes perfect sense. If there’s one thing that it seems like is not okay in the book is, like, just Zealotry. Just kind of like following something blindly because it’s part of your religion or part of your culture or whatever. Unless it’s a sports team. But, yeah, go on. Sure. If it’s something innocuous that doesn’t matter, then yeah, why not? Who cares? You’re not hurting anybody unless you actually are being like, well, yeah, I’m stabbing anyone that’s a fan of a team. Other than that, it’s funny because they showed that NFL game in Mexico on Monday night, and the different sections were, like, caged off. And I was like, what the fuck? Why is that? And I realized, oh, this is a soccer stadium in Mexico. So those guys are like green street hooligans fucking. We’re like 20 movie references deep. But these people will fight each other for pride of their own team, which I would never do. I mean, I love the Patriots, don’t get me wrong, but if there was, like, a jets fan, it was like, Fuck the Patriots. I’d be like, yeah, man, whatever. All right. I don’t care. Does not bother me one bit. But, yeah, the Zelda stuff just doesn’t fly unless it’s something that doesn’t matter. But I’m with you. My first love here is the crew. I mean, the different perspectives, because all the characters are quite diverse. The interesting part is because the way that she writes this with it being different perspectives, it’s not told from third party. It’s not from the one person perspective. You get to understand how the diversity of the cast and their life experiences matter to them, how they see things differently because the same thing is happening, but you see them differently. And I think, bottom line, it just tells you I feel like there’s one message here. It’s just that perspective matters. You might have the same ultimate goal, which is, like, to get this money, get that bag, boy. But the way you go about it and the way you approach it and think about it is totally different because people are different. And that’s something that should be embraced. It came across just so naturally and in a fun way. It wasn’t like preachy or anything. It was just interesting. I have a question for you. What do we think about the world, this world building situation? Like the geisha verse, Ketterdam, the different nations, that kind of thing. I’m not sure how familiar are, but this was basically books that were written after she wrote the original geisha verse books. I didn’t know that. No. Well, there’s shadow and bone, right? Yeah. So she wrote Shadow and Bone, which in the geisha verse universe. So she references a lot of areas that were initially written about in that book. Yeah. We got Robka Fierta, Shuhan, Kirch Novi Zam. I read that book after this, and for me, I didn’t really like them as much. You definitely don’t need to read those to read this one. And understand everything, but I really thought the world bidding was great. I was wondering because this is my second go, and then I’d also watch the TV show. I was wondering, is your first time reading it how you saw those things that it instantly kind of makes sense for you, or was it, like, catching up? Yeah, so it didn’t make a lot of sense for me. I felt like I was coming into a world that had existed that I was still trying to catch up with. There were things that were referenced that I was like, wait, what? Like what’s? The wandering isle. But a lot of fancy books do that. I don’t know what this place is. And that’s what we love about fantasy in general, is that then you can dig deeper. And so when I realized, oh, this is just part of a whole different series of books. This is like Rogue One. If you just saw Rogue One, you’d be confused. That’s like, Wait, what is this? Like, no, this is a whole Star Wars universe. Like, you got to dive into it. Well, Star Wars also leans heavily into the past stuff, so you almost couldn’t watch half the Star Wars stuff without seeing the originals. Yeah, well, I hope that’s the case. You should, because the OG is great. But I did feel a little behind the eight ball when it came to, like because they kind of just say places and then move on. Because it wasn’t about that, especially when it came to the Grisha situation, because they’re, like, basically witches. There’s, like, three orders the corporal key, the Ethereal key, the Matriarchal key, and I was like and then within each of those, the magical powers are like the abilities, whatever, are tons of them. So I was very confused as to how that worked, which I figured we get more than the other books, but at the same time, it didn’t take away from it. If anything, it made me be like, maybe I should get more into this universe. So I thought it was a cool setting. It wasn’t fleshed out in this particular book. Got you. Yeah. I think maybe because I’ve read more on this reread, it was much more enjoyable because it just kind of clicked. Oh, that’s that’s that I didn’t have to think about it as much. Okay. What did you hate about it? I think I mentioned I already thought it was a little bit more Ya than I remember it being Red Rising because I read this and Red Rising around the same time, and I was like, Reading is the best. This is awesome because they were very good Ya books. But this one was a little bit more Ya. Redizing was a little bit less than I remember, but it was still great. I will also say, even though this isn’t a hate, it’s actually like that there’s a lot of more love than I remember, but I actually liked it. I actually thought it was added good elements to it. I don’t remember Dirty Hands being so in love with the national. You’re saying this because I’m sorry, this is your second read of this book. You’ve read this book before? Because I was like, wait. Red rising. We read that? Yes, I read it a couple of years ago when I first read Red Rising. Okay, cool. So you don’t remember Kaz being, like, in the show? Yeah, he was definitely more lobby dubbed. I mean, outwardly, if you were showing it in the show, which Eric did a show on this, but we’ll talk about that outwardly. He looks you would think, oh, my God, this guy has no emotions. He doesn’t feel anything for anyone. But again, not a complaint. I think it was just second reading. It was a little different. Well, just to touch quickly on that, I thought the Nina Matthias relationship was a good way to approach a relationship in a book. It wasn’t over the top. Obviously, they cared for each other greatly and they had different viewpoints. It was used as a vehicle to explain other things as opposed to just being, like, a focus, which I appreciated in terms of my hates. I mean, I like the book, so I didn’t have a lot to hate, but come on, seriously. Come on. The crew is all between 16 and 18, and I know you have to grow up fast on the mean streets, but these guys are all at the top of their game at, like, 16 and 18. I mean, CAS came out of his floating brother, climbed up the ladder into the barrel, and in five years, it’s like he did the Matrix download. Like, he’s just, like, the greatest fighter, the greatest con man, the greatest hard player. You’re 17 years old. He’s 17. Like I said, I know you got to grow up fast, but how fast can you possibly grow up? The aging complaints don’t make sense to me. You see that one time. It’s not really referenced. Other than that, he’s just younger than the mob boss. Everyone I don’t think Demolition cares. What if you say there are 30? When I read it, I don’t think of them as 17. It doesn’t matter whether you folks who cares? I’m just saying, I think Game of Thrones, they had, like, four year olds that were banging people. I don’t know. Were you worried about it in that? That’s not Game of Thrones. That’s the guy from Subway’s hard drive. All right, there’s a clip for the kids. Classic Jasper’s. Perfect shot. It’s like, how do you do that? Ammo costs money. He’s naturally gifted, that’s why. Yeah, I guess so. Everyone’s super. The only person I kind of get is Anege, where she has, like, the Dick Grayson Robin from Batman. For those that for those that are interested, where she grew up as an Acrobat, she has that background of like, okay, she’s basically a born ninja. She has been practicing, and she was four years old. I mean, you don’t think Kaz has put his 10,000 hours in? You started going to the gangs when he’s nine. He’s put his 10,000 hours in. Yeah, but how many fights can you get into? How many people would it change your opinion if you were twelve when you started doing that and he’s now 30 again? What is it? It would but it has nothing to do with the plot. There’s the age gap or the age that being that young. Just say it’s fantasy. And they’re actually 30 year olds. The sun goes around this Earth in the Spanish world at a different rate. What does it matter? The age itself doesn’t matter. Just the amount of time to perfect these skills. That’s why I read it as, like, they’re 30, and then literally none of that matters. It doesn’t matter. No. Ice Court not the Ice Palace. It just came to me. But how all of these guys and gals can break into the Ice Court and do all this crazy stuff and somehow get out of life against thousands of trained warriors, and they’re all teenagers. I’m sorry, this is the Goonies. It’s not going to work like that. I saw that complaint before for other people. I don’t get that. I get other ones, like character flaws. I get where it’s just like, this person is too perfect, or this is unrealistic, but to be like, oh, the age thing. You’re pre researching my hates. No, you’re pre researching. I hate that. Don’t pre research. No, that was the only I saw reviews because this is a four five on good review. And I’m like, I wonder what people don’t like about it. Maybe it’s just like a two ya for people or something. And then people are like, oh, it’s so unrealistic that they’re this young doing this stuff. I’m like what? Who cares? Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking for hate here. If we were watching a movie and they’re 17, I agree. But it’s in my head. I make the characters up in my head. What do I care if they’re 17? Buddy. This is Spy Kids. This is what this is. It’s a bunch of fucking kids taking on the world’s most dangerous criminals. That’s very yeah, I mean, kid, you read Mitch Rapp’s origin story. The book was not that good, but he was the best of all time when he was, like, 22. Yes, of course. You got a question? Mitch Rap, you got a question? Mitch Rap? Rapid 7ft tall ship fireball from March. I’m guessing William Wallace was, like, 18. No, but it’s not a hit. I’m just trying to say William Wallace litter. He’s 35, kids. So basically he was battling when he was, like, 20. Yes, of course. That’s Scotland. Sons of Scotland. Listener mail. What do we got? You’ve got mail, nicky from Nashville. I like, the very much myself. Okay, so in the book, Anecd climbs up the heated shaft all the way to the top. Would you rather pardon? Would you rather have that journey? Like, her feet melting on her shoes and whatnot? I’m in context here. Yeah. The Shawshank redemption. Hers. Hers. Hers. See, I actually disagree with that because I think the first five minutes or first, like, minute in the poop tunnel yeah, it would be the worst minute of your life. You throw up, like, six times, and then after that, it’d be normalized. You’re like, I just want to yeah, well, the human body is quite amazing in that it normalizes stuff quite quickly. It’s amazing. And it’s bad because when wonderful things are happening to us, we make those. We normalize those, and we don’t appreciate the little things. But a shit tunnel when I mean tunnel, I don’t mean, like, the tunnel. Like she loves lair. I mean a pipe. I am claustrophobic as well. I just wouldn’t be able to make it. I would just die. I would curl up in the shit ball and die. Yes, exactly. In my story that I died in the shit, too. And that’s thing is worse because it’s physical pain. So you basically have to have you had to hold something that’s super heavy, like moving a couch. But it’s like 90 degrees in the summer, and your arms are getting more and more tight. You start feel a little drop of sweat coming down from your forehead. You can’t scratch it, as was heard for, like, going up a fucking tunnel. I mean, to physically exert ourselves for that long. I understand. And if, you know, if you sneeze, you die. You tell me the whole argument. I get it. There’s nothing. My biggest fear is that poop tunnel. It’s literally my biggest fear. I think it’s a good question. Listeners, call in, let us know. Email and let us know which tunnel you’d be really rather go up or down. The poop tunnel or the poop shoot or the and the poop shoot is definitely down. I guess we can cast the movie. I’m not I mean, we’ll talk about it, but so Netflix adapted Librar Ego’s Shadow in the Bone trilogy and six of Crows into a series. Many of the characters are present, but I don’t think they’ve done this particular story yet. Yeah, they’re going to do us, I think, this season. They’re doing that’s. The second season. Yeah. The first season was this other shadow and Bones. Shadow and bones. How many characters from this book are in there? I think all of them are in it. I think they showed basically the back stories of all the characters, almost. So they’re all in it in the universe. It was fine. It was very, very PG. It was made for, like, 13 year olds. It wasn’t made I want CAS to be fucking dirty hands. But they made him, like, super mushy. I’m really like I’m hard on the outside, but that’s because I have feelings. Come on. He has his cutthroat. Yes, exactly. God, we’re on the same page today. So I did recast it, but since I’m not, I have a brain. I can see these characters as older than 18, and so I made them fucking normal ages. I decided, no, I’m going to do whatever I thought they were in my head. Yeah, and I’ll give you a perfect example, because this is what I thought when I was reading the whole time. Matthias. That’s jason. Momoa. That’s what it is. That’s the character. So that’s who I was thinking of the whole time. I didn’t think of that. An 18 year old. I just thought, oh, Jason Momoa has been a fucking huge, fucking manly, attractive dude. That is what, 35, 40 in real life. You might be able to that. I don’t know. Jason momoa also with the white hair, because he’s got, like, white hair. The Ferdinand, who are really just, like, Norwegian. Really? That would be cool to see with his beautiful eyes. I’d be into it. And I’ll run through the other ones again. These are all not age specific. His counterpart, Nina Zenik. Scarlett Johansson. Voluptuous flirty. I mean, it’s just too easy. It’s really too easy. I think Nina is a little bit huskier than Scarlett Johansson. What does that mean? She’s got more meat on the bone. She’s a wolf. Oh, does she? Isn’t Scarlett hanson voluptuous. Is that where I am? Yes, I would think that, but I also think that I think the cast doesn’t necessarily need to be the most beautiful people. Well, she’s supposed to be a seductress. That’s true. That’s true. Okay. Like, she turned the door to not be turned. All right? You better accept it. Give me Jake Jillian Hall from the movie Prisoners. Give me that person. That’s what I want Cass to be. You know what I’m talking about? Jake gyllenhaal from the prisoners. I haven’t seen it. You haven’t seen prisoners. Really move that to top of that. That’s one of my favorites. I really think that’s a really good movie. Yeah, he’s like just a psycho in that. Him and Hugh Jackman both. Ray I like them both. Okay, go on. Jasper. Will Smith. I mean, give me Will Smith from Wild. All west. That’s what this is. Wiki. Wiki. Wiki. Wildlife. Jim west. Desperado Roughada. And then, as I just did, I’m going to butcher this name. Dilshad Vadesaria. She’s in I watch her in the TV show Greek, way back when. 30 minutes. Yeah. I see her on the Internet. Still shots. I see her on the Internet. I just remember her from those shows. I liked her. That’s a deep pool. Good for you. That’s a deep pool. That’s what I was picturing. My mind. So I didn’t do Wiling just because I think anyone could be Wild. Honestly, I think that’s a good cast. Let’s get $200 million behind this thing. That’s what we need. We don’t need this mushy shit. So six of crows. Keith, would you recommend it to listeners and friends? Maybe around the Thanksgiving table? Yeah, I really like it. I suggested it, so obviously I’m going to say it’s great. I’m putting it in my top ten. It’s going to top ten. I’ll have to determine where that is. I think it’d be number five spot, potentially number four I liked a lot. So I like this world building. I like the fast pacedness. I like the audiobook is amazing. I think it just really brings it to life. But, yeah, I’m a big proponent. I like the book. I’d recommend it. I don’t think it breaks my top ten because it doesn’t finish. I need a book that finishes because now I got to read the next one. Yeah, I’ll give you that. It did finish the treasure. Yeah. The heist. The Heist. I thought it was a good book. I would totally recommend it. I think it’s a fantasy. Beatrice so I kind of like baby. Yeah. So even though it’s 16 hours, it goes by pretty fast. And the story itself was fun. The characters are great. I thought I had a lot of interesting messaging to where it was like, not in your face. And it was just like, hey, there’s this Heist, and it makes you actually think about stuff. So I like that, too. All of it. Cool. So, yeah, six across. Definitely read it. Peeps. Definitely read it. And we’re moving on. Next, we’re going to stay in the fantasy verse and in the Ya, maybe even more Ya OG Ya. And we’re going to be reading J-R-R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which Keith recommended this, and I think this was his biggest mistake because if we’re reading The Hobbit, he left the door open. He left the door wide open for a twelve episode Lord of the Rings. Todd, do you know who is the audiobook narrator, by the way, for The Hobbit? Yeah. Now, who is it? It’s your boy Andy circus. Oh, what? That must be the new one. That’s amazing. We’re listening or reading the hobbit next. I’m going to read it because I have a hard copy. So although the Andy Serkis sounds really good shit, we’ll see how it works out. But yeah. Cool. Well, happy Thanksgiving. Always good to talk to you, Kevin, out there. Happy Thanksgiving. Bye now.
Six of Crows Book Club Questions - Buddy Book Club
December 3, 2022 @ 4:22 am
[…] Club – we have a light-hearted comedic podcast that covers a variety of books. We just did an episode on Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, one of our favorites (not-so-young) young adult books. We love […]
Make it a Movie: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo - Buddy Book Club
December 7, 2022 @ 3:59 am
[…] the movie production. We just finished reading Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (check out Book Club Podcast), and simply put, it is a book that needs it’s own movie. The book is a roller coaster […]