Evan's Reading Adventures

Authors will often use their writing as a vessel for expressing feelings that they have for the rest of the world. While it may not at first appear that there is much overlap between a world filled with elves, goblins, and dragons, you would be surprised.  R.A. Salvatore has made many connections that are applicable beyond the scope of the Forgotten Realms. The most prominent of these connections is the idea of race. Salvatore did not come create the forgotten realms and has never even created a new creature. That being said, the Adventures of Drizzt Du’Urden books central theme revolves around the idea of how these races interact.

As a reminder, Drizzt Du’Urden is a dark elf a creature once considered a monster. Salvatore was actually the very first author to consider writing extensively about these creatures. There are creatures in the Forgotten Realms that are considered to exist on a spectrum of goodly or evil. The most evil creatures are demons (obviously) and the most ‘middle of the road’ creatures are humans. Humans can be evil or goodly. Salvatore was the first to change the narrative here, drow were among the most evil creatures and yet Drizzt is a good character.

Drizzt has traveled his world in constant search for a home. He went from town to town and was rejected. In fact, many times he was turned away by a small militia that came to oppose him. Drizzt finally met a man named Mooshie. Mooshie was an accepting old man yet acted as somewhat of a in-between societal rejection and Drizzt’s eventual acceptance. An interesting plot point is that Mooshie was actually blind. Although he accepted Drizzt based solely on his character it was certainly easier to do so without being able to see the evident differences between the two races.

Mooshie being an old man eventually died leaving Drizzt to once again wander the Forgotten Realms again for a home. He eventually finds his friends who accept him for who he is and understand him to a be a good person. Salvatore constantly reinforces with idea of racism against certain races by describing the troubles Drizzt faces when traveling. People are constantly ‘eyeing’ him.

It actually most accurately parallels the ideas brought forth by Brent Staples and his article titled ‘Black Men and Public Spaces’. He talks about the ‘casual racism’. If you have never read his piece I highly suggest that you do. The reasons that I think this parallels the race divide in the Forgotten Realms is because it is constant. Drizzt is always discriminated against when it comes to his race as a drow. Similar to Brent Staples Dizzt is imposing. Brent Staples concedes this point by mentioning that he is a very tall and very large man. Drizzt can also be seen as ‘dangerous’ but it is not within someone’s right to judge someone else base only on these specific facts.

Thankfully, the discrimination in the Forgotten Realms is not real. It is just a story. The discrimination in the real world is very real and can be seen reflected in our stories.

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Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers is an in depth analysis of success as a whole and those who seem to achieve it. Not one of the tradition approach Gladwell begins his novel with a list of names of the top hockey players including their hometown, height, weight, position, and birthday. Gladwell asks the reader to analyze the chart and find a similarity. Since we’re not all national best sellers Gladwell shows us that the commonality between these players is their birth month. He goes on to show us that 40% of any elite group of hockey players will have a birthday between January and March, yet only 10% will have been born between October December. The analysis of this is what sets apart Outliers from other books and Malcolm Gladwell from other authors. He goes on to tell us that the reason for this distinction is that the age cutoff for youth hockey is in January so that if you are born in January you would then be the oldest… and consequently you would also be the biggest. This, Gladwell argues, allows for a series of advantages that ultimately craft a better player. The largest players, get the most attention and best coaching, they make the best teams and get the best equipment. All this leads to a more successful player but all this began with a simple six month age difference. Gladwell explains in his writing that it is this distinct advantage at even a young age that provides the foundation for a lasting advantage in the future.

I found this perspective to be extremely intriguing. Some believe there is a divine intervention which sets apart the ultra successful but Gladwell argues in his book that it is rather a bunch of small advantages which are continually capitalized upon. In fact Gladwell describes outliers as, “…those who have been given opportunities, and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”

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Later in the book Gladwell expands upon a different idea. He talks not about opportunities given but opportunities that are taken advantage of. This is how he begins the conversation about the 10,000 hour rule. The 10,000 hour rule is described as the amount of time that it takes to achieve true expertise at any skill.

Gladwell is, without a doubt, one of the best authors of our time. His use of research and examples allows him to simplify complex concepts down to basic truths.

 

Now that we have a basic understanding of the background of Forgotten Realms from a few posts ago, it is now possible to talk about my current book “The Silent Blade”. This is the 11th of 35 books in The Legend of Drizzt series. The barbarian Wulfgar was recently rescued from the tanar’ri Errtu  (basically a demon) that was torturing Wulfgar in the Abyss (basically Hell) for six years. Wulfgar’s return was an incredibly positive things for the story line since it was thought that he was dead for six years, or more practically for about two books. His return, although great, has been riddled with complications. Wulfgar is a barbarian a notoriously ‘manly’ race whose culture revolves around strength, courage, and war. Wulfgar is suffering from extensive Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and I believe this to be the purpose of the author writing this book. Each character goes to extreme lengths to try and ‘cure’ Wulfgar. Bruenor, a father-figure in Wulfgar’s life, tries to tell Wulfgar to use sheer strength and anger to overcome his problem. This only leads to Wulfgar falling further into his persona of indifference. Drizzt attempts to ‘run him out’ by taking him to battle giants. This almost costs Drizzt his life since this leads to Wulfgar becoming frozen in flashbacks of his torture leaving Drizzt to fight off the giants himself. Catti-brie tries to soften Wulfgar by showing affection, this also almost costs Catti-brie her life. In the Abyss Wulfgar was tortured by being led to believe he had escaped the Abyss and had found Catti-brie only to find that it was actually a shape shifting demon waiting to continue his torture. So while Catti-brie showed her affection Wulfgar had a flashback to the Abyss and punched Catti-brie severely injuring her. Wulfgar ran away from the group, fearing they would not accept his failures and extremely guilty for his actions. Drizzt came to the conclusion that they had failed their friend by not allowing him to heal, they had expected him to forget his past trauma and, despite their best efforts, resented his failures. 

As with many books in this series this book quite clearly goes beyond the world of the Forgotten Realms and is truly making connections to the real world. It is generally accepted that mental health is an issue in the United States that has recently gained more attention. PTSD is something that has been given more and more attention in recent times as well. It is no coincidence that Wulfgar of all characters was the one to be tortured for all that time. Wulfgar is not struggling with any physical affect from the torture, in fact, the book portrays his physical strength as even stronger than before. One quote from page 141 I believe does a good job of summarizing Wulfgar’s struggles, “Black waves of despair washed over him, burying him. What he had done was beyond forgiveness, especially since he realized and admitted to himself that it would likely happen again. ‘I am lost,’ he said softly.” I found this portrayal of PTSD to be powerful and I am interested to see how the author draws this to a conclusion. Will he continue his parallel of real world PTSD culture or give a solution he believes to be the right one?

Magic is one of my favorite topics in fiction books. Authors often use similar historical norms of magic to build on how their wizards or mages use magic. I find it so interesting to see the differences and similarities between authors and their characters. I would like to draw some comparisons and differences between my two favorite demonstrations of magic in books. Harry Potter and the Drizzt’s Forgotten Realms have a couple of similarities but far more differences. 

Firstly let’s discuss the wizards themselves. Both books have people that are known as mages or wizards. One distinguishing factor is most clearly seen in the first book of the Harry Potter series from the character Hagrid “You’re a wizard Harry.” I found this quite telling because this means that while Harry is a wizards others are inherently not wizards. This is not that case in the Forgotten Realms. To become a wizard in the forgotten realms you simply have to study witchcraft. While some may be more inclined to become wizards it would be just that an inclination not an inherent ability. 

Now let’s talk about their actual casting. In Harry Potter wizards have their specific wands that select them. While in some cases a wizard is able to cast with another wand, it is uncommon and leads to inconsistent spell casting. Drizzt’s world could not be further from this. Wizards do not need to use wands and if they do use wands they’re in no way specific to the user. An accurate way to describe them would be as blow horns. If your goal is to yell loudly, then a blow horn is a great tool but not explicitly necessary. Another difference between the casting in these two worlds is that wizards in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter wave their wands in a specific way and say a certain set of latin-based words that lead to a display of magic. It is important to note that this is true across nearly all spells. Killing someone is the same length as lighting a candle. In the Forgotten Realms wizards could be more accurately described as ‘conjuring’ power. Casting spells can often require long meditative strances with pages upon pages of ancient language memorized.

This leads us to our next point, one that I find the most interesting. Where does magic come from? This is something that goes shockingly unexplored in the Harry Potter world. It is quickly mentioned that there are some that can cast spells and others who cannot. Furthermore, what does spell casting require? Typically in other books and depictions of magic there is a physical drain on the spell caster. This drain is often physical like running a certain number of miles and can often mean that multiple wizards must come together to cast spells on a larger scale. This is not the case in Potter’s world and is actually not explicitly the case in Drizzt’s world either. The magic in the Forgotten Realms is an extremely well described element. In short, there is another realm or dimension which contains pure magic and that magic is held back by something known as The Weave. The Weave is maintained by a goddess known as Mystra. This explains why wizards in the Forgotten Realms are not physically taxed by the exertion of spell casting because they act more as vessels for channeling magic. One final difference is that while neither wizard in each respective world is physically taxed by the exertion of magic in the Forgotten Realms it is possible to ‘over-cast’. Requiring too much magic from The Weave can result in something attune to spontaneous combustion. This is never something mentioned in the Harry Potter world yet is quite common in most literature. 

So while wizards are generally powerful in both worlds there are clearly some distinctions between the subtitles in their mechanics. 

This week I will be continuing my passion blog from last semester. Since I am new to this class I will provide some introduction. Reading has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. When I was younger I distinctly recall my mom, on multiple occasions, walking in on my brothers and I and telling us to “put the books down and head outside.” Now that I am in college I do my absolute best to read for fun and sometimes end up procrastinating my work by reading. I also frequently read to learn, while nonfiction text can be a bit more ‘dense’ than fiction reading I still believe it is one of the best ways that we can learn. Sometimes my posts talk about different types of reading whether that is genres or reading with the intention of learning. I also really love to do book reviews on this 35 book series that I am currently reading, unfortunately, since this is as continuation of my passion blog from last semester I am already on book eleven so if you would like to get the back story I highly suggest that you read my past posts. That being said, I will use this post exclusively just to provide background information since this is my favorite part of my passion blog. 

To provide some background, the world that these characters live in is derived from a board game called Dungeons and Dragons and the world is called the Forgotten Realms. It’s similar to Lord of the Rings with orcs, goblins, giants, barbarians, dwarves, and elves. Just so that I can begin to provide the scope of support of this world I encourage you to just look at the wiki  that has been created to categorize this world. These books, although they have a lot of complexities, are generally adventure-style stories meaning that the characters decide they are going to go on a journey, go on the journey, fight monsters, and kill said monsters. The books are also very introspective into the characters and the main character Drizzt Do’Urden often writes in a journal which reveals what is going on inside his head. 

 

Drizzt Do’ Urden  is the main character of these books. He is something called a Dark Elf or a drow. He is originally from a city called Menzoberranzan, which is a city in the Under Dark. A massive series of underground tunnels that is underneath the entire surface world, pretty much the underworld. His race of people are described as chaotic evil. Drizzt overcomes this evil and leaves the Under Dark and enters the surface world where, after about three books he finds his other friends. Wulfgar, Bruenor , Catti-brie , Regis , and Guenhwyvar 

Wulfgar is a barbarian that is shockingly similar to the Nordic god of Thor since he is about 6’ 8” and has a hammer that magically returns to his call. Bruenor is a dwarven king. Catti-brie is a human that was raised by Bruenor since her parents died when she was a baby. She is the love-interest for both Drizzt and Wulfgar. Regis is a half-ling, which is pretty much just a hobbit, that sneaks around and is good at stealing things. Finally, Guenhwyvar is a magical panther that comes from another dimension when she is called by Drizzt. 

Congratulations, you now know more about Dungeons and Dragons than 99.9% of the population you nerd. In the future I will provide talk about the books that I am currently reading. I am so excited for you to read all about it. 

Would it really be the final blog post without finishing with our friend Drizzt Do’Urden? No. It would not be the right thing to do. With this is mind I will discuss the interesting relationship between Drizzt and a new character I have yet to introduce. Artemis Entreri, a human assassin tasked with stealing Regis (Regis is a halfing, which is more or less like a hobbit… It’s pretty much exactly a hobbit now that I think about it). In the 5th book of the series we are introduced to the assassin Entreri. He is the only person or creature to ever be able to keep up with Drizzt in battle. Entreri and Drizzt end up with somewhat of a stalemate with Entreri kidnapping the halfling Regis. Drizzt, always looking out for his friends. Chases after Entreri with his friend Wulfgar and eventually is joined by two other friends. This leads us to book 6. Book six covers rescuing of Regis from a city known as Calimport. It would be similar to following someone from Baltimore, Maryland to Miami, Florida. which is why it takes a whole book. When they finally reach Calimport Drizzt and Entreri begin to fight. The reader is flooded with information throughout the entire book on why this battle is so important so allow me to explain. Drizzt comes from the city in the Underdark and is a Drow. Drow are considered an evil race and yet Drizzt goes against this and sticks to his positive morals. Entreri on the other hand is a human, generally considered a ‘goodly’ race, yet he goes against this and has no morals and frequently kills people in cold blood of just for fun. There characters have been developed as almost exact opposites. Drizzt feels the need to kill Entreri because he sees him as the darkness inside of himself, whereas Entreri wants to kill Drizzt because Drizzt did not ‘sacrifice his soul’ as it is described to be as good at fighting as Entreri.

The battle between them was super sweet none the less, but niether of them were able to beat one another. Enter book 7. After a completely seperate story line Entreri goes all the way back to Ice Wind Dale (Baltimore in this example) just to fight Drizzt. At this point Drizzt has come to the realization that he does not need to kill Entreri since because his overwhelming desire to kill him that he had in the 6th book was stemming from his insecurity of his values. With his values reaffirmed Drizzt is able to defeat Entreri because he is not emotionally invested.

It has been a lot of fun blogging about this stuff for this semester! I think that I will continue to write about reading and probably more Drizzt since there are like 56 books in the series or something ridiculous like that. Thank you!

The way I came up with the idea of reading about self-improvement as a blog topic is for two reasons. For one, I myself have read a bunch books about general self improvement and certain topic such as wealth development hoping that it will help me be a better version of myself. Secondly, I have been listening to the famous entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuck. Gary Vaynerhcuck, who is more commonly known as Gary Vee own a multi million dollar company known as VaynerMedia. He is an early adopter of social media as a form of social influence. He focuses on ‘providing value’ to his followers not always looking to make a buck. This idea of providing value means that he is constantly providing opinions and advice that he thinks that can help others. One of example of this is his quote, “You can’t read about push ups, you gotta do them.”

He is clearly making the point that reading about something will not make you good at it. He later clarified that he meant inspirational quotes and people always looking for ‘that inspiration’.

This is very similar to something Elon Musk did when someone asked him what his number one piece advice would be for young entrepreneurs looking to get started in business. His response was, “If you need inspiring words, don’t do it.” This was reported in an article from Business Insider.

Now for my opinions on the topic. I disagree for the most part. Now to give them the benefit of the doubt these guys are specifically talking about a situation where someone is stagnant because they don’t have the motivation they think they need to get started. Personally I believe that reading self-improvement books or even something as “trivial” as inspirational quotes can be extremely beneficial for people. I personally have read self improvement books and totally watch motivational videos if I am lacking motivation.

I think reading is such a powerful medium and that its strength should absolutely be valued in all aspects even something as simple as a motivational quote has the power to give someone the strength to complete a task. Reading as always had a way of empowering people, in order to find success I agree that this motivation must be followed by action but I think that reading is always a good place to start.

Along with probably about 7 billion other people on the planet I have been known to use the oldest excuse in the world when it comes to not being able to read. I am busy. I have a lot of tests in school or I have a lot of homework. I have to go to the gym or I have to go on a run. Regardless, whatever I end up doing is not sitting down and reading. Maybe others can relate to the fact that I kind of go through periods of making time for reading where I will read a book or two in a very short amount of time, then I will stop reading for weeks on end. Although I have talked in the past about how all reading should be considered such as reading for class, or reading your own writing, in this case I am considering reading in a more classical sense of sitting down with a book.

In my quest to find a better system to ensure more consistent reading I stumbled across a Youtuber. Enter John Fish:

Josh Fish has some really interesting videos and I suggest you check them out here. He is a Computer Science major at Harvard and it wicked smart. He makes videos going over how he studies, his mindset, and a bunch of other super helpful things for students. One of these videos is linked here. In this video he talks about a year long project for him where he read a book every single week for an entire year. In this video he talks about the struggle of finding time between running (he is a huge running guy), having a social life, and oh yea, being a student at one of the most difficult universities in the world.

This main strategy is to find the time throughout the day of the ‘in between’ time as he describes it. He does a lot of his reading on the bus, sure it is only about 15 minutes but he claims that this seems to add up. I hope to begin practicing this because reading does not have to be a super formal setting. I think that I have been guilty of wanting the moment to be ‘too perfect’ in order to start reading. I have a hunch that I might not be the only one. So toss your book in your bag and lets not make any excuses, lets get reading.

Coming straight from the desire of my fans today I will be discussing my personal opinion and some data on reading on screens as opposed to paper. In actuality professor Babcock just mentioned it in one of the comments of my last blog posts but nonetheless I will be running with the idea and I am grateful for the help in finding something to write on.

So let me first discuss my personal opinion, the truth is… I am a sucker for books, real books, paper, hardback books are always going to hold a special place in my heart. My entire childhood was filled with books, stuffing them into my bag, turning on the car light to read them, the smell of the pages. All of these things contribute to my love of books. I think reading from a book is so calming and really puts me in a great mood whereas reading something off a screen is less of an experience for me. While others have extremely strong opinions on the topic I do not. I simply prefer reading off of a paper page.

Did I purchase the $250 textbook for my Econ class simply so I could read off of a page and not off the the screen?? No way! If I am choosing between a downloading a book on my phone or ordering a book to my house, I will order it every time.

In an article from Scientific America titled, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens” there are many discussion points. One of these points is that in the 1980s there was serious evidence against reading online but then since the 1990s there was a lot of evidence on either side of the isle. My favorite part of the article that I think is the largest summation of my opinion and the evidence I have seen is,

“Compared with paper, screens may also drain more of our mental resources while we are reading and make it a little harder to remember what we read when we are done. A parallel line of research focuses on people’s attitudes toward different kinds of media. Whether they realize it or not, many people approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper.”

In conclusion, I believe that reading on paper may only yield slight benefits from an objective point of view but considering personal experience with reading from books it might be better for some to read from books.

 

Reading is a beautiful thing. With it we can travel to different worlds with incredible characters stretching our imagination. We can learn new things and some of us can read the same story again and again without ever getting tired of it. There is no doubt that reading has shaped history. Classic stories like the Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, and Huckleberry Fin. Even older still we see Shakespeare who shaped history with this plays. Beyond this even still, and perhaps the greatest example of reading shaping history is of course the sacred texts, The Holy Bible, Quran, The Tanach and many more. These texts shape the history of mankind, but when we look closer it is rather evident, at least I hope so, that these texts are made up from words.

The selection of words and their place within a text can be extremely powerful. This is not what I am interested in though, some words have amazing history of their own, a history I would love to uncover.

Let us begin with the word “berserk”. Nowadays when someone is going berserk they can also be described as ‘freaking out’ but the origins of the word have a much more aggressive interpretation. The word berserk comes from the Nordic people or vikings. This word was used to described a war-crazed warrior that fueled by the desire for bloodshed (and some argue the occasional hallucinogen) would go into battle without armor and kill a unbelievable number of people.

Secondly lets consider the conjugation of the word Octopus. While some would be quick to argue that the simple solution is that the plural is simply octupi you would be wrong. Octopi insinuates that this word is of Latin decent which some would argue it is, those people would again be wrong because in reality this word is ‘Latan-ized’ from the Greek word ‘oktopous’. There is a fierce argument over this plural with some arguing that because of its use in the English language it should follow English words which would leave us with octopuses or octopi. Perhaps I won’t uncover the mystery of this conjugation in this one post but maybe you will develop an opinion of your own.

These words are examples of words with a great history or mystery attached to them. These words have unique histories which tell a story within themselves. Who knew that it was possible to tell an entire story with just one word.