Joshua Noel and TJ Blackwell dive into the captivating world of appendices and epilogues, right off the bat highlighting how these often-overlooked sections can completely transform a reader's experience. They discuss the most expansive and interesting examples found in literature, from the rich details of Tolkien's appendices to the insightful reflections of various epilogues. The duo shares their personal histories with these elements, revealing how they each discovered the hidden gems nestled at the ends of their favorite books. With a relaxed vibe, they banter about the importance of these literary features in enriching stories and even debate whether they’re essential or just nice-to-have. As they explore how appendices and epilogues can enhance comprehension and connection to the narrative, listeners are reminded that every page—yes, even the ones at the end—counts.

Takeaways:

• Appendices and epilogues can often provide crucial context that transforms the entire reading experience.
• Joshua and TJ stress that every type of reading counts, from comics to audiobooks; don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
• In discussing the importance of appendices, they highlight how these sections can reveal deeper lore and enrich the world of the story.
• The duo emphasizes that readers should embrace appendices and epilogues as integral parts of the narrative, not just afterthoughts.
• They humorously debate whether authors include appendices because they couldn't fit everything into the main story.
• The discussion touches on how literature, especially fantasy, often includes detailed appendices that can illuminate the story's universe.

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We discuss all this and more in this one! Join in the conversation with us on Discord now!

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Support our show or by purchasing a comfy T-Shirt in our store!

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Be sure to check out all of our All Reading Counts episodes and support our efforts to promote literacy and address the stigma around various kinds of reading:

https://systematic-geekology-shop.fourthwall.com/pages/all-reading-counts

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Listen to all of TJ's episodes:

https://player.captivate.fm/collection/f4c32709-d8ff-4cef-8dfd-5775275c3c5e

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Listen to all of Joshua's episodes:

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Mentioned in this episode:

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What are the most expansive and interesting appendices and epilogues in the books that we read? Well, we're going to be answering that and much more in a very unique episode of all reading counts. This is systematic ecology.

I am one of your co hosts, Joshua Noel, here with the one, the only, the great tj, Tiberius Juan Blackwell. And if you're like, man, why is he so great, man? You clearly haven't read the appendices of your Bibles.

It's about how TJ was hanging out with God in the beginning right there in the appendix. No one ever reads that.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, we really are going to talk about some appendixes, the Bible and epilogues. Maybe is the end of the Book of Mark an epilogue written by someone else? I don't know.

Maybe.

Uh, we're gonna have a lot of fun with it. Uh, some of my favorite things to read come out of epilogues and appendixes and stuff like that. And sometimes they completely change a book.

So usually with already accounts, we like pick a kind of literature and we're like, we'll talk about this. Like, we'll pick books and we're talking about Lord of the Rings. Uh, but this time we're gonna do a little bit more vague.

We of course, do throw this up to our patrons. They had a few things to choose from. We could have been talking about Internet articles or blogs or.

I forget what the other options were, but they voted on this and specifically said they want us to talk about Lord of the Rings appendix. So, Nick Polk, be ready. We're going to talk about it. We're going to do it for you.

Which we could technically do, depending.

Yeah.

A whole episode probably.

Yeah, maybe more.

Yeah.

Nick, join right now and we'll do it. Anyway, before we get anything else, we do have to shout out what was the last kind of literature we read.

I can go first because I think it'll be surprising to some people. I've been reading manga, actually. I think that's what I said last time too. But this time it's the last time we recorded one of these.

I was like, I started a Kingdom Hearts because it's something I already liked. And TJ was like, you probably could have done it with one piece too. And I was like, yo, yeah, bet.

Then I started reading one piece manga and yeah, that's the last thing I read. But instead of starting at the beginning, I'm just reading where I'm at. So I'm like reading Egghead island specifically.

Yeah.

Which is great.

It's so Good.

I love it.

Well, actually this might be my favorite island since Aces execution. I'm not sure, but it might be. I loved walnut. Anyway, tj, what have you. What's the last kind of literature that you.

That you read?

Same thing, same property.

Wait, like same exact thing, just different place in the series.

Recent chapter.

Yeah.

What arc are we on now?

Now we're in the God Valley flashback.

And I just can't wait for them to finally finish the manga and then. And say, you know what, there's also an epilogue and it's just as long as the others. The actual series.

He's gonna finish one piece and immediately start two piece. We've known this.

Praise God. Anyways, with that, if you're on a laptop, please consider reviewing our show on podchaser or goodpod.

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And remember, listeners, if you want your own shout out to be like Jonathan, you too can support our show for $3 a month on one of those three platforms, Apple, podcasts, Captivate or Patreon. Also, we do have to let you guys know. Let me make sure I got this up for the YouTube people.

Everything on our All Reading Counts merch, there's a series you can follow down below. There will be a link to the playlist. You can find all the episodes in our already count series.

There's also going to be a link in the description for some of our merchandise with All Reading Counts, anything you purchase there or if you get the bonus episode on Patreon and you pay for it. All the funds that we get for All Reading Counts stuff we actually donate to our public library.

So the reason we do this series is to support literacy and we do want to take those funds and help our public libraries as well. So if you're on YouTube. You can kind of see some of the merchandise that's on the website. I actually really, really like the design.

We updated it recently, and I think it looks cool. Also, the new merch website just looks better, too.

I agree.

Yeah. Yeah.

So consider checking that out.

And now we'll go ahead and jump into the episode proper, starting with just kind of like, what do we mean by all reading counts and why we think it's important? We always start with this, but, you know, it's always someone's first episode.

Probably for the most part, statistically speaking, it is always someone's first episode, based on what I'm looking at. So, tj, what do we mean by ordering counts? Why do you think it's important?

So really, what spurned it? What really caused us to start doing this? Because a lot of people don't consider audiobooks to count as reading. And we disagree.

But we're extending that to, you know, other shorter form content that people might not consider reading. Poems, you know, novellas, just comic books, manga.

Those kinds of things that do often did get discredited as reading, you know, in, like, second grade for your reading log. Teachers like, hey, that doesn't count. We don't agree. We don't agree. You can tell your second grade teacher that.

Go find them.

Yeah, write them an email.

Pretty sure my secondary teacher's Ms. Reagan. I'll let you know, Ms. Reagan, exactly what I think.

But we're trying to combat that with all reading counts, and we're also promoting reading as a whole because so many people have achieved it for other forms of entertainment. But there's a lot of benefits to reading. Improved cognition, memory, all kinds of stuff. Josh, you have more benefits.

Yeah, I mean, everything that TJ said, longevity of life actually is among the things there increases your vocabulary, your mental awareness, all that good stuff. And yeah, they've done the studies.

They've shown that scientifically speaking, comic books, audiobooks, give you the exact same benefits as the other forms of reading that people more traditionally count as. Hey, that helps do it. And who cares what other people think?

Yeah. Yeah.

But, yeah, also, I just want to reiterate what TJ said. It is a lot to do with, like, disabilities. And why I'm so passionate about it is, you know, people are like, oh, audiobooks don't count.

And a lot of people, that's literally the only way they can read, or comic books or this, you're. That can't count. And people who are on the spectrum or people with adhd, different stuff like that.

Sometimes that's really the only thing they can read.

And then to discount that makes them feel like they're not able to do this thing when, scientifically speaking, they get all the same benefit from what they're reading. And there's no reason you shouldn't count it as. Yeah, I love doing the spill every episode. It's fun. Not every episode.

If we did it every episode, I think it would get old. But every. All reading counts up.

Yeah.

All the relevant episodes.

Yeah.

So, tj, what is your history when it comes to appendices and epilogues, since that's our thing today? Did you always read these or did you, like, used to skip those when you were a kid? Never.

Never skipped something. So the way I read everything growing up was from the library. And I didn't live, like, in a city or something.

So, like, when I finished the book, I couldn't just take it back. It was a process.

I had to either wait until the next school day it was from the school library, or had to wait until my mom wanted to go back to the library to, you know, take it back. So by the time I gave that book back, I read every inch of paper in it, including the appendices and especially the epilogues.

I would never skip an epilogue. Are you crazy? But the appendices, for me, it's always.

I learned quite, quite a few words from books, including names and, you know, therefore foreign language, like pronunciations vaguely, because, you know, they're often based on just non English languages for fantasy novels, which is most of what I was reading growing up. So, of course I was going to the appendix, looking up how to say these names that I've never seen before. Never seen that combination of letters.

Appendices are a very important part of any young fantasy reader's journey.

I feel like I have a much weirder relationship to these things than tg. I did not ever skip them. But when I was younger, and maybe someone told me I had adhd, but our family wasn't like a real thing, so whatever.

I never quite learned how to cope with it.

So for a long time, if all my friend group was talking about a book like, let's say, Lord of the Rings, I would almost exclusively read the appendix and epilogue because it's what I had the attention span to read. And then I would know enough stuff that other people didn't know that it really seemed like I read the book so I didn't have to feel ashamed.

So I did that as a kid. Then as I got older, I learned how to how to actually read and cope with some of my own disabilities.

And I just never stopped reading the epilogue and. And the appendix because I grew up kind of like that was all I read. So I knew the importance of it.

Like a lot of information, that's the only place to find it.

And then for a long time I had this weird thing where it was easy for me to read theology books or books about the Bible, commentaries and that kind of stuff. But I had a harder time reading fiction in a lot of those books, Especially one of my favorite Bibles is the New Jerusalem Bible.

They do abbreviations and stuff in the footnotes. That doesn't really make sense unless you reference it with the appendix in the back.

And it kind of explains what do these abbreviations and different things mean? Which kind of solidified for me the importance of all that. So once I started actually reading more fiction just kind of carried over.

Yeah.

So with that, tj, clarify for everybody. What's the difference between an appendix, an epilogue, footnote, etc. Etc.

Is a term usually used in lieu of et al. But. So an appendix is additional matter at the end of a book. Traditionally, you can put the appendix in the front after the glossary.

I've seen that once or twice. It's weird. I don't know why a publisher would clear that appendix goes in the back. But traditionally. And when I say traditionally, I mean by.

By the word of Tolkien, it goes in the back. And it is additional content in the story that connect you more to the world. Usually it's something like that.

A lot of the times it will be, you know, you can have maps back there, you can have pronunciations of names back there. Basically, any additional content that the author thought would be helpful for you to have with the book, that's what's going to be in your appendix.

So super helpful. I don't really see a reason not to read them unless you're just trying to burn through books, you know, just move on to the next one. Sure.

But sure, the epilogue traditionally is what the author will kind of pin on to the end of the story as like, additional resolution. So they feel as if they finished the story. And the epilogue is just kind of the happily ever after, if you will. Usually, hopefully.

Yeah, yeah.

And sometimes an epilogue will completely change a book, or sometimes it just kind of re. Contextualizes, like a few of the examples I'm going to talk about throughout the episode.

And that blog is going to kind of change where, like, maybe the main story was about me and tj, the Epilogue's like, okay, but here's what's happening in the grander world because of what happened to Josh and TJ in the book, whatever.

And then a footnote is when an author will, you know, decide if something needs additional clarification or reference. This doesn't normally happen in novels. Sometimes, rarely. But it's a lot more likely that you'll see it in like translated poem.

Basically anything that's been translated. That's where you're more likely to see a footnote. Because of translators, notes like, hey, there's like 14 words for this.

This is why I chose this one.

Yeah, like the, the New Jerusalem Bible is a collection of like Jewish and Hebrew scholars translating the Bible not word for word, but like theme for theme and trying to match the type of literature. So like, if a psalm rhymes, they want to make sure it rhymes in the translation.

There are some pages of that where the footnotes are just as big a section as the actual text.

If you get into like, yeah, especially the Bible, but also like ancient poetry translations. Like, not even ancient, just like old English.

Beowulf.

Beowulf is bad. Beowulf's bad.

Bad. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, so that's where. That's where our footnotes come in for, you know, more scholarly minded people typically.

I wonder if Beowulf is the only text that Tolkien used footnotes for. Like, that's the only thing I can think of.

Yeah, maybe.

So there are also endnotes which are distinct from footnotes for some reason because they specifically tend to be in the bottom margins of the page and I thought seen as less relevant, but still.

So I thought they were like at the end of like a chapter.

I don't think they have to be.

I'm not sure what that is. Okay, so that's still maybe in notes, but it's still in structure. Different.

Yeah, because a lot of the books that I like that are like, for perspectives of ecclesiology or whatever. Like there's a whole series that I like to read that's like different perspectives from different Christian traditions on whatever.

They'll have like one person argue, then three other people will respond to his main article, and then at the end of the chapter will be all the footnotes or end notes that are like, where they're all pulling from or when one person referenced another person, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I think that is specifically the case in like, academic situations. At least from what I've seen.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

Anyway, I will say though, the one exception for me, I don't read the maps in the appendix. I am not a very good visual like reader, I guess. So like even like I could look all day at this like thing of Arda.

Like if I try hard, I could see where Sam and them went on the map. But as I'm reading the story, nope, doesn't happen. This does not help my brain.

I love it. I love it. This my room in my apartment. You can't really tell. My room at home at my parents house is covered in maps.

Three of the four walls of my room are covered in maps. And not, not like fantasy maps either. I have one fantasy map, maybe two hung up on my wall and one of them is from Red Dead Redemption.

So that's not a fantasy map, that's just Texas. That's Texas 200 years ago.

Funny.

I will say though, some of the Bible appendix.

Sometimes like I remember early on when I started looking at the maps, it did change some of how I read it just because of like seeing how like Paul's journey went.

If you have like one of the maps that like with the path that shows like everywhere that he went in missionary, you kind of realize that their whole world was around the Mediterranean Sea, basically. So like a lot of times when you're like, oh, they went to Rome and then they went to Athens, I'm like, wow, that's crazy.

And then like you see it on the map and you're like, oh, yeah. To them the world was like this little piece of the map by Mediterranean, like America's and all this other stuff didn't exist.

And it doesn't seem as vast when you see like the seas in the middle and they're kind of just doing like a loop. Because in my mind, Europe, Africa, Asia, like those are completely different places, but each do like this little loop.

Yeah.

If they just had like some real good boats.

Yeah, yeah.

A lot of time there was a ferry that went across the Mediterranean Sea. Oh yeah, that would have been. That would have been super helpful.

Oh, I thought you told me there was one. You were telling me about your experience with the ferry, the Mediterranean Sea. I was like, I haven't heard this story.

No, no, no, not yet.

All right.

So do you think, tj that epilogues or appendices are ever a sign that the author was just unable to explain the characters? Well, wrap up the story well on the main event. Like, do we need the map?

Because they really just didn't explain it well enough for us to visualize it or like, I don't know, why do they do this if they already have it in the story.

So I think, especially for an author like Tolkien, making the map will help you not only contextualize the story, but also conceptualize the story. So it's helpful as a writing aid. When I've made a couple different, like, custom campaign settings for D and D games, I always start with the map.

It just helps me talking. Way smarter than me. He probably just really needed his world to be visual. He wanted people to know how smart he was, so he created a world.

But typically, I feel like the author won't put that stuff in an appendix because they couldn't fit it into the story. It's more like it wasn't necessary to fit it into the story, but they.

Still wanted you to have it.

They wanted you to know, though.

Yeah.

Like a nice little preface.

Yeah.

Because you won't find something in an appendix that's like, oh, by the way, the emperor's mom and dad tried to kill him when he was 4. That's not going to be in the appendix. That's going to be somewhere in the emperor's exposition.

Yeah.

Although with Tolkien, you might find out that the emperor's great, great, great, great great grandfather was murdered by the queens are like that, like 500 years ago.

Special case. He wrote a lot more extra stuff about his world than most people.

Yeah.

You know what happens at the beginning of time in Arda?

Yeah, yeah, that's different.

That's a little different. But that's what I feel like it mostly is, is like extra information. That wasn't necessary, but it's nice to have.

Yeah. Yeah.

I wish the. The biblical authors knew more about this. Maybe the book of Matthew could have left that genealogy for the appendix.

Yeah, that been great. That would have been great, actually. Right where it belongs.

Not in the front.

Not in the front.

Yeah.

Someone go get them. But do comic books or video games ever do anything similar to an epilogue?

So, like, is the bonus level of like a Sonic video game or like, you know, the comic book last frame of Dr. Doom showing up. Is that the same thing as an epilogue?

Oh, yeah, definitely. Well, in some cases, obviously there are different writing styles for comic books. They vary greatly.

Usually I'll find for a big event like Secret Wars, Infinity War, Black as Night, you know, big stuff. They will have, like an epilogue of how the world is, you know, going after the big event happens. Most comic books, I feel like, don't.

They'll have a little preview of, you know, what's going on in either other comic books or the next issue in the back. Typically video games are different. Different, but the same. So a lot of games will do that, like bonus level.

And a bonus level is not the same as an epilogue. A lot of story driven games have epilogues where they're covering the same subject matter as a book.

But for your arcade games, you know, they'll also have bonus levels that aren't contributing to the story, but they are contributing to the gameplay. Because that's what it's for. It's a video game.

In Street Fighter, which famously had no or very little story for the first 10 years of its life, there are bonus levels. If you play arcade mode because you get to beat up a truck, that's the bonus level.

You're not fighting a player or a computer, you're fighting a truck. And it doesn't do anything. You just beat it up and score points.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think the evil usually is within the game. And maybe like the appendix is more like. So like India.

It's different from like arcade games where you had bonus levels to like now modern games just will do dlc. So like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle released the Order of Giants.

And it's more like an appendix because it explains kind of what happens to the giants. Like it was something that was in the video game. There was no need for that to be part of the story.

They still gave it to us so we can learn a little bit more about the giants and play through some stuff.

Yeah.

And it'll. So a lot of it's not as much anymore, which really stinks.

Just because that's what I had of Peter Jackson's King Kong, the movie, the video game. Because their bonus content gallery was a museum and you could walk through it and look at the stuff that you unlock.

Sick. So good.

It was so good.

My favorite surprising to know one, one of the times when we were waiting 5 million years for Kingdom Hearts 3. They did like one of the rereleases for Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, and all the games in betweens actually came in like a little white hardcover book.

And you have like the game in there. But then there's like all these pages of concept art from like before they ever did the first game. And I love that stuff.

And that's Definitely falls under the appendix. Like it's literally book pages at that point.

Yeah, yeah.

And I feel like a lot of games could like learn a lesson from the appendix. And a lot of RPGs you'll find, you know, journals, logbooks, books in world if you're playing, you know, a big one like Xenoblade, Skyrim, Oblivion.

A lot of zombie games do this really well.

Yeah.

But just, just let me have like a little option on the main menu to go read all the books that I found in the game so far.

Yeah.

And like give us a library, Kingdom Hearts.

You find all Anselm's report and then later you learn it's not Anselm, but who cares? And it doesn't explains who the heartless are.

All this other background stuff that a 10 year old me didn't care about, but adult me who's still playing the same game is like, yeah, I'm going to read all of this. This is great.

Oh, I was the opposite, dude. I used to. Every time I found a book in any game, I read the whole thing. Now I'm a lot more likely to skip.

Yeah.

What's funny is that's how I learned a lot about Marvel characters. Marvel ultimate alliance did that. Something similar.

Oh yeah, they did a great job.

I learned so much about the character. That's actually why I got it to cop Marvel Comics. I think before then I was like, I exclusively want Batman content.

And then I was like, change my mind. Marvel ultimate alliance is right. These characters are.

And they are. And it is.

Yeah.

What about movies? Like the after credit stuff that Marvel started doing? Is that more an epilogue or an appendix?

Like at the end of Thunderbolts, like we see Fantastic Four showing up. So it's kind of like opening the world up. It's like a brief scene.

Yeah.

I don't consider that appendix. That's more like a teaser.

Maybe like a footnote. End note. That's the end note, by the way.

Fantastic Four.

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

I love it. All right, so as far as actual books, epilogues, appendices, what are some of the ones that stand out the most to us?

Yeah, me specifically. Just because you wrote it down. I want to talk about it. Ergon's Guide to Alagasia.

Loved it.

Yeah.

I wasn't sure if that counted. I was actually going to ask you, does that or like fantastic beaks that J.K. rowling did work.

It's like a separate book, but it definitely functions as an appendix. What does it fall in?

Well, I agree with You. It is a separate book. And Ergon's Guide to Alagasia, I think is more like an appendix than Fantastic Beasts because it's fantastic.

Beast really has its own narrative that it's pushing. Yeah, it does, but arrogance, God, it's just. To me, it's really nostalgic. It's special to me. Also really annoying to me because I was.

I'm barely younger than Christopher Paolini and I found that out because I'm pretty sure I was reading Eragon when I was like 12, 13.

I told you about the stupid thing my brother did, right?

Not yet.

Do you want me to tell you now? I didn't mean to interrupt you, but sure. I think you'll find it funny and also want to punch Matt the Man. It won't let me change. Okay.

There.

My brother used to be obsessed with those books when they were coming out and he wrote a letter to Christopher Pellini and Christopher wrote him back. Matt had a letter handwritten by him and signed and everything. And he lost it. I'm like, matt, that's crazy, dude. You had no idea. You have no idea.

Like, this guy. Like, that was huge. Like, back when Aragon first came out, people like. And now.

Yeah.

And his other books are really good. His sci fi stuff's great, but just for clarity, I am a good bit younger than him, but he wrote Aragon when he was 16.

What? Yeah.

Insane.

Yeah.

And you can kind of tell if you go back now, but it was still great book. Anyway. It really just gives you more of what we wanted because he was so young when he was writing the series.

There's a lot of stuff that felt like it got left unsaid. And that's what Ergon's Guide really helps with. And I think it's. It's wonderful.

I actually haven't read that one. I just recently finished Inheritance Cycle, like last year.

What?

I feel like I should pick that up.

Yeah.

I never read it until you and Christian mentioned it, like several times on two different episodes. And I was like, maybe I should finally read this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I like it a lot.

And audiobooks are good.

I bet they are. Especially being able to. Because that's. The appendices of those books have the spells pronunciations in them. That's super helpful.

That does seem important.

Especially when he titled the second book One of the spells or the third book Prisoner. That was pretty funny. That was pretty funny of him.

So Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them.

I didn't think there was a narrative at all, but it was literally just a picture of the creature, then a list of like what that creature is and does and how that's born.

Well, they not rewrote it. They're releasing like the movie books.

Okay, okay.

So, yeah, I was thinking of like back in the day because it was like something that was like mentioned in one of the stories or is like one of Harry's textbooks. And they released this and I'm. I loved it actually, when it all it was was that and not the actual story of the movies or whatever.

I like being like, huh? And literally just a frog has to sit on some eggs. That's how I get a basilisk.

That's.

That's it.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. It's. It's really special. Wildly reminds me of like the dragonology book that treat dragons like real, real animals.

Yeah, I love that.

Love that. So basically what we're saying in this episode is that appendices are for nerds.

Ecologists specifically, who want to dig deeper.

Yeah, it's true. So they count.

Yeah, well.

And since specifically Jonathan Augustine was the patron who was like, we had a vote and there was a tie on what we should do for this episode, but he left in the comments. Please talk about the Lord of the Rings appendix. That's what won the tie. No one commented about the other thing. So that's how you win.

If you're on Patreon and you see a tie and you want your side to win. Leave an interesting comment. That's the tiebreaker. So Lord of the Rings appendix, it's literally how we get the entire show.

Rings of Power is literally only based off the appendix. It gives you like, genealogies, it gives you like history of the character, History of the Rings, all kinds of just crazy wild and out stuff.

Dj, have you read the appendix to the Lord of the Rings?

Yeah, it's been a long time, but I have and it's because it's interesting because, like, there's a little appendix in Two Towers in Fellowship and Return to the King. And the Appendix is like 100 pages or something, is just so much. But that took me by surprise the first time I was reading them.

Is it the Tree of Gondor? Isn't the. Its entire history is just in the appendix. Right. Like how it actually came from Numenor and all that.

Yeah, the entire appendix. The appendix is just way more content. And then there's the Silmarillion.

Yeah.

Which functions as like a appendix almost, with some really good short stories sprinkled in. It's like if you take appendixes and just combine it with short story anthology, I think that's what the Silmarillion actually is.

Yeah.

And it's great. Perfect.

One of my favorite books, actually. All right, so some of the other ones that stand out to me, one of my favorite, all time favorite. I'm gonna call it an epilogue.

The Screwtape proposes a toast. I'm not sure it counts as an epilogue. CS Lewis releases this separate from the Screwtape letter.

But typically now, if you get a copy of the Screwtape letters, it's gonna have that at the end. So that's where I'm like, I think it falls in the same category. It's like a separate chapter and.

Whereas the book Screwtape Letters is a series of letters from Screwtape to his nephew. Am I getting that right? Wrong. Is it Wormwood to screw tape or is it Screwtape to wormwood?

You ask me. Don't ask me, Mr. T.S.

I'M pretty sure Screwtape is writing too. Anyway, at the end of the. Yeah, because it's Screwtape. Okay. At the end of the book, when you get to Screwtape proposes a toast. This is CS Lewis.

Just like, oh, by the way, at the college graduation for demons, Screwtape is there. This is like toast. Like, hey, we're doing so great. Here's what we're doing.

And he gives an entire thing of like, here's what's going to happen to the education system and how we're going to get people to be polarized and turn against one another in politics, even though it's not about that at all. And you're like, like, I dare someone to read this. Like, it's literally just CS Lewis describing what modern day America is going to look like.

Like, that's all it is. And you're like, what? He pretty much when he talks about the education systems grouptapes, like, here's what I think we should do. Their schools.

And it's almost exactly the no Kid gets Left behind program. Like, it's verbatim pretty much. You're like this lose a prophet. Like, it's wild. Vastly different from the other letters, which is why it's separate.

But I think it's a must read, personally.

Yeah.

Then a weird comic book one.

Oh, actually I haven't read Sandman Overture, so I'm gonna take my earbuds out and you just need to wave at me really hard when you're done.

I won't say anything about it.

Okay.

I'll Just say it is interesting that Neil Gaiman actually just straight up writes. Also just does an entire epilogue at the end, by the way, Salmon was such a good book. But wait, there's more.

I think that's what an epilogue really is. It's the. But wait, there's more.

Yeah, yeah.

Also really good.

Neil Gaiman really just loves writing his stories.

Yeah.

And I feel like Sandman's one of those. Were like, yes, it's a comic book, but it's also just straight up a novel. Like, it's so good.

Yeah, it is. It's special.

Yeah.

Other ones that stand out to me, there's a lot of theology ones that I could bring up. Even Forgotten God by Francis Chan.

I know a lot of more progressive Christians don't like Francis Chan as much as I do because, yeah, a lot of his theology I disagree with. But Forgotten God, you talk about how, like, we claim we have the Holy Spirit living in us and we just don't act like it.

I mean, his epilogue in that book moved me to tears and had a moment where it really helped me overcome some of my own mentality over the injuries I've had. That's how I'll describe it. One of my favorite scholarly works is who Wrote the Bible? By Richard Elliot Freeman.

He is a Jewish scholar and he's just talking about the Pentateuch, really.

But in the epilogue, he kind of has a verbatim because he goes through the documentary hypothesis where five different sources wrote different parts of the book and some redactors came in and edited them into the books we have today. In the epilogue, he shows verbatim like, okay, here's this source. Here's what they wrote.

And it kind of breaks down the Bible into the different sources that he's talking about in a way where I can look at it and go, okay, this is why you think this was written by a different source. Why you think that these is the same story written by two different people.

And then after reading that, now when I read the Bible, I'm like, yeah, I just read the same story twice.

And you.

And yet somehow I would have never noticed that if it wasn't for the epilogue in Richard Elliot Friedman's who Wrote the Bible? I'm assuming you haven't read that. Have you read Kindred by Octavia Butler?

I haven't.

You should.

Tiffany read it. Really liked it, too, but you should read it.

Tiffany can read.

Yeah.

She's got the Kindle Unlimited thing now. So now it's like I'm just constantly Hearing about these books that I might never read. But Kindred is different.

I will read Kindred because it's a sci fi, African American kind of thing. Octavia Butler writes a cool story.

It involves time travel the way the book ends, because I don't want to ruin it, because I actually do want TJ and other people to read this one.

But the way the book originally ends, it shows the physical harm done to the married couple who keeps going back in time and seeing, like, enslaved people in America back in the past and how they were physically hurt from it and their lives were changed at the end of the story. The epilogue shows them revisiting the place where someone was buried that they met in the past.

And it really opens up to the whole of America and kind of asks this question of, like, will America ever heal from what we've done? And without that epilogue, it's like a really personal, intimate, cool story with these characters. But then the epilogue makes it.

Yeah, no, this is all of our story. It's just really cool thing that she does.

There's a kindred graphic novel.

What Will. If you're listening, that's pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah.

I kind of want to check that out now.

Yeah.

So I guess those are my main shout outs. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out, are there any other ones that I wanted to make sure we shout out?

I think those are the main ones for me that I'm like, these are some awesome epilogues. Awesome appendixes. Obviously there are others, I will say.

Just real quick to sleep in the sea of Stars, which is Pisker's apparently first foray into sci fi. Had a really cool appendix where he had drawn some schematics of how these ships were built and how their technology works. That was super fun.

I like that a lot.

Yeah. Yeah.

How do we feel about some of the books that are basically the appendixes written by other people? You know what I mean? Like, and I know the inheritance cycle has a couple of these.

Obviously, Lord of the Rings is if you actually have a series of six that other people wrote that are just like, here's what's going on in Lord of the Rings and explaining it and kind of doing like, basically an appendix book. It's really just a money grab. I like some of them.

There's a commentary. It can be helpful. I typically don't.

It's the same thing as a biblical commentary, then.

Yes.

Is this just the Bible commentary version of.

Especially in that case.

Sick.

Especially in the case of Lord of the Rings.

I love a Good Bible commentary. I like it more when they actually include the scripture, so I'm not having to reference back and forth. I can just read the commentary.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people who write commentaries are overestimating how large my desk is.

Yeah, I want to kind of go get my Oxford English commentary of the Bible.

You expect me to have your commentary and also the Bible open together so I can, like, do my reference? Yeah, no, I don't have, like, a drafting desk. Layers.

Yeah, yeah.

You're not Shrek the. Yeah, no, I love them.

But some of it, when it's, like, about TV shows and movies that were fun, though, like, I have the Doctor who commentary appendix, basically up there. Stuff about Doctor who.

All right, so what do you think is it that draws us into that desire to stay a little bit longer, you know, for the epilogue, or to look a little bit more into the details? Like, what about these stories really draw us in enough that we want just that investment?

You know, by the time you finish a book. Well, and there are two scenarios. By the time you finish a book, you've already spent so much time with it, usually that you want to.

You just want to get as much time as you can out of it. So you'll read the appendix. Even if there wasn't anything particularly confusing in the book, you'll read the appendix.

Or in Tolkien's case, where the appendix is just a lot more story.

You're absolutely going to read it.

You're absolutely going to read it. And if you're listening to this and thinking, I didn't read the appendix, you should return the King. You should read at least appendix A and B.

Correct.

And learn about Helm Hammerhand, because he's awesome.

Also, it'll make that one anime film make a lot more sense.

But that's typically what it is. Otherwise, it's like you're reading the appendix because you were confused about something and hoping for more answers. Like in the Bible.

Yeah, I'll say that that's worse in most cases. Like, if I'm confused enough that I'm reading it just because I hope that it's going to make sense. Maybe not a great book.

Yep, maybe.

But usually for me, it's the first one.

Yeah, same, same.

I do want to say, though, because, like, with the Bible, there are some things that, like, it irritates me how some people treat some of the sadded stuff as just as important as the Bible, like the maps or, you know, the verse numbers or the little headings in their Bible. And a lot of the stuff is done kind of help in translation.

But in translation, they're also interpreting what they want you to think the meaning of Scripture is. And when you get something like the Bible, it's like, this is supposed to be a sacred book. And then all of a sudden we're adding stuff to it.

We're adding the maps, we're adding subtitles, we're adding verse numbers. To me, it irks me when people treat that stuff as just as sacred as the words, because I think the actual words of the Bible are sacred.

All that other stuff. Cool. That's somebody's opinion. I feel free to argue with it one way or the other, because that's not part of the Bible.

Right.

I don't think the same issue occurs with other texts. But maybe the problem is it's distracting. Rather than this part isn't sacred, it's more distracting from what the actual message of the book is.

So maybe that does still exist.

Does that exist in stuff like Beowulf and all that, where, like, maybe adding some of the stuff that we add distracts from what it's actually trying to say?

Yeah, well, no one tries to write an epilogue for Farewell because that would be.

That would be stupid.

But, you know, there are some translations that are looked upon pretty unfavorably because of that same type of thing where they're trying to create their own meaning or something.

Yeah.

Or at least reinforce a possible meaning.

Maybe that's a good reason for endnotes, too, because, like, sometimes too many footnotes does get distracting or like. Or makes it look overwhelming. There's like, what.

Especially if you're reading, like, a split copy of an ancient poem where you've got English on one side and the original on the other. It's a lot of text. A lot of text on a page.

Have you seen those Bibles that have, like, four different translations, like nlt, nasb, King James, or like, something else, like, all in one thing.

No, I never will, hopefully.

Yeah. I like the concept of comparing it because I want to be like, oh, why did you translate it this way? Why did you translate it that way?

But then, like, actually opening it, looking at it, I'm like, no, too much on one page.

That should be reserved for when you have one of each. Or technology.

Technology is cool.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because online reading still counts.

Yeah.

I can just open four translations of the Bible on this screen and have one in each corner.

Or what's really fun is if you have a. The. What's the. It's not the blue letter. Bible app.

There's an app that I have that's a Bible app that I can literally highlight a word and it'll like pull up references where I can see literally how everybody translates actual thing. Logos Bible. The Logos Bible app. It's awesome.

It also has commentaries and stuff in it I can download, so I can just highlight whatever and just look through the references. Way easier than having like five commentaries and several versions of the Bible on my desk. That doesn't work. But having it in an app, it's awesome.

Yeah.

All right, so dj, what's our main takeaway with epilogues, appendices, all that? Is it just that they count or people should read them because it enhances their reading or.

I think the point is not only do they count, but I think you should read them because the author put it in there for a reason. Yeah, read it. Or she.

Yeah, they want you to read it.

I think for me, in the case that like you're reading it because you're confused and the work didn't make sense, I actually don't think you need to read it. In that case, I feel like you didn't even need to finish the book.

I'm one of those where I'm like, if it's not fun unless I'm doing it for school, why am I still reading this? But if it's like you really appreciate it and you enjoy like Tolkien's work.

Yeah.

He had there because it was something important to him to understand the world he created. And if you connected with his story, then I think you. Not that you owe him that respect, but maybe a little bit.

Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's just where I'm at with it, so I hope you guys enjoyed this.

Stick around for the appendix to this episode on Patreon, we'll be asking a bonus question for people who either already patrons or if you just want to do a one time purchase, you can do that. And the funds, again, we'll go to our local libraries because we're doing this to promote literacy and literacy is awesome. So with that.

All right, tj, do you have, before we do anything else, a recommendation for our listeners or anything important, maybe?

Well, I did mention it earlier and I really think if you're into sci fi, you should check out To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. I think it's a really interesting world that Paolini's building and this is not the first time I've recommended it, so check it out.

Let me know what you think about his, you know, first Foray into a new field.

I will actually. I'm really interested.

Yeah.

I bought it when released, which is like probably one of three times that I've done that in my life.

That was a pretty high recommendation.

All right. I don't know. For me. Yeah.

You know what? It's not tough. Read the light novel of Kingdom Hearts, Chain of Memories. That's my recommendation.

Yeah.

Because we're supposed to be books that different than the kind of literature we talked about. I don't think there's an epilogue in it, so you're safe. That's also a state of every priest.

The only comprehensible way to. To get the story of Chain of Memories.

It really is. I mean, the manga makes sense, but the light novel is just the best way to get the story.

Actually, it's a hard story to understand because it's about memory loss. So it's like.

Yeah.

Really hard to write that in a way that's comprehensive.

Yeah.

But I think the light.

It feels like they're trying to go beyond unreliable narrator and they're trying to impose unreliable reader.

Yeah.

Unreliable narrator reader correspondence.

You feel like it's my fault.

Existence. It's everybody.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that. I love the story, though. It's so good.

Yeah.

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