pyromagnestir

Alright, I got time for another update I suppose.

For non fiction I finished John Quincy Adams. The book was an interesting look at a guy who probably isn't one of the better known historical political figures of the US but I ended up liking him quite a bit.

I have now started Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell, it's about Hawaii, particularly the American influence in Hawaii leading up to the eventual annexation. I decided to read it after having gone on a family trip to Oahu for this past new years. I'm not very far into it yet.

As for fiction.

I finished Three Body Problem. I dug it. The setting and the context of that setting, plus some clever sci fi touches, made it seem like an interesting approach to a familiar trope.

Then I finished a book called She of the Mountains by Vivek Shraya. It was pretty cool.

The author is a trans woman (though the book appears to have been released before she revealed this as the about the author stuff in the version I read still uses male pronouns) and that's relevant as half of it is story about a character coming to terms with their sexuality and their body. But there's also another half that's based on Hindu mythology. It shifts back and forth between the two stories and both are quite interesting. It also had some nifty art mixed in (note: I actually thought it was going to be more along the lines of a graphic novel when I decided to check it out but was wrong about that it was a story with some art every so often to add to the tone and theme). I really enjoyed it and thoroughly recommend it.

Now I'm gonna start Battle Royale. All the talk about it with the Battlegrounds stuff has had me itching to start it for a while.

I also started Return of the King and intend to slowly read through that.

I want them to make each other cry during the debate for number 1. Except Alex. Alex should be the only one who leaves happy.

My top 5 of the generation as described thus far would probably be:

• Zelda BotW
• Talos Principle
• Fire Emblem Awakening
• Doom
• Mario Maker

None of them would break into my top 5 overall, though I struggle to even come up with what that might look like. Probably

• Ocarina of Time
• Link to the Past
• Mario 64
• WWF No Mercy/WWF Wrestlemania 2000 aka the best fighting games ever

What might round out a top ten after that? Kotor?/Perfect Dark?/Portal?/Fire Emblem Path of Radiance?/OH GOD THIS IS STARTING TO HURT I NEED TO STOP NOW

@sinusoidal: Blindsight is so good. There's a follow up called Echopraxia that's alright, but as complex as some of the concepts present are in Blindsight it has a sort of simplicity to the set up and overall plot that I think really works for it but from what I recall I felt the sequel is a bit more convoluted. Has some cool ideas though.

My thoughts get a bit long so I'll just stick them in spoiler blocks if anyone wants to read them.

Well I finished Country of Vast Designs a week or so ago, it was a very interesting look at the presidency of James Polk who seems to have been a fairly accomplished president in a couple ways, though I do not think much of him as a person.

After that I finished Stolen Legacy by George G.M. James, who proposes that Greek philosophy that has been attributed to various still well known names such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato was in fact mostly if not entirely actually Egyptian philosophy which these people either plagiarized intentionally or have just been given undue credit for.

Now I'm starting John Quincy Adams by Harlow Unger. He's staunchly anti slavery so I already like him much better than Polk.

And for fiction:

I finished Warrior's Apprentice, another fun book in Lois McMaster Bujold's sci fi series.

I also finished LOTR Two Towers and hey guess what that book's alright.

Now I'm on to Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu and I'm digging it thus far.

This thread reminds me of people freaking out after Dan's "loser leaves town" match, as if I recall correctly many were convinced that was just a dumb prank that wouldn't lead to anything and were angry about it too.

Touching the Void, a couple mountain climbers try to go up a mountain and one of them breaks his leg real bad and they have to make it back down. I thought it was pretty darn great.

Had a bit of a slow period where I wasn't reading as consistently for a bit but right now I'm in the middle of:

A Country of Vast Designs, about the presidency of James K. Polk, who was president during a very active point of early U.S. history, when Texas was annexed, war broke out with Mexico, and negotiations were heating up with Britain over Oregon territory. Polk's the main focus of the book but I don't really have much of a read on him, as there are a lot of other much more colorful figures around him who stand out much more, while he's rather ambitious and a bit full of himself, but generally a politician's politician who keeps his real thoughts and aims close to the vest. Also at this point in history slavery is a big problem, and becoming a very heated point of contention in U.S. politics, but he doesn't seem to care about that at all.

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, I'm a guy who loved the movies but only recently have been getting around to reading through the books. Turns out they're quite good.

And I'm near the end of:

Black Powder War, book 3 of a series about the Napoleonic wars, only if everybody also had dragons, and the dragons could talk and were quite fun. It's rather enjoyable.

SoM being this site's GotY I have zero problem with because hey it's their site and it's their choice and we have an entire podcast of why they chose that game on that day. Would the choice be different on a different day, if they had more time to reflect and try other stuff? Almost certainly! But what difference does that make.

I have played it but didn't finish it for reasons that had nothing to do with how much I enjoyed it, I just had to stop playing right in the middle for reasons and by the time I came back to it I felt rusty and thought I'd finish it later and later has yet to become now. And I was rooting for Bayonetta 2 during the debates because I figured if it won it meant there would have been a more entertaining discussion leading up to that choice and I'm always rooting for what I think would be the most entertaining discussion, but it went the other way.

I have not actually played B2 at all nor much of the original Bayonetta as that kind of character action game is not really my thing so while it seems really crazy and interesting from a distance I struggle to actually get into it.

I also want to point out I like the GotY debates because it's the one time they will usually pull out all the stops and really get into a discussion about what they feel about most games. The bombcast and quick looks are understandably more vague, and spoilercasts are rare. Though yeah in practice what that often means is they end up picking some games apart to all hell and maybe even be hyperbolicly harsh towards them rather than really focus on positive stuff as they all want their favorite to make the list and the "knives come out" but even so I still find that genuinely interesting and sometimes quite compelling.

While I understand why, for several reasons, it wasn't this site's game of the year and didn't have a chance, I would like to say that Talos Principle came out in 2014 and hey I personally think that game is pretty great. Though it released super late and hell I myself didn't actually play it until 2016.

Oh I finished American Gods and it was quite good, now I'm watching the tv adaptation and it seems pretty good too.

After that I kinda slowed down on my pace for books for a week or two, but now I've started The Two Towers, as I've never actually read through Lord of the Rings and been meaning to get to that for some time now.

Also I'm going through a book called Muhammad by Karen Armstrong, it's the second book she wrote on the prophet Muhammad I believe. It's going through his life and what he actually preached and did. It's interesting.