flamebyrd | Entries tagged with books

It's been exactly 4 months so I suppose I should post to say I'm still around! I just don't have a lot of free time right now.

Website
My website was down for a couple of days, so I'm sorry if that affected anyone! I have pondered switching to a static HTML site generator instead of what I'm currently using, which would avoid this happening again, but see above re: free time. (If I do, I will write a tutorial for how to do it, specifically to make your own fanfic archive so you can upload a work and it automatically adds it to whatever index pages you want and then upload it anywhere that supports plain static HTML... let me know if that's of interest to anyone.)

A couple of people have emailed me with bug reports and feature requests recently, so there have been some changes:

AO3 Statistics CSV Bookmarklet: Should now work properly with Unicode characters (e.g. Chinese, Japanese) and quotation marks in titles

AO3 Works List CSV Bookmarklet: Now includes the work's recipient (if available). I also reordered the columns so apologies if that's messed everything up for you.

Games
Theory of Magic (AKA Arcanum). A couple of years ago my brother linked me to this idle/clicker game where you work a wizard up through the ranks. I suddenly remembered it the other day, figured a game where you mostly just let it sit there and do its thing was perfect for my life right now, and have been playing for almost a week at this point. Documentation is very light so it's a "discover it as you go along" sort of thing - there's a new wiki with very little information, an old wiki with lots of info that's only available on web.archive.org, a Reddit that is mostly inactive (but at least not private) and a Discord I haven't joined. But I'm having fun!

Beastieball: This is a Kickstarter for a new game by the people behind Chicory and Wandersong, both of which I loved! It seems to be a Pokemon-like Volleyball RPG. It's fully funded but they are still working on stretch goals so check it out if that sounds fun to you!

Twitter
I finally quit Twitter - Tweetdeck going away was the final straw. Still figuring out how best to fill the idle-scrolling/refreshing void in my life. Maybe I need to pick up a game?

Reading
I picked up a copy of Witch King by Martha Wells but I haven't had the chance to read it yet. I recently reread Death of the Necromancer (which is getting an updated rerelease soon) and the Fall of Ile-Rien, which I still enjoyed. I also picked up the Murderbot audiobooks in a Humble Bundle (which has already ended, sorry) so I'm looking forward to listening to those someday.

Food
I got an Instant Pot after a deep anxiety spiral about trying to reduce the amount of cooking with gas I do. I've never used a pressure cooker OR a slow cooker before! If you are a multi-cooker user and have favourite (vegetarian) recipes, please send them my way!

So what happened here was that my friend and I came across a promo Tweet for the upcoming manhua adaptation of this Chinese webnovel which had a very poorly translated summary, and in the course of finding a better summary I became intrigued enough to read the first couple of chapters of the translated novel and then I finished it within 48 hours.

It's omniscient POV, like most Chinese webnovels I've read, but you're mostly in the head of Xue Xian, who is a very arrogant, belligerent millennia-old black dragon. His narration is frequently hilarious. The love interest is an amnesiac monk - the strong, silent type.

I really loved all the characters in this and I found the ending very satisfying and romantic! It's very readable too, I didn't find it dragged too much and each chapter left me eager to read the next. Even though the content is quite serious the tone is very light.

( Content notes: )

( Vaguely spoilery musing. )

I read JQ's translation. Translator's introduction is here, then you can get to Chapter 1 here, and once you reach the end of the edited translation you can access Chapter 63 from here.

A couple of months ago my friend told me she was watching and really enjoying a Chinese drama on Netflix that was:
- Just like a sports manga, except about online gaming
- Almost entirely romance-free
- Featuring a healthy dose of secret identity shenanigans

Sold, I said! Except that I'm very bad at watching things, so I decided to seek out the novel instead. It hooked me very quickly, and then I realised it was over 3 million words long.

Anyway so I read it all, accidentally through less-than-legal means because the officially-licensed site that hosts it did not make it at all clear that all chapters beyond 90 were behind a poorly-described paywall, not just a login requirement. I'm not going to say I read every word - a lot of the battle sequences (and there are many) I just skimmed for dialogue.

And then I convinced my spouse to watch the live-action drama with me! We're up to episode 20 and really enjoying it, with a couple of caveats:
- When the show is trying to be funny, it gets extremely cringey
- We really want to punch some of the antagonists in the face
- Sometimes the heartfelt speeches about the power of Glory get a bit cheesy

There is an animation available too (on YouTube, legally) that I would like to watch eventually if I can convince anybody to do it with me.

So, am I recommending this? If you love long drawn out sports power fantasies about being the absolute very best at the game while mentoring new and under-appreciated players into greatness, definitely check it out! If you don't, I don't know that it will make you a fan of the genre. It really shines in showing the way all the pro players know each other and relate to each other as friends and rivals both on and off the field (as it were), and the mentorship parts can be really touching. There are also moments that are completely heartbreaking. The protagonist is an asshole but somehow I love him anyway, and the secondary (and tertiary) characters almost all have distinguishable traits that makes them memorable and fun.

🎮 My gaming YouTube profile suggested a Let's Play of Mini Metro, a puzzle game about building urban train systems, and about halfway through I got twitchy wanting to try things, so I went in search of where I could buy it. (As an aside, I really recommend IsThereAnyDeal for getting an overview of the pricing of PC games.) Anyway, it told me it was on sale on the Humble Store (sadly, it isn't anymore), however before I headed over there it occurred to me to search my inbox in case I'd already bought it in a bundle, and it turned out it was in the Itch.io Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid! So I loaded it up on the media PC and had a happy couple of days building train lines. I can definitely see it being a stressful game for some people, but I found the ability to continue in "endless" mode took the stress out of it for me and I could just enjoy trying to optimise my system.

🎨 My watercolours and swatching tools (see last post) finally arrived! I had a nice, chill time swatching all 34 of my watercolour tubes (although now my shoulder hurts - maybe I shouldn't have done all 34 in a single day). I have updated my watercolour spreadsheet with the new colours accordingly, although I didn't think to mark them in any way. I should have added a date column on this. Now I just need to... make some art? That sounds fake.

🖼 Relatedly, I just discovered the concept of Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) and I love it and want to make some. I also have a box of blank watercolour postcards I recently rediscovered! Filing tiny art under the list of things I'd like to post people if I ever get around to making a form.

📖 My library hold on Rainbow Rowell's Any Way the Wind Blows came in, so I'm about to start reading that. Here's hoping I like it more than Wayward Son!

(Right now my brain is 90% uni assignments, 9% panic about a job interview I have next week and 1% anything else, but I have a few shower thoughts I wanted to share.)

The other night I just could. not. sleep. so I had the bright idea to put on the Howl's Moving Castle audiobook I'd acquired a couple of months earlier. It's a book I've read a lot, I thought. That means I can listen to the familiar words and just drift off to sleep.

This was not what happened, of course. Although I'm not entirely sure I can blame the book - eventually I switched it off and put on my sleeping playlist* and that didn't work either.

( Spoilers for the book and audio rendition follow. )

The audiobook is available in the usual places audiobooks are sold/rented. I recommend it!

*Currently consists entirely of music from the soundtrack of Gris.

Because our house gets oddly quiet at night, despite being in a well-populated suburb located between two major roads, A and I have taken to listening to things before sleep.

A few months ago we tried out Phoebe Reads a Mystery, a daily podcast in which Phoebe Judge (of multiple other podcasts I haven't listened to) reads a classic mystery book chapter by chapter. It worked well! Did one or both of us usually fall asleep mid-chapter? Yes. We just catch each other up the next day.

So we made it through the first five seasons:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie
The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (New to me)
The Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie
The Leavenworth Case - Anna Katharine Green (New to me)

Moonstone and Leavenworth were particularly interesting listens, because being 19th century works of detective fiction that pre-date Sherlock Holmes, their tropes and conventions were unfamiliar to me. ( Cut for vague spoilers. )

Also I was reminded of how much the dynamic of Hastings and Poirot's relationship in those two books makes me cringe. Anyway.

Phoebe is doing Dracula now, which I do not consider relaxing bedtime listening, so I suggested we listen to some Dorothy L. Sayers next, since I have long enjoyed them and A has never read them.

We started with the recording of Whose Body? on Librivox, which is read by two people in alternating chapters. Aside from some early teething issues (one of them pauses just slightly too long between paragraphs for the first few chapters) once they found their stride it was good! A enjoyed his first Sayers experience* and I suddenly realised how much of it I still remembered despite it being several years since I last read it.

That was the only Sayers novel on LibriVox, so I sourced the Ian Carmichael audiobook for Clouds of Witness. We listened to chapter one last night and I have to say, Carmichael gets extremely into the characters and narration in a way that is entertaining but not great bedtime listening. Still, I think we'll persist for now.

Incidentally, do I list these as books or as narrative audio in my annual review?

* Of course, it goes without saying that some of the content is quite problematic, there were several points where we said "...wow" at each other in dismay.

Title: 网恋翻车指南 | Guide on How to Fail at Online Dating
Author: 网恋翻车指南
Raws: http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4074715
Translation: https://chrysanthemumgarden.com/novel-tl/ghfod/

Summary: A Chinese M/M webnovel about MMORPG gaming, revenge catfishing and online-dating someone you know in real life without realising it.

In short:
This was super cute! Both of the main characters are so good-hearted and nice. There's a decent amount of identity porn, which I always enjoy. A nice, slow burn romance. The gaming feels very real in a cynical sort of way, with account sales, login sharing, paid "booster" services an accepted part of the system. There's a bit of angst but it's short-lived, so this was a nice, long, relaxing read.

( Content notes )

( The rest is spoilers, but this isn't a book with a lot of twists. )

This book reminds me of:
- Scum Villain's Self Saving System: The protagonist has a very low opinion of the MMO he's playing and frequently complains about it internally while in-character as a cutesy girl
- That one Inception fic where Arthur and Eames play World of Warcraft

PS: Many thanks to

alias_sqbr for putting me onto this novel!
--

Aside: I'm still trying to figure out the tone/format of my reviews. Are they for people who are familiar with the canon? People who aren't but are interested in trying it out? Both? I think I want to strike a balance between the two but I'm struggling with it. This one leans towards the former.

I was going through the starred items in my RSS reader and clearing out all the ones I'd added accidentally over the years, and found a rec from

alias_sqbr in 2016 for this short yuri manga about a robot and the girl next door.

Since it was only 8 chapters I decided I may as well read it on the spot.

It's very cute, sort of a collection of slice-of-life scenes that show their developing relationship from both of their points of view. It's also a surprisingly realistic depiction (relatively speaking) of what it might be like to be in love with a robot.

Warning for some uncomfortably voyeuristic scientific content. It also has a reference to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which was a surprising drop back to reality to me.

Tonari no Robot by Nishi Uko on Dynasty Reader

This is the first novel by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, the author of Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, which I talked about last week.

I really need to start compiling these thoughts as I go, so that I'm not trying to cobble it together from chat logs and the vague memories of feelings.

( Cut for length and spoilers. )

So after making my post about my TO READ list for 2020, I took the initiative to get all of said ebooks on my Kobo, which included the version of the Mo Dao Zu Shi | The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation translation I'd downloaded in, apparently, July 2019.

Anyway, so I started reading it on January 1st and after 2 days of doing basically nothing but reading (with pauses to eat and sleep occasionally), I finished it!

I'm a fast reader. It's a long book.

The non-spoilery review is that I really enjoyed it! I read the English translation available here.

( The spoilery version is below the cut. )

I read some books! And watched a movie! And then I... never posted about any of them! This entry has been in the works since July.

Book: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
I'd seen this recommended in a few places and, most importantly, my local library had. It reminded me of Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books (no surprise, since she has a quote on the cover) without the gender aspects. I enjoyed it a lot, as demonstrated by the fact that I read it all in one day.
( Spoilery thoughts )

Movie: Captain Marvel (2019)
I also enjoyed this. It was fun and took some unexpected turns. I felt like it could have leaned in on the 90s nostalgia fan service even more, which seems like a weird thing to say about a movie. Didn't exactly punch me right in the feelings, but that's okay.
( Spoilery thoughts )

Book: Thornfruit, by Felicia Davin.
I enjoyed this, with reservations.
( Spoilery thoughts )

Book: The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited (graphic novel)
I recently put on the podcast for this to keep my brain distracted while I did some tidying up, and blasted all the way through to the end of this arc before I remembered I'd recently bought the graphic novel version and hadn't read it yet. For me, this is the absolute worst way to approach an adaptation, because it means I spend too much time thinking about the changes and not enough enjoying it.
( Spoilery thoughts )

Game: Gorogoa (iOS)
This game was very cool, not like anything I've ever played before. I enjoyed it, but it was a) very short, and b) I'm not really sure I understood what was happening in the story. Every time I got stuck I would come back later and realise it was I forgot to try pulling the top layer frame off a tile.

Book: Wayward Son, by Rainbow Rowell.
This is the sequel to Carry On, which I talked about here.
( Going to keep all of my reactions under a spoiler cut here. )

🎮 Gris (Steam, Switch): This game is visually stunning. It's almost more of an interactive art piece than a game, but it is a game nonetheless - an platform-adventure game, per Wikipedia, same as Wandersong - and I'm enjoying it a lot. There's a plot, but it's being told through deep metaphor (no words).

🎮 Ori and the Blind Forest (Steam, XBox): This game is very beautiful in a modern 3D-rendered style, although it's a 2D game play-wise. It's the first Metroidvania game I've played (to the best of my knowledge), and I'm finding all these features like "maps" and "ability tree" and "multiple attacks in combat" very hard going on the decision-making front. I'm enjoying it but so far the plot seems a bit superficial - there's emotion there but I'm not really feeling it.

🍓 Celeste: I finished the main story! Of course, there's also a lot of post-game content I'm slowly working my way through. If you're interested in my progress, I document it in this Twitter thread (beware spoilers for what post-game content exists). I'm working on a post musing about how I flailed my way through a precision platformer with nothing but the force of my own ~~stubbornness~~ determination.

📖 On a Sunbeam:

fred_mouse linked to this beautiful webcomic, set in space and with a wonderful cast of characters. No men, queer relationships, and very fantastical space imagery. I really raced through it online, and am looking to buy the print version if I can. It's on the Hugo shortlist for this year! ( A few spoilery thoughts. )

🧵 I've been cross-stitching again! I did Madeline from Celeste on 10ct plastic canvas, which is now providing determination and encouragement on our fridge, and also made a pixel art rendering of the bard and Miriam from Wandersong, which we mounted on a 4" square canvas. I like the look of the mounting a lot better than the traditional hoop framing, although I needed to leave a lot more overhang. Tips for making the corners less bulky appreciated! I'm now working on a much larger project I started over 20 years ago and haven't touched in years - it moved to Canada with us in 2009, and back with us in 2016 without a single new stitch.

I'm back home! I haven't done one of these in a while, so here's a quick, probably inaccurate update on what I've been doing to conquer pop culture.

Books
Rogue Protocol - Martha Wells (Murderbot #3)
Exit Strategy - Martha Wells (Murderbot #4)

Audio (I only list narrative audio here)
The Adventure Zone: (K)Nights, 1-3
The Adventure Zone: Amnesty 8-12 (I'm not sure how much longer this has, but I think I'll wait a bit longer before listening to more)
The Adventure Zone: Dust
The Adventure Zone: Balance - All live shows through 1 November (Seattle, Halloween Special)
Lawful and Orderly - 1-2
The Strange Case of Starship Iris 1-4

If anyone has any narrative podcast recommendations, please send them my way!

Television
Guardian (镇魂) 1-4
Some random episodes of the classic Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Movies
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017)

Live Events
Pittsburgh Penguins @ Toronto Maple Leafs, October 18 2018
Skate Canada International (Laval, QC) - Exhibition Gala

I also watched the entirety of Griffin McElroy's Pokemon Nuzlocke Run, despite never having played a Pokemon game. It was nice, chill plane viewing.

Books
The Murderbot Diaries: Artificial Condition - Martha Wells

I really need to get back into the habit of reading books.

Audio
The Adventure Zone: Balance - the rest of it, including all the live and MaxFunDrive episodes (but not the bulk of the Suffering Game)
The Adventure Zone: Amnesty 1-5 - This was very cool, but I think I'll wait until the next arc is finished before continuing
The Adventure Zone: Elementary (AKA Four Sherlock Holmes and a Vampire [Who Is Also One of the Aforementioned Sherlock Holmes]) - this was Extremely Silly 😂

Television
Agatha Christie's Poirot 10x04-11x02 - I think I'm done with this - it was getting too dark and sordid for my tastes. I enjoyed much of the early seasons a lot though.
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 2x01-2x07
Rosemary & Thyme 1-9

This sounds like a lot of TV, but it's been a while since I logged my TV watching.

Books
Daughter of Mystery (Alpennia #1) - Heather Rose Jones

Television
Agatha Christie's Poirot 5x08-10x03
Miss Marple (v. BBC, Joan Hickson) - an assortment of episodes, not in chronological order
Rosemary & Thyme 2x14 - this was randomly on TV, and I want to seek out more episodes because it was extremely silly but very cute. As I said on Twitter, I ship it on principle.

Movies
Thor: Ragnorok

Audio
The Adventure Zone 18-51, 58-60 - I got partway into the 2nd chapter of The Suffering Game and ( cut for spoilers, fictional injury )

I'm out of the habit of reading again, it seems. I'm looking forward to the new Murderbot novella coming out soon, and I have the second Alpennia novel to read.

Incidentally, is there a nice collective noun for this type of post? Content Consumption log?

Yes, it's only been a week. Don't expect this to last.

Books
Artemis - Andy Weir

Next
The Stone Sky (Broken Earth #3) - N. K. Jemisin

Television
Agatha Christie's Poirot 4x03-5x03

Audio ie. Podcasts
(I'm only including narrative podcasts in here.)
The Adventure Zone 1-8

If you want a book which is basically Harry Potter dialled up to 11 with canon m/m and vampires, go read this one.

( Cut for spoilers and too much italics. )

Edit 1: Added 2 points!