Since I'm sort of on a reading roll right now, and it feels immensely good, I decided to go through my shelves of unread books (MTBR in Bookcrossing speak) and pull some long-languishing pieces from them, to compile a sort of reading list for the next few weeks. What I've mainly been looking for are shortish things that I can read within a shortish amount of time - and then release (or keep if they are really excellent). This will help with several things: my reading goal for this year [since half the year is officially past, I did a count - I'm currently at 14 novels and 62 manga if I only count up to June, and 17 novels, 62 manga and 11 graphic novels (Neonomicon, 1 volume; Y: The Last Man, 10 volumes) if I add what I've already read in July (which is a lot, as you can see. I'm on a roll!). So, if I count the graphic novels as separate books, I'm at 28 books and 62 manga. If I don't, and count them as one book, I'm at 18 books. If I put graphic novels in a whole different category...well, yeah, 17 is not remotely close to the 26 I should be at. I guess definitions here are quite loose, and I could count them as books if I wanted to, but just for the sake of it, I could try and get to 52 books which are mostly text (even though that might just subtract even more from my 'books' number...grrrr). I don't know. I guess I'll just throw them into one pot, except for the manga - and Ijust realised this was supposed to be just a one-line count of what I've read so far...geez], clearing some space on my shelves, being more at peace with myself (because I really want to know more books! MORE!), getting new ideas for other projects, and who knows what else.
I don't need to read these in a particular order or anything, but I really want to get these read. Here they are:
Roald Dahl, The Witches (191 pages)
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones (174 pages) - I've started this twice but never read the whole thing :P
Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head (205 pages)
Paul Watzlawick, Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein (124 pages)
Märchen von Katzen (186 pages)
Truman Capote, Frühstück bei Tiffany (147 pages)
Khalil Gibran, Der Prophet (72 pages)
Herman Hesse, Gertrud (123 pages)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Nachtflug (138 pages)
Roald Dahl, Kuschelmuschel (124 pages)
Martin Suter, Hubert spannt aus und andere Geschichten aus der Business Class (63 pages)
Literatur für AussteigerInnen (89 pages)
Räuber, Mörder, Sittenstrolche (142 pages)
E.T.A. Hoffmann, Der goldene Topf (128 pages)
Dorothea Keuler, Undankbare Arbeit (108 pages)
Elke Heidenreich, Nero Corleone (88 pages)
GRAUKO, Die Schrift II (64 pages)
H.W. Longfellow, Evangeline (89 pages) - more like poetry, but who cares?
Pamela L. Travers, Mary Poppins (174 pages)
Francoise Sagan, Blaue Flecken auf der Seele (191 pages)
Francoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse (184 pages)
Jim Grace, Stadt der Küsse (256 pages)
Stefan Grabínski, Das graue Zimmer (369 pages)
Andrew Sean Greer, The Confessions of Max Tivoli (267 pages)
Gregory Maguire, Mirror Mirror (278 pages)
Garth Nix, The Creature in the Case (109 pages)
Facts of Life (190 pages) - but really tiny ones. ;)
Your shopping list from outer space (44 pages) - hahahaha
Neville Randall and Gary Keane, Focus on Fact #5 Unsolved Mysteries (128) - ehehehehe
And let me just add, because they really deserve to be read after waiting for so long:
Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero
Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
Now, this is a long list, I just realise, because the books piled on top of each other aren't really that high. As you can see, most of them are less than 200 pages, several of them even less than 100. Now, the rule is, either I read them this summer or they go. None of them go back into the shelves I took them from (unless I read them and they are excellent, as I said before). If I start any of them and don't like them enough to continue, they go, and they don't count.
There's some amongst that list that I've been meaning to read for ages, and some that I don't really care about massively, but have some vague interest in, and some I already started at some point but never finished, and some surprise ones which just ended up with me because they sound fun. I just made a count, there's 31 books in that list. If I manage all of that, I should be well settled for my goal. :)
And I think reading something light and easy will also be quite nice, because...right now I'm in the middle of Kraken by China Miéville, and it is many things, but it's definitely not light, and definitely not easy. ;)
Edit (2/9/2012): Reading them in the summer might have been a bit idealistic/naive. I give them until the end of the year.
I just realised, I never made my June reading update. Even though I finally read a little more, again!
It's just two books, I just realised. It felt like much more. I guess it's the stuff I've been reading since the beginning of July which made me think that. Anyway: Roald Dahl's Incredible Chocolate Box Neil Gamian, Anansi Boys
Reading Anansi Boys was just so much fun I must have thought that June was much more bookactionfilled than I thought.
Oh, here's the thing - I read the beginning of two books, namely "The Gift" by Alison Croggon and "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch, because I gifted them to my boyfriend for his birthday and, just to check I hadn't given him something silly, I read the first few pages of each of them. I liked them, too. (More on "The Gift" once July is over, I guess.) And after May, where I only, and sporadically, touched American Gods, this must have been quite a rush to my poor dried-up system.
I have to say, I really enjoyed Anansi Boys much more than American Gods, and I don't think that's entirely due to my very, very drawn-out reading of the latter. It was just so much more fun, more compact, and probably also a little easier on me. American Gods is essentially a road movie with a lot of little interesting episodes. Anansi Boys felt more like a really rounded novel, one interesting plot with many interesting characters which in the end all nicely fit together, just like the Pratchett books I used to read. Things which seem disconnected and make no sense at first suddenly interlocking like the perfect puzzle pieces they are. I did not have the same sense of completion with American Gods. I still like it, and it is immensely clever and interesting, and it has Loki in it, but, yeah, Anansi Boys will probably be my favourite son. :P
I can't say much about the Roald Dahl. It's, like, 50 pages, if at all. And it just lists chocolate facts in big, easy to reads print. It's fun for the half hour it takes you to leaf through it. It has excerpts from books and not quite random facts about Roald Dahl. It's nice. And, see, that's really all I can say about it.
Just wait for the July update. That one is going to be MASSIVE. :D *happydance* Oh, I've missed reading so much SO MUCH! :) (ie this much so much, if that makes more sense)
As promised, some research and actual pictures/videos from the game. I have by now played for around 30 hours and reached/explored what I suppose must be the largest area in the game, although going further might prove me completely wrong. I'm still stunned by the actual size of this world. This is only the third area, after all, and it's huge. I've never seen the like.
Anyway, background information. Very alert ones among you might already have guessed that this game was produced by Monolith Soft, a company founded by former Square employees. They're best known for the Xenosaga trilogy, which, of course, is related to Xenogears, one of those excellent games never to grace the European games market (a source of deep regret for me, as the more I look into it, the more I wish I could have played it/could still play it some day). Previously mostly owned by Namco Bandai, it changed hands over to Nintendo in 2007, which offers the explanation of how I managed to find myself playing an RPG on the Wii (something I really never expected I would do).
At this point I'd really like you to check out the Xenogears OST, and especially the MYTH orchestral album. I got these a couple of days ago, and am deeply obsessed. At least, listen to these two, which are basically the opening and the prologue music of Xenogears. Or just watch the whole opening, really.
I listened to these two on eternal loop, together with this, this and this, the whole of yesterday afternoon, evening, and a large part of night. Insane, but oh, the prettiness of it all. [The day I originally wrote this not being the same I posted this, but...I'm still listening to those songs, hehe.]
Music is also one of the strong points of Xenoblade. The Xenogears OST was composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, one of my absolute heroes ever since I played Chrono Chross (listen to the Chrono Chross opening here - honestly, do!), and he apparently supplied some material for Xenoblade as well.
Actually, several composers have done work on the Xenoblade OST, and in comparison to what happened with the Final Fantasy 10 OST (where I felt a harsh contrats between those tracks done by Nobuo Uematsu and those by the others),the result is really quite organic and smooth.
But then, this is not supposed to be a post about music. I just get really carried away with RPG music (and probably music in general). There might just be a separate post about the Xenoblade OST, as I have had deep feelings for that ever since I started playing. Yes, really. I'm in love. ;)
The place you start - Colony 9. I actually did a piece for the "Travel Writing" homework in my creative writing class this semester on Colony 9. So pretty. So. Much. Fun.
Now, since anyone can just read up on certain facts on the relevant Wikipedia-Pages, here's some of what I think about story, gameplay etc. so far:
1) Story: After the intriguing intro (the end of which gives me goosebumps every time), the story seemed to move rather slowly for me, but that was just due to me just exploring the world and doing missions for *hours* before progressing. It then, of course, got very interesting very quickly. War between two very different races? Magical (?) weapons which suddenly don't work as the heroes thought they should? The pros and cons of seeing glimpses of the future? Wooo! I think it's really going to be a lot of fun, and interesting in a philosophical way as well.
2) Gameplay: Geez, I never thought I'd get really excited about gameplay stuff. I really thought of myself of being there for the story, most of all. I'm not much of a tactician. A lot of the time, I didn't need to be when playing games. But here...The battles move quickly, and a lot of the time you can actually decide whether you want to enter into them or not. I admit that when fighting more than one enemy at once, they get chaotic and a little obscure, but they're still mostly a lot of fun, so I'll forgive them their failings. There's so many features, so many things you can do, and I've only 'collected' half of the playable characters so far. First of all you can choose freely which characters to place in your party (yes, you can switch out your main character with the magic sword :P). You can choose freely which of them to control. Then, you can choose which choice of 8 skills the characters have at their disposal (they learn new ones all the time). You can choose what other support talents they learn in what order. You can choose whether they learn talents someone else has learned. Then, you use those skills in battle in a way that makes sense when working together with your teammates. You can do chain attacks, you can do battle calls to motivate your friends, you can help them up when they fall, you can...it's almost absurd. You can customise your outfits (ie armour and weaponry) to a degree I didn't think was possible. You have so many options, I really do see the replay value here. I think you might need the first playthrough to just get an idea of what's possible, and then have fun with it all during your second playthrough. I don't know. Maybe that's just insane (because, after all, the game is HUGE). But maybe...
In battle, controlling Shulk. Look at all those symbols!
3) Harmony system: I admit, this is part of gameplay, to a degree, but it deserves an extra section. The harmony system traces the relationships between the characters in your group as well as those you meet around the world. You first have to make the necessary links, then, doing missions or whatever, you can change the status of those relationships (so far only for the better). In your group, you can improve the relationships by: doing missions together, fighting together, helping each other in battle, having little private talks (at predetermined spots throughout the world, at certain levels of like/dislike set by the game) and who knows what else. It's intriguing, and it's also hugely fun. In, for example, Dragon Age Origins, you could also influence relationships between your characters, but only by talking to them in camp and giving them presents. However, I think the system here makes so much more sense. I mean, helping someone up when they've fallen in battle must surely be worth some sympathy? Telling them they did a beautiful attack or comforting them when they missed must surely be a massive improvement for the relationship? And it is. I love it. (Although, if I've read correctly, you can also give them gifts.)
Part of the harmony diagram. Those little smiley symbols go orange-yellow-green-blue and then either pink clouds (non-love super relationship) or hearts (LOVE)
So, I think this concludes my 'short' introduction on some of the background and some of the features, and the music (tehee). And maybe offers some more explanation on why I love this game so much. I don't really know how that happened, or rather, I do know, but I'm still surprised, awed. Other games I often really just played for the story. This here...I don't know. Words somehow fail me. But since there's a sufficient amount of them already in this post, I guess that's quite alright.
Now go listen to that music.
I have to admit I had a less than ideal first week in this new decade of life. Things were little hectic finishing some of my work, then I got ill just on time on my birthday, spent 3 days recovering while simultaneously suffering from a heat wave (no fun drinking tea and lying in bed when it's above 30° outside and your flat faces southwest). I then looked forward to getting a new haircut, which ended in something of a desaster. I've recovered now, but at the beginning I was really the opposite of happy. I know that short haircuts have their dangers, but I'd brought photos and all that, so I thought it would work out. Well, it didn't, and I only really noticed when I was home. I then decided to just rebleach my roots and it would look much better already, then wait for a month or so and check out a different hairdresser. Applied bleach, accepted the usual burning sensation - then suddenly had some sort of extreme allergic reaction (which I never had before). Itched, swooned, panicked, washed everything off, took meds. This resulted in my roots not turning blonde completely (hello orange), my face (and hands, and ears) being red and slightly swollen for the rest of the evening (real fun, since we had guests) *and* the next day, and me swearing this was the last time for at least a while that I bleached my hair (which means going back to dark soon).
At least the weekend has been quite acceptable. I've resolved to wear some sort of headband for the next few weeks (pretty scarves etc) to make this haircut work for me (but I still really hope some other hairdresser can actually make it look the way I'd like it to look...and not that it's simply impossible for my hair, or my face, or whatever); and I've got some work done, and I've been to a nice birthday party, and I've made some plans.
Anyway, next week! Tomorrow I'll be starting to write down what I eat again, but I won't be posting this, except maybe in weekly updates. Week #1 means reducing sugar, not yet giving up completely.
Also, tomorrow I'm supposed to start doing my morning pages, and I'm dreading this a little, since I'm known to sleep in as long as possible and sometimes even a smidge later. ;) But maybe I'll actually manage to get up 15 minutes earlier to write them. That would be REALLY great. I've not yet settled on a specific idea for an artist's date, but I'm sure something will come to mind.
There's also a lot of other things to do, nice ones (visiting my nephew, getting to see "Man of La Mancha" as a birthday present), and good ones (doing more freelance work, applying for a grant), and maybe somewhat annoying ones (taking my boyfriend to hospital for a long-awaited operation, nothing terrifying, but annoying nevertheless). And maybe I'll finish some more posts which have been languishing in a half-written state for a while, and *maybe* I'll even find a chance to finally knit something again. We'll see. :)
