Reading

The Empress

I picked up The Empress by Meg Clothier on a reading retreat where the author gave a talk - and she was awesome!
And, to begin with, I was really enjoying this book.
It follows Agnes, a princess of France in the late 12th century, who is sent to Constantinople at the age of 13 to marry the emperor's son.
I have to say, the writing and the protagonist's attitudes felt a lot more modern than I would have expected, given the setting, but I didn't feel that was necessarily a bad thing, since it made it a much more engaging and relatable read.
But around the 100-page mark, things took a definite turn - characters I'd liked started demonstrating terrible attitudes, making very poor decisions or doing bad things, Agnes started mooning over a very toxic man, and the whole thing got quite unpleasant in a lot of ways.
So, I unfortunately decided to stop reading it.

Les Miserables

I picked up Les Miserables by Victor Hugo at our local station free book exchange a while ago, and it went almost immediately into my July TBR, based on prompts picked from my TBR jar. I wasn't wholly enthused - mostly because it's so long - but I ended up really enjoying it! It took me pretty much a month to read - in amongst other books, but it was surprisingly pacy in parts, funny in others and generally very entertaining. It's ridiculously over-wordy, but most of the words are clever, beautiful, amusing or interesting, which really helps.

I know the musical really, really well, so it was fascinating to consume the source material and see which bits had been used, changed, or left out. I liked some of the characters either more or less in the book, which was interesting - but Javert will always have my heart.

Really glad I randomly picked this up and then was prompted to read it by my TBR jar! Definitely a win for my YouTube project, as I never would have read it otherwise!

Rashomon and Other Stories

As with most books of short stories, I liked some of these and not others. I certainly didn't understand them all, and a few were pretty grim and unpleasant. But there were two in particular - Green Onions and Horse Legs - which I really enjoyed, particularly because of the meta aspects and the absurd humour of them. A lot of the writing was vividly descriptive - which made the less pleasant aspects even more horrible, but also provided a fair few beautiful pictures of landscapes or amusing portraits of specific characters. Very varied in terms of subject matter and tone, so an interesting collection in terms of how they were grouped together.

Current Mood: accomplished

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FFXI Base Story summary (Bastok missions 1-5)

OKAY FOLKS! So, when the Jeuno raid dropped in FFXIV, I got strong nostalgia goggles for Final Fantasy XI, and returned to the game then. My goal? To replay the game's stories and document them so I wouldn't forget them again.

I am pleased to say that I have finished the first set of my documentation! It is here:

https://altheavalara.neocities.org/ffxi/bastok

And is a fan script of the Bastok city-state's rank 1 missions up to and including the rank 5 missions.

Now, this was originally the end of the base game's story, though they added additionally missions later. And each of the three city-states start out with different missions, but then there's a LOT of overlapping (some missions are exactly the same regardless of which city-state you're from.)

I'm proud of the fan script, but it's LONG, and not everyone wants to read dialogue. So I decided to write a summary. It's... also still long, but shorter than the actual game script. Plus it was a fun exercise to explain the story.

Anyway, it's under the cut. ENJOY!

( Read more... )

At the Scent of Water

At the Scent of Water by Linda Nichols follows Sam and Annie, separated and grieving after the death of their daughter. It's about them coming to terms with the tragedy and finding a way forwards, with the help of their families and friends.

I really enjoyed this book - much more than I thought I would because it's billed as Christian Fiction and I was worried I would find the religious aspects off-putting. But I went with it and it was a beautiful story overall, extremely well told and very involving.

I wasn't 100% sold on all the decisions reached by the characters, but the ending was largely satisfying and came together in a very sweet and heartwarming way - but still acknowledging the complexities of the situation and that there would likely be more hardships and difficulties to overcome, which was pleasing.

I would definitely read more by this author.

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questions

Question thread #143

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.