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Insults, books, WoW.
Oct. 19th, 2012 01:28 pmThere's an insult I don't understand. "Mouth breather". Ever since I was a little kid I've had allergies and sinus problems, so it's rare I can breath through my nose (usually only after multiple medications). So perhaps, as a life-long mouth breather, I'm missing something. I'd rather breath through my nose, it's nice when I can, but why aren't both ways valid? Or is it just that one is "different" than the norm? Or is it more along the lines of "gay" as an insult and most people frown upon it being used as an insult?
Book #24 of 2012: Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge. Book #24! I was hoping to hit 25 books this year, half of the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50bookchallenge goal, and I'm going to make it for sure. Woot!
Gullstruck Island is an odd book. Fantasy, it was about a population of people spread across islands, so they had to use the "Lost" to communicate with each other. The Lost are the rare members of their population who can send their senses out elsewhere. One could send his hearing towards the moon, his vision under the sea, his sense of touch into his neighbor's house, all at the same time. Then boom, one day all the Lost fall over dead. The book is about what happened to them, what might have been behind all the sudden deaths, etc. It's a mystery!
It should have been a wonderful match for me. I loved the world-building. The "magic" was subtle. There were different languages used in the book (which were well done and made sense). The characters were mostly believable. There was nothing wrong with the book. Yet it put me to sleep. I can't explain it, I should have loved it, but instead it dragged page after page, for 500+ pages. Never once did I have the "Can't stop! Just one more page!!" feeling.
Yesterday I started book #25, The Enemy by Charlie Higson. It's fun going into a book knowing nothing about it other than seeing a thumbnail version of the cover. I must have heard things I liked about this book when I bought it, but that was a year or two ago and I long since forgot. Being an ebook, there wasn't even a back cover to check.
Turns out it's a young adult "end of the world" type story. Something happened and every adult either died or turned into a flesh-eating monster. Unfortunately the writing isn't very good, the author never learned the "Show, don't tell" rule.
The Amazon blurb says: "Full of unexpected twists and quick-thinking heroes, The Enemy is a fast-paced, white-knuckle tale of survival in the face of unimaginable horror." That's opposite of the book in every way so far. Everything that happens is telegraphed (one character is described as the smartest kid ever, the story says outright that they always do what he says because he's right 100% of the time... yet when they go into an abandoned building and he says five or six times that it's a trap and they should leave, they don't listen. And guess what, it's a trap!), the "heroes" are stupid thus far, it's not fast-paced, it's about as white-knuckled as drifting off to sleep is, and "unimaginable horror" is the biggest laugh at all: as the author doesn't describe anything, just tells you the adults are all monsters, there's not a single bit of horror to it. Hopefully it'll get better, but I suspect I'll be moving on to something else before I finish it.
(I google image searched "It's a mystery!" and Paul Ryan came up. His expression amused me, so I decided to go with that image.)
WoW: And the last horse crosses the finish line! I finally hit 90 day before yesterday, the last person of everyone I know. My first thought was "YAY now I'll never have to quest again!" which later made me laugh, as there are endless dailies to do. I'll give it to WoW though, I haven't been bored since then.
I'm focusing on just the Tillers for now. Everyone and their brother are on the new mounts, and I like my stone panther mount, so I don't need to push for the new ones. My farm makes me happy though, along with cooking stuff for NPCs, so I'm going to stick with that. I'm dabbling with the raising your own mount folks, and even lighter dabbling with Nat the Fishing Guy. (I'm more interested in fishing than mount-raising, but Nat is more out of the way, so I stumble onto him less often.)
The AH is going well and poorly. I've not sold one of the TCG mounts yet (EEEEEK), but I've also doubled the amount of gold I had since MoP dropped, so I'm back up to a comfortable range. I'm not where I was before buying all the TCG mounts and 13 Deathchargers, but I'm getting there. When/if they ever sell it will be a nice bonus.
Book #24 of 2012: Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge. Book #24! I was hoping to hit 25 books this year, half of the
50bookchallenge goal, and I'm going to make it for sure. Woot!Gullstruck Island is an odd book. Fantasy, it was about a population of people spread across islands, so they had to use the "Lost" to communicate with each other. The Lost are the rare members of their population who can send their senses out elsewhere. One could send his hearing towards the moon, his vision under the sea, his sense of touch into his neighbor's house, all at the same time. Then boom, one day all the Lost fall over dead. The book is about what happened to them, what might have been behind all the sudden deaths, etc. It's a mystery!
It should have been a wonderful match for me. I loved the world-building. The "magic" was subtle. There were different languages used in the book (which were well done and made sense). The characters were mostly believable. There was nothing wrong with the book. Yet it put me to sleep. I can't explain it, I should have loved it, but instead it dragged page after page, for 500+ pages. Never once did I have the "Can't stop! Just one more page!!" feeling.
Yesterday I started book #25, The Enemy by Charlie Higson. It's fun going into a book knowing nothing about it other than seeing a thumbnail version of the cover. I must have heard things I liked about this book when I bought it, but that was a year or two ago and I long since forgot. Being an ebook, there wasn't even a back cover to check.
Turns out it's a young adult "end of the world" type story. Something happened and every adult either died or turned into a flesh-eating monster. Unfortunately the writing isn't very good, the author never learned the "Show, don't tell" rule.
The Amazon blurb says: "Full of unexpected twists and quick-thinking heroes, The Enemy is a fast-paced, white-knuckle tale of survival in the face of unimaginable horror." That's opposite of the book in every way so far. Everything that happens is telegraphed (one character is described as the smartest kid ever, the story says outright that they always do what he says because he's right 100% of the time... yet when they go into an abandoned building and he says five or six times that it's a trap and they should leave, they don't listen. And guess what, it's a trap!), the "heroes" are stupid thus far, it's not fast-paced, it's about as white-knuckled as drifting off to sleep is, and "unimaginable horror" is the biggest laugh at all: as the author doesn't describe anything, just tells you the adults are all monsters, there's not a single bit of horror to it. Hopefully it'll get better, but I suspect I'll be moving on to something else before I finish it.
(I google image searched "It's a mystery!" and Paul Ryan came up. His expression amused me, so I decided to go with that image.)
WoW: And the last horse crosses the finish line! I finally hit 90 day before yesterday, the last person of everyone I know. My first thought was "YAY now I'll never have to quest again!" which later made me laugh, as there are endless dailies to do. I'll give it to WoW though, I haven't been bored since then.
I'm focusing on just the Tillers for now. Everyone and their brother are on the new mounts, and I like my stone panther mount, so I don't need to push for the new ones. My farm makes me happy though, along with cooking stuff for NPCs, so I'm going to stick with that. I'm dabbling with the raising your own mount folks, and even lighter dabbling with Nat the Fishing Guy. (I'm more interested in fishing than mount-raising, but Nat is more out of the way, so I stumble onto him less often.)
The AH is going well and poorly. I've not sold one of the TCG mounts yet (EEEEEK), but I've also doubled the amount of gold I had since MoP dropped, so I'm back up to a comfortable range. I'm not where I was before buying all the TCG mounts and 13 Deathchargers, but I'm getting there. When/if they ever sell it will be a nice bonus.
