Books and net stuff and HP
Aug. 3rd, 2006 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserOh my god! A post not about FFXI? See? It's possible!
In theory, anyway. Let's see if I actually reach the end of this one and post it.
* In Harry Potter land: I have so very little interest left in things, but this (WARNING: Spoilers for the last book!) was still an interesting read. Comes from a live reading/interview she did. She leaked things out when she didn't mean to! Hee. I suppose I'll get the last book eventually, but not going to be camping the store on the first day it's available.
* Random net foo: Recall that old Nationstates game? You create a county, then it "evolves" based on your decisions on issues. Well finally, finally I got really high numbers on something!
"Thistledom is ranked 1st in the region and 121st in the world for Most Corrupt Governments."
121 might not sound that high, but it's out of 104,617 governments! So, um, yay for me? :P I've tried to make the country based on The Admin series of stories (link leads to NWS text), but some of the issues you had to decide on didn't have an answer that matched well, so it's wandered off-course.
* Books: For a while I've been meaning to post about my Great Book Project, but I've never gotten around to it. A few months ago, I decided I owned way too many books. Some were 20 or more years old and had followed me through many moves on the east coast, then out here to the west. Most of them I hadn't read in a decade or more, would I ever want to read them again? Unlikely, for the most part.
But the problem was, they were so old and forgotten, how could I decide what to keep and what to throw out? The solution: Read them all again! Every single book I own! (There was also "and I'll buy no new books until I'm done", but I failed at that part.)
I've gotten through 19 books so far, the oldest 22 years old, and I've come to a conclusion: I had darned bad taste! So many werewolf books, so many horror books. So many so painfully written!
Have you ever seen the line "his eyes pierced her very soul" written in a book? A published book? I have. I've read about main characters who had no friends in highschool, no social interactions at all, who had the most beautiful woman on the whole planet fall in love with him for no reason at all. Not even once, that's happened in two different books so far!
On the other hand, I have read a few good books as well! Sad part is: When I want to find more by those authors, or more in the book's series, they've long since stopped publishing and are hard to find even in a used state. I've wanted to find out more about two different authors, and couldn't find a single reference to either of them in Google -- it's like they vanished off the face of the Earth!
It's surprising how very dated some books are. Car brands, jacket brands (remember when people cared about those?), TV shows/movies/actors, etc. Seeing the really dated ones makes me (slightly) more impressed with the ones the authors succeeded in avoiding references that would later make them so very dated.
I had meant to give a book-by-book review (sort of like those bad Japanese candy reviews I used to do), but I never got around to that. Maybe I should grab a couple and bring them in to work with me so I can do it here...
I have no idea what I'll do with the books I'm going to get rid of. (Yay, the pile of "throw" is bigger than the pile of "keep"! I'll have lots of room on my bookshelves once I'm done!). I thought about giving them to a library, but they're just so darned bad! I thought about selling them to a used book place, but then I'd have to find one. I don't dare bring them to work and leave them on a table for people to take. Maybe I'll put a "Free Books!" post up on Craigslist and then leave them on the sidewalk for someone to pick up. Hopefully they won't return them once they see the quality of them.
In theory, anyway. Let's see if I actually reach the end of this one and post it.
* In Harry Potter land: I have so very little interest left in things, but this (WARNING: Spoilers for the last book!) was still an interesting read. Comes from a live reading/interview she did. She leaked things out when she didn't mean to! Hee. I suppose I'll get the last book eventually, but not going to be camping the store on the first day it's available.
* Random net foo: Recall that old Nationstates game? You create a county, then it "evolves" based on your decisions on issues. Well finally, finally I got really high numbers on something!
"Thistledom is ranked 1st in the region and 121st in the world for Most Corrupt Governments."
121 might not sound that high, but it's out of 104,617 governments! So, um, yay for me? :P I've tried to make the country based on The Admin series of stories (link leads to NWS text), but some of the issues you had to decide on didn't have an answer that matched well, so it's wandered off-course.
* Books: For a while I've been meaning to post about my Great Book Project, but I've never gotten around to it. A few months ago, I decided I owned way too many books. Some were 20 or more years old and had followed me through many moves on the east coast, then out here to the west. Most of them I hadn't read in a decade or more, would I ever want to read them again? Unlikely, for the most part.
But the problem was, they were so old and forgotten, how could I decide what to keep and what to throw out? The solution: Read them all again! Every single book I own! (There was also "and I'll buy no new books until I'm done", but I failed at that part.)
I've gotten through 19 books so far, the oldest 22 years old, and I've come to a conclusion: I had darned bad taste! So many werewolf books, so many horror books. So many so painfully written!
Have you ever seen the line "his eyes pierced her very soul" written in a book? A published book? I have. I've read about main characters who had no friends in highschool, no social interactions at all, who had the most beautiful woman on the whole planet fall in love with him for no reason at all. Not even once, that's happened in two different books so far!
On the other hand, I have read a few good books as well! Sad part is: When I want to find more by those authors, or more in the book's series, they've long since stopped publishing and are hard to find even in a used state. I've wanted to find out more about two different authors, and couldn't find a single reference to either of them in Google -- it's like they vanished off the face of the Earth!
It's surprising how very dated some books are. Car brands, jacket brands (remember when people cared about those?), TV shows/movies/actors, etc. Seeing the really dated ones makes me (slightly) more impressed with the ones the authors succeeded in avoiding references that would later make them so very dated.
I had meant to give a book-by-book review (sort of like those bad Japanese candy reviews I used to do), but I never got around to that. Maybe I should grab a couple and bring them in to work with me so I can do it here...
I have no idea what I'll do with the books I'm going to get rid of. (Yay, the pile of "throw" is bigger than the pile of "keep"! I'll have lots of room on my bookshelves once I'm done!). I thought about giving them to a library, but they're just so darned bad! I thought about selling them to a used book place, but then I'd have to find one. I don't dare bring them to work and leave them on a table for people to take. Maybe I'll put a "Free Books!" post up on Craigslist and then leave them on the sidewalk for someone to pick up. Hopefully they won't return them once they see the quality of them.
