Cav's Place

Between 2003 and 2006, I was posting reviews on BookCrossing for any book I read that was registered on that site, which, at least after the first part of that period, meant the vast majority of them. Those reviews varied greatly in size, style and quality, tended to include a fair amount of spoilers not marked in any way and also various typos and spelling and grammar mistakes I’d be terribly embarrassed by these days, but they were all there. In addition, some of them also included personal notes or comments referring to what was happening in my life at the time, which made me want to gather and preserve them in one place for a long time.
Then, after the period of my life during which I read so much thanks to having access to so many books I was actually interested in ended in such an abrupt manner, I only made an account on another site where I could post such reviews in December of 2008. That site was Shelfari, and I continued to use it until a few days before the end of 2012, posting ratings and something which may be called quick reviews, if not simply brief comments, for anything I read between 2010 and then. Strangely enough, what I posted during 2009 were such quick reviews for five of the seven books I had read in 2008, while for some reason I can’t currently comprehend I never even added the first four books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series to my shelf, despite having bought and read them that year.
Now, since the end of 2012, I’ve been using Goodreads, and creating an account there first made me seriously plan to gather all of these reviews in one place. However, while I copied everything I had on Shelfari within days and then also added a quick review for one more of those books read in 2008, the BookCrossing reviews prove difficult to tackle in more ways than one, so I started and stopped a few times and therefore some of them still aren’t there even now. In addition, I always felt it’d be wrong to simply copy those old reviews there as they are, so on top of making the necessary corrections and hiding spoilers inside spoiler tags, or sometimes deleting them completely, I also keep those personal comments out of the version posted on Goodreads, meaning that I still need a place to gather all of them as they are. Corrected, of course, but without missing parts that are relevant to me personally.

That’s where the new Books category comes in. This week’s first post listed some fantasy recommendations and was the first one actually posted in this category, but I have since managed to copy all of these reviews originally posted on either Shelfari or Goodreads, including the two that are actually worth being called as such, here, along with the ratings. This includes the Goodreads version of my quick review for The Black Jewels Trilogy, as instead of simply making some necessary corrections I expanded on the original BookCrossing version and actually explained what I meant by the few words I had managed to throw there back when I finished reading it.
My aim is to also preserve the original dates of these posts, so at the moment you’ll notice that the one containing the fantasy recommendations is the most recent showing up under that category, but that proved particularly difficult for those originally posted on Shelfari, as the original dates were lost either when I made some corrections or additions, perhaps even to something other than the review itself, or, in most cases, when I poked around to copy all information to Goodreads. As such, I used the date listed as the date I finished reading for those read between 2010 and the end of 2012, but for those posted in 2009 all I could do was make more or less educated guesses based on any information I could still find, so most of those may be off by up to a few days, and one of them even by a month or more, since I couldn’t narrow it down any further.
What isn’t listed at all on these sites, on the other hand, is the time, so you’ll find all of these showing up as having been posted at 11:59 PM, unless there’s information saying otherwise. However, if there’s an existing post with the same date and time or there are multiple such reviews posted on the same day and they’re unrelated, I’ll set the time so they’ll be a minute apart, one after the other, at the end of the day, since there seem to be some issues if two or more posts have the same date and time. I chose 11:59 PM instead of 12:00 AM because I tend to write these during the evening or even at night and therefore that’s likely to be closer to the actual time, and in fact, depending on the time zone used by each site, it’s very possible that some of them were actually written after midnight, so on the next day for me.

Now I’ll have to move on to those originally posted on BookCrossing, in order to add them here as well, but that won’t be any easier than it was the first time around, so I won’t finish them too soon, especially since now I won’t be discarding those personal comments. I won’t be discarding or hiding spoilers either, only perhaps editing the few where such spoilers are in fact replies to reviews written by others, in which case I’ll try to make them make sense on their own. As such, anyone looking for a version that’s “safe” to read should check what is, or what will be, posted by me on Goodreads instead.
What I’m uncertain about is what to do if there will be any others like that one for The Black Jewels Trilogy, as in having a Goodreads version that has significant additions compared to the BookCrossing one. In that case, I used the date of the latest version, but it does feel weird to do so, and it’ll be even worse if some of the others will prove to be part of series. Then again, I’m not sure there are any others in this situation, as I recall specifically wanting to add something to that one because it’s one of my favorites, but if there will be, I expect to get stuck trying to reach a decision for quite a long time.

A couple of months ago, somebody who admitted to having “always taken a rather condescending attitude toward fantasy literature, with the exception of Tolkien” asked for recommendations on the MobyGames forums, wondering whether anything else “that would have at least some literary aspirations, even if it ultimately lapses into mere pretensions” may be worth trying and specifying that what he’s “definitely not looking for is someone’s poorly written account of their D&D session, gay dwarven sex or endless descriptions of swords clashing”. So I replied at some length and, though my list is obviously limited by what I already read, now that I’m planning to put the book reviews written over the years here on the blog, thought I might as well add this here as well, with the edits required to turn a forum reply into a blog post.

Since the popularity of the TV series would make many start with this, yes, A Song of Ice and Fire is stunning, and the books are definitely far better than what you can see on TV, as that may be outstanding compared to other series in this genre but not so much when compared to the source material. Still, I have to say that my recommendation of it is based on the first four books. The fifth is still sitting there on a shelf, as I heard enough bad things about it to not want to spoil my opinion of the series by reading it on its own. When he’ll release the sixth, it’ll be out in paperback as well and I’ll get it too, I’ll go for reading both I guess. Up to that point, however, and in books two and three in particular, it goes to mind-boggling in scope and passes that point without even noticing, though one has to note that it’s very low fantasy. With the exception of Daenerys’ dragons, once she has them, such elements appear very rarely.

Then I also particularly liked The Black Jewels Trilogy, which is conveniently available in one huge volume. Yes, very much a Mary Sue case and there’s a note of soap opera in there, but highly original world that oddly enough works really well. Plus those character names… Must note that the series continued a fair amount after that, but what I heard was that most of the other books were pretty much just a fantasy soap, some focusing only on one event or another and so on, so I didn’t bother, though if you put them all together they do continue the story. Then again, it wouldn’t necessarily need to be continued past the end of the main trilogy.

For those who may be interested in some epic science fantasy as well, I really liked The Book of the Short Sun, which is also conveniently available in one large volume. Extremely confusing, with this unreliable witness thing that Wolfe does and a main character who can’t control his powers and doesn’t usually know whether what he’s experiencing is real or merely a dream, but nevertheless absolutely awesome. I’ll say it’s the best part of his Solar Cycle, if probably because it’s the one with the most notable actual fantasy elements and that’s what I prefer.

Back to regular high fantasy, Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. Seriously, the first two books of that are stunning. I did see people quite pissed off by parts of the second, but that was because of connections they made with real life, and yes, I’m talking about the depiction of organized religion. The third book seemed somewhat weaker, though still nice on its own, while the last one is just a compressed whirlwind of action. Does seem like the author got rather bored of the series and wanted to finish it even though what was supposed to happen would have probably required at least one more book, so it’s extremely packed and at times you need to stop and “unzip” what you’re reading to make it more bearable, but that sure was an awesome piece of work.

Still at Keyes, Age of Unreason. Written before Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone and it shows, as the style is rather rough and you shouldn’t expect reasons to like it based on that, but the story is awesome. It’s alternate history with significant, and increasing as you go along, fantasy elements, with real historical characters but everything else taking a very different turn. While the writing issues are usually noted by most, I do see that plenty tend to say that it’s better than Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone in terms of the actual story. Not exactly sure I’d agree, since I strongly prefer proper fantasy, but it is quite awesome, and the way it all comes together in the end for one amazing and heroic 100-page battle scene, which works better than those who are uncertain about reading detailed descriptions of battles would probably think, is quite something.

And since this was originally posted on a gaming site, I obviously couldn’t forget The Witcher. The Last Wish, Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt and Baptism of Fire are out in English at this point. Admittedly, The Last Wish is made up of short stories, which are a bit of hit and miss, and I didn’t read Baptism of Fire yet, but sure liked Blood of Elves and Time of Contempt. Quite different from what typical high fantasy means, but then again many probably already know that.

And since somebody had mentioned Weaveworld on that thread as well, I did read that too at some point. Urban fantasy isn’t my thing, horror elements even less so, but it was indeed well done, and I’m saying that even if I generally stay away from fantasy novels, meaning single books that are not part of series, because it’s pretty much impossible to fit proper worldbuilding into a single book, even a big one. Does work for urban fantasy, since you only need to explain what’s different, but proper high fantasy can’t work without the space offered by a series.

It’s the third Sunday update of 2014, but you can say there’s a reason for it, obviously on top of the fact that I can’t get myself to write anything else. As you can see from the title and despite what I was saying two days ago, the reason is that it snowed yesterday, which was quite a surprise despite the rather shockingly cold day for this time of year. Now it’s melting, but a fair amount had settled on the ground after some large snowflakes started falling in the afternoon, briefly stopped after probably less than half an hour, then started again and continued at least until some point during the evening, when I think it turned to rain for a while. Quite sure it was snowing again during the night, however, though the earlier rain made it hard for the layer to get any thicker.

Otherwise, since I’m writing such an update, I’m going to also say that I seem to be giving up on The Witcher yet again, seeing as I didn’t play at all this week. I still mean to keep trying, especially since I don’t think there’s a particular reason why I stopped now, but there was no particular reason why I gave up on Morrowind either, and it happened once in 2008 and the second time in 2012, so I’m not sure how that will go.

I definitely won’t be playing anything now, however, seeing as I did volunteer to help with that translation and, after sending what I could quickly do right away, last evening I was finally told what I actually should have done. Thankfully, what I did is likely the part that was most needed, but the rest is more time-consuming and frustrating, so I’d better get to it. I did say I’ll do it on Monday, but it’ll probably take a few hours, so it’d be a good idea to start today, and if I’ll also manage to finish then all the better.

Slightly late, but we can now say that autumn arrived here as of yesterday. It’s cloudy, rainy, somewhat windy and chilly, and tomorrow it’ll be downright cold, with the high being reported as 5°C and an estimated wind chill factor of five to seven degrees. Temperatures should get back to what would be normal for this time of year during the second half of next week, but that’s still quite chilly and ten to 15°C less than we had until recently, so it’s still a shock despite actually being what should normally happen at the end of October.
Can’t stand this sort of weather. Raining or threatening to rain quite steadily at length, not the relatively brief storms that I quite like to watch as long as I’m safe inside and don’t need to be on-line right then, to be able to unplug the cable for safety reasons, and obviously also no snow, as that I’d definitely like to watch and even go outside in. Also cold enough to make me miserable, but not enough to switch to, shall we say, “winter mode”, putting on a sweater on top of the other clothes and so on. Thankfully, the city seems to have started providing heat, though these days they say they’re only testing, so let’s see how it goes and whether or not the other people living in this building will decide to turn it off until the end of the month, as they’re allowed to do if the majority approves, due to the bills.

Otherwise, the writing’s going terribly, having given up on pretty much anything other than struggling to keep adding at least 100 words per day, even if they make next to no sense and quite clearly add nothing to the story. Gave up the goal of at least 300 words per day over a year ago, then also gave up editing the finished sections several months ago, then also allowed the average words per day, calculated since I started writing daily, to drop below 250, also dropped tentative daily targets of 250, 200 and 150, then gave up even trying to come up with any sort of chapter or even section plan, and now I’m not even reading what I wrote a day or two before anymore, so what little I keep adding may well not even make sense when put alongside things that are on the same page. So the only thing left is to give up completely, but I guess I’m still too stubborn for that, for at least a little while longer, even if there’s absolutely no point or value left in it.

That said, writing pointless personal posts on here that have about as many words as I can add in my story in several days and also make more sense than it currently does feels like even more of a waste. There would have been other things to say, but none of them good, so I’ll leave it at this and see if I can be useful for others at least, as I volunteered to help with a translation and I’m waiting to see if I’m not overlapping with someone else. What this week’s second post will be, I don’t know at the moment, though I do have some forum posts saved and mean to make one out of them, the question being whether I’ll get around to it and, if so, when.

Took the Political Compass test again a few days ago, and once again found that I slid even further left since the last time, so I’m just putting the result here now for future reference.

I first learned of this test in 2006 or 2007 and probably took it about six or seven times since then, which made this drift towards the left particularly obvious, as I remember my score on that scale being only around -3 at first and sliding noticeably further every single time after that. On the other hand, my social score doesn’t change much, the difference between the highest and the lowest being of no more than one point and, if I recall correctly, most scores being within two or three tenths of each other, indicating that there are probably just a few questions where I tend to alternate between two answers.

Economic Left/Right: -8.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.54

Considering how far left I ended up now, I’m inclined to say it’s quite unlikely I’ll slide even further, but as long as it’s still possible I can’t be certain of that. After all, my views in terms of economics can quite clearly be described as being far to the left, demanding an entirely new system that will guarantee a decent standard of living for all except those proven guilty of serious crimes without anyone still having any need to “earn a living”, and not making any difference between those who wouldn’t do anything at all and those who’d still choose to work but not have a particularly good performance. Granted, I’d like to see a few additional benefits for those whose performance would be particularly good, but any actual special treatment should be reserved only for those who’d have truly important achievements that’d bring significant benefits to many or to the world as a whole.