Rowling and other sundries

Alright. So I managed to finish The Casual Vacancy. And that's really the only good thing I can say about it. Well, the other is that Rowling still manages to be a decent world builder. Too bad she filled this one with such horrible people that by the end you really don't care what happens to any of them. I've heard that she said that she expected her audience to be in tears at the end of the book and if they weren't, then that was a person she didn't want to meet/know. After wading through 500 pages of terrible people, I don't know that I want to meet her either. Any emotional weight she wanted the ending to have is just completely overshadowed by her attempts to write an "adult" novel. It takes more than a lot of swearing, sex and drugs to manage to be mature. Just ask the video game industry - they've been struggling with that for years now.

Sigh...

On a lighter note, The Sixth Gun is a pretty fascinating comic collection that also features not necessarily nice people but manages to be a whole lot more enjoyable. It's an apocalyptic-ish Western sorta thing. I recommend this one. I like the art style and the story hits all of the right notes. The beats of the story aren't exactly ground breaking, but the setting itself is fun and that grants it a few favors.

I'm about to start This Book is Full of Spiders, the sequel to John Dies at the End. I'm looking forward to it.

Blade is dumb. That is all. (No really, it's horrible. Why are there three of these movies?)

The Tall Man is the weirdest "horror" movie I've seen in quite some time. You go in expecting one thing and then about halfway through it turns into something else and then the end manages a twist on that and then you're left wondering why this is a movie. It's not bad, but it is really weird...

After watching the Pandemic episode of Tabletop I really wanted to snag the game and its expansion. Alas the expansion is out of print at the moment and most likely won't be available until the end of the year/beginning of the next. So we've done the next best thing and played a lot of Forbidden Island. On legendary. With some of the alternate islands. We've lost every time and it has been glorious. I'm keeping my eye out for Pandemic and the expansion though.

I need a bell for our copy of Pit. I'm not sure why I have a copy that doesn't have a bell. This is terrible.

It's time to start planning Drucon. The real trick is finding some games that will play seven people or so. We might try splitting the group up some, but we'll see. Fortunately Shadows Over Camelot plays that many. As does Pitchcar and 7 Wonders and a few others that we have running around/access to. (See the previously mentioned Pit. Why do you think I need a bell?) I think we'll also try a round of the Pictionary/telephone game.

And to finish things off an early Happy Birthday to lovely wife. I would mention her age here (it's legitimate this go round) but I'll be nice. Love you sweetie!

And so it goes

It seems like that's a line from Kurt Vonnegut. (The title that is) It seems to fit things in casa del 'd' at the moment. Hmm.

I've been reading The Name of the Wind again in the evenings. Such a good book. I was a little worried it wouldn't be as good the second time through (especially as I only read it a few months back), but nope, still excellent.

We picked up a couple little games in preparation for some family time. Qwirkle Cubes takes the gameplay from Qwirkle and mixes it up by turning the tiles into dice. So you're still trying to complete lines of 6 (either same color different shape or same shape different color) but at the beginning of your turn you can opt to roll any of the dice that are in your hand. It makes things a little more interesting. Also you can see what your opponents have at any time so there's a little more strategy to what you might place.

Forbidden Island is a co-operative game that has you trying to collect 4 treasures from a rapidly sinking island. Each player has an ability that lets them break the rules in a specific way as you work together to try and keep the island from sinking before you get the goods and get away. It's by the guy that created Pandemic which is a pretty well known co-op game. This one is a little simpler and meant for families. It's also much cheaper - priced around $15. It plays 2-4 people and lovely wife and I found it pretty fun.

We've still been having some fun throwing the frisbee around and taking some walks around the neighborhood. They built a pretty nice biking/walking path close by that we like. I've not been real good about exercising lately, so we try and get out for a walk in the evening to at least pretend.

And that's about it. The kids still live at the pool (when we let them) or terrorize the neighborhood. I guess we'll try to blow some stuff up this weekend and celebrate the holiday. Too bad we can't get any real fireworks...