A Book Survey

A friend passed this on to me, so here goes.
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1. Favorite childhood book?

Harry Potter by JK Rowling of course. I'm so young. 

2. What are you reading right now?

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Supposed to be brilliant. 

3. What books do you have on request at the library?

Wish I had access to a library that wasn't my school one. Such is life. 

4. Bad book habit?

Dog-earing, and not using bookmarks. 

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?

Nothing.  

6. Do you have an e-reader?

My dad has an iPad. I'm technically allowed to use it, though I haven't yet. 

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?

Depends on the book. If it's heavy then I like to vary it up. Lighter books I finish in a few hours so...

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?

Uh, no. 

9. Least favorite book you read this year (so far?)

(2011) Shantaram, I think. God that was annoying. 

(2012) Inheritance by Christopher Paolini. I could not read it. My eyes literally slid off the page and gazed upon the sky in despair. It was awful. 

10. Favorite book you’ve read this year?

A Streetcar Named Desire. Fabulous play. 

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?

Quite often. I love trying out new genres and authors. 

12. What is your reading comfort zone?

Non-fiction, postmodernism, humour.

13. Can you read on the bus?

Yep.  

14. Favorite place to read?

My bed, under the blankets. 

15. What is your policy on book lending?

I'm good with lending.

16. Do you ever dog-ear books?

All the drat time. 

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?

Never. I hate seeing ink/pencil marks in my books. 

18. Not even with text books?

Not very often. I end up making notes on paper cause I remember better.

19. What is your favorite language to read in?

English.

20. What makes you love a book?

I like stories with complex or compelling characters. Language and style are really important for me also. I refuse to read books that treat topics like rape insensitively. 

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?

Whether or not I enjoyed it.

22. Favorite genre?

Bildungsroman. 

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?)

Biographical works. People are interesting, but eh, I don't like strange speculation over the drugs they smoed etc. 

24. Favorite biography?

Can't think of any. 

25. Have you ever read a self-help book?

It was about teenagers, and a little didactic and silly.

26. Favorite cookbook?

Huh?

27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?

Nothing inspirational, I'm afraid! Only depression.

28. Favorite reading snack?

Peanuts.

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.

Nothing in particular comes to mind. 

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?

Sometimes, I guess? Some critiques of awful books are positive, so I can't really say. 

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?

If it deserves a bad review then I shall give one. Honesty is how I roll. 

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you choose?

Japanese might be interesting - though that's more to do with video gaming than books. 

33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read? 

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. So big and fat. Awesome though. 

34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?

Hmm, nothing yet. 

35. Favorite Poet?

T.S Eliot is great. I like the romantic poets too. .

36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?

No libraries to speak of, except the school one.  

37. How often have you returned book to the library unread?

Never.

38. Favorite fictional character? 
Not from a book funnily enough. Estelle Bright from Trails in the Sky. She's one of my favourite examples of a well-written female character, and just so goddamn awesome.
From books, I guess I find Edmond Dantes cool, partly because of how elaborate and amazing his plan for vengeance was, and his redemption. 

39. Favorite fictional villain?

... I can't think of any. Voldemort I guess? It's been a while since I've read anything with clear-cut villains.
40. Books you’re most likely to bring on vacation?

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, maybe a few travelogues by Bill Bryson. Nothing too heavy or thick.
41. The longest you’ve gone without reading.

Regular books - a few months, thanks to tons of schoolwork. I do read the novels set for school pretty often, so it depends on which kind.
42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.

Inheritance (again). I refuse to look at that refuse. Also, Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. I wanted to fling it out of the window in despair. 

43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?

not much if I'm into the book. If it's not a good book, then even the spot on my wall is distracting - ooh it looks like a face!

44. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?

Lord of the Rings was amazing in scale - I think it lived up to Tolkien's vision. 

45. Most disappointing film adaptation?

Narnia. Even Liam Neeson as Aslan cannot save that series. The worst thing was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader turning, from a journey of self-discovery, to a typical good vs. evil battley thing. 

46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?

No idea. Never too much at once though. 

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?

I look at the blurb and that's it. I don't like spoiling myself. 

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?

Bad writing mostly, or if the subject isn't interesting enough and I get bored.  

49. Do you like to keep your books organized?

I'd like to, but I don't. I have books everywhere except the shelves. 

50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?

Keep, mostly. I'm quite attached to most of my books. 
51. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?
Not really, no. I don't usually read thrillers, so I guess I stay away from those. 

52. Name a book that made you angry.
Twilight and its spawn. Ne'er have vampires been so awful and writing so hilariously bad. 

53. A book you didn’t expect to like but did?
Madame Bovary. The cover put me off with her bovine stare and general demeanour, but the book was great.
Serious reason: Most unlikeable protagonist ever, except maybe Anna Karenina. I usually don't like books with unlikeable protagonists. 

54. A book that you expected to like but didn’t?
Shantaram. People raved about it all the damn time but I thought it was both pretentious and horrible. The author's Architecture of the Novel article sealed the deal.

55. Favorite guilt-free, pleasure reading?

Never guilty, kiddos. But I do enjoy Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes a lot. 

Free Periods can be disturbingly dull

I'm getting my exam papers back today, and stuck in school during a free, I've realised that I have truly reached the nadir of my school life. These days, a lack of homework has me scurrying for a calendar or some such, because it feels so... wrong.

I was reflecting upon my actions when I decided that I have to thank my friends and family for making sure that I didn't grow up to be too socially retarded. I believe I spent a better part of my time being an idiot and not really trying to reach out to others, which finally bit me in the ass three years ago. As such, the experiences from that time have helped me be marginally less horrible than then.

People also had a lovely idea that I would beat them up at the slightest provocation, which makes me sad. Maybe I've gotten rid of that perception (slightly), but that it existed is a cause for concern to begin with. Yes, I was a violent idiot, but the key word is : IDIOT. I'm also going to be arbitrary and blame 75% of this on anime, because that was raison nombre un why I couldn't find things to talk about with others. I'm not saying anime is bad. I'm saying that I was obsessed with it to the point that I had nothing whatsoever with which I could actually hang out with people about, and an unhealthy view of reality filled with tsunderes and slapstick violence.

This segues nicely into the topic of my friends. In that awful, awful era I had three friends. One grew up to be slightly crazy but awesome. One grew up to be not-at-all crazy but awesome. The last grew up to be completely insane and horrible. I cut ties with her finally after she insulted one of the friends I have now - that being the tipping point so to speak. I was so sick of her that it felt strangely cathartic. She's now stalking the other members of that group for a meetup over the summer. For better or worse she hates me now, so she doesn't stalk me, and I won't have to see her again.

I'm going to end this on a slightly amusing note. The last time I met with friend no. 3 (insane and horrible).

She contacted me on facebook saying:
"Hey I'm going to Mumbai! Wanna meet up?"
Being naive and foolish, I agreed to this enterprise. This was a very bad decision to make.
The plan: Go to Phoenix and dump her in Landmark after lunch. It was perfect. She'd look at the books. I would be happy.
What actually happened: She came with her mother. At the age of sixteen, she wanted to bring her mother with us. What. The. Fuck.

My first reaction was to go to my mother, take her aside and tell her in hushed tones that she is coming with me, or I shall run away forever. She agreed, out of pity.

The first time I saw her was special. I remembered her as small, twiggy and generally very flat. She wasn't any of those any more, oh no. Big, fat and with boobs. It was terrifying. I looked at her up and down and wept a little on the inside. The she turned around. On the back of her T-shirt was a message I will never forget in my entire meagre existence.

AISH AISH BABY.
.
.
.
.
.

I'd like to say it got better but it really didn't.
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Hmm... I'm actually considering my first blog project so to speak, which is likely going to be me being strange and nerdy and liveblogging my next run-through of Trails in the Sky. Or a blind run of Last Story when it releases, whichever I feel like doing first. Last Story will be easy enough to screenshot for, though I'll need to set up stuff for Trails.

What to do. What to do.

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On a more personal note, I went to buy new glasses. Spectacle frames are disgustingly expensive in India. Also, today I did absolutely nothing of value and that depresses me greatly.

I got some songs by Zaz and Ben l'Oncle Soul. They really are quite good and fill me with despair for the English music industry which is still going strong with people like Miley Cyrus and Bieber.

I Did Promise Content

I promised fun stuff, so instead you can read nerd stuff.

Today, I want to talk about Fire Emblem, a series of strategy games spanning 20 years or so, that I've been a fan of for the last two or three years, by Intelligent Systems. They're relatively well-known in the west, after leaving Japan's shores officially in 2003, and have a fairly impressive fandom.

The series also thrives on several factors often not common in the SRPG genre:

• Permanent death: You lose a character; they are lost forever. 
• This is being changed with the advent of Casual mode
• Huge armies with every character named (and hopefully with a backstory)
• Coupled with perma-death, the average player is prone to resetting every time they lose. The death quotes often being tragic do not help with this compulsion. 
• Breakable weapons
• Everything, including the UBER-weapon that you shouldn't use until the final boss, will break if used a certain number of times. Combined with limited funds, this can be a pretty wonderful resource management lesson. 
• This was changed in FE2 where weapons cannot break, and FE10, where certain super-spoiler events can stop weapon breakage. 
• Luck-based leveling
• Each unit has growth rates, and so their stats which, unlike most games, stay in the double digits, will go up purely based on luck - say a unit has a 35% growth in HP. They therefore have a 35% chance of getting a +1 to their HP stat. 
• The fun thing about this is that every game you play will be subtly different because even the godly units can get badly screwed by the Random Number Generator, or the RNG Goddess as known in common parlance. You might get an amazing unit one run, and the next one, that same person will fail horrifyingly as you weep in his wake. 

They are however more famous for some of the incredible bullshit they pull on you at regular intervals and the incredible satisfaction and fun you get from the games. It may seem a little strange - you aren't actively involved in the game. There aren't any super-sexy combat situations to mash buttons in. No guns, man. The graphics are passable, but not great, and most of the time the animations are going to be switched off because they get kinda boring after the 10000000th time. Myself, I love the series, though I haven't played all of the games yet, and not all of them at MAXIMUM bullshit mode.

I've played, out of the twelve released (soon to be thirteen), seven titles. I'm planning on starting an eighth soon enough, which I may chronicle on this blog. If I feel like it. These are (in order of number, name, translated title if applicable, system and highest difficulty withstood):

1. FE4: Seisen no Keifu [Geneology of the Holy War] SNES -> Normal mode
   This actually has a Hard mode hidden in the Config menu. I honestly had no clue about this until an LPer on SomethingAwful showed it off. The more you know, I guess. It also is one of the few games that literally sends a wave o'dudes after you every few turns, and it is amazing. 
2. FE6: Fuin no Tsurugi [Sword of Seals] GBA -> Normal mode
   My masochism has no bounds, but the units here are so bad that I balk at the thought of using them in Hard. Really, mediocre people in any other game are truly gods among men in FE6. 
3. FE7: Blazing Sword (prequel to FE6) GBA -> Prologue/Eliwood Hard and Hector Normal
   This one is funny because it has three mode of gameplay - a tutorial prologue called Lyn Mode, the regular game in Eliwood mode, and the regular game in Hector mode. The names of the modes are based of the main characters in each mode. 
4. FE8: Sacred Stones GBA -> Hard mode
   This is the easiest game for a reason. Hard mode is a joke. 
5. FE9: Path of Radiance Gamecube -> Normal mode
   There is no reason I haven't played Hard yet except lack of motivation. It's pretty easy too, in comparison to the other Hards. 
6. FE10: Radiant Dawn (sequel to FE9) Wii - Hard mode
   Easy is the Japanese Normal, Normal is the Japanese Hard and Hard is the Japanese Maniac mode. This was obviously Nintendo trolling the people who said the west got only the easy games. It's also unironically my favourite. 
7. FE11: Shadow Dragon (remake of FE1) NDS - Hard 4
   This is also funny because it has Normal, and then five degrees of Hard, which is basically another word for degrees of sadism. Normal has a prologue that tries to explain the setting to you, while Hard 1-5 do not. 

I'm planning on starting FE5: Thracia 776 soon enough, and once the patch for FE12 is complete, I'll go through that as well. I refuse to inflict 1, 2, and 3 upon myself because of how unpolished they feel to me now. I did try 2, though I gave up after being mobbed by Zombie Dragons. 

Anyways, enough of me ranting about my love for Fire Emblem. Such a cheesy title. Trust me though - if you like tactical games in any way, then this is a must try series. I'd recommend either 7 or 8 as a gateway, though 9 is just as good if you own a Wii. 

So, my exams are finally over. I feel a certain sense of catharsis coupled with the feeling that I'm failing Psychology. But it's okay. We're all failing together, because it's psychology.

I had an awful morning, and pretty much wasted my Saturday sitting in school because of a subject choice presentation in which I didn't get to present in the end. I'll post some fun content later. 

An Encounter in TV Tropes.

I'm almost through with mock exams, begging the question: WTF am I blogging right now for? I suppose I'm just really bored, and there's only so much time you can look at awful heart diagrams before wanting to keel over and die.

So, I spent some time on the TVTropes forums a little while ago. Handlename: SC Bracer, which is a) my initials and b) a bit of terminology from the Legend of Heroes RPG series by Falcom, which is the most amazing story-based RPG I've ever played, except maybe Xenoblade.

I knew about the site for a few years, back when it was cool and made fun of things like Twilight, Sonichu and FATAL (which I refuse to explain because it's highly NSFW). Sometime between then and now, the site took on this awful "no criticism" ever outlook on life, and became the world's biggest hugbox. Back then, it used to be about making fun of creeps. Now it is the creeps.

I lasted less than 48 hours on the site, which is hilarious because I was banned for pointing out that saying "women have less mass than men and should go to space because of that" was misogynistic. First they shut off my posting and made it impossible for me to visit the forums. Then I appropriately left them an open letter pointing out the paedos and creeps in the forums, which got my page locked and even my ability to delete my account removed. I don't really see the point of the latter, but eh, I suppose they need to make my life harder somehow.

I went there specifically because of the Writer's Block though, thinking, as I'd disappeared from that part of the internet for a while, that it was still sort of cool. I was wrong, for the reasons mentioned above and more.

Let me show you:

The first topic I posted in was the one asking what themes your work had. Now, I can understand not being absolutely sure about the themes in a work, because people do confuse the issue. I know I used to, before I started the IB English course. What was amazing/shocking/awful were posts like these:

COMING OF AGE, BITCH

And my eternal favourite:

I'm not sure I understand what a theme is, let alone how to determine the theme of a story. (I understand what a moral is, but I don't think that's the same thing.) That said, at a guess . . .

My pain and sorrow know no bounds. There are some other terrible examples of humanity in there, including one Major Tom who talks about his awful military novel filled with nonsensical details about guns and cherry blossoms amid character development (there is none). The setting of this novel is apparently Dreyerball (sp?), which reminds me of only one thing:

I hear they do work rather well.

I'll leave you with the most amazing quote of them all, from Natasel, who was highly offended during a series of PMs between the two of us, that I disliked misogynists and paedos. And proceeded to call himself one, which is why it was offensive. Well drat, I can't believe I offended you man. What about my sensibilities?

Ashamed that I did not think of females generally being lighter than males also means its cheaper to launch them into space.

^^^^^^ Ditto children.

Also, with them being smaller, it will take less air, water and food to keep them alive.

A space staion staffed entirely by little girl astronauts is the wave of the future?

This was right after my ban, so it took a little cookie deleting to be able to see this. Yes. If you get banned, all you have to do is delete tvt's cookies from your browser. It's so cute and badly done, I want to cry.

The King's Speech Soundtrack

In the absence of anything to write about, I thought I'd mention my immense love for Alexandre Desplat's work. As everyone should know by now, he won a Grammy for his work on The King's Speech, and was nominated for Harry Potter 7 as well. Too bad he can't win twice in the same category, because he deserves it.

The OST for TKS is one of my all-time favourites, and I can't rave about it enough. Think of any fantastic piece of music you may have heard of in the past few years, and then multiply that feeling by several thousands. There we go.

Lionel and Bertie

The album starts with this poignant track, which has a very subtle and gentle melody mingled with the strings, before gradually building up with a flute. It never loses the warmth from the first few bars though, and it makes a nice introduction to the music.

The King's Speech

One of my favourite tracks, it has a great melody. There's a sense of melancholy in it, mixed with a sense of hope.

My Kingdom, My Rules

Despite what the title might have you believe, the piece isn't at all obnoxious. It carries a slight sense of pomp, tempered by the instrumentation which is, again, understated and very well crafted. One thing about this soundtrack is that The King's Speech is constantly reused as leitmotif, even in the other pieces. It sounds familiar, but different as a result.

The King is Dead

It's appropriately sad, and sinks into the background while you listen. I find it to be one of the weaker tracks in the running, but really, that doesn't make it any less pleasant to listen to.

Memories of Childhood

Continuing the theme of deceptive names, this song is nostalgic, but melancholy in tone. It's quite long, but illustrates a certain sense of transience that fits in very well with Childhood.

King George VI

Another nice track that takes its time building up to a crescendo. It feels lonely and unsure, before the strings cut in with a strong melody filled with determination amidst apprehension. I can't explain it exactly, but it fits the king very well.

The Royal Household

This is The King's Speech, with the primary differences being the dynamics and length. A nice track really.

Queen Elizabeth

This amazing lady gets a nice song to herself. She's famous for being ridiculously brave and the song is indicative of her resolve in my opinion.

The Threat of War

I don't like this one all that much, but it sounds very tense and suspicious, the way I'd imagine the run-up to World War II was. It features a nice crescendo that is probably analogous to the tension before the war, which is rather nice.

The Rehearsal

This is my absolute favourite because of the difference in mood and theme from the rest of the soundtrack. It starts soft and hopeful, and then builds up with a very light flute and strings accompaniment and that lovely melody. A must-listen, no questions asked.

Fear and Suspicion

The King's Speech is rearranged once more, but is slower to start, and changes slightly towards the end in both melody and accompaniment.

There are also two more tracks in the OST, but those aren't composed by Desplat - rather, performances of Beethoven's 7th (II) and Piano Concerto 5th. Very nice listens, but I honestly cannot do justice to that sort of thing. My prose is sadly lacking.

You should be listening to this. Right now. You'll thank me for it later.

Well, so much for my first actual content post.

I'm out.

Hello World

I just started this on a whim, and maybe because I reunited with a few friends from when I was in middle-school. That was a fun conversation.

I guess I'm going to be blogging about my interests here, not to mention the odd internet trainwrecks I chance upon. Sometimes, I might even decide to be funny.