Book Chain, etc, Week 9

#8: A book with a cover in the same colour as the previous book

Devil in the Mountain: A Search for the Origin of the Andes by Simon Lamb.

Still at it, but it's slow going. It's interesting, but it requires concentration and it's not the kind of book where, when you're not reading it, you're actively looking forward to picking it up again. (At least for me; someone who was more into geology in general might feel differently.)


StoryGraph Onboarding Challenge: A book you discovered via the 'Similar Users' toggle on the News Feed

Attempt one: Mythos by Stephen Fry. A collection of retellings of stories from Greek mythology.

I have not yet officially given up on it, but I'm less than a quarter of the way through and I have a strong feeling I'm not going to make it to the end. Fry is at a disadvantage with me, because I've been reading various authors' retellings of Greek myths since I was small and I already know most of the stories (and most of the facts he sprinkles in about modern words that derive from them), so it's standing or falling on the execution. I had hopes for the execution -- after all, it's Stephen Fry -- but so far it's not going well. The tone feels inconsistent: it doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind whether it's aiming for a formal register or a colloquial tone, or whether it's recounting the myths as something long ago and far away or getting right up in the action and into the characters' heads, and switches from one to another from sentence to sentence in a way I'm finding rather irritating.

Someone I know is listening to the audio book and enjoying it, and perhaps that would be the way to go; presumably Fry's performance would help.

Anyway, we're still in the early parts of the story, where the world is full of immortal personifications of abstract concepts and humans haven't been invented yet. I'm going to give it until the humans show up, and see if the narrative settles down when there are actual people in it. My hopes are not high, though.

Week in review: Week to 28 February

. The family walk-and-talk has successfully occurred for two weeks running.


. The weekend boardgame group continued to play Ticket to Ride Legacy. ( Read more... )

. At the weekly game meet, I played Cockroach Salad, 7 Wonders, The Mind, The Royal Game of Ur, and Thirty-One. ( Read more... )

. I have completed the jigsaw puzzle I was working on. It made a bad initial impression which it has not subsequently succeeded in overcoming. ( Read more... )

I have a second puzzle from the same series, and I'm going to do it next because it's there (and I'm curious about whether the nonsense booklet is a regular feature), but it's going to have to work a bit to gain my good will.


. I went to another concert, at the same venue and with mostly the same group of friends. This week it was the Hindley Street Country Club, which is much more my kind of music; I had an okay time last week, but this week I really enjoyed myself, ending with a big grin on my face and at one point going so far as to consider thinking about getting up and dancing. ( Read more... )

. I am continuing to play and enjoy XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. It's an indication of how much extra content is in the DLC that this first play-through has been going for over two weeks, during which I've been playing fairly often, and I'm still a fair distance from the final boss mission. I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the final boss mission; another thing that the DLC adds to the game is a series of mini-boss missions that are less intense versions of the final boss mission and provide opportunities to develop and practice useful strategies. Defeating each of the mini-bosses also results in a reward of a unique powerful weapon that I expect I will be glad of in the final battle.