E-Readers – Someone Shares My Opinion

I just had to share this from Tycho over at Penny Arcade:

I mentioned to Gabe that the LendMe feature didn’t extend to all books, and he was surprised to learn this, as “lending” a book digitally removes it from your device. It is, in many ways, like lending a person a real book. I suggested to him that this was precisely what they didn’t like – you have to warp your mind to perceive it, to understand why a publisher of books would hate the book as a concept, but there you have it. They don’t like that books are immutable, transferable objects whose payload never degrades. A digital “book” – caged on a device, licensed, not purchased – is the sort of thing that greases their mandibles with digestive enzymes.

Imagine what these people must think of libraries.

I’d like to reiterate that I called it first  :-)

Apparently the LendMe function is much like the Zune’s sharing functionality. It’s there… it’s chock full of DRM.. but not many publishers want to let you use it. What a way to take an awesome (and in my opinion, necessary) feature and render it useless.

New Story

I’ve got a new story up! It’s based on a #twitfic I posted on Twitter a while ago.

“Who knew knitting needles made such good vampire stakes?”

It’s called Knitting Technique and you can find it under the Writing page and also here.

Book Review: Academ’s Fury

Spoiler Warning:  This is the second book in a series (first book’s review here) and I will probably give away spoilers for the first book. If that bothers you please mark as read and come back when you’ve read the first book.

Brief Synopsis: For one thousand years, the people of Alera have united against the aggressive and threatening races that inhabit the world, using their unique bond with the Furies–elementals of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Metal. But now, the unity of the Alerians hangs in precarious balance. The First Lord of Alera has fallen in his efforts to protect his people from the vicious attacks of their enemies. Now, the fate of the Alerians lies in the hands of Tavi, a young man who must use all of his courage and resourcefulness to save his people–and himself.

Tavi has grown up a bit from the first book. If you consider this series to be the tale of Tavi’s life (which it appears to be) this is the college years. He’s figuring out who and what are important to him.  Some of his naiveté is falling away as he realizes that not everyone is who and what they appear to be. He makes some good friends and some bad enemies along the way.

As Tami mentioned in my review of the previous novel, Furies of Calderon toed the line between young adult fiction and high fantasy. Academ’s Fury aaaaaaalmost crossed the line over into high fantasy. The next book, Cursor’s Fury which I’m about 150 pages into, makes it all the way over the line. 

It seems to me that we see a bit more of the other characters in this book than the first. Most of the events in FoC occur in Calderon Valley, and everything is basically part of the same plot arc. In AC you split your time between the capital city and the valley with two distinct plot lines. I think it’s a major factor in bringing this book out of the YA genre and into high fantasy. You get a better sense that the fate of the world hangs in the balance and there’s a much clearer battle between good and evil (as opposed to one guy against another).

As before, the world building and character development are superb! I think it’s Jim Butcher’s strength as a writer; characters you really identify with and a rich, immersive world. He never disappoints!

Summary

Another excellent read from Jim Butcher, 4.5 *’s

Trivia

Player: [after pushing an opponent all the way off the field] Sorry coach, I stopped when I heard the whistle.
Coach: Where were you taking him?
Player: The bus, it was time for him to go home.

It’s Comming On Christmas…

It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

But it don’t snow here
It stays pretty green
I’m going to make a lot of money
Then I’m going to quit this crazy scene
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Yep… It’s that time of year again.  The holidays have snuck up one me once again.  I’m having trouble getting into the spirit this year.  It feels like it should only be early November… Yet here we are, Thanksgiving’s over, Christmas parties are coming up, I need to start buying christmas gifts.  I’m getting through the motions properly.  I’m organizing a Secret Santa gift exchange for my friends, organizing a party for my small group, we’ve adopted a family from a shelter for battered women and children… I’m just not feeling it.  Maybe it’s because it took so long to get cold around here.  I was wearing t-shirts up until the week before Thanksgiving, now it’s going to be snowing tomorrow.  Snow.  In Ausin.

Come to think of it… I’m not feeling much right now.  I’ve got so much stuff I feel like I HAVE to do it’s hard to get motivated to do the things I WANT to do.  That’s the main reason it’s been so quiet around here lately.  I feel like I’ve been run ragged… It’s been one thing after another since September.  Maybe things will calm down after Christmas?  Experience tells me I shouldn’t hold my breath.

In much happier news, The Hubby told me last night he wants to help me get my craft room set up.  We need to move a few things around but it shouldn’t be too much work.  Maybe this weekend

Maybe if I set up the Christmas tree after dinner I’ll feel more in the holiday spirit.

Happy Thanksgiving and Blogoversary!

I wanted to wish all of you out there on the interwebs a Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope you’ve managed to avoid the family you don’t get along with and are enjoying entirely too much food with the family you do get long with

Today is also the 1 year anniversary of my first post on this blog!  Thanks for reading and helping to keep me sane (I know, that’s debatable!) over the past year.  It has been a pleasure writing this blog and I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have.

Enough of the sappy stuff.  Go eat yourself silly!  Speaking of which, what are you doing on the computer on Thanksgiving Day anyway?

A (Mostly) Finished Project

Sorry it’s been so quiet around here lately.  I’ve got a TON of projects pulling on my time and mental capacity.  Here’s one that I hit a major milestone on last night!

 

The top is finished, tonight I’m going to sandwhich with batting and backing fabric and finish the edges.  The quilt is 72 inches square (so sort of queen sized).  It’s a much belated wedding gift for a family member.

Some Additional Details

I wanted to add a few details to my last post to answer a few questions I’ve gotten.

• Game Version: We’ll be playing 4th Edition D&D
• Race/Class restrictions: I’d like to keep it to the options in the first Players Handbook but if someone really wants to play something from the PH2 I won’t object
• Alignment restrictions: Good, Lawful Good, or Unaligned.  At this point I’m not really interested in running an Evil alignment game.
• When we’ll start:  I think it’s a good idea to wait until after the holidays to get this thing rolling.  Starting right in the middle of everyone’s busy season seems like a plan destined for failure! Plus I know several people that are participating in NaNoWriMo (I have no idea if I spelled that right) so you won’t have to worry about interrupting your writing

I’ve currently got 3 players: Tami, Byrd, and The Hubby.  There’s room for more, if anyone else is interested please let me know!

Calling All Geeks

I mentioned a while back that I had an interest in playing D&D.  I had kind of given up on the idea since I don’t know anyone around here who plays or might be interested in playing.  Then I read this yesterday from Gabe over at Penny Arcade and thought that sounded like a perfect solution; play by email!  I haven’t thought through all the details and logistics yet, I thought I’d see if there was any interest first.  I’ve never played D&D before so I thought it might be fun to get a group of people together who haven’t played before or maybe haven’t played 4th edition, though I won’t turn anyone away

So, how about it?  Who wants to put their RP hat on and go have an adventure?  If you’re interested send me an email at pvillegirlblog [at] gmail [dot] com!

Welcome BBB Readers

First off, thanks John, you doubled tripled quadrupled my previous record for page views in a single day by linking to me!  Not sure if that’s an indication of how many readers you have or how few I have

Either way, if you’re comming over here from The Big Bear Butt Blog, thanks for clicking through, I hope you stick around.  Since you’re probably here because of the raffle, I’ll point you to the Crafts In Progress page up at the top to see pictures of the scarves I’m working on for the raffle (I’ll keep posting more pictures as I work on them).  Also up there are my Finished Projects, the current standings and rules for my Movie Trivia Game, and a few short stories I’ve written.

Unfortuantely this isn’t a WoW blog (though I used to write one) so if you don’t find anything of interest here I understand.  As the tag line says, I mostly write about whatever crosses my mind: movies, books, crafts, and anything shiny that distracts me from work.  If you like what you see there’s an RSS link up there, feel free to add it to your reader of choice! 

I hope you all participate in the raffle, cancer research is a cause near and dear to my heart.  My thoughts and prayers go out to Julie and her family, thanks John and all the Shide Devils for organizing this charity drive.

Book Review: Riddle Master Trilogy

In a land where wizards have long since vanished, Morogon, Prince of Hed, is confronted with a challenge much different from that faced by Hed’s land-bound rulers before him.  Although he wants only to rule and work the land of his birth, Morogon must search out a very different destiny – given to him by the stars imprinted on his forehead since he was born.  He must wander strange, foreign lands full of untamed magic in the form of riddling wraiths, mysterious harpists, a lost crown, a magical sword, and an all-knowing High One who rules over all.  But in his quest for a new life for himself and his people, he must face great dangers – not only to himself and his people, but to his promised bride, his land, and his very way of life…

The Good

The Riddle-Master trilogy was definitely a good read.  The characters are very real.  Morogon and Raederle are a couple I really enjoyed reading.  All of the supporting characters were well written, even the villains (and you don’t really know who they are until the end anyway) are understandable if not likable.

The action moves along at a nice pace, though I’m glad I read the trilogy in a single volume, the cliffhanger at the end of book 1 is a doosie!  The story is intriguing.  At its heart it’s a coming of age story, though it’s definitely high fantasy with a battle to save the entire realm.

The No-So-Good

There wasn’t anything truly bad about this story but there are a few downsides.  The story is hard to follow at times.  The main characters are riddlers, they put pieces of the puzzle together to figure out what happened and why.  Sometimes the author expects you to do the same which means remembering lots of little details.  She doesn’t tell you anything twice and you kind of need to remember everything for it all to make sense.  This makes it a good read for a vacation where you can read the whole thing in a relatively short amount of time! 

You can tell this was the author’s first novels, and the second and third are leaps and bounds ahead of the first book.  I think the best way I can put it is that it’s lacking in polish.  You don’t really understand why Morogon and Raederle love each other so much, when you get to the final battle at the end it’s kind of anti-climactic, you get the big reveal of who the good and bad guys really are and bam, Morogon defeats them.  It kind of makes sense when you know all the little details but it doesn’t flow well.

Summary

I’m going to give this one 3 *’s.  It was a good read, just not great.  Pick it up at the library or used book store.

Trivia

Guy 1: Why do this?
Guy 2: Why not do it?
[Guy 1 shakes his head]
Guy 2: Cause yesterday I walked out of the joint after losing four years of my life and you’re cold-decking “Teen Beat” cover boys.
[pause]
Guy 2: Cause the house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes. The house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet and you bet big, then you take the house.
[another pause]
Guy 1: Been practicing this speech, haven’t you?
Guy 2: Little bit. Did I rush it? Felt I rushed it.
Guy 1: No, it was good, I liked it. The “Teen Beat” thing was harsh.