Books:
3. Fall of Atlantis: Marion Z Bradley. This has to be one of the more annoying books I’ve read recently, and the reason I didn’t finish any books in March. Silly tribal magic stuff combined with ridiculous superstitions about pregnancy and child bearing, then they throw in caste based ceremonial rape into the mix. Things like this just irritate me to no end, and if I weren’t such a completionist I’d have just deleted the book half-way through. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. Repeatedly.
4. Storm from the Shadows: David Weber. In contrast to the last book, I finished this in just a day or so. What they’d been setting up for 11+ books finally hitting. Really enjoyed this and the next few books…
5. Mission of Honor: Another David Weber. This book was somewhat painful, but not because it was bad or anything. Just the storyline… At least the ending was good.
6. In Death Ground: Steve White & David Weber. I ran out of Honor books, so I moved on to other Weber books I had already purchased. The early bits of this were a little sloggy, no real emotional connection to any of the characters, just a dry telling of history pretty much. It picked up though part-way through and was quite enjoyable, aside from the cliff hanger stalemate at the end.
7. Mogworld: Yahtzee Croshaw. This is only the 2nd or 3rd paper novel I’ve read in the last few years. Enjoyed it. Very .Hack ish, only better. More coherent.
8. K-On Volume 1. Decided to switch over to a few Manga. This one wasn’t bad, but I’m not used to the sort of 4-panel stuff in Manga.
9. Lucky Star volume 7. I ended up with a rather random assortment of books from Borders closing, so I went ahead and read this one out of order. It was good enough that I decided to rent the Anime. I looked on Netflix and found that the first disc was missing. Since I couldn’t find the first issue or the first disc, I ended up deciding to buy the first one in the store. Found the whole series for $30 instead. Yes, the first manga I read was enough to make me buy the whole anime series.
10. In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V. After reading some Manga and a paperback, I went back and bought another month of webscriptions. This book? Like the other worlds of honor books, it fills in interesting details around the main series, but I’m not sure how critical most of them are.
11. Crucible of Empire. Reminds me somewhat of Worlds of Honor. A sort of high point in the middle of the novel, followed by quite a bit of political intrigue and posturing, capped off by setting up for the next book. I still enjoy this series, but it seems they’re taking it quite slowly. 7 years between books?
12. Literature: Unsuccessfully Competing Against TV Since 1953. Good Sheldon book.
Games.
8. Uncharted 2. Quite enjoyable. I was expecting something different from Uncharted 1 though given the way everyone was boosting it up, and this was instead very similar to Uncharted 1.
9. StrongBad 4: Dangeresque 3. Entertaining. I skipped 3 because it started crashing every time I brought the map up. :(
10. Portal 2. Great. Just great. Maybe not $50 great on the Single player side, but at least $20 or $25 great. The Co-op play might make up the difference, if I could find someone to play with.
11. Pokemon Black. I can’t believe I forgot to include this originally. I’ve finished it, but have little urge to go through with “catching them all” this time. Kind of like Sapphire. I guess I’m not really into that kind of time sink anymore. Though, I did put over 250 hours into DQ9.
Videos.
21. Boston Legal: Season 1. Not quite what I was expecting from the clips I’ve seen of it. Not all bad, but gets preachy at times. William Shatner tends to be too much of a strawman at times.
22. Robots. Rube goldberg-ish, but fun.
23. Banner of the Stars. Enjoyable SF. I think I enjoyed Starship Operators more, but this was pretty solid.
24. Suzuka. Think Love Hina for the Jock crowd. Except it’s a bit more realistic and far less silly. Some of the Love Hina vibe went away after the first 5-6 episodes though as it turned more into a high school thing and less of a “guy living in an apartment full of girls and cleaning their bath, while stumbling accidentally and falling on them” thing.
25. Battlestar Galactica: Caprica. Origin stories. Fun. Since they’ve already gone all the way the other direction in the series, I guess they have to do prequels.
26. A Bit of Fry and Laurie, season 4. Carries some of the good stuff from 3 forward. Still good.
27. Archer Season 1. I think I like Frisky Dingo better, but this was entertaining. (I’m not as much a fan of Spy movies, and this heavily parodies those.)
All around, I was pretty scatter-shot this month on what I watched. I’m actually watching about 3 separate series right now on Netflix, so haven’t finished as much of any one series.