I finished the Name of the Wind and it was the best book I've probably ever read. I'm 650 pages into Wise Man's Fear and it's really amazing too. Once I'm finished with that I only have two other novels on my book pile that I started building this summer. So I'm getting itchy to buy more so that I don't run out of stuff to read. For some reason seeing that pile shrink and running out of new books makes me nervous.
Wow these are all pretty cool Justin. I especially appreciate the Apel Fire Retexture and Alternate Skies work that has been done there. The ES mod community does really beautiful work
I haven't been gaming this week yet Tami. I still have Borderlands in the tray and I've been doing a tough New Game+ playthrough but I haven't made time to make any progress this week, and the number one reason is The Name of the Wind.
I remember you saying it's slow to start but grabs hold of you just a little ways into the book and doesn't let go. I've heard people say the pacing is fabulous and it's hard to put the book down, and this week I've seen all of that and more. I usually start reading after dinner and put down maybe a hundred to 150 pages each night before I go to bed, and literally the only reason I stop is because I know I can't stay up all night during the week. It almost pains me to put it down and try to find a natural stopping point. There never feels like a natural stopping point. It's masterfully written and the pacing is so fast I never want to stop. I've never read a book that makes me wish there were more hours in the day to continue reading it. This past week that I've been reading it my mind has utterly been wrapped up in Kvothe and his story, and sometimes I've woken up with Rothfuss' prose and lines of the writing in my mind. I really enjoy the way he describes things and presents the scenes and events of the story.
Right now I'm at this point where Kvothe just earned his pipes playing his lute at a music club in the city of Imre outside the University, and he just came across Denna again. It's been a really heartbreaking story so far but often in the most inspiring way. I was torn apart by what happened to his troupe at the beginning of the story. Rothfuss got me to care and love Kvothe's parents and his troupe in a pretty short amount of time. Then the bullies did horrible things to him in Tarbean when he lived off the streets, but there were always uplifting moments I cherished like when the shoe craftsman in Tarbean gave him a free pair of shoes, or the last time he saw Trapis the old man priest who takes care of the orphans and sickly. This is quite a powerful story that's unfolding so far.
Thanks Nicole, I appreciate it. I didn't hear about the goty edition till recently, I guess they annouced not too long ago. I stumbled across it while I was surfing Amazon.com and then I went to IGN and other press sites to confirm it. It's out October 8th here in North America. It comes with a whole gang of DLC, all four of the campaign expansions, all of the new classes, level cap raises, and all kinds of the other DLCs big and small. Gearbox really spent a long time supporting that game and they put out a ton of DLC, it'll be great to get it all at once and finally get to play the game!
Thanks Peter, we've been seeing footage from the helicopters and it's pretty crazy. They're watching the bridges around here, some of them are shut down and might be overflowed overnight. We can head west to the University if flood water shows up since there's high ground over there.
I've got too many other games this season to get GTA 5, but I'm hoping it's good because I may play it sometime later. If you buy it you should blog about it and let us know what you think. I'd like to watch some Let's Plays of it when those come along too. It'll be a while before I'd get a chance to play it.
Thanks Rodney. Julian Titus here at the site is from Austin and he's talked before about how dry and hot it is, and how alien and magical it feels when rain comes along. It doesn't rain that often here but when it does it can get intense. When it rains we usually get lots of wind and lightning here in Colorado, and hail that damages people's roofs.
I'm really excited for the Borderlands 2 GOTY, I've been waiting to play that game and it'll be fun. I really enjoy the gunplay and the music in Borderlands. It's creates a great dusty, wild west, futuristic vibe.
Thanks Matt. We don't ever get this much rain so when we hear of flooding we are skeptical, but the amount of rain that the front range is getting is ridiculous and it's continuous for the most part. The overflow of the rivers in my city is way worse than I expected it to be, some places are higher up and are perfectly safe while other places are entirely under water now.
I'd like to see how Borderlands 2 runs on Vita. It's nice that it's coming to Vita, there's actually a lot of great games finally on the way for that platform. The most surprising thing at the recent Gamescom convention was that many of the most interesting games there were Vita games.
It's an online game and it's more like Monster Hunter and Dragon's Dogma (both of which are already quite similar) mashed together, not much like Assassin's Creed or Dark Souls (except in the art) from what I've seen and heard from it. I'm not interested in it for now, I want a strong single player game and Dark Souls 2 will be better for that when it comes out. I've always been interested to check out Monster Hunter and this looks to be that kind of game, so when I get a PS4 in a couple years or so I might check it out.
It'll be playable for the first time coming up at TGS so that'll be when the freshest information comes out on its online structure and gameplay. Most fantasy online rpgs don't interest me, but maybe this one could be neat.
Take everything I say with a grain of salt because I don't actually like writing much at the moment. I'm more into level design and learning programming in games. I read a ton but the last time I was truly excited about writing was a few years ago when I did some short stories. One of them was a really heavy horror short story that I threw together in a few hours, it ripped off some plot points from Silent Hill 2 and wasn't an original story, but I was more interested in developing the atmosphere and scenarios and how I described them in my prose at the time or whatever. Some things happened to my main character that made you really empathetic, but by the end you saw him in a different light and understood why he kind of deserved to be in such a hellish place. It was a fucked up story with literally no positive endings for anybody lol. It was distubing to write and I didn't feel good doing it, but it felt like the right thing for the story. I was depressed at the time and needed to vent and create a dark place with my imagination, and that short story helped out with that a little bit.
In regards to your story, it all depends on why writing it is making you bummed out. If you're creating characters that you really like and bad things have to happen to them in the story, you should feel bummed out just like the reader should if they become attatched to the characters. If you really care about characters and the drama that's unfolding is painful, that's likely a good sign you're doing something right. But if you're bummed out just because you're not enjoying writing it, that's a whole different can of worms. That would probably mean you should quit and write something else that is more engaging to you. Maybe come back later or scrap it altogether, depends on how you feel, you're the author afterall.
