username

That's the weird part as Nucky had a real bother and wife so I don't think they are gonna kill them off as he never suffered such losses, although they are so loose that I could be mistaken. Granted I've been of the opinion that they should say to hell with history and go nuts just to throw everyone off so I wouldn't complain.

Yeah, Rusev seeing the impossible odds, handing the flag to his woman and pushing her to safety before running headfirst into the unwinnable fight was the most badass face move I've seen in ages. That's the shit Roman should be doing at some point after he gets back.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but all the non-historical characters are now dead aside from Gillian, right? I guess Narcisse would be as well but I don't know that we'll be seeing him again. I figured they'd leave someone alive so they could tease killing them in the series finale, but now I'm not sure who they can actually kill in the final two episodes aside from generic cannon fodder. .

Disregarded everyone's advice and started up The Color of Magic as I apparently bought it on a daily Kindle deal for like $2 a couple years back and completely forgot about it. It lacks the "pop" of Monstrous Regiment but it is more or less a short story collection so it is easy to get in and out. Beyond that it is decent enough fun, a bit simple but nothing objectionable.

Screw that, they have a bundle where you can get Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV and two other games for $9 total. That's borderline absurd pricing.

American Beauty also "cheated" a tad bit by changing its opening apparently rather late in its overall development. It was supposed to start with the two kids being convicted for Lester's murder which would likely frame Lester's journey and final thoughts in a much harsher light overall.

Hey, I finished this up with a few days to spare before it was due back at the library. Let me toss a bit of a spoiler warning here as we've been pretty clean so far. Let's get the negative out of the way first: the female revelations eventually got to the point of absurdity. I can appreciate why they were there and I think Pratchett was aware of this (the Maladict unveiling hints strongly at this) but at some point in that final run it reached the point where I groaned everytime it happened which kinda hurt an otherwise nice scene at the end. Beyond that I found it to be a rather enjoyable read. I haven't put the thought in to think all that deeply about the themes touched on beyond a superficial level but I found Polliver to be a rather well developed protagonist, just clever enough to push things forward when needed but with enough naivety that she wasn't too far ahead of the reader. Jackrum was a heck of a character as well, the one person with a complete view of how things are, all that charm and a certain morale code clashing against the weight of previous deeds and a ton of blood spilled. I think I liked him/her but there were plenty of moments where I drew back from them. I liked that we followed a crew of mostly decent...ish people who were fighting on behalf of a country that it feels fairly safe to consider "bad guys". A generally warlike nation, starting them for what seems to be inane reasons, practicing a theology that has gone completely off the rails. A country ruled by a dead Duchess and worshiping a dead god, it's not what one would normally find themselves rooting for yet the gals, perhaps treated worse by said country than the actual invaders, are such a strong window into how the people themselves are mostly just trying to get by the best they can that one ends up hoping that the country can turn the war around if only for the off chance that they might find a way to then right themselves. The novel plays with said hopes before batting them around, although it leaves open the chance that the small gains made will snowball into bigger things in the future. I'm not at all convinced that Polly is ready to step into those rather large shoes, but I'd like to read the story of how it'd turn out. So yeah, good book, glad I gave it a read.

Worth clarifying since the way you phrased that could be confusing for someone unfamiliar with the story. The story was published after Dr V committed suicide, not that the story was published, outed Dr V and led to his suicide. The specter of the story possibly outing Dr. V may have contributed to his suicide. Simmons's error (he came in after this point) was not shelving the story, which is still bad.

It sounds like a fairly interesting treatment (I mean, the cliches playing themselves out differently part falls very much in line with what I was writing above) but I would probably check out once I got to the whole elf part. I wouldn't take that too hard as I'm about as far out on the "anti-elf for no particular reason" spectrum as you will likely find. Any choice you make is obviously gonna excite some but lose others as people have all sort of random loves and hates, that's gonna be pretty unavoidable. As long as you make what is there the best you can make it and hopefully make it as intriguing and interesting as it can be (without going too far, obv) it shouldn't be too much of a handicap. Also since this came up and this would likely be one of the better places to ask: what are the good other Discworld books to check out as an interested outsider since, as mentioned above, there are a ton of them and it's a bit intimidating to try and pick a good place to start. Whatever the Igors I think they are swell Next time: hopefully talking about the actual book some!

The thing is I don't know that there is a real reason beyond "I don't like it". This fortunately lacks elves which is probably the thing most likely to get me to walk away from something (I've not read or looked at one LOTR related thing ever and those have been recommended... many times over the years) so that helps. Zombies I was originally fine with but after the past several years I could probably due without seeing a zombie anything for the next decade or so; fortunately again this book's portrayal of them is very different and I view as a positive. It may just be that I've seen these notable... archetypes or creatures my whole life, the vast majority of the time with them keeping to some rigid genre standard despite them being fictional and hence capable of being anything. I loved American Gods and enjoyed some of Gaiman's other work but he seems to touch on... I don't want to say a different class of fictional characters but ones that read as fresher to me. And to be fair to Monstrous Regiment I have mostly enjoyed what Pratchett has done with those characters. Igor as mentioned is a very different take on a zombie, Maladict and his whole black ribbon "deal" while likely done before is far from cliched and... truthfully I generally forget the troll is around until it actually shows up. So hey, I guess my one person answer is that your best bet is to do something with these archetypes that doesn't lean much at all on the expected, perhaps overused aspects that one initially thinks of when they hear the term. As always I caution against taking what I like or think as something that speaks for others as I like and dislike some pretty random stuff from time to time. On the book itself I came down with a bit of a head cold this week so my progress has slowed dramatically. I'm hoping it clears up in the next few days otherwise I might not be able to make much progress on it until next weekend.

I'm about 200 pages into this and despite it having a major mark against it via being the kind of fantasy that always turns me off (we have zombies and trolls and vampires all working together along with a werewolf, some imps, etc.) it's actually been pretty okay beyond that. I don't really have much to say yet as I'm not even quite sure what it is building to, but so far so good.

If you wait until the Black Friday sales you may be able to snatch one for... maybe $40 at the lowest, but I'd be amazed if you see anything before then.

This was not a faith inspiring episode of television tonight. At least we get twice as much Nucky now I guess.

I always wanted to give a true Terry Pratchett book a shot after reading Good Omens all those years ago and the local library appears to have this one, so I believe I should be in for this one.

I haven't seen a lot of people saying that Stewart decided to deliberately run over the guy (I'm sure someone out there has). What I have seen raised is the dual issue of A) the guy decided to walk around on the race track and wave hands at someone in a moving vehicle and B) Stewart seemingly may have gunned said vehicle when reaching said guy. There isn't much to say about A at this very second as the guy is dead, whatever price was to be paid for that he's more than paid. NASCAR may want to take this opportunity to pass some rules about this, I'll leave that for another day. If Tony did B in a way that isn't typical of that particular race (i.e. the only reason to rev up there is that Ward was there)... said revving up likely killed him. Much less an intentional act to kill, he did something he didn't have to do and it directly lead to someone's death (possibly, I'm sure more will be looked into and come out as the next days go by). Most of us have done stuff like that in our lives, but if luck goes bad and either we die or someone else does because of it you kinda have to face the music. I don't think Tony is a bad guy because of this... but he may have to go away because of this. Just a wretched situation all around

Sorry you didn't enjoy it Jingus. My main worry coming into this was that Pale Fire's appeal may be a bit narrow, at least compared to the previous two book club books. Thanks for at least giving it a shot. Also you remind me that I need to get around to reading House of Leaves one of these days. That is a very intriguing analysis tim. I checked around online a few days ago to double check to see if how I interpreted some things wasn't completely off the ball and was stunned to see how many theories there are out there about what is real, what isn't and just who everyone is. Again I'm not sure I'd go as far to endorse any of them, but that linked one does do a good job of explaining exactly why that person sees the work that way.

I tried this past weekend and could not get it to actually run, perhaps someone else may have had better luck though.

This is the kind of thing that does push me away from concluding that he made the whole thing up, yeah. It does leave open the possibility that there is a king with said tales about him, yet said king is not Kinbote.

Spoilers, obviously, but I'm not sure that any of the early histories (assuming you are referring to Kinbote) actually occurred. The book has the sight of hand where the unreliable narrator is revealed to be even less reliable than assumed yet after finishing up and sleeping on it for a few days I was not sure that I might have still been believing his words more than I should have. He wasn't the target of an assassin but instead a deranged narcissist, but beyond that and the probability of him being a fake king I'm not all that convinced that there even is a Zembla. Going down that road raises a few issues such as how he got said job and house in the first place, but while I've not made up my mind I am kinda leaning towards him just being completely off to the degree that he almost inverted Keyser Soze'd the whole story he told.

On a closer look it looks like his arm gets trapped behind Ron's leg on the pick-up which results in him not going all the way up. Ron improvised the rest.

Support Your Local Sheriff is one of my favorite goofy movies of all time and Garner did such a great job playing it all off with a straight face.

Yeah, he never quite stops... surprising you in that way.

I'd have loved seeing them do that to The Wall. I can't stop watching this. I recall one time they did that in a 6 man tag against the Jung Dragons, with Mike Sanders catching the guy mid-air in the center of the ring with a powerslam for the win. Still probably the best context-free finish I've ever seen.

I found Machinarium to be rather charming, but it is a point and click adventure game without a big focus on writing. Good game but it's only gonna work for a certain niche.

Man, I made sure to give as little actual info as humanly possible while still telling someone what the basic book is about. I think you'd get more relevant to the actual story info off the back of the book itself