I don’t really think it needs to be said, but I’ll state the obvious: I’m a huge dork. My brother’s only been telling me that for the last 20 years, and I know he’s not wrong. But my dorkiness comes and goes—sometimes I feel downright hip—but today, today I am going to bask in the completeness of my inner dork, nerd, and geek, rolled into one.
Gather around, and let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, I was a dorky seventeen, working at the local Taco Bell. I would work late nights, mostly because, well, my friends did. And these friends, they liked to play Magic the Gathering (MtG) late into the night. And as a girl playing, I was a huge novelty. My friends gave me cards, made my decks, forgot about me when we played in massive group games to the point where I might, and did, win.
MtG: Arena
I enjoyed playing, and there was a book that was passed around, called Arena, that was pretty much the most awesomest book ever. Well, by ever, I mean in the history of MtG. Which at that time, wasn’t a terribly long list; from what I gather, Arena was possibly the first.1 But what I liked about the book, and probably what other people liked about it too, was that the main character was someone like us—someone who controlled mana and cast spells, as you do in the game. It was unique in that for a fantasy, it was a different look at the world. It was the introduction of “the plainswalker.”2 The plainswalker in the book was the position the player had while playing the game. Instead of a lightning bolt being an actual, natural lightning bolt, it was a spell pulled from a pouch and called into being, much as you would play a card from your hand.
Now, fast forward, oh, nearly ten years or so. I’m done playing MtG. I sold all my cards off or gave them away. I only desperately want a copy of Arena because I remember how awesome it was, and I’m on a terrible nostalgia trip about the books I’ve loved. And then E comes back from summer vacation, hooked on MtG bad. I mentioned that I used to play, if he ever wanted someone to play with. And so we did. Even before we were “official” with our dating, he had already amassed a large card collection that we “shared,” meaning he bought it, and it stayed at my place.
This pretty much meant I didn’t have to worry about amassing cards myself, because I nearly never use them. They just look pretty, as there are always more cards than can go into a deck. But, as we get back into it, I think more and more about Arena, and how much I liked it. And wonder in passing if there are still MtG books. And of course there are. But now, these books are based on the sets; a new book is released to go along with each card set.
MtG: Morningtide
MtG: Lorwyn
And being hooked on MtG again, I get a hankering to read these books, especially the book to go with the card set that I had become enamored with, Morningtide3. Every time I went to Barnes and Nobel, I checked the shelves but it was never there. For Christmas, I ended up getting E a Fat Pack, which has some cards, dividers, boxes to match the set, and yay! for me, the Morningtide book. But It was still awhile until I read the book. Morningtide was a secondary set release, and it’s book, much like it’s cards, required Lorwyn to make full use of it. I didn’t really even think about reading the book until E bought a Lorwyn Fat Pack4. And then, of course I had to. So over a rather long period of time, I read them both. And thought they were rather good, actually. I could recognize some characters as related to specific cards in the deck, but I was really brought into the world that MtG has created.
I am not sure how this book world relates to the other sets of cards other than the Lorwyn/Morningtide/Shadowmoor/Eventide block, as I don’t really play past sets (though I still am fond for the Urza’s block), and haven’t read any other than the three books. The only part that really bothered me was the untied plotstrings at the end of the second book. The first makes you read the second (and the second really needs the first to make sense), but the end of the second doesn’t really end things. The world has changed, and the book ends right on the cusp of that change. And I’m nuts over the unresolved plot involving the Morningstar elf, who isn’t a card in her own right and seems to play a major if not understood or explained roll in the second book.
I could hope that the Shadowmoor book would pick up the plot, since that card set is “after” of the events that occur in the book, but just reading descriptions online doesn’t really make it clear. Morningtide is obviously a book two (it even says it on Amazon), but Shadowmoor is listed as it’s own series, making it unclear if it goes with the previous two books. Being the huge dork that I am, I will probably pick up Shadowmoor just to figure out what’s going on.
- It’s hard to tell, details are very sketchy on the MtG site. In fact, had I not ever read it and distinctly remembered it’s name, I probably never would have ever found a copy at The Used Bookstore in Chico. [back]
- Which, oddly, becomes a card type in the Lorwyn block of MtG. Because of this book, I feel very meta playing a plainswalker in my deck, when I used to be the role of a plainswalker. [back]
- I fell in love with the artwork, and then the way the set was played. What can I say. Distracted by shiny pretty things. [back]
- I won’t lie, it was mostly for the book and the “life counter.” But all E’s purchase. [back]
Awhile ago, Dorchester Publishing ran a small “contest”—fill out a survey, provide some info, and if picked, they’d send you an ARC1 of a soon-to-be published novel. The only stipulation was that if you liked it, you would talk about it. Post reviews to forums, to Amazon, to blogs. Well, I got picked, I read the book, and whether or not I liked it, I knew I would blog about it. It was the least I could do for a free book, I figured.
The promotion was for a Marjorie M. Liu novel, Soul Song. It’s the sixth book in the Dirk & Steele series. I came into this book having never read a previous book in this series, nor any of Liu’s previous novels. It is a paranormal romance, and not one I would have picked up in the bookstore, had I seen it on the shelf. Getting an ARC was a great way to try out a book I normally wouldn’t want to spend my money on. I now have an urge to look up Liu’s backlist, and gorge myself on her paranormal.
(more…)
- Advanced Reading Copy [back]
I suppose people have guessed by now that maybe I don’t read the most recent of novels. So far this summer I have tackled Metamorphoses, Frankenstein, and a fair few trashy romance novels. But, I haven’t tackled anything that’s been on a best sellers list at any time in the last year.
It should be no surprise then, that my most recently read book was written in 1803, and published in 1818. Jane Austen has to be my favorite English author of all time. Seriously. The dry wit, and the acute observation of human nature makes Austen one of the few authors where I have to read the books multiple times to get the full depth of what she’s writing. (more…)
There seriously has been nothing going on.
It’s so boring around here that I didn’t have the heart to blog about nothing yesterday. Or, it could be that I just couldn’t think of anything good. Whichever you prefer.
I have been doing geeky things, but nothing anyone would really be interested it. But I’m going to tell you about it anyway.
I downloaded the Microsoft Office Beta a bit ago, and damn, it’s confusing. Kinda. Since I mostly use Word out of the bunch, that’s what I’m going to focus on.
The new Word 2007 menu bar.
The navigation bar for the new office programs is slick, but hard to understand. Even though I’ve been using Office since the dark ages, this new nav bar is messing up my mind. Things aren’t where they used to be, and it takes a little thinking to find them again. It doesn’t help that I haven’t really had a reason to create a document since the semester ended, and I downloaded the beta after that.
Options for where to send the file to. Including blogs.
Not that Microsoft made it obvious, but you can actually blog from the new Word, and my last few posts have been published that way. However, I really am not a big fan of how everything is set up. To start with, there is no way to create a blog post without opening up a regular document first. I suppose Microsoft is assuming that people will create a document, and then decide “hey, I think I’m gonna blog that.” Then, when you do choose to blog, it creates a completely new document with the same exact text. Pointless, I tell you. It should be seamless.
I think that if you open a blank document, one of those lovely little tabs should say “blog post,” and when you click on it, it should give you the options you need: publish, publish as draft, remove formatting, etc., etc. When you decide to blog, it shouldn’t make an entirely new document out of it.
Also, I’m a bit afraid to start in with the formatting on the posts. If I bold something, I have no guarantee that it’s going to convert to <strong> over something else. It would be nice if the writer was offered some way to see the HTML before the post, and insert some of your own. I’m unsure how to do lesser headings since any code you type out in the document doesn’t get converted when it’s uploaded . Also, I wish that formatting would be stripped from the <p> tags that Word sends from a regular document to a blog document.
On the publishing side of things, Word doesn’t have a problem connecting to WordPress at all. However, it doesn’t respond as one would hope. When publishing, it sets the timestamp to WordPress’s default, December 31, 1969. It’s rather annoying, because once you post you have to go and edit the timestamp. Also, categories are not supported, so if you’re using them, again, editing in the admin panel has to happen.
I think that if Microsoft wants to make Word a viable option in blogging, these changes need to happen. I really hate posting, and then going in and editing my post, and I don’t want Word throwing bad code after good. If you like what you’re using now to post, don’t even bother with Word’s beta.
I’d go back to Ecto if I wasn’t so frustrated with it too, at the moment.
—”Electricity,” 311: 311
As a end-of-semester present to myself for doing so well and not stressing out, I bought myself a knitting book. Not just any book though, but one written by those blog goddesses Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne from masondixonknitting.com.
I have wanted this book ever since Ann and Kay announced that they had signed a book deal. Released last March, this book has managed to make it to the top of the “must have knit book,” alongside other bloggers like Stephanie Perl-McPhee, and Wendy Johnson. And, oddly enough, there are actually patterns that I want to make1 so badly that I’ve been eying my stash to see what kind of cotton I’ve got hiding in there.
- K thinks it’s funny that I own over 25 knitting books, and have only made patterns out of maybe five of them. [back]
I want to start a new feature around here, but I don’t know how well it’ll be received. I read books. A lot of them. This week alone, I’m on my fourth book, and I still have two days to go.
So, what I’d like to do is review books. Not to the extent of a book report, but something similar just the same. I’d love to review ARC’s but seriously, where am I going to get those? (so, if you’re an author, send me an ARC, and I’ll totally review for you).
The book for todays review was published awhile ago, and is a really well known author. I mean, who hasn’t heard of Anne Rice?
I read a book today that I didn’t think would affect me as much as it did.
My sister has been bugging me for a week or to read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chobosky. She gave it to me earlier in the month, after she had read it, borrowing it from a classmate.
Wow is all I can say about this book. It’s about the freshman year of someone who is different, someone who (I believe) everyone can relate to in one or another. The story is told through letters the narrator Charlie has written to this anonymous person, who he has never met.
The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking “I know how that is. Oh, I’ve lived through that. Yep, that happened to me.” It is such a heart wrenching account of a year in this guy’s life where he has to deal with his best friend committing suicide, his friends from junior high not speaking to him, and dealing with trying to “participate” in life and not just sit on the sidelines.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has ever felt like they were on the outside looking in, like they are the only one who feels the way they do. It’s just so hard to explain why this book is so good.
Ugh, just read the damn thing. It’s so short, you could probably finish it at the book store (and if you didn’t, there’s no way you would be able to leave it behind.)
And I really have not done any amount of justice to how good this book is. If you’ve got a chance, pick it up.
- “Am I Missing,” A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar: Dashboard Confessional
