The Ravings of Demented Rabbits

Interlude

So sorry, but during my entire week off from work, I really had better things to do than blog. Things like play a lot of Neverwinter Nights and Civ, and read lots of books. But I shall describe these things unto you, O readers, and that's pretty much going to have to hold you for a while, though I will mention that it was hard not to just up and quit today at work, after tasting all that time off. If I wasn't leaving in 3 weeks anyway, I may have.

So, Shadows of Udrentide, here. The first Neverwinter Nights expansion, which I'm pretty much playing because Cole was like "Dude, the NWN xpacks are so cool!" Because to say I thought NWN sucked is a little bit of an understatement. I mean, yes, it was directly competing with Morrowind, but seriously, guys. You're Black Goddamn Isle here. I can't believe your singleplayer game sucked that hardcore.

Fortunately, Shadows makes up for that by actually being fun, and actually having a plot I didn't hate, and Deekin the kobold bard, who's the funnest NPC this side of Minsc. It's still not Baldur's Gate 2, or even Baldur's Gate, but it's fun.

I'm still weeping for what NWN could have been, though. Maybe when NWN 2 comes out. And we'll see how I like Hordes of the Underdark, though thus far it's a little too Icewind Daleish for my tastes.

...Yes, I realize an entire two of my readers have played Icewind Dale. However. We pride ourselves in obscure geekery around here.

As far as books go, we had a conversation today at work:

Shanna: "Yeah, I had a bunch of stuff to do, but really I spent the whole week reading. I read like four books."

Me: "That's exactly what I did."

So Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation was good, in the same sort of way that listening to your grandparents talk about how it was back in the day is cool, because that's pretty much what the book is. If it gets maybe a little too worshipful sometimes, well, whatever.

And if the tapeworm kingdoms of yore were cruising around fighting pagan invaders of Britain in shield walls, Bernard Cornwell would be the guy to write about it. The Last Kingdom is more King Alfred vs Vikings than tapeworms, but it's still got shield walls and pagans, it's a good fast read, and it makes me want to go play Barbarian Invasion again.

I thought Bury Us Upside Down was an interesting book, because I generally find the air war over Vietnam to be an interesting subject, and because it's well-written and covers a lot of interesting (likely only to me, I admit) things about what forward air controllers do and how the air over North Vietnam worked.

We all pretty much figured out that Mark Bowden was the man after we saw Blackhawk Down, and so I picked up a couple more of his books (there are several, I am delighted to find). The first of them is Killing Pablo, about the hunt for the Medellin Cartel head Pablo Escobar in Columbia. Think Clear And Present Danger, here, complete with Delta Force guys maybe maybe not having a hand in killing the guy. Interesting stuff. I'm a little ways into Guests of the Ayatollah, about the Iranian hostage crisis, and so far it's shaping up to be a very good book indeed.

There were also interesting things involving hobgoblins and lizardmen, but I think the people who care were either there, or have heard about it already, so.

Also, I was sick over the weekend. Don't do this. It's bad. Just so you know.

Posted by Dwip at July 10, 2006 6:51 PM