Sunday, February 13, 2011

A Fortnight Already?

Seems I let things slip a little (I can't even remember what font I typed in!). Whoops! Anyway, I'm still around and here're the updates.

1. I finished the whole of The Hunger Games trilogy.
Oh, lucky me. The final part was a massive let down despite some strong chapters and plot points. The last few chapters were a complete cop-out on Collins' part, and I felt it was a weak ending to what could have been a fairly strong series. My advice would be to just stick with the first part, to be honest. It only gets sillier.

2. I picked Pratchett back up with The Fifth Elephant.
Yay, Pratchett! I'm a newcomer of sorts to Discworld, although my experiences have been over a number of years. I loved The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents, and last year I borrowed the whole of the City Watch-based novels along with the Moist von Lipwig books (So, in order: Guards! Guards!; Men at Arms; Feet of Clay; Jingo; The Fifth Elephant; Night Watch; Going Postal; Thud!; Making Money.), following Sky One's adaptation of Going Postal, and I'm really enjoying them. The weakest so far is either Jingo or Men at Arms (Or was it Feet of Clay?), but they were enjoyable in their own way.

Towards the end of last year I finished Jingo and put it down, and it's only recently I've picked the series back up. One of the great things about Discworld is how the books connect in a loose manner; You can see the world and characters progress through them, but you don't have to read them in order or even all of them to see what's going on. However, The Fifth Elephant trips up a little on this as 'The Clacks' make an appearance after a very short gap from Jingo, and it seemed a bit poorly done on Pratchett's part. Luckily I knew what they were from the Going Postal adaptation I mentioned earlier. Review/thoughts coming soon, I hope.

3. I've once again remembered how bad I am with starting & finishing books.
Yeah, I've gone into bad habits again. I started both Mistborn (Mistborn: The Final Empire in the UK) and Dragonfly Falling to a small degree, and got about halfway through Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which I had to put down as I thought it was a bit too silly, and not to my taste. I much preferred the recent BBC one-shot adaptation starring Stephen Mangan.

4. Angry Birds is slowly turning me into an Angry Bird.
I can see the appeal of this game, and I won't deny that - for the most part - it's well made and quite charming, but it has a strange difficulty curve. The latest update has completely buggered up the notifications about the Mighty Eagle, though, so the game does little but frustrate me, especially as the levels are now quite hard - and increasingly so.

I reckon that's about it for now. Up, up and away!