back to the regular format. why? WHY NOT?!

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i recently finished the book Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel after a four month tour through the 800 page tome. it’s the story of two magicians (actual wizards, mind you; this isn’t some Prestige or Illusionist knock-off) and there relationship through the trials and pitfalls of returning magic to England, where it was once flourishing, during the Napoleonic Wars.

i hate making such bold and encompassing statements like this, but… it might be my favorite book.

it’s not just the pitch-perfect setting, the thoughtfully developed characters, or a unique voice from the writer, Susanna Clarke. what intrigued me most was that there are rules to the magic performed in the book. you can’t simply look into a bowl of water and say “show me this lad” and get a result. they have to work at it, and (in a sense) triangulate this person’s position on a global scale. when this is compared to the fluff in the Potter universe (where the magic is practically used as a plot device) it’s a bit hard not to tip your hat to Clarke.

the same thought process goes for creating golems and the like. keeping in mind that matter cannot be created or destroyed, Strange (in the book) lends a hand to a ship beached on some shoals by creating horses out of the sand under the water with the intention of roping the horses to the ship and thus pulling it to safety. well, for one thing the horses are wild at heart, making them incredibly difficult to rope. secondly, they were made of sand and, once wilted, completely changed the bay’s topography. it’s very give and take. there’s never a clean cut spell; you either get your intended effect plus something horrifically unwanted, or the spell simply doesn’t work. it’s portrayed as a delightfully inexact science.

the prose will bother some, and i will admit, it takes a bit of getting used to. Clarke’s tone, with its arch wit, has been described as “Austenesque” and this is apparent from the start.

Mr Honeyfoot’s kindness to Mr Segundus did not end with that evening. He invited Mr Segundus to his house in High-Petergate to eat a good dinner in company with Mrs Honeyfoot and her three pretty daughters, which Mr Segundus, who was a single gentleman and not rich, was glad to do. After dinner Miss Honeyfoot played the pianoforte and Miss Jane sang in Italian. The next day Mrs Honeyfoot told her husband that John Segundus was exactly what a gentleman should be, but she feared he would never profit by it for it was not the fashion to be modest and quiet and kind-hearted.

yes, it’s a bit confusing. yes, it’s Dickensian in its wordiness. but, goddamn, it’s a fun read.

pick up your awesome copy today.

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my blog looks so, so awesome.

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in an effort to be more productive and less destructive, i have made it a point to not play as many video games. this was a sad, pitiful experiment.

a few weeks ago i completed my second playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess. it was, as before, great.

now, in a move that i’ve been avoiding for quite sometime, i have d/l’ed a copy of World of Goo. a garage-dev game put out first on the PC, then ported to WiiWare, it has gotten critical acclaim from numerous outlets and seems to keep getting more.

i’ve never been one to have my finger on the pulse of what’s cool/fun/current (in fact, i just found out about these douche bags), and for this i usually don’t care. save for a few instances…

1. when i didn’t find out about the 2005 tsunami until two months after the fact
2. the Half Life series
3. Gmail

some of this can be attributed to the fact that i didn’t keep up with current events (no tv, internet, or newspaper). but with this instance, this World of Goo instance, i just feel outright stupid. i knew about teh game from the get-go, yet avoided it like the plague.

for good reason, too – it’s retarded fun.