brenticus

I tried to read The Nightingale and had to drop it because Hannah seemed to simultaneously want to insist on how french everything was (ooo, they're drinking café noir, not black coffee) but also didn't seem to understand how a language works.

Like, the main character was reflecting on her mom calling them her little nightingales because their last name is Rossignol, the french word for nightingale, and I'm like... She called you nightingales because your name is literally nightingale, why does this warrant multiple paragraphs of internal monologuing?

The plot and characters were fine if uninspired, but she put so little effort into the setting that the whole thing felt poorly slapped together. Which I guess tracks well enough with this article, too.

Buckshot Roulette is fun. Not a lot to it, really, but a fun loop that I got a decent number of hours out of.

I bought Arctic Eggs after seeing a little bit of a playthrough but haven't actually played it yet. Seems weird, which I like.

The first few are available on standard ebooks and they're quick, easy reads, go for it! With the caveat that the standard ebook versions are the original 1920s versions so there's a bit of weird racial stuff now and then.

I had to put down Fellowship of the Ring for a while due to a cascade of library books, but I'm finally back to it. God I just love how that book flows.

When I want something simpler to read I've been going to the Hardy Boys books lately. Read a bunch of them as a kid, they're still quite enjoyable now. Normally if I reread something 20 years later it's pretty clearly no longer my taste, but I'm on book 3 and still enjoying them quite a bit.

IIRC New Zealand returned to actual normal, as in COVID was a relative non-issue, faster than many other countries. Their restrictions were more severe and weren't lifted very quickly, but when they were lifted things were actually fine.

Places like the US and much of Canada dropped restrictions while things were still pretty bad in terms of infection rates and strain on health care systems, and really they hardly enforced them to begin with. You could see this as a return to normalcy since restrictions were gone, but in Alberta they lifted restrictions when we were still dealing with plenty of deaths, severely impacted health care, and on top of that we were still figuring out the implications of the whole long COVID thing. That's not a return to normal, I don't think, it's pretending things are normal when they're not.

I blasted through a couple this week to try and kick my reading slump.

The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 12 was great, dealing with the fallout of the previous volume plus dragging Maomao into new situations. Mostly I appreciate that she does actually recognize what's going on between her and Jinshi. She's purposefully ignorant, not totally ignorant.

The Misfit of Demon King Academy: Volume 7 was by and large what I expect from the series. Goofy stuff being OP, Anos being OP, and so forth. Good fun in the same way the rest are good fun.

I've been a bit out of the loop on LNs for a bit, but All-Works Maid seems kind of interesting, if only because the heroine is apparently unaware that it's an otome game. Noce change of pace from trying to manipulate every interaction because it's a game.

To some extent this feels like episode 2; the last few episodes didn't feel like they really moved along the main conflict with Marcus, but this one really sets up a proper encounter between Veltol (with more of his power available) and Marcus' minion(s). There's a point that ties back to everything else, not just a semi-SOL episode dealing with something random.

Not that I didn't enjoy the last few episodes, but clear progress towards the main conflict is always appreciated in this medium.

I find pan frying them works best if they're leftovers, the dough fries up better after it's boiled and then dried out a little. It's a very good option for sure.

Potato and cheese is classic, and honestly it hits the spot better than you might expect. Toss with butter after boiling. Keeps them from sticking and tastes great.

Commonly topped with sour cream, green onions, other onions, and/or bacon depending on what you have handy. A nice fatty sour cream with grilled yellow onions is my favourite, especially served with a nice hunk of garlic sausage.

Yeah, half-heartedly doing French in Duolingo for a few years meant that I knew a bunch of words and could read stuff okay, but communicating and thinking in French was incredibly difficult. I took a couple of classes IRL to fill in those other skills, so now I can actually get by as long as people are a bit patient with me. It was easier for me to learn that stuff than other people in my classes because I had Duolingo experience, but Duolingo definitely isn't enough on its own.

I read a couple volumes of the LN and it was goofy fun. Nothing mind blowing, but a fun take on the isekai formula. It got even better once it got out of its own way and acknowledged how silly it all was, because really there's nothing evil about this dude or his empire at all.