Blog Features

Thirteen Books

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Good Morning Friends! I am on my fourth day this weekend and as a result, it has made me terribly late to sit down and write a blog post. When last I shared my progress in this year’s bookish journey, I had finished my tenth book. As of about 11 pm last night, I have now finished my thirteenth. I find myself in a position currently where none of my holds are available and I have nothing currently checked out of the library. So once I finish writing my morning post, I will begin the process of sifting around and trying to land on my next novel. I have a handful of ideas but ultimately it will be determined by what is actually available. I acquired the Iron Druid series from something other than Amazon or the Libby app, so I might start down that road next. I am thinking about starting an audiobook section of my Plex Server so that I can use that to keep track of my progress and shift between machines while listening to the same book.

The goal of this weekend was to acquire two shiny new library cards. That did not exactly work as expected, because thankfully I consulted one of my librarian friends first. It turns out that most of the smaller libraries are all signed on to the “OK Virtual Library” which was a way of allowing smaller communities with smaller budgets to be able to afford the trappings of full access to digital materials. However, this means that one Library card at the OK Virtual Library system is effectively the same as any other card, meaning that if I really want a third card to expand my access… I will need to make a trek down to the Oklahoma City Metro Library system. I’ve already noticed a difference in what I have access to through Libby however, so our trip to Bartlesville is definitely a net positive. I also got to hang out albeit briefly with my friend who is a Librarian there which was also extremely good.

When last I shared my journey through books, I mentioned that I was about to start Heroic Hearts. This is a collection of short stories from various authors, but the primary reason I was interested is it includes another tale that takes place after the events of Battle Ground involving Major General Toot-Toot Minimus and Lacuna… and to a much much much smaller extent Harry Dresden and Will the Werewolf. The story itself was fun, but I stuck around and consumed a number of the other tales including one set in the Iron Druid Chronicles focused around the dog Oberron and his point of view. Probably my favorite of the stories was The Dark Ship by Anne Bishop… which means I need to do some searches to find out what else that author has written. I think this is why I have always liked these anthologies of short stories because it gives you a view into the world of a lot of authors in a short condensed manner. I have to admit from the short focusing on Oberron I am thinking the Iron Druid Chronicles might be a little too “captain planet” for my tastes, but I am still willing to give it a shot since it was suggested by a good friend.

Next up I dove into Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis. This has been on my list of books to read for a long while because I am a big fan of Lindsay’s long-form YouTube video essays, and wish that was a thing she was still doing. I remember listening to some podcast discussion centered around the creation of this book and how one of the things about being a popular YouTuber is that book deals appear out of the woodwork, and how she waited for the right one that would more or less give her free reign. What we get in Axiom’s End is a nostalgic trip through that particular brand of internet weirdness that was the late 2000s, more specifically 2007. Effectively this novel is Dubya-era nonsense blended with Wikileaks scandals, a bit of the X-Files, and the movie E.T. centered around a fully adult cast rather than a group of kids.

It takes a bit to really get engaged in the setting because it starts throwing out what sounds like important vocabulary without really explaining what any of it means. It reminds me of reading Dune for the first time and having to interpret a lot of things through context clues, the key difference being there was a thick glossary at the back of that novel… which is lacking here. I like the central character of Cora Sabino and the journey she goes through during the course of the pages. It is a bit of a weird romp, but well worth your time sticking around until it properly grabs you. There are a few unanswered questions that you sort of have to roll with because I still have no fucking clue why the first events of the novel actually took place. There is a logical sequence that never really resolves that you sort of have to hand wave away, but the rest of the novel resolves neatly.

Most recently I finished up Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher… who is the son of Jim Butcher the author of the Dresden Files series. While digging around to catch up on the Dresden series I stumbled upon the existence of this novel which immediately placed it on my radar. My friend the aforementioned Librarian said that they were reading the novel, and funnily enough, my hold kept them from extending their own old so I technically finished it first. At its core… Dead Man’s Hand is the most generically competent urban fantasy novel you have ever read. That doesn’t necessarily make it bad, but it feels like a setting you have been to before with highly regulated magic users and a not-quite-ministry-of-magic governing them and their actions. I guess one of the things that do make it more interesting is this is a post-unmasking society where “usuals” and “unorthodox” have learned to live together in a somewhat unsteady peace.

One of the cardinal sins of this novel is that it has some truly awful character names like the primary protagonist of Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby. At face value, it is a slightly awkward first novel from an author that at times feels like a caricature of his father’s writing style. That is probably unfair however because if I did not go into this expecting at least some similarities due to my extreme familiarity with the other’s body of work… I would likely judge it more positively. The novel did manage to make me care about the characters and make me interested in hearing more about this world. The second book in the Unorthodox Chronicles series has already been announced and will be called Long Past Dues releasing this October. I am interested enough in GG Grimsby, Huntsman Mayflower, and Wudge to definitely throw that on the list of must-reads. If you like magical detective stories, and more specifically like the buddy cop dynamic of a completely green rookie and grizzled grumpy veteran, then this is probably worth a read for you as well.

More than likely I am going to be starting book one of the Iron Druid Chronicles at some point today. The series begins with a book called Hounded, which I am guessing will dive into the bond that the main character has with the hound Oberron that I met in the short story discussed earlier in this post. I liked Oberron quite a bit, so if nothing else I think I can limp through a novel just based on that alone. My friend mentioned that it felt a lot like Dresden Files and even though the story I read was from the point of view of the dog, I can absolutely see some similarities. It still floors me that I am thirteen books into this journey with no real signs of slowing down. I know at some point I will probably stall out at least for a bit as I will want to play some narrative games this year, namely the new Jedi Survivor game coming out in April. Tomorrow I will likely share my progress in Guild Wars 2 that I made over the weekend.

Hopefully, you have a great week and as always feel free to drop me any suggestions for novels I should explore. I will say that I am not terribly interested in anything with a more romantic focus. That isn’t really my jam, as I tend to skip through romance scenes in novels because I find them exceedingly awkward most of the time. I might have to dive into a few at some point because I happen to be friends with several romance authors, but I am largely putting that off for now lest I get bogged down.

Ten Books Down

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Good Morning Friends! I’ve continued to keep busy with my whole consuming books nonsense and thought I would give some updates this morning. I’m feeling a little groggy this morning because I was up until well after midnight finishing up a book. I’ve also come to the realization that any concerns I had about being a slow reader were largely unwarranted. The speed at which I read seems to be directly related to my desire to read, and maybe the books that I felt like I was reading slowly… just gave me an insufficient drive to keep going. At this point, I am halfway through my 20 books this year goal that I set for myself, which makes me think I maybe need to re-evaluate that goal. I continue to greatly enjoy using the Bookwyrm website/app to track my progress.

I suppose I should have started things off with a Happy Valentine’s day greeting for those who are participating in it. My wife and I are a bit weird when it comes to holidays and our “valentines” activity is going to be on Friday when we both have the day off. It probably says a lot about us as people and as a couple that the chosen activity is going to be hitting up two libraries in nearby communities and getting additional library cards there. One of the neat things about the Libby app is that you can add multiple libraries, which effectively expands the pool of available books to check out. We are part of a massive regional library system already, but two larger communities in the nearby vicinity are not and have their own offerings. They charge a fee to get a library card if you are not from that community, but I am more than happy to support said library systems. So our Valentine’s gift to each other is to go sign up and get two more cards a piece, to theoretically mitigate the holds a little more easily.

Since I last gave a book update I have consumed three novels or more two novels and a novella. The first was The Lies of Locke Lamora and this is something that I had recommended to me numerous times over the years. At the beginning of the novel, I was not entirely certain I would enjoy it, because I don’t usually go in terribly well with the whole thieves guild thing. That said as the adventure unfolded before me, the more hooked I became with the fate of the Gentlemen Bastards. At its core, this is a grand heist novel… but instead of one single heist, it is made up of innumerable smaller outings culminating in one final major event. The flowing back and forth between the current time and past remembering was a bit jarring at times because you essentially needed to keep putting a mental bookmark where each timeframe left off. I figure I will give the next novel in this series a shot, but I expect it to play out in a more linear fashion since this LoLL served as a bit of an origin story as well as the tale of an epic heist.

Next up was Battle Ground, the latest novel in The Dresden Files series and in truth the second half of the novel Peace Talks. For as badly as I viewed Peace Talks, this novel was effectively the payoff, and given that they came out in the same year… my assumption is that a single larger work was crudely chopped in half and then released as individual books. Dresden is best when it is a small personal outing that is focused on a single “monster of the week”. This is the other sort of Dresden novel however that is focused on wide-sweeping cosmic forces… and as a result, it effectively becomes “Changes 2.0”. I won’t explain that further because I don’t want to spoil the flow of the series for anyone who is otherwise unindoctrinated but suffice it to say Changes was a novel that changed everything about the world, and Battle Ground similarly opens a brand new story arc. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but also I am looking forward to dropping down this hill into what seems to be more “Core Dresden” for lack of a better term for it.

Lastly is the novella that I read last night in a single sitting called The Law. This takes place directly after the events of Battle Ground, so I would highly suggest NOT reading it out of order if you have not fully caught up with the baseline novels. This story alone gives me a lot of hope for the sort of Dresden we might see in coming outings because it was effectively an old-school detective case file. It wasn’t exactly the best thing I have ever read but followed the case of someone down on their luck turning to Harry Dresden for help and him having to navigate the subtleties of the supernatural world for them. It makes me anxious for the release of the next proper novel because I think we are going to be entering a period of the sort of Dresden stories that I enjoy the most.

I have a number of holds on books that are not quite available yet, so I think I am going to roll into Heroic Hearts and keep with the Dresden theme for the moment. This anthology has another short story that is set after the events of Battle Ground, featuring the valiant fae Toot-Toot and Lacuna. Toot was one of the first characters you got introduced to in Storm Front, and he is still one of my favorites of the reoccurring cast. I fully expect this to largely be a comedic story because Toot has always at least somewhat served that role in Dresden. The little folk however have also shown that they can be mighty adversaries just due to the sheer number of them, so I expect a proper adventure as well. It should be a fun diversion until some of the more serious novels come off hold and become available.

I think more than anything I wish I had landed upon this pattern of interaction with books before now. I know I tend to be super into one thing for a period of time, but I am hoping that I can sustain this sort of thing because I am really enjoying myself.

Yup Books and Games

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One of the challenges with this whole “goes super hard on books” pattern that I seem to be in, is that it does not exactly translate to an easy steady drip of content to write about. It feels really weird to sit down in the morning and essentially say “yup books”. From the standpoint of “talking about them when I’ve finished them” is great, but the whole me being in mid-flight thing is not exactly a delightful spectator sport. At this point, I am about half the way through Lies of Locke Lamora and it has grabbed me enough to make me want more. However, I also don’t really want to talk about the book as I am experiencing it, and rather will just batch up those thoughts once I have finished it.

One thing I did find out is that apparently there is an order of operations that must be maintained within Bookwyrm, and if you want a book to count towards your reading goals it has to hit the “read” shelf at some point. I ended up moving Nona the Ninth to my “Books of 2023” shelf and then “finished reading” and it completely skipped the goals queue. I had to do a bit of backpedaling and “finish” the book again to get it properly slotted as my 7th book of the year in my “20 books” goal. Other than that general weirdness, I am enjoying Bookwyrm quite a bit however I wish its federation worked a bit more as I was expecting. I thought maybe I would be able to follow my Bookwyrm account and then boost the comments that I leave when I finish a book. However while I am following myself, I never see any updates even when I drill down into the profile. A friend suggested that I check out Storygraph so I might dive into that at some point because it seems like it would potentially be a good recommendation engine.

I am trying to branch out a bit of late and do things that are not “Path of Exile Delve” while consuming an audiobook. So far doing events and map completion in Guild Wars 2 seems pretty drift compatible for the sort of interaction that I am looking for. Essentially an activity that flows nicely with listening to an audiobook needs to be one that is mechanically satisfying but asks nothing really of me to grasp narratively. Working on the main story or expansion quests doesn’t really fill this role, but all of the assorted drop-in group activity does beautifully. I’ve been trying to get into the habit of doing Tequatl at a minimum, and then knocking out my daily objectives and farming the three guild halls worth of resources as well as my home instance. For a long time, I have felt like I really wasn’t making much progress financially in the game, but there is a neat add-on for BlishHud that tracks “coin” earned during your session and it seems like every night I am clearing about 5 gold in an hours worth of time.

I’ve also been trying to ease back into playing Final Fantasy XIV more frequently. What I really need to do is get started on leveling my crafting or working on beast tribe quests again… but what I am actually doing is running retainer missions and fucking around liberally. One of the giant obstacles in front of me is the fact that I need to spend some serious time cleaning out my retainers and sorting out the gear that I actually might want to keep for cosmetic purposes from the dross that I should just turn in for company seals. I also noticed that apparently, I am no longer the highest possible rank in my grand company, so I guess I need to sort out how to change that. There are weird minion boxes that I cannot seem to purchase.

What I REALLY need to do is get into the Hunt Train nonsense, because they are super lucrative and also just enough activity to feel like I am doing something meaningful in the game. I have greatly enjoyed this activity in the past, and I need to probably ease back into doing it more often. It might even be a reasonable option for leveling alternate jobs. I only actually leveled Paladin to 90, but did manage to pull everything up to 80 before burning out in 2021. Hunt trains are a great way to get some gear to level those classes up easily as maxed Crystarium gear will pretty much hold you until you hit the level cap.

All of that said… I still actually am playing a lot of Path of Exile. I find the mechanical loop that I have fallen into deeply relaxing. I play the Summon Raging Spirits Necromancer until I fill up my sulfite and then play my Righteous Fire Juggernaut down in Delve until I run out of that resource again. I continue to periodically liquidate cool things I found down in the dark for profit and as a result, I have over 7000 Chaos Orbs and another 20 or so Divine Orbs. That is without me really going out of my way to do much other than these two activities, and passing up a ton of smaller trades because I am busy and don’t feel like stopping what I am doing for 5 chaos. I think more than anything I learned a lot about the trade economy in this league and feel like there will never be a point in future leagues where I struggle to gear myself.

With all of that… I somehow managed to cobble together a blog post on a day when I was not feeling particularly like blogging. Sometimes in life, you just need to start writing and eventually, it will coalesce into something hopefully worth reading. That I guess is the benefit of Tales of the Aggronaut being a blog about “me”, and less about any one particular subject. Hopefully, yall are having a delightful week out there, and if so… I hope it keeps on that trajectory until the weekend. If you are not, I hope whatever stresses are haunting you, ease the fuck up.

Nona the Ninth

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Good Morning Friends! This is going to be another mostly-book post. Whether or I like it or not, my gaming blog has veered closer and closer to a book blog over the last few weeks. In truth Tales of the Aggronaut is not a gaming blog, but a “me” blog, and when my activities shift so does it. I tend to obsess about things and right now it seems that I am obsessing over having a library card and “renting” books, and using that to knock out a bunch of things that I have been meaning to read for years. At this point since Christmas I have finished seven books, and over the weekend I knocked out the latest book in the “Locked Tomb” series by Tamsyn Muir, meaning that I am completely caught up in that series.

If Gideon the Ninth was Deathmetal Hogwarts, and Harrow the Ninth was Necromantic Battlestar Galactica, then Nona the Ninth is Spycraft Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Each novel in the series has been wildly different in part because it gives you a window into a wildly different part of this universe. I’ve tried not to really talk about a lot of details in these posts because I do not want to dive down the rabbit hole of spoilers, but I feel like I need to at least talk a little bit about the setting. Effectively in this fictional universe overlayed on top of our own universe an event happened thousands of years in the past that caused the extinction of the human race. John Gaius, the Necrolord Prime… the God Emperor of the known universe… resurrected humanity and formed the Nine Houses each with their own necromantic traits to serve as his flock.

Gideon the Ninth is a novel that dives deep into the traditions and variations among the nine houses. It is a tale woven through a trial for those assembled to figure out the process of becoming Lyctors. The second novel, Harrow the Ninth, is centered around the truth behind the throne as “God” aka John Gaius struggles against a hidden conflict that none of the nine houses were even aware of. You get an understanding of what the ruling hierarchy of the necromantic empire looks like, and get to know several of the key players. Nona the Ninth however is a novel centered around the common folk, the humans that survived the extinction event and that continue to live in fear of the empire and the nine houses. It also centers around an organization called Blood of Eden, effectively terrorists or freedom fighters depending upon your perspective.

The perspective of the novel is that of Nona, a personality that is inhabiting the body of Harrowhark Nonagesimus and is effectively going through a rapid evolution from infancy to young adolescence. Nona loves everyone, especially dogs. Nona is innocent and childlike unlike the rather severe Harrow that we came to know from the other novels in this series. This leads to a very distorted lens that this story is told from the perspective of an extremely unreliable narrator. The constant thread between the last two novels is a constant grasping for what the fuck is actually going on, and if that is not something you can handle as the pieces slowly slide into place… then you maybe want to stop with the first novel. Each novel has a mystery to be pried loose from the background infrastructure and it leads to a very wobbly and disjointed way that the tale is told until everything eventually comes into focus.

At this point, I am hooked, and I am probably going to be reading these novels forever. Each novel effectively resolves a crescendo that leaves more questions unanswered than know. We will ultimately have to wait for the next novel in the series before those questions even begin to be answered. This was not a big deal when I knew there were novels waiting patiently on me to consume, but now that I am caught up it will probably be a more tangible frustration. The next book has a name… Alecto the Ninth has a targetted release date of sometime this year, so here is hoping that the wait will not be too long.

Following wrapping up Nona the Ninth, I have now dived into The Lies of Locke Lamora another novel that I had been meaning to read for a while. At first, I was not terribly certain what I thought of this story. I tend to not really go into the whole Thieves Guild thing other than maybe the Elder Scrolls games. Now that I am settling into the story I am definitely hooked for the moment, but uncertain if this will be a setting I return to enough to consume all of the available books in the series. It feels very like David Copperfield meets Dishonored at the moment, or at least the Camorr reminds me a bit of the setting of the second game. I originally set myself the goal of 20 books during this calendar year, but I might need to revise that up a bit given that we are just now in February and have already finished seven and am now about 20% or so into the eighth.

I hope you all had a great weekend and I wish you luck in the coming week. I am trying to sort out what exactly I want to do gaming-wise. I am still playing an awful lot of Path of Exile, but am also starting to slide back into some more Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV. I also know that Season 28 of Diablo III is just around the corner and am planning on diving into that as well. Given that I have been on this Audiobook plus Mechanically Enjoyable Game kick, I am not really sure when I will return to narrative games again.