Sunday, September 7, 2008

Sunday Salon - September 7, 2008

The Sunday Salon.com Well, it's my first Sunday Salon and I figured I should write this one up early since today is going to be busy. It's been a rough week and I've been trying all sorts of new things to shape my blog into what I had in mind.

I've written several reviews to be published in the future, but my hiatus from writing has really had an impact. I guess two years of game forum moderation really can wreak havoc on your skills. (You write what you read!...never before had I thought of that until now.) Either way, I've been brushing up and while a lot of my writing currently is still clumsy, I do know I'm improving. Hopefully I can get those reviews out soon and in better quality than my previous attempts.

One nice thing is that I've been able to read books at my old pace again! I just finished a long series of books focused on Charlie Chaplin and since I was not able to get an early reviewer book from LibraryThing this month, I am now working on my backlog of books. These are books I bought or was given over my two years of non-reading.

Currently, I'm reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I'm through the first 200 pages so far and while the beginning was a bit slow, I'm enjoying it. I definitely love the usage of footnotes! Strange thing though, I was reading some various stories written by Prosper Mérimée this week and his syntax and writing style seemed really similar. So similar, in fact that at one point I was merging his short story, The Double Mistake, with Jonathan Strange, spawning a moment of disorientation.

As for my big day, Spore comes out today! It's a organism/evolution simulation game that starts from the simplest of creatures and can evolve/mutate into societies with religion, science, war, love, and space travel! It's been well-hyped and long-awaited. Of course this means I need to get the house ready for several days of marathon playing...this means clean laundry, dishes, meal lists, etc.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the Salon. I'm interested that you found the Clarke slow going at first because so did I and I didn't give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I should go back and try again.

Clare Dudman said...

Good luck with the game - it sounds hugely intriguing.

And welcome to the Sunday Salon!

Unknown said...

Spore is the bane of literacy, alas, for you will never read another page again...

OK, maybe that's pushing it, but it's a good thing you queued up some reviews, and that you read like Speed Racer! I'm currently (or WAS, before Spore hit) reading the biography of H.P. Lovecraft in preparation for October.