Thoughts on E3 2016

I made a video about my thoughts on the E3 press conferences. Come watch!

Bad guys need to be portrayed strong (Spoilers)

Hey that Star Wars movie came out! Did everyone watch it yet?! OMFG IT WAS SO AMAZING/GOOD/OK/MEH/BAD/TERRIBLE! Right?

Anways, I'm not here to necessarily complain about the movie. I liked it. But it made me think about some things. Things being the portrayal of antagonist in general.

While I am not an avid movie watcher there is something that irks me when a antagonist is not properly portrayed. Last year we saw that robot thing called Ultron in the Avengers and Kylo Ren in Star Wars that really irked me. No, it's not their personalities. Both of them had a different take on the lead bad guy and both were played just fine. My issue is more on how much of a threat they are to the group of good guys who will eventually beat them.

Let's take Ultron as an example first. He's a robot who has multiple forms of himself. So he's like his own zombie horde. The issue I have with how they presented him was basically just that. He has an army of himself. Not like a group of robots that he put is AI mind into, which you could build them up as the elites of his group. But every single enemy was him. So what's the issue? Well it's just that. Good guys need people to beat up before they get to the final boss. Unfortunately here, it was all Ultron. So by having the Avengers basically beat up all of the Ultrons, none of the Ultrons turn out to be a big threat. I mean sure, there's the "Strength in numbers" thing, but this is a movie. Eventually the bad guys win.

Now I know some of you will be like "Oh but there was that one Ultron that was like a super robot" and I will discuss that in a bit. But when Ultron first showed up and did his speech, he was presented fairly well. He had his motives and was considered a threat. What was the next thing to happen to him? Well the Avengers shot him, he blew up, and more Ultrons showed up for action time. So right away, any danger that Ultron presented was taken away in the very first scene because the Avengers destroyed that robot.

Now one can say "Oh but it was a messed up robot anyways, it could of easily been destroyed." And yeah, your right. But by presenting the main antagonist early on as something the good guys can destroy makes the antagonist look a lot weaker to the viewers.

Now let's look at Kylo Ren. He is an angry emo kid with super powers. Cool. Awesome. And through out the movie, he is more or less considered a threat. The end of the movie though makes it so that
Rey beats him. Somebody who hardly knows how to use the force or a lightsaber beat the antagonist of the movie. But hey, movies need a feel good ending right? Well yeah, but let's think about this longer term.

The issue here is more or less the same as Ultron, but on a longer scale. Of course this is all theoretical at this point but if Kylo Ren shows up in the other movies as the antagonist yet again, then what's the threat? Rey already beat him so we know she can do it again. Oh but this time he's stronger with the force, has a different lightsaber AND has a robot arm. He's more of a threat now right? Well no. Know why? That's right, he was already defeated.

Let's talk about wrestling here for a second. In wrestling, there's something called "The Chase". It's essentially where the good guy faces off against the bad guy and constantly looses until finally the good guy over comes the odds and finally beats the bad guy.

People love the chase. It's one of those "never give up, never surrender" kinda deal and builds up a lot of anticipation to when the good guy finally wins. Of course there's the issue of making the good guy constantly loose too much that the fans don't believe in the good guy any more. It's a fine balance.

So let's once again look at Ultron and Kylo Ren. Both have been beaten and have/will do something to make the audience believe that now they pose as a threat to the protagonists of their respective story lines. In the case of Ultron, he gets better robot armour and no one really knows about Kylo Ren just yet. But let's just say he is presented much stronger in the next movie. The audience then does something like "Oh man maybe now they can beat Mr and Mrs. Star Wars Avenger!" and end up more interested in the next face off. The issue here is yet another Wrestling term called "Backwards booking" where they make the wrong person look stronger to the audience. The good guys are meant to be cheered and bad guys to be booed not the other way around.

The reason is because you follow the story from the protagonist point of view. You feel for them, watch them grow as people and yes, you route for them. By giving Ultron better armour, and Kylo Ren more force power or whatever, it makes almost makes the audience root for the bad guys this way.

Look at Rocky IV for a second. Imagine the story being Apollo beating Ivan Drago then Rocky goes to Russia to fight Drago once again. Would anyone care? No because Drago already lost. To use another wrestling term he has no "Heat". We already saw him loose. So why watch him loose again?

In the case of Ultron, what they could of done was not destroy that old, broken down robot Ultron was in but instead let it escape and put that old robot in a better suite of armour. It puts a connection between Ultron and that robot because not only did that old robot escape the Avengers, but now it's a much more intimidating. Which makes the audience wonder just how they are going to take Ultron down. Of course, not making all the robots Ultron as well would of been a good movie.

In the case of Kylo Ren, he really could of been Darth Maul done right. If Darth Maul stayed around till the end of the first trilogy, he could of been Obi Wan's counterpart. Darth Maul killed Obi Wan's Master and now Obi Wan wants to avenge him. And when the eventual rematch ensues. Hot mamma I wanna see that. Instead, what we got was instant revenge and no character growth for anyone.

Rey didn't have to beat Kylo Ren. Did Luke beat Darth Vader? No, he just forced tricked him. Rey could of lost, somehow escaped, theoretically became stronger in the ways of the force and face off against him again. It builds anticipation for the next time they face off. And the audience continues to cheer for Rey along the way.

Bad guys/gals should pose a threat (or at the very least appear to) to the good guys/gals. Not in every case but in action movies it works best. We know the good guys are going to win but that doesn't mean you can phone in the enemy right from the get go. It's about the struggle to win rather than the way they win in most cases. The stronger you make your enemy, the better the pay off is when you finally beat it.

The thing about House of Cards now

So I just finished watching the final episode of the third season of House of Cards and frankly, I didn't really like the entire season all that much. I think it comes down to the position Frank Underwood is in now. He obtained his goal and now we just watch and see if he can survive. So a lot of this season was just him trying to keep his power and be re-elected for next term. Which hey, if your into that political stuff, then maybe this is for you. For me however, it was not.

So let's talk about anime for a second. If you ask me to name an anime series off the top of my head, I would say Death Note. No, not because the name is easy to remember (though it is) but because it was pretty awesome. Essentially, Death Note is about a guy named Light who has the power to kill
people. Using this power, Light starts to kill off people and begins his vision of a utopia for earth. Of course there's this whole cat and mouse stuff and Light has to do a lot of scheming to stay one step ahead of the Police and such to make sure they can never make the connection between him and the killings. It's the intrigue that kept me going back to the show and it always left me wondering what Light was planning next.

Low and behold House of Cards was doing the same thing where Frank would make people look bad to further his standing in the office and I was engaged. I loved it. I loved that he had this master plan and everything was going his way. Thing is, Frank's plan was to become president and well, he did that. We saw Frank achieve his goal. Now what? Well obviously we see if he can run America and run it properly. Or how about we end it on a high note and just see him sit in that presidential chair and roll credits instead? No? We keep going? Well ok.

So here's my problem. He's in the position he wanted all along. What is the greater goal? Well there isn't one. Season 3 of House of Cards to me is filler. We were introduced to a new threat in the Russians and yes, Mr. Underwood could potentially loose his presidency in the upcoming elections, but there's no end goal now. I'm just watching him do what he does... without the scheming.

Some will say "Oh but there's so much more to House of Cards now. Like it's characters and whatever else." and yeah ok there's that, but it's not what got me sticking with this show. What struck me was that Frank had this master plan and we were seeing it unfold in front of our eyes. If you like the conflict between him and his wife, the relationship between Remy and Jackie or the tension between Doug and Seth that's great. Characters should evolve and create potential conflict between one another. But the core should stay the same.

So the obvious question is "Well what's the next conflict?" the answer is simple. We watch Frank fall out of power. We see that his scheming, the people he surrounded himself with, all turn on him to further their own goals(Thus the name). Thing is, we won't see that. Not for awhile. Why? Well because that's the end of the story. Which means no more House of Cards, which means no more hit Netflix exclusive.

The show can try and create as much conflict as it wants, but to me that's all filler. He can win the election, but then all that's left is for his other term to run out and we get some new guy. Of course, there's all the conflicts that can arise with other governments, and maybe some sort of scandal, but we would still all know that after those four years are up he's done. Maybe they move on to his wife after that? I don't know.

A Year of Books

If I were to ask myself last year summer that I was going to read a lot of books in the coming year I'd probably say "Yeah right." or something to that extent. But low and behold I have read A TON of books since reading Norwegian Wood. And guess what? Not a lot of them were as good as Norwegian Wood! Some were! The others were still pretty good though!......!

But yeah, I'm not sure why, but I've kept on reading books with no real end on site. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I get all my books on my phone. It's not something I thought I'd end up doing when I got my first "Smart Phone" but hey, here I am reading books. Honestly, I thought I'd just play mobile games and check out twitter or something. But most mobile games suck (Sorry I meant "Not for me"), and twitter is well... twitter!So the notion of needing a time waster eventually became reading books.

At first, I was so in love with Murakami, that I thought I'd try and read all of his works. 3 multiple dimensions later, that kinda got boring. So I just kinda moved on from there and found out about Brandon Sanderson and these "Mistborn" books and well, welcome to the fantasy genre Almeda!

Looking back I'm pretty sure I read about 19 books in the span of about 13 months. So that's just about a book or so a month. I don't even think I ever finished a game month in my entire life of loving games. But I still love them vid games! Really! I do! It's just, I don't know! You can kinda just quickly read through a part you don't like in a book. When you play a bad level in a game, you have to play through that level.

I've always been a story guy in video games, so I guess it comes as no surprise that I'd like books. I just didn't know how much. I am 100% way more infatuated with books then I ever had been. Reading books like Mistborn and realizing how much detail you can put into a story, making it last as long as you want. Or reading a book like Moth Saga which pretty much cuts the bullshit and gets directly to the point of the story. It amazes me the way a person will craft a story. It amazes me the different ways they go about telling a story. It's just all very very amazing. Good books and bad. Seeing how people do their thing and do it so differently is just amazing.

I mean, I guess that's the same for video games right? With there different genre's and ways they present the story? He wait, I talked about some books but I wanted to write a list about all the books I read.

So hey! List!

Norwegian Wood- The book that started it all. I've contemplated reading this book again but I rarely replay games. So re-reading a book should follow the same logic. As far as I remember, it's still the best book I've read.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage- Still onboard the Murakami train, this book is pretty much the only physical book I have (accept for one other I guess). I really did like this book. So much so that I actually finished it that very day. That was a pretty amazing feat. It's probably still my second favourite book by Murakami.

The Blood King (The Summoner 2)- So that first book I read turned out to have more. Way more infact. But I'd actually like to think of this as the end of the series. Prince Drakye slays his evil half brother and becomes king. What more do I need to know? I don't know. I just felt like for a 60ish chapters book. Almost 40 of it was training Drayke, 15 of it traveling back to Drayke's home, and then 5 about him winning it back. It kinda drags I guess.

1Q84- Holy hell was this the start of me not liking Murakami. There's a lot of cool moments in this book but is tied down by such bullshit. The third part is basically about a girl waiting in a room for a guy she loves.... that's about 30 some odd chapters. What I said in this video is pretty true.

The Fault In our Stars- Good book. Kinda sad book. Makes me want to read more from this guy.

Mistborn Trilogy (3)- My first real entry into the "epic fantasy" genre and man. These are long ass books. But I really enjoyed my time with them. My only issue was with the second book. I loved the first and third, but book 2 seemed so stagnant. Too many things going, in a setting I didn't really care for. But man, if you're looking for a book that has movie like moments, this is one of them.

 The Wind up Bird Chronicles- So like I literally skipped chapters in this book. I just couldn't take it. There was so much flash back stuff to characters I didn't care for, that by the end it didn't really matter. At this point, this book made me want to take a break from Murakami books.

City of Stairs- I was really confused with this book. I mean, I liked it's setting and story and all. But I couldn't get over the fact that the person was like a diplomat or something. But she was really someone who was fascinated with culture. Kinda like a Historian I guess. Anyways, the author used that as an excuse to "World Build" because she was so interested with that culture. I thought it was just a lazy excuse. Like why not just make her a historian or something? I really didn't see the need for her to be involved with the government. But maybe this book was above me or something. Still, good stuff though.

50 Shades of Gray (Book 1 and 2ish)- SO Yeah I started reading these books. Haven't finished yet, not really planning to. I feel like I could really go deep in this, and I will. I had a friend pretty much say "Every guy should read 50 Shades" and that's basically why I started reading these. Now I know you may make the assumption that "Oh she likes to be tied up and shit" but no. I'm not saying this goes for every hetero girl out there (or maybe all I don't know), but the big thing about the first book was how unrelenting the guy was when it came to his affection.

So I'd like to say that both these characters are fucked up. Like really, they both are. The main girl may be sweet and innocent at first but as the story develops, well her logic for staying with him is pretty stupid. But the main thing that happens in this book is as follows; Girl and guy have sex, Girl gets paranoid that guy doesn't love her, guy comes and reassures her, sex again, paranoia again, reassurance again. That's it. That's what happens in the first book. BDSM aside. So I feel, the reason why my friend said "every guy should read 50 shades" is because of how often he'd just show up when the girl would get paranoid. Because he's rich he can fly anywhere, drive anywhere, appear anywhere. And I guess that's what she liked about it. Cause she wants a guy to be ready and waiting or something (I could be completely wrong here).

The second thing I want to say is how much I don't feel the need to read any further. This is how the first book ends:

*Guy spanks girl*

Girl: Stop spanking me I think you're weird!

Guy: Ok. :(

And that's actually a great way to end the first book. It left me wondering how they were going to get back together. Maybe the girl would go through a lot of soul searching and realize she actually likes the BDSM stuff? Or she likes the guy so much that she can put up with that stuff? Or both! But here is like the first chapter of book 2.

*Two weeks later*

Guy: I miss you.

Girl: I miss you too.

Guy: Let's get back together.

Girl Ok.

I hated, HATED this. Cause now, all that ending in the first book was just a hook for people to read the next. And instead of building up anticipation (which by the end the second book is about 25 chapters), of there eventual reunion, they just do it right away. Which leaves the rest of the book to be about sexing and spanking.

GREAT. THANKS BOOK! I DON'T NEED TO READ THE REST OF YOU!

Sputnik Sweetheart- The last Murakami book I read (So far). The main reason I gave this book a shot was two fold:

1. It was only 17 chapters long. 
2. I wanted another romancy thing like Norwegian Wood, and the internet said this book was about romance.

I mean, it was. But not like Norwegian Wood. And like out of nowhere, there was a multiple universe BS that happened near the end. Like come on. I know the books short and all but just... come on.

Moth Saga - Reading these series of books after something like Mistborn really made me love books on a whole new level. While I don't think Moth Saga are bad books, I think it doesn't go into detail as it could have. This is mostly in comparison to Mistborn really.

Moth Saga left me mesmerized mostly because of what my mentality was before reading books. The best way to describe these books is by saying it cuts all the bull shit that a normal epic fantasy does. It doesn't go into a huge "World Building" thing describing in full detail about its universe. Its fights aren't as detailed and well, it's just a lot shorter. I'll give you an example.

The first book in Moth Saga was about how this girl was going to a town she'd never been too. About five or so chapters later guess what? She's there. Now, if this were Sanderson writing this, I'm sure as hell he'd spend about 20 chapters describing the journey in full detail. Here? Not so much. And that is both a good and bad thing for me.

Before reading Mistborn, I think I would of really liked these books. But after reading them, all I was left with saying was "Man, the writer could of gone into more detail about stuff." But then what would that of achieved? The story would of ended the same. So why would it matter that this book doesn't go into full detail about its world.

It's something that I can probably go into more paragraphs about (Compare and contrast the writing styles of Brendan Sanderson and Daniel Arenson based on only one series of books by each author), but lets just say I like most of the Moth Saga. Haven't read the follow up stuff though. Maybe later?

The Martian- I was actually surprised to find out this guy was a game dev back in the day. That's pretty cool! A lot cooler than when people come up to me and be like "Bro you like vid gayms? Yo Dedmus like vid gahms too! You must like Didmause!" What was I talking about? Vid games? Those are cool. Man I can't wait till that Xenoblade comes out for WiiU. I swear it'll be the first WiiU game I'll buy sinc-

So I really liked The Martian. And, I can see this really working as a movie. One might say that this was a bit of a gateway to see if I'd like Scifi stuff. The only thing I didn't like about it, and this is no fault of the book, but I could care less about science stuff. When the guy explains how he mixed chemicals to make water and how that could turn out bad was like the most boring stuff for me. But yeah good stuff.

The Stormlight Archive ( Book 1 and 2)- While one can say I've read 5 books from Brendan Sanderson, I feel it more appropriate to say I only read two. I consider the Mistborn trilogy to be one whole and The Stormlight Achive to be the other since they are just continuations of each others respective stories. But yeah, I read these books in like three weeks. Nearly 2 million words read in three weeks. No regrets. It's really good.

Girl In Translation- In my attempt to try and be more diverse (I felt at this point I was getting into a bit of a Fantasy binge), I decided to try and read other genre's. Girl in Translation was one of these attempts, and I thought it was pretty swell.

I was actually put off a bit with the setting to be all honest. I'm not much one of an immigrant story lover, but this one pulled me in right when the girl in question went to school. It was kinda charming seeing her struggle in school trying to understand what her teaching wanted, and I felt her whole trying to grasp English was a good hook for this story. The romance sub-plot was actually my favourite party really. Anywho good stuff.

Those are all the books I've finished. I'm still trying to get through some like Absurdistan, Dragon Sword and Wind Child, Stormdancer and I guess the rest of 50 Shades of Grey (I read some earlier this month and I feel like its time to comeback to it) but I'm pretty early in all of them, and none have yet to hook me just yet. So I feel like the next month or so will be a slow month for me. Especially considering it's time for vid games to come out. I've been wondering if I should get an Xbox One or a Steambox first recently. Like I know I'd probably end up with both eventually, but the question is-

Here's a small list of books I'm hoping to read in the coming future (Can you believe it's already October? I swear it'll be the end of the year faster then you know it):

The Wheel of Time series- 14 books! 14! Man, I don't know if I'm up to the task. I feel like this would last me the entire 2016 year and I don't think I have it in me to commit myself for that much.

Suzumiya Haruhi series- seeing as these are Light Novels it seems like a doable thing. About seven chapters each book. Times that by 5 because I've already seen the anime. That leaves about 35 chapters to read, which is about the average length all the books I've been reading have been. About.

The main reason for reading these are because there doesn't seem to be any future plans for the anime to return. And with Aya Hirano living in her own world right about now, it seems fitting to at least try to finish the story in some other medium. Also Kobo doesn't have book five but it has the other ones. Weird right?

Dune- To be fair, I've actually been trying to read this as we speak. I think this will become the next book I try to finish. But I have no idea what's going on. All I know is that there's a guy named Paul, someone named Jessica, A duke, A Baron, An Emperor and something called CHAOM. If you think that's a lot it really, REALLY isn't.

Also, I don't think I'll read all of them. Probably just the first one.

So yeah that about does it for this post. What do you think of books? Use the Hastag #BooksForAlmeda to reccomend me books. Or leave me a comment saying I'm wrong for not like City of Stairs enough below. If you were a book which would you be? Click this link to find out which book you shou-

A lot of books are bad but some books are good.

That probably goes for a lot of things in life, but for me personally, I hate reading. It's kinda weird, I know. I consider myself a fairly creative guy and most people tend to ask me that stupid question "Oh, you like writing? What's your favourite book?" to which I respond with a "Uhhhh..." thinking I have a proper response talking about ' Gatsby', 'Prison Break' and my favourite 'Uh, you know that one book where that guy-yeah yeah 1942'. But whenever I read a book I never felt compelled to keep going. I just kinda closed my eyes and fell asleep. So some of the books I read were great sleeping pills.

A lot of it is in my lack of imagination. Some, if not most books have a almost masturbatorialness when it comes to describing its world. They like to tell you how big a house is, what kind of patterns are on a person's shoe and just how blue some guys eyes are amidst the smoke of a cigarette. I cannot stand it. I cannot properly imagine what a author is trying to describe and it gives me a headache when I try to think of what this shower looks like.

I'm a dialog kind of guy. I like conversations, not narrations. Which has lead me to love other forms of story telling such as TV Shows, Movies, Comic Books, Anime, Manga and of course, Video Games. Oh boy do I love Video Games. I love Video Games so much, I'll play a Visual Novel which is what it sounds like; a novel that has visuals.

Dialog cuts to the chase. You got a problem? Solve it with words. That's my motto. In fact, most of the time when I do read a book, I tend skip all the text and wait for the famous " to show up and read what's in it. That's just how it is for me. Hell even when it comes to writing I know I get stuck on the narration portion and mostly just skip to writing the dialog. So they tend to turn out like scripts... kinda sorta like.

Long story short I find reading a book kinda boring. Which is what makes me love Norwegian Wood so much. It was an amazing read and I was hooked pretty much from the third or fourth page on.

I started reading it one day at work on a whim and could not put it down. Every subway ride, every free moment at work, every time I woke up and every time I went to sleep I read this book.

The writing style was something that I can get into fairly easily. Haruki Murakami kinda didn't bullshit with set up and I liked it. I mean yeah sure he talked about tree's and the set up of Watanabe's room, but he never went so deep as to describe what kind of cake he got for Naoko's birthday. It's a cake... who cares?

What probably worked best for me was the first person perspective. So let's talk about Anime for a little bit. The more I think about it, the more I think Makoto Shinkai is my favourite Director. I loved Voices of a Distant Star, The Place Promised In Our Early Days was OK from what I remember, 5 Centimeters Per Second was amazing, I didn't care much for The Children Who Lost Their Voices, Someone's Gaze was real sweet and The Gardens Words was another great movie, if not short. Reading Norwegian Wood all I kept thinking was "Dude Shinkai must really love Murakami's stuff" and it shows.

It's the style of narration and the soliloquy's that really make it work for me. I don't care about what a place looks like, I care about how a character feels. It makes me, as the audience understand a characters motive. I was grasped by the soliloquy's and that one part where Watanabe talks to Kizuki about finding his motivation.... man... MAN. So good. What was I talking about?

The big thing about finishing Norwegian Wood wasn't so much that I finished a book. But more so that I finished it in three days. THREE DAYS. I only do that with Video Games. Those classic moments of beating a boss and then looking at the clock and going "Oh shit, it's 7am.... oh well let's keep playing" happened with this book. I swear to you. I was reading at like 11pm, decided to make dinner and oh shit it's morning now so let's make bacon and eggs. I was captivated and by chapter 6, I didn't want to stop.

It got me thinking about the other books I read (voluntarily) and made me wonder how quickly I read through them. The results weren't so great but yo, check this list out:

The Da Vinci Code: Both my sisters recommended this book so I gave it a go and yeah, good book. More so for the twists and turns with the puzzles and stuff but I dunno. It was alright. Also I still struggled through this book and gave up and fell asleep multiple times. Let's say like eight months to complete?

Memoirs of a Geisha: So upfront, I found out that Zhang Ziyi was playing lead for the movie version of this book, so I decided to read it before it came out. I had a real hard time finishing this book. I mean, I know it's an American author writing in a Japanese setting but man, every time a kimono showed up he just had to get real descriptive out it. PARAGRAPHS and paragraphs and paragraphs about how a red Kimono had a fish or something on it. I just didn't care. Also I didn't really like it so I avoided the movie for like eight years until I finally saw it (it wasn't good). Trying to remember how long it took me to finish it feels like six months off and on.

The Summoner: I had a lot of time on my hands one summer so I visited a library fairly often and that's where I picked up this book. It's a good story if you like fantasy stuff I guess... I don't know. I think this was the only fantasy book I've read so there goes my opinion. Aside from Norwegian Wood I would say this was the fastest book I've read so let's go ahead and say it took me three months to complete

Undisputed: How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps: So this is an autobiography of who is my favourite wrestler (if he keeps showing up maybe not anymore) Chris Jericho. Which chronicled his first run in the WWE and his tales as the lead singer for Fozzy. I didn't care much for the Fozzy stuff but man did I love his WWE stuff. That one part where he wrote a whole story about a baloon that he lost when going into the ring was amazing. He's an amazing story teller that's for sure. Sure his idea of success is different from what the audience saw, but that's the kind of guy he is. He's a company guy through and through. Just because he didn't win the Main Event match doesn't keep away from that fact that he was in the Main Event match. I cannot wait for his next book. As good as it was, I still very much had a hard time getting through it. But when I did read parts of it, I read a good chunk. So let's say around nine.

Norwegian Wood: So I know I talked a lot of good about this book but let's talk about the bad. Primarily the ending. It wasn't so much so how it ended. Just more so that it ended in two or three paragraphs. The paragraphs before that Watanabe was doing some real soul searching or other and then boom he does something else completely unrelated and it ends. Roll credits. I mean, I know it's a known thing for Japanese stuff to end without full closure but man, that was out of nowhere. Which left a real sour taste in my mouth. Anyways I finished this book in three days.

So as you can see, it takes a while for me to read a book. Now if you want to talk about how I marathoned through the first hundred chapters of Bleach and Naruto in one day for both. Or how I completed reading through Dead Man Wonderland, A Town where you live, Blame!, Genshiken and Holyland? Well, those are different stories altogether.

What might of help was the length of Norwegian Wood. I read it on my iPhone so it seemed like a lot of pages but I could be wrong and the book could be a fairly short one I don't know.

With the Video Game season about to begin, I know its kinda hopeless but I'm wondering what direction I should move in next. I also did buy all of the A Song of Ice and Fire books, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the follow up to The Summoner (Which has like seven more books apparently). So if I wanted, I could read those. But I kinda wanna read more Murakami books. I just wonder if it will have the same impact on me as Norwegian Wood did. Also Anime... yay?

Yeah fuck it books are dumb. Let's go play Earth Defense Force.