#Contemporary-A-Thon Round 3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

coffeebooksorme · 5 years

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Contemporary-A-Thon Round 5: Day One

Challenges Met: 3

Books Read: 1

I go back to work tonight so I was fortunate enough to start the readathon right at midnight and I decided to do so with the biggest chunker on my TBR which is On The Come Up by Angie Thomas. I read that sucker in 6 hours! Honestly, it didn’t even feel like it took that long because Angie has this amazing power to suck you right into a story.

I’m reading an eARC of The Little Bookshop at Herring Grove and...sigh. First, I didn’t realize it was the 5th in a series when I requested it. Honestly, it doesn’t feel like the 5th so I’m good to go there. The synopsis made it sound like a village by the sea take on You’ve Got Mail, which, if you know me, you know that’s my favorite romcom movie ever. It is, however, not that. I’m only 38% through and there’s honestly no conflict so far. I thought it’d be a light enemies to lovers trope read but so far, nope. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve got a lofty TBR of 7 books for this round! Two of which are manga/graphic novels so it shouldn’t be that bad. The rest of my TBR after that can be read in either physical form or ebook (thank you, scribd!) and I read hella fast with ebooks so I think I can manage this! I read 7 books for The Reading Rush so fingers crossed I can do the same for this round of Contemporary-A-Thon!

#booklr #books #wrap up #reading wrap up #readathon #contemporaryathon #bookworm #book dragon #bibliophile #mine

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patheticphallacy · 5 years

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Contemporary-a-thon is hosted by Chelsea, Julie and Natasha and pushes you to read contemporary novels throughout the week. It’s taking place between February 10th and February 16th, and I am very excited to take part.

Generally I don’t read things based on genre, I’m very much someone who goes with the flow, so I’m excited to finally be taking part properly in this read-a-thon! Usually I’m at University when this is taking place, it’s all very new for me actually having time to read.

Of course I’ll be attempting to follow the challenges that are set (I do love a good challenge), and I’ll be attempting to read at least three books, and five comics/manga volumes!

TBR: Challenges

1. Read a contemporary with green on the cover

~Wilder Girls by Rory Power

~My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

2. Read a contemporary from a new to you author

~The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman

~Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

~My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

3. Read a diverse contemporary

~A Silent Voice Volume 1 by Yoshitoki Oima

~Kappa Quartet by Daryl Qilin Yam

4. Read a backlist contemporary (something that has been on your TBR for over a year)

~Giant Days Volume 11 by John Allison

~The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman

5. Read a dark/hard hitting contemporary

~Orange Volume 1 by Ichigo Takano

~Bunny by Mona Awad

~The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells

~The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell

6. Read a contemporary with an illustrated cover

~Our Dining Table by Ori Mita

~Heartstopper Volume 3 by Alice Oseman

7. Read a contemporary that is beloved by a member of the book community (and shout out the creator!)

~Fleabag: The Scriptures by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (the TV show is beloved by many members of the book community, including Chelsea, who is one of the hosts! I feel like reading the scripts counts.)

~Normal People by Sally Rooney (honestly highly praised by a lot of people I follow on book Twitter, including Barry Pierce and Jasmine from Jasmine’s Reads!)

I don’t think I’ll read all of these, but it’s my goal to read at least half of what I’ve put on here. I have a week off work, so finger’s crossed!

Thank you for reading❤

If you liked this post, consider buying me a coffee? Ko-Fi.

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Contemporary-A-Thon Round 6 TBR! Contemporary-a-thon is hosted by Chelsea, Julie and Natasha and pushes you to read contemporary novels throughout the week.

#contemporary #contemporary-a-thon #diverse #graphic novel #literary fiction #manga #read-a-thon #script #tbr #young adult

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casualarsonist · 7 years

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Far Cry 4 review

I'm gonna begin this review in the same way I begin all my Far Cry reviews - by talking about Far Cry 2. Far Cry 2 was not a perfect game. It's story was very limited, and thus the context and motivation for your actions were lacking. It's saddled with a number of half-implemented mechanics, and fully-implemented but frustrating and repetitive mecahnics. However, it was laden with an incredible atmosphere, a genuinely reactive world, and (most amazingly) the landscape of the game felt real, not built. You felt like you were actually watching the setting African sun filtering through the dust and the trees as it fell over the still river water at dusk. It's a mental image that I cannot forget. Now there's a few reasons I bring up FC2. A lot of people don't enjoy it. and I get that. It can be frustrating and it's not the most accessible or guided experience. BUT, what it does do is it plops the player in a big sandbox, gives them limited resources and intelligent and dangerous enemies, and says 'make your own story'. And because the game refuses to spoon-feed the player, and in that need for the player to adapt to the changing circumstances around them, FC2 allowed a constant creation of 'this one time when I was playing Far Cry 2...' moments. It aschewed OTT collect-a-thon busywork. It aschewed the asinine tower-climbing that has become that crumbling pillar upon which Ubisoft's games stand. It gave the player a bunch of rather vague mission parameters, a jungle, some fire, some deadly enemies, and a bunch of fairly underpowered weapons and said 'good luck'. And it was exhilirating. It was exhilirating to be forced into a cat-and-mouse stealth battle with a number of men whose clothes matched the surroundings. I was exhilirating to be unable to flush them out of hiding because you were in green grass and green grass won't burn. It was exhilirating to have to use your hearing to locate enemies because you're under a canopy and it's too dark to see them. It was exhilirating having to turn your eyes away from the road to look at your map only to look back at the road and see an enemy vehicle coming your way, knowing that if you don't get to your gun fast enough that you might die. It tested your skills as a player. It forced you to focus and made a man out of those that took the gunplay for granted. Then came FC3. And all of a sudden the HUD was filled with markers and minimaps and text, and you could see enemies through walls, and the map was littered with garbage that you had to collect or else you wouldn't get the achievement that said you collected all the garbage, and the entire map was the same and recognising your location by it's appearance was all but impossible (but that didn't matter because you had GPS to hold your hand), and the enemies all wore the same bright primary colour because there's nothing more tactical than making yourselves visible from the moon, and once you cleared an enemy stronghold they were gone for good and you'd effectively progressed by making the map less fun. Hurrah? I was excited for Far Cry 3. I lined up to play a pre-release build at a video game convention, and I bought it and played it and finished it and it was okay. And then a few years later I got a better graphics card and I reinstalled it, and I uninstalled it again within 2 hours because once you've finished it, going back is like returning to the second grade. And then Far Cry 4 was released. And I didn't get it. Because it was more of the same, wasn't it? Because I was bored by FC3 and the obnoxious characters and the obnoxious hand-holding. For the record, I suck at Dark Souls - I'm not the world's best player and I don't relish a punishing experience - but the 'winning formula' that Ubisoft had struck upon with FC3 failed to capture my imagination. I didn't hate it. I still remember the first time I played it through. But the gameplay failed to challenge, and the story failed to engage, so the game itself failed to give me a reason to return. But I love the series because of its potential. Because even when it was Crytek property I loved the conceit - an open-world (of sorts) FPS sandbox in an exotic locale. I loved that at one point Ubi had created a set of reactive mechanics that, together, created an experience that was greater than the sum of it's parts. So I bought FC4 (on sale of course). And...it was fun. At least, the first play through was fun. The hand-holding wasn't as obnoxious, the game looked better than FC3, the characters still grated, but the story wasn't COMPLETELY devoid of heart. The game was still using collectibles as a substitute for meaningful content, but at least those collectibles unlocked weapons for you to use. The game was full of predators that add a degree of unpredictability to the game that I felt was severely lacking in the 3rd installment, and your plans for stealth can often go awry when a stroppy leopard stumbles into the mix. The enemy strongholds can be reset, or contested, which means that danger is never ENTIRELY eliminated from the equation. It's a better game. It's fun. Upon replaying you can fly over the land and see how uniform it really is. Lacking still is variety in the terrain. The landscape is little but a bunch of locations connected by a series of roads, with nothing much that stands out in between. This place is not lived in, it's not real. It's a 2D game board on a table with a carboard prop every 5 squares, and a bunch of plastic army men stationed here and there. The enemies are still painted day-glo, just in case you forget where to shoot, and most of the missions involve going somewhere, killing something, and/or collecting something else. There's a re-hash of the FC3 mission in which you can burn a bunch of plants, and there's a single contemporary song in there somewhere, because feelings are like cold hard numbers, and Ubisoft have a steadfast belief in the simple arithmatic formula of 2 x (memorable moment) = 2 memorable moments. There's also a bunch of side-missions that involve taking drugs, because that was a thing they did in a different game that people bought. But...it's fun.

TL;DR - Far Cry 4 is easy to pick up and play and you're rarely far from a firefight. There's enough unpredictability to make it feel a little different each time you play. It's got a little more lustre in it than FC3 the second time round. It's no FC2, and it's still adhering strictly to Ubisoft's slogan of 'video game, the video game', but it's almost, ALMOST, a compromise between the accessibility of FC3 and the dynamic engagements of FC2. It's not a bad game. It's not a game-changer, but did you expect that? Get it cheap.

7/10

Good

#far #cry #4 #four #review #pc #ubisoft

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