#for someone who logs in almost daily for the past 5 years i'm very much a casual

[neriyon]

For the FFXIV ask thingy: 8, 14 & 20~

Ohh nice, a triple~

8. Biggest Accomplishment?

This is a hard one since I don't do any savages or extremes or any of the "hard" endgame content people usually say as their big accomplisments haha. So I guess uhh, idk, getting all jobs to 90 during EW? (six to go till all jobs at 100) Or that 5000th commendation I got last month? Figuring out how to do old content (and maps) with just the 3 of us? Still playing this game after 5 years?

14. Favorite Raid?

Alliance one? One of the Nier raids, probably Copied. Ridorana, Orbonne and Aglaia are good too, but there's just something that sparks joy whenever I see Nier raids come up in roulette.

8-man ones? Uhhh..... Pandae 9 (Kokytos) or 11 (Themis)? P4 (Hesperos), 6 (Hegemone) and 7 (tree) were nice too, and I kinda still like getting Eden Titan on rouls.

20. Favorite Limit Break?

Hmm, summoner one is very neat! Not that you get to use it that often, but it's fun to finally become Bahamut.

Fav tank one is drk, melee on is ninja (*angrily does really fast hand signs at you*), ranged is bard (its the bow at the end) and healer is whm. Almost all of them are good tho, only ones I'm meh about are the more "boring", non flashy ones (pld, mnk, sam)

[hedgehog-moss]

Do you have any advice on picking books for readers with limited time? I love to read, but in the past couple years I've been dissatisfied with almost everything I've read and I've purposely been trying to pick a variety: obscure, best-sellers, internet-recs, vintage, recents and I can't seem to pick well. I know the key to finding more good things is to read more quantity, but I've only got so much free time and can only read so fast.

Oh I feel you! There was a whole period of my life when I was desperately trying to find some alchemical formula to ensure that most of the books I read are good-to-great rather than okay-to-good. I had this scientific process where I tried to log a lot of details about the books I read and then look at the numbers year after year to find a common denominator. Is it a matter of reading more, or is it reading more older books vs. recent ones, male vs. female authors, books from my to-read list vs. impulsive reads, books recommended by friends vs. books I find myself? etc. etc. I made line graphs.

In the end the only factor that seemed to correlate with how many good books I read in a year was the number of unfinished reads, so the one piece of advice I have is to not hesitate to give up on a book you're not enjoying. I read multiple books at a time so it's easy to see if there's one that I keep neglecting in favour of the others; and I get most of my books for free or very cheap (from my local library, or OpenLibrary or Zlibrary, or secondhand bookshops where they're like 50cts apiece, or swapping books with friends), the ones I buy new are mostly books I've already read & enjoyed, so I don't have qualms about giving up 20 pages in if I'm not feeling it.

Other than that, I've kind of made my peace with the fact that finding a good book is a mysterious serendipitous process and most of the books I read will be just okay, plus a few bad ones and some great ones.

That said if most books you read end up being unsatisfying rather than at least okay, maybe you're not sure what you're looking for? It helps to identify what you want from a book at a particular time (fun escapism, learning more about a given topic, immersion in a specific atmosphere and if so, which one...) I tend to start a new read with a precise idea of what it would take for this book to be satisfying, e.g. "rn I feel like reading about someone's quiet daily life, maybe a diary or letters, set in a place or context I don't know much about, without turmoil or tragedy" or "a story set in the 17/1800s with flowery prose, interesting female characters, focused on intricate social shenanigans rather than romance or adventure" etc, so it allows me to narrow things down and eliminate potential reads where too many criteria are missing.

And I like to read a few 1-star goodreads reviews—some prefer to focus on 3-star reviews which are more balanced; personally I figure, if the people who hated this book the most cite reasons for disliking it that aren’t dealbreakers for me, that’s a good sign. And if the worst reviews cite stuff I'm actually looking for right now ("too long, too many digressions, long-winded prose, too quiet / not enough action", etc) then it’s a book that comes recommended both by 5-star and 1-star reviewers :)