The Sheriff's Secret Roleplay

Title: Stories of Your Life and Others
Author: Ted Chiang
Genre: Science Fiction

5 Stars!!!

This is an anthology of short stories. I bought it for one reason. The story "Story of Your Life" is the short story that the movie Arrival was based on. I'll say now that I love, love, loved the movie, so the short story was never going to measure up, and it didn't. Mostly because it wasn't as emotional as the movie. I thought the movie had a better narrative and emotional impact. The book was more intellectual. It was by no means bad, it just had large shoes to fill. However, I'm sure you noticed I gave the book as a whole 5 stars, and I stand by that. Some of the other stories were just jaw-dropping, at least to me, when it came to concepts that explored. They were all speculative in nature. The first story was about building the tower of Babylon, and I was completely sucked in from the first paragraph. Sometimes reading this book I felt like it was intellectually a little out of my league. I understood it, I just felt like I should have a graduate degree to read it. It was a weird feeling. I often could only read one or two at a time, because then I needed time to process what I had read. I loved this book, and most of the stories in it. I have no idea who should read it, but someone should, especially if you like intellectual and philosophical concepts.

Hi! How've you been? It's been a while, huh? Still, I think this is the most I've posted during a year in years. I think doing the book reviews and advent calendars help with that.

So, anyway, it was my birthday on Friday. I turned 49. I have mixed feelings. As a whole, I understand I'm still relatively young compared to someone like my parents, but I have the body of a 90 yr old. I did a lot of time reflecting on my health, is what I'm saying. I'm in excruciating pain every day and have trouble walking from one room to another, and I'm honestly terrified of how much worse it's going to get in the next year. I know losing weight will help stave that off, but I'm finding the whole thing difficult atm. If you can, please send health vibes my way?

In better birthday news, I for a present, I bought myself the Lumos Pro pen from Tom's Studio. Their pens are unique in that they're completely reusable. It comes with a whole pack of different-sized nibs and a refillable ink reservoir. I also bought three new inks, because their pens don't take shimmer inks, and the only inks I currently have that I like are shimmer. I'm honestly excited to get it.

That, and my dad sent me $100 for "books", which is awesome! Oh, and my boss and his wife sent me $100 gift certificate to Amazon. They do it every year, and I always appreciate it. I bought a lot of kitchen essentials I was missing.

Other than that, I've been journaling a lot. I've been a bit obsessed with Archer & Olive journals, so I have a few right now. I haven't really been doing anything with them, but now I'm almost halfway through one of them with only about a week or two worth of entries. This pleases me. Hoping to keep it up. Once I started journaling, I found I really enjoyed the writing, and I'd sometimes spend three hours at a time doing it. It makes me wonder if I should go back and try The Artist's Way thing again, which requires "morning pages" of writing.

Well, I think this is enough blabbing for one entry, now onto the book reviews!