Category: Reviews

So Long, and thanks for all the Fish (1) book review

I love the title, but the fourth book in the Hitchiker Quintology just doesn’t do it for me. For those unfamiliar with the series, it’s a series of books about the literally out-of-this-world adventures of an ordinary earthling, Arthur Dent, thrown into space after the Earth is demolished to make space for an intergalactic bypass. It’s as crazy as it sounds, and each volume is jam-packed with impossible happenings, fantastic new locations and colorful characters of all shapes and colors (my personal favorite is the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, btw).

Then you come to So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and everything takes a turn for the worse. I’m about a third through it and I bet it picks up later, but I’m really bored so far. Actually I’ve read the whole series before way back in high school and I don’t remember this one being quite so bad, so we’ll see.

What’s wrong with it? Firstly, you’re just dealing with Arthur Dent so far. He works as the straight man to a host of nutters, but as a character on his own he’s dreadfully boring. Secondly everything takes place on Earth, and not just Earth…Britain! The least romantic nation on the planet. Thirdly, nothing’s happened except Arthur’s got a crush on this girl and he doesn’t know how to handle it. Well whoopdy-doo! Welcome to puberty! Color me unimpressed!

Ah, it’s good to get that off my chest. 90-10 odds that things will pick up very shortly and make this slog worth it (I distinctly remember Arthur and Fenchurch making out on the wing of an airplane, which is seriously gross), but man, what a let-down after the last three.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1)

If you’re at all interested in self-improvement, you must have heard of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. It’s become something of a ‘bible’ in this modern day. Schools recommend it to their students, bosses to their employees (and vice versa), I bet even hospitals recommend it to patients sometimes.

Just because something is popular or bestselling, though, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. I will come straight up and admit I haven’t read the whole thing yet. I’ve only read the first few pages. I agree with his overall idea, that instead of changing our personalities we need to change our principles and our deep thinking in order to be more effective. That’s a good idea. Better than good, it’s true.

What I have a problem with is the preachy, excessively wordy, downright disheartening way these ideas are expressed. A book at least has to hold your attention before it can proceed to inform or educate you, or even educate you. Stephen R. Covey fails at the very first step, with his cheesy metaphors, self-flagellating examples and plodding writing style. I’m thinking of buying the audio version instead. I mean, there might be something good in there since it’s spawned so many spin-offs and rip-offs, but getting to it…that’s another matter.

Final Fantasy Tactics A2

In keeping with the spirit of having fun in Japanese, I’ve been playing more and more games in Japanese. I recently finished Final Fantasy Tactics A2 for Nintendo DS, the sequel to the somewhat-okay Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I wasn’t too great a fan of its predecessor, but I really liked Final Fantasy Tactics, so I decided to give it a shot.

Was it fun? Heck yeah. I made it all the way to the last boss then turned around and went right back into town so I could keep doing missions and having fun. When I got tired of that, I took my overlevelled self back and whupped the pathetic little boss into submission. Power Up 4 + MP Turbo + Grimoire Fragment + Nu Mou Illusionist + 2 Jugglers spamming Smile = Sayonara, boss.

If I had to find fault with FFTA2, it would be with two things. Firstly, the story is really trivial and unimportant. Boy gets tossed into strange world and the only way to go back home is to have lots of adventures. Boy takes to task like a fish to water, and spends 10+ years wandering around world having fun. There’s a bit of story in there with evil organizations and sealed monsters and stuff, but they’re obviously there out of obligation. No sense of urgency and no sense of purpose makes this game a bit on the “meh” side when all is said and done. Secondly the battles are too, too slow. Moving, turning, choosing an attack, executing the attack, your opponent doing the same, it all takes way too long. A simple 5 on 5 encounter can take upwards of 15 minutes if you’re not careful.

Lastly, did I learn any Japanese from it? Haha, I’ve long stopped evaluating material by that standard. If it’s fun, it’s fun, whether I learned something from it or not. But I don’t recall seeing any particularly unusual kanji or phrases I didn’t know. The language – and the whole game, in fact – appears to be tailored towards a slightly younger crowd, so it’s easy to understand, and they repeat themselves a lot to make sure you get it.

All in all it was a good experience, and now you know what I’ve been up to in all the weeks I haven’t been posting. 🙂 That’s all for today.

Guin Saga Episode 1

After much hesitation, I finally sat down and watched the first episode of Guin Saga.
I say hesitation because I heard the original novels the anime is based on has been running since the seventies for hundreds of volumes, and I hate starting things that have no end. Either the anime runs on for a long time with no resolution or the writers make up their own, usually-unsatisfying anime-only ending and calls it a day.

Still I had the episode sitting on my computer for a while and eventually I ran out of things to watch, so I gave it a go. It’s not half bad at all. It seems to be moving very quickly, which is always a plus for long-running series. The animation is clean and crisp, and while the characters look a bit squat and chubby, they move very fluidly. The action scenes were over the top, but this is a series about a man with a leopard head and a princess with psychic powers, so I don’t think anyone’s looking for realism here.

The story hasn’t broken new territory yet: royal twins, kingdom sacked, parents dead, all alone, rescued by mysterious man, chased by the bad guys…or are they, etc. etc. It’s only one episode so it could go any way. Indeed the ending sequence featured some other characters we haven’t met yet, so I’m looking forward to finding out more soon. Until then!

The Richest Man in Babylon (2)

Seeing as it’s such a short book, it didn’t take me long to finish The Richest Man in Babylon. The very last chapter was a short history of the Babylonian kingdom. Nothing you couldn’t look up on Wikipedia in five seconds, but extremely interesting nonetheless.

I also liked the debt reduction plan Clason introduced in later chapter: devote 10% of your earnings to savings, 20% to paying back your debts and 70% to profit-making investments. Of course the nature of your debt determines whether this is feasible or not, e.g. if your house is on the verge of foreclosure I’m not sure the bank would go along with this plan. But for someone with a reasonable amount of debt, it’s a feasible method that should pay off in the long-term.