I Know What I Did This Summer

I'm not sure why, but I'm going to tell you all about the slacker goof-off things I've been doing this summer/fall while Soren's been napping. Sure, I'll occasionally work or clean up or do something productive while he's sleeping, but my true joy lies in doing things that have no practical value. Just fun value.

I'll start with reading, just so that I can impress people with my crazy literacy skillz before I start talking about video games. Why is reading better than video games, by the way? A complex game with an intricate plot can be much more intellectually stimulating than a bad book. Even games without interesting plots can exercise the brain, or at least induce a zen-like state; meditation doesn't work for me, but Tetris does. Hey, I love reading and always have, but I think video games get a bad rap. Even when I'm playing Final Fantasy and going around killing monsters, it's not so much a thirst for virtual blood that drives me as a motivation to see which cool treasures the monsters will drop and which new abilities my characters will learn as they level up. Wow, that's really girly, isn't it? I'm not doing it for the fighting and killing; I just like to nurture my characters and gather shiny objects. Math is hard! Let's make cookies for the boys!

Like I said, I'm going to list the books I've read before I talk about video games. Starting now. Earlier in the summer, Soren and I were always bugging visiting Kelsey at the lagoon, and I ended up borrowing a fair number of books from her:

- The Abhorsen trilogy (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen) by Garth Nix
- Shade's Children by Garth Nix
- The Wind Singer (book 1 of the Wind on Fire series) by William Nicholson
- Elvenbane (book 1 of the Halfblood Chronicles) by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey
- The Firebringer trilogy (Birth of the Firebringer, Dark Moon, The Son of Summer Stars) by Meredith Ann Pierce

I really enjoyed the Abhorsen books, and would definitely recommend them to anyone who liked His Dark Materials or The Dark is Rising. Shade's Children was all right, as was The Wind Singer, but Elvenbane was pretty bad (sorry, Kelsey) :^) The Firebringer series is A Number One in my book, because it is about kick-ass unicorns who come in pretty colors like blue and go around fighting wyverns and stuff. If you are male, you will not like the series, but that's just due to your unreasonable prejudice against unicorns.

I also read a couple books I didn't borrow from Kelsey: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Sophie's Choice. I was very satisfied with HP, and I'm not sure what I thought about Sophie's Choice. One can't really claim to enjoy it, exactly, but it was an interesting read. I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know how it compares.

As you may have already figured out, I also spent some time playing video games while Soren was napping. Games are my motivation to exercise; I fire up the Playstation and start doing step exercises, and before I know it, 40 minutes have passed. It's a great system. I just recently finished Final Fantasy XII after logging about 150 hours (I've had the game for a long time, although I'm not going to say how long because I don't want anyone to do the math). It was a really fun game, with tons of sidequests (things to do in the game that don't advance the plot), but it wasn't my favorite FF. The story was really boring, which is a real shame, because several of the previous FFs had fairly intricate plots, with all kinds of shocking twists and surprises (they usually didn't make a ton of sense, but they were still interesting). I was also disappointed to find that there was no character development, and all the characters were pretty much the same in battle. With previous FFs, you really had to choose the members of your party carefully based on their strengths and weaknesses, but all the FFXII characters have the same stats and the same abilities, so it doesn't matter what you do. In all, though, the game clearly had some merit, because I've never spent quite that much time on one game before. And I didn't even finish all the sidequests (I've learned not to care about the optional ubermonster that has 7 million hit points and takes 5 hours to beat).

I also took a little time and finished up Katamari Damacy (I bought it when I was pregnant, and playing it made me feel ill, so I've had a slight aversion to it ever since). It was fun, but it has zero replay value.

Now that Final Fantasy is over, I've moved on to Kingdom Hearts II. Despite being full of Disney characters, it's a pretty fun game, and the plot is (so far) pretty interesting. The battle system is lame (mainly involves mashing the X button 1000000 times) and I hate the effing Gummi Ship, but the plot makes up for it. Man, a game that combined the gameplay of FFXII with the story quality of Kingdom Hearts would pretty much rule the entire world. Maybe such a game will exist by the time I retire, and then I can spend my golden years doing something I really love. Meanwhile, Chris can feel free to play as much golf as he wants and cook gourmet dinners for me. Sounds like a pretty good retirement to me.