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What I've recently finished reading:

Tombland by C. J. Sansom, the last of the Shardlake books. It's massive, I think the longest of these books, with a very long historical essay at the end which I'm slowly reading through. It's very firmly set within a historical event, namely Kett's Rebellion of 1549. Which is probably why it's so long. While some of the other books in the series include actual events such as the execution of Anne Boleyn or King Henry VIII's Progress to York, those are all mostly backdrop to the mystery plot. Here the plot is interwoven with the rebellion - actually kind of oddly, because it's really plot plot plot plot REBELLION REBELLION plot REBELLION, where suddenly the ostensible activity Shardlake's undertaking is put on the back-burner because of REBELLION, and it's mostly dropped until very near the end where the villain does a somewhat clunky exposition explaining everything. Not the smoothest of these books for sure, but still quite interesting, with great characters as usual.

What I'm reading now:

While I'm waiting for some holds to come in at the library, I started reading George Orwell's 1984, partly because one of the people I subscribe to on Substack (Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance) is hosting a group read of it. I haven't read it since I read it in college, for a class on "Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature", so it's pretty interesting to revisit. (And terrifying. Also, terrifying.)

Still watching:

We're getting close to the end of S2 of Arcane. I amused myself by abruptly recognizing Maddie's voice as Suvi in Mass Effect: Andromeda (Katy Townsend, typecast as a lesbian, I guess!). Then I checked the cast list and realized there are really so many actors I have heard in other things! But the only other one I recognized was Shohreh Aghdashloo, because of course I did, how can you not? (And hee, she was in Mass Effect (3) as well!)

Still playing:

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which is finally getting a little less linear. I set the difficulty one step down (I was on normal=3/5, set it to 2) and it's much kinder - I still get killed a few times by the toughest enemies at the end of each quest before I kill them and prevail, but that's okay.

Huh, I still haven't finished a book or a show (getting close on Tombland though) but I have played another game!

As I mentioned before, I told my brother about Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, and he enjoyed it so much he bought a bundle from the same publisher, Annapurna Games, and Gorogoa is one of those games, which he recommended to me. I bought it while it was still on sale for $5; it's back to $15, which, it's a great game but also very short (my time was 4.4 hours, and I'm a slow gamer!) so if it sounds interesting to you I recommend wishlisting it and buying it on sale.

This is a beautiful hand-drawn puzzle game. The plot is - obscure, to say the least (I looked at a Steam thread of people giving their interpretations, and they varied very widely!) but the basic story is a young boy's quest to collect five colored fruits. The puzzle mechanism, though, is something I'd never seen: the game window is divided into four panels (like a windowpane), and to progress you must zoom in and out on the panels, drag panels over one another (some of them have holes through which the lower panel can be seen), and move them around the game window (sometimes the panel is just a view on a larger area, which is revealed by moving; sometimes you must line up two panels in a particular way so something can pass between them). The panels are often not static art but contain moving parts, which you often must figure out how to take advantage of. Actually the Steam page "About this game" section does a pretty good job of showing how this works!

Now I am on to Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I have already died twice and I'm not even through the prologue part of the game, oog.