Chris

Yes. It is the worst piece of music I voluntarily subject myself to. I despise it.

I've noticed that the older the book we've read for the Idle Book Club, the more strenuously polarizing it is among our readership. I imagine this is because the distance between the setting and ourselves is wide enough that people who enjoy the book in question enjoy it so much that its positive qualities overcome any historical disconnect, whereas the people who don't enjoy it can't even fall back on relating to the characters or situations in a baseline "they're people like me" sense. That's interesting--I'm halfway through, and I enjoyed the Paris stuff much more than the Spain stuff so far. That's primarily due to the prose itself than for any other reason, though.

Hey guys, really sorry about the Walking Dead Season One spoiler. I reuploaded the file and the specific spoiler moment is now censored out.

Owned!

Of course, but the farther you zoom in on anything dealing with human interaction, the harder it is to represent systemically in an honest and believable way. Civilization is deliberately abstract and pulled-out. Almost everything in that game is only very roughly representative. If you zoom farther out from interpersonal friendships, they also become more abstract and able to be represented somewhat convincingly. That's why The Sims is more convincing than Facade (as well as other reasons, of course), and why games that do depict interpersonal relationships very well tend to lean more heavily on well-authored assets and writing than many other kinds of things depicted in games.

Yeah I am but like Sean I also can't remember where we were sitting.

I was in the audience for that! I didn't entirely understand what was happening but it sure was exciting.

Nice, are you in Porter Square? I lived at Highland & Cherry, basically equidistant to Porter and Davis Squares. Great location.

I listened to the New York Times Book Review Podcast, Bookworm, and the Slate Audio Book Club. I still listen to the NYTBR podcast every week; Bookworm I probably listen to half the episodes, and the Slate Audio Book Club seems to go away for months at a time (cough). I also read the New York Times Book Review fairly regularly. But the most significant difference between my habits then and now—and this is extremely frustrating—was that when I was in Boston, I lived quite close to an absolutely amazing bookstore called Porter Square Books. It's an independent bookstore that sells only new books (not used) and has a great cafe inside of it run by an independent pizza shop down the street. It's just a wonderful place that feels really good to be inside. I would go there almost every night on my way home from work, just to get a cup of tea or coffee and read. I bought all my books from there. They always had all the newest hardbound fiction on a big table right in front, and three or four days a week they have author events in the evening. I have simply never found anything like that since: an independent new-oriented bookstore with a cafe inside of it. It's either a huge corporate bookstore like Barnes & Noble, or a sort of disheveled used bookstore. Neither of those are bad; I enjoy both for what they are. But neither is what I really want as a place I can use as a way to genuinely keep me in tune with the literary world. Porter Square Books fulfilled that need amazingly well for me, to the point where I've found it very difficult to recreate in the absence of such an establishment. That probably means I just don't consider it important enough, or I'd figure it out, but man that place made it easy. I miss it more than any other establishment in the Boston area.

Well he chose to put the accent on there!!

Physical traits like health and magical ability and stuff are inherited, just not the "special characteristics" stuff, which makes (very general) sense to me. As for equipment I just interpret it as "this equipment is passed down in the family as heirlooms," even though obviously that implies someone is collecting the equipment from the dead body somehow and returning it.

This thread reminds me how much I've fallen out of sync with the literary world recently. When I moved to Boston I, for various reasons, got incredibly into literature. I read a ton of books and listened to a bunch of book podcasts and always new what new literary fiction was coming out or on the verge of coming out, and what everyone in that world thought about it. But since moving back to San Francisco, I've been reading less and and much less up to date on that whole scene. It's actually a real bummer. I'm finding it hard to recreate those specific conditions that led to those tendencies on my part.

I'm glad you feel the Le Carre discussion was interesting because I basically wanted to re-record it immediately after we wrapped because I feel like I so fully squandered my chance to say anything interesting about that book. Jesus.

Ah if that's the case, then yeah my claim doesn't apply. That would surprise me! In StarCraft 2 you can adjust the resolution but has no effect on the scale of the units or world relative to your screen size. You fit the exact same amount of stuff in the screen, it's just rendered at higher DPI.

That kind of thing is deliberate in many competitive multiplayer games (StarCraft is the same way) because it is one part of keeping everyone on the same playing field—so you don't have some players able to see more of the arena than others.

This is incredibly tragic and difficult to believe. Ryan Davis was one of the friendliest and most supportive people you could ever hope to meet. It's really impressive to be able to maintain that demeanor consistently while also being caustic and witty when needed; few manage it. What a good dude.

I may have misspoke if I suggested Civ 4 has a fundamentally cynical worldview. What I meant (or at least what I mean) is that Civ 4 feels a bit more like a blank slate. It is, I think, a stronger game in its interaction of systems in that respect. It's not a LACK of positivity that the game has, it's just that Civ 5 goes out of its way to highlight it more.

"Open-world games," I think. There had been plenty of games with "open worlds" before, but they were generally already contained within other genres, like RPG or something. I think GTA is what prompted the terminology "open-world game."

I played all those shitty games when they came out so I could write some dumb thing about them at the time.

We r dum

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

The time isn't really something we have a lot of control over. We live in the Pacific time zone and record the podcast after work; them's the breaks. We're going to push it straight out to YouTube every time though so it's easier to watch afterwards.

Yeah, that's what I meant by Henry not necessarily being the BEST character—Anne Bolyn is handled totally masterfully. I just meant Henry is fascinating as he is a KIND of character who is almost never represented like this.

I think I was most fascinated by Henry. Which isn't to say I liked him most, or found him the best-drawn of any character, necessary; but the way he was portrayed felt the most unique and ambitious in the context of fiction. Portraying a medieval monarch with this degree of subtlety can't be an easy task for a modern novelist.

Cromwell may not be personally awestruck by it in the way others are, but he is aware of it, and I feel Mantel effectively conveys to the reader how Henry's force of will does indeed create a palpable aura of power around him—which makes his often pathetic insecurities revealed in confidence all the more meaningful.