It was a week that was full of melancholy, and frustration last week, at least up until Friday, I think I might have managed to turn it around. I think I was getting my sleeping schedule quite effed up, staying up too late to finish some books, and that it just made my days worse. Or I think so. I’ve been working on keeping the sleeping schedule decent over the weekend, and slept a bit more, in hopes that it should fix it, and I feel a bit better today in the morning at least.

Books

I decided to start something new, rather than doing the reread I thought of last week, I’ve been hearing about Ruby Dixon’s books for a while, and thought, why not give them a try, I got the corsair series, and started reading it this week.

First out was The Corsair’s captive which had a fun start with some world building, setting up the couple and everything, and then it was over, it was a really short book, and it felt like it was to it’s detriment, what was there was really fun though, and it was a good start to the series, it just felt more like the good introduction to a book rather than a full one.

Second In the Corsair’s bed Which I enjoyed more, it was a fun story with characters tha I enjoyed more, and slowly the world-building was getting to a point that I felt more at home with the characters, and it ended too short again, but at least now I was starting to really get into the series which helps.

Then Enticed by the Corsair, This one had a premise that was a bit more enticing, there was some gore at the beginning that I didn’t enjoy much, but I guess it was needed for the characters to be as they are. Interesting in having a blinded character, which I enjoyed and it was now that it felt like the series really has started to getting a grip on me.

And then as the last of the series Deceiving the Corsair which is the next one up, and I really enjoyed it, but I think that a lot of it had to do on being built on top of the other books, and now the environment and everyone there felt more like home, I knew the characters, and everyone playing off each other was very enjoyable.

All in all the whole series clocked out on around 700 pages, so while it looks impressive reading that many books, it really wasn’t that much, it was a lot of fun though, and I enjoyed it, it just felt more like this was one long book divided up between the couples. Seen as a whole I really enjoyed the series more than the books seen by themselves.

Having finished off the series I then started on the follow up series with Corsairs: Adiron The first book in Corsair Brothers, And being a bit over half way through the first one, I have to say I enjoy this a lot more than the first series so far, first of all, all the books are around 400+ pages, which gives each couple and story time to stew, and the whole structure of the story so far at least reminds me more of how Jessie Mihalik does it, with some more story vowen into the story of the relationship, which is nice. I’m really looking forward to continue on with these through this week and probably longer as well, as these are quite a lot longer than the first series.

Games

This week has mostly been going on with things I’ve played before. I’ve been having some more fun with Rift of the Necrodancer taking a little break off of doing practice and working on the hard songs, as I’m starting to get to another spike in difficulty that needs me being better at sight reading to just understand what the game wants from me, so I’ve been playing some remix mode on moderate to get better at it, and it’s a lot of fun, this game just has such a great set of songs. My biggest problem is that I get into a focus hole with this game so easily, so if I don’t watch out and at best set a timer, I can just go into a trance and wake up hours later without feeling that I have done anything. It’s a wonderful game though, and I will probably keep on playing it for a long while.

I’ve been doing some more puzzles in Picross S+ as well, and am getting closer to getting the e2 puzzles done, I have about 30 normal ones and 27 mega picross puzzles to do to get through it, and it’s still a fun puzzle to do when I don’t really feel up to thinking too much.

And I’ve been keeping on going with Dungeon Encounters it’s still a game that I enjoy a lot, it’s pretty grindy, and yeah, you will have to be pretty patient to get to the end of it I think, but there is so much fun stuff in there that is not really easy to see when you look at pictures of it. With the really minimal aesthetics of the game, it just invites my mind to make up it’s own stuff, stories and places etc, and this game kind of does that in the same way that I feel like a book often is working together with the author to create and better the story as you read it. I’m getting to kind of a difficulty spike in it now, where my current weapons are starting to get kind of weak for the monsters around me, but I haven’t really yet gotten to a place where I can replace them, so I should probably trudge back out to a store, and see if they have some better ones. I’m managing so far, but there hasn’t really been that many drops lately to catch up to. I’m also enjoying gathering up the wandering people lost in the labyrinth and bringing them back home, there isn’t really any reward from doing it, but it’s a nice side quest to do, and I enjoy it so I do it anyway. Fun stuff.

As the last game that I played for a bit was Soulstone Survivors and it’s fun, it’s more or less a bog standard survivors game that doesn’t really do that much new, but it’s focus on dashing is pretty fun, and it has some nice progression systems that are fun to do, so it’s just something that is enjoyable spending some time with.

I did also get Gato Robato a small little exploratory platformer, and Slime 3k: Rise against despot both for less than 2€ each, they looked interesting enough that I thought why not, I haven’t really played any of them enough to make up an opinon of them though, I’ll leave those for later, for now I’m having fun with my current setup of games.

Media

And much more than that I haven’t really been doing, still going through my standard rotation of podcasts, not really feeling like adding anything new lately, also a bit behind still since my vacation, it takes quite a lot of time to get back to where I have just a week of a backlog. My favourite podcasts still is Into the Aether and Video game podtimism they just are fun, happy, and a little injection of positivity in my weeks, and it’s nice that one releases on wednesday, and the other on sunday, so that they are spread out a bit. Stay Forever is another one that really is giving me a lot of joy, they just had a 2-parter on Windows-95 and there is an episode of super mario world lying in wait for me, so that is something to look forward to as well.

So that was my week I think, at least the enjoyable parts of it, having a nice walk in the weekend, and trying to reign in things a bit to get some more sleep made it feel a bit short, but on the other hand restful, so there is that. Here is for an even better week this week.