This book is another where the topic wasn’t quite what I was expecting. The focus on healthcare made it not quite as useful as it could have been, however it was still very good. I liked the culture building focus that it had, and I know I need to do more of that.
I need to start reading the descriptions before deciding to try some of these books. This one was a lot more fundamentalist and fringe that I was expecting. The ideas espoused in this book were along the lines of ‘find God on your own, and continue to develop a relationship with God.’ I like that it is anti-religious-hierarchy, but the way in which they dismiss the structure for a personal relationship with God isn’t the direction I would go. I lean much more towards the reasoning reflection on what God could be and want with the world, instead of the vague notion of a relationship. There must be some sort of structure to the beliefs.
This was a really nice temporary ending to the series. I’ll pick it back up when the next ones come out. The wars in the title make up a very small part of the book, with a lot of politics and movements of the major characters playing a bit bigger of a role. The fires from the last book are featured heavily, and drive most of the action in this book. My favorite part is the understanding that Climbs-Quickly has of the human situations, even more than most of the humans involved.
This was a nice little book, and I enjoyed listening to it. The characters didn’t evolve much in the book, but the little bit that did happen was nice. The story didn’t touch on much more of the sentience and intrinsic value question, but the recap was nice.
This was a really nice book, and it reminds me of bending in the Avatar. I’ll probably go through the rest of the series.
Sunday, I took a train to the city to hang out with Nick. I showed up about an hour late, but was the second person there. We hung out for a good while. A few others came over, and we played a round of Ticket to Ride. It worked out really well for me, since everyone else was concentrated in another part of the board. I was having a really good time, and made a total of 138 points, completely destroying all the other players.
Stephanie was amazing, and took me to a surprise event on Saturday for my birthday. We went east into the valley and when we started getting close I saw the advertisements for the caves. I was still excited to see if it was going to be the caves. We got there and saw a map of the caverns, It went very deep and on top of that we got to repel through the ceiling! I was scared when I came through the crack in the top, because it was 100 feet from the floor. On the floor there was a “bone pile” that was made of hundreds of people who fell through the crack in the ceiling. We continued down to the adventure tour. The tiny cracks we crawled through in the adventure tour were just big enough to squeeze through. The best part was the final climb up a chimney and then the slide down the cave wall. I really enjoyed the trip and would love to do something like it again.
We biked to Palo Alto to meet up with some of Steph’s MIT friends at Patxi’s Pizza for dinner and got some tasty deep dishes. Then we stopped by Cream for desert. Two of the four friends live very close by, but they don’t come over much. They were pretty cool guys, so it would be nice to see them around more.
We played a good number of games Thursday, and I played all of mine with Chris and Jeff. It went surprisingly well, and we didn’t get into too much analysis paralysis. The first game I got out front with some really strategic plays and stayed there. I was also able to get a massive last turn that put me way out front. Chris got second by one point, just barely nudging out Jeff.
In dungeon dice, I was nice at one point and that came back to get me. I should have just been mean and let them take damage, but oh well. I enjoyed it, but it was a little short. There wasn’t time to build up a character and enjoy the abilities, because the game only goes to 4 points. It also doesn’t make sense to go past that since the monsters don’t get harder as your character gets better. I like the mechanics, but it seemed to be missing something in depth.
As always I liked playing Gauntlet of Fools. That is one game that never seems to get old. We played two rounds with Paul winning the first, then Chris and I tied on the second.
It's an Exciting World 