For some reason i haven't felt emotionally up to watching tv or playing much in the way of games, but i'm just fine with reading. Maybe it's because i read a lot as a kid/teen when i was feeling depressed (though i obviously played plenty of games back then too.) Or maybe it's because playing games (sometimes) and watching TV (almost always) were things i did with shelleycat, while reading was something i would just do next to shelleycat. Or maybe it's because i seem to be picking up books with decent amounts of tragedy in them, and my brain figures wallowing in depressing books is an acceptable activity when i'm depressed.

I just finished seanan_mcguire's "Late Eclipses". I love her books, including the Mira Grant ones, but she seems to be trying to understudy for Joss Whedon. Almost every books she writes has at _least_ one character you care about get killed off in it, and sometimes a lot more than one. I won't say if Late Eclipses is on the low end or the high end of the spectrum, but it is not an exception. I started reading it sometime last week, but i got through about 90% of it sunday and monday. I feel like perhaps i ought to go reread the older ones since it seemed like i'd forgotten a couple of plot points and hints and omens, but who has time to reread the old books when she writes three or four new ones a year? =P

I also finished up "Mockingjay." As already mentioned i was about halfway through it last monday, and i believe i finished it up friday morning. I know some people have been unhappy with it and i can understand why. However i thought it was depressingly reasonable and realistic, though maybe that was just due to the mood in which i was reading it.

So at the start of the week i was at the part, she's got her not-quite lover back, but he's been mentally damaged and doesn't really know her anymore. Great. Sure hope that's not an omen =P Then by the end of the week her squadmates are getting killed left and right, including ones she was reasonably good friends with, and then her sister gets killed. Even better =P

The goal to personally infiltrate the capital and assassinate President Snow is exactly the kind of thing that people are always doing in stories, but which ought to be really frickin hard to do in real life. Even after everything else just the idea that they'd somehow manage to shove themselves to the front of the the hoard of people trying to get sanctuary in the mansion seemed like a pretty daunting task all in itself. So although it doesn't fit the heroic tradition it didn't bother me that much that overall the whole thing went down in flames. Er, so to speak =P

I guess i was right about President Coin being a problem for the second half of the book, though it wasn't nearly to the extent i was expecting. And i still haven't quite figured out why Katniss voted for a "last" Hunger Games. Did she think she wouldn't be given the chance to kill Snow and/or Coin if she'd voted no? And it's never really explained why that Hunger Game never happened, though it's stated quite clearly that it didn't. Obviously the assassination of Coin caused some disruption, but it didn't seem like it was necessarily all her idea to begin with.

I also don't think her worries at the end about what her kids would think about she and Peeta had done were reasonable. I mean i can understand why she'd be worried about it given what she went through, but it's not like kids ever really understand the crap their parents had to go through if they don't have to deal with something similar themselves. That's part of the reason wars keep happening after all. Past wars always sound exciting and romantic to a lot of the next generation. If anything t's entirely possible when they do tell the kids about it and instead of being horrified they start doing the hero worship thing, and she'll end up even more traumatized by that.

So anyways, it's time to pick a new book to read. Perhaps i'll go with the new Honor Harrington. That should be nice light fun reading with absolutely no one dying or any other kind of tragedy =P

Meanwhile on Audible i'm listening to Heinlein and Spider Robinson's Variable Star, so at least i'm reading one fairly light hearted thing. So far it definitely seems like a strange and interesting mix of Heinlein and... not.