I only played the original one. I had a fair amount of fun with it for what it was. It can feel a bit empty and wide, but the gameplay was quite fun, even if the combat is kinda painfully easy most of the time. You can build basically however you want and become pretty OP.

Is the remake worth looking at for those who played the original? I was kinda ignoring it because I’d played through it once already. Wasn’t super sold on a second go-through.

…I really did not expect to see Christy Clark on that list, even if at only 4%. If I’d seen her running as a Con, that would not have surprised me so much. Responsible in BC for legislating striking teachers back to work with the argument that they could not legally bargain on topics like class size, something that much later finally got thrown out by the supreme court. She was a member of the BC Liberals, which were really the right-wing party in BC at the time.

I’d wager both left- and right-leaning people in BC have some bad memories of that one for differing reasons. I certainly have to imagine she’d be a quick way to lose the existing liberal voters here.

It seems feasible if you don’t imagine they’re all big novels. A lot of nonfiction you might borrow several of in one visit and not read front to back. Think recipe books, handicrafts, anything along those lines. Could also be smaller things like children’s books, poetry collections, etc., or some of the books were unusually expensive.

We already got to those ones.

It’s a 14 book series. It’s generally acclaimed for its world building and depth, but understood to be a bit of a slog in the middle. The original author, Robert Jordan, died while writing the 12th book, and Brandon Sanderson was chosen by Jordan’s widow to finish the story using notes left by Jordan for his successor. I never finished it myself but I understand these final works were very well received, and Sanderson is a great author himself.

I spent a few months in Germany years ago, and “Americans” (Amerikaner) tended to be used to refer to people from the Americas (either NA specifically or NA and SA collectively) in my experience. If you wanted to say someone was from the US, you’d say something more like “aus den USA.”

The last digit of pi is clearly the i, which would be equivalent to 19 after converting to base 10.

I use Downpour. They all kind of have the same pricing service. $12ish for a monthly one credit, buy more at the same price. Downpour lets you either use their app for syncing or just download the MP3 and/or M4B (a format similar to MP3 but with chapter stops for books) to use however you’d like.

Though I’m not sure it supports gifting. Someone else suggested Libro.FM which is very similar but I know does have gifting.

I avoid Audible personally, they’ve historically taken a huge cut from authors. I can get basically the same deal everywhere else. If you’re curious check out Brandon Sanderson’s various posts or media releases about the topic.

After Jones Soda did the six-pack of Thanksgiving dinner themed sodas (including Turkey & Gravy), this kind of thing just doesn’t surprise me any more. I guess it’s meant as more of a novelty thing than something people would actually use in seriousness.

Annette Marie has a number of series set in her world of The Guild Codex. Urban fantasy where guilds of “mythics” (mages of various sorts) live hidden from the mundane world. The first series The Guild Codex: Spellbound is a good place to start, featuring a normal human woman stumbling into a bartending gig for such a guild. That 8 book series within the world is complete. Book one is “Three Mages and a Margarita.”

Super engaging, and has great audio narration if you’re into that as well.

I took that zip file and imported it at Storygraph. That site isn’t perfect either but at least it’s building up instead of falling down, and seems to have heart. Also its recommendations, while hit and miss, are a lot better than what Goodreads has offered in the last couple years.

The two things I occasionally go back to Goodreads for at this point are the list of releases by authors I’m following, as you mention, and an FSF book club I’m in over there. That said I haven’t bothered tracking my books on GR for a while now. I really can’t see it turning around any time soon, especially now it’s Amazon owned, and Storygraph deals with that aspect of things very well.

I’ve also seen Bookwyrm mentioned around here lately as a Fediverse alternative. I’m not familiar with it or its features, but it’d bear looking at for comparison.

I largely limit myself to ebooks or audiobooks now, which generally means I’ve no need to purchase a book before the very second I intend to read it, unless I expect to be somewhere without internet for a while and need to predownload stuff.

If there’s a book in interested in but won’t be reading right away, then I put it on a TBR list. Previously on Goodreads, ATM I’m using Storygraph. Then when I’m looking to read something new I skim through the TBR list and pick something off of it to borrow or buy. In that sense it’s less a backlog and more a menu lol.

Another Kobo user, I have the Clara HD. I like having an eInk device for ease on the eyes, it has a good backlight with a natural light setting for warmer usage at night which is nice.

I suspect most basic ebook readers would be similar. I just wanted something feature-light that was purely for reading.

I did specifically want to avoid Amazon. Basically every other retailer uses the same ebook format: Epub, either DRM free or with Adobe Digital Editions DRM. This means most ereaders can use books from most retailers. The exception is Amazon - they use their own proprietary format with its own DRM to lock you into the Kindle ecosystem. Kindles can now read non-Amazon ebooks but non-Kindles can’t read Amazon ones due to this. I find that particularly scummy and want nothing to do with supporting it, especially when most books I buy through Kobo or other sites are completely DRM free by comparison.

(There are ways to get Amazon books you own onto other devices in a pinch if you do some searching. Questionable legality, even if you own the book, which is crazy to me, but it’s not impossible. Amazon has been updating their DRM against it, but it’s still doable.)

I personally can’t. I find it too distracting, even lyricless stuff. Oddly the opposite is often okay… I can listen to an audiobook while doing something else mindless and not miss out on details. But a physical or ebook generally takes my full attention.