Keeping track
Jan. 11th, 2024 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merrileemakesI kept a log of the books I read and games I played in 2024.
First impressions, I thought I would play more games and read less books! But my work has an avid book culture, which I've been enjoying. I used to read constantly as a kid but got burnt out of reading during uni and my early career. I'm enjoying reading for pleasure again.
Book of the year for me was Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham. It's a detailed account of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, but it's also much more. The book starts from the early days of the Soviet nuclear program and ends with the Fukushima meltdown in 2011, with commentary about the corruption and fall of the Soviet Union. Higginbotham, or maybe his editor, was also really respectful of the reader and very often used people's titles or job roles as well as their names when talking about them. This really helped when faced with the cast of thousands involved in the Chernobyl disaster, especially all the unfamiliar Slavic names. But the author did the same thing in his next book Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, and it helped heaps there too.
Both these books sound like grim reading, but I actually found them comforting. Both Chernobyl and Challenger were sudden and catastrophic events, but were actually preceeded by years of experts saying 'look, if you keep doing this it's going to end badly'. I feel better knowing that people do see things going badly before they happen, even if they can't prevent disaster. It's not all blind chaos.
I was expecting to play a lot more computer games this year than I did and I'm not sure why. Over the last 5 or so years I've been working through my Steam library of 300ish games and I'm now down to about 40. These are mostly the cream and the dregs, because I've already sampled everything in between.
I really wanted to like Firewatch, but the whole have-an-emotional-affair-with-your-lying-alcoholic-boss story just didn't sit well with me. And the plot ended up being very Scooby Doo. So my game of the year is Procession to Calvary. It's the exact mix of whimsy, social commentary and puns that I really enjoy. The entire game was made using famous artworks and music in the public domain, following a story of a lady knight who really just wants to murder people. There's a bit of puzzle solving and a bit of stabbing, but mostly it's pretty chill and very enjoyable.
I don't really have goals for number of books read or games finished per year. I think it's a bit arbitrary as a goal, as one "finish" can be 2 hours or 200. And I reject the sunk cost fallacy, so if a game or book (or knitting or weaving project, for that matter) is no longer doing it for me I will give up, I don't care if I'm 9% into it or 90%. (Especially point and click puzzle games that decide that the final challenge should be based not figuring things out but rapid-twitch jumping or fighting. I'm looking at you Broken Sword 3, Deliver us the Moon andthat game I can't remember the name of but had lots of walking in the snow Kona).
I've spent the tail end of 2024 getting ready to participate in a yarn stashdown during 2025. Prep involved getting the majority of my stash into Ravelry, which was fun but also involved a lot of yarn winding and got a bit tricky on my shoulder. So in an attempt to bring my laissez faire attitude to stash, I gave up winding with 9 skeins left to go. I'll do them later. Or not.
For 2025, my goal is to remember that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Execpt maybe adhering to that goal.
First impressions, I thought I would play more games and read less books! But my work has an avid book culture, which I've been enjoying. I used to read constantly as a kid but got burnt out of reading during uni and my early career. I'm enjoying reading for pleasure again.
Book of the year for me was Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham. It's a detailed account of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, but it's also much more. The book starts from the early days of the Soviet nuclear program and ends with the Fukushima meltdown in 2011, with commentary about the corruption and fall of the Soviet Union. Higginbotham, or maybe his editor, was also really respectful of the reader and very often used people's titles or job roles as well as their names when talking about them. This really helped when faced with the cast of thousands involved in the Chernobyl disaster, especially all the unfamiliar Slavic names. But the author did the same thing in his next book Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, and it helped heaps there too.
Both these books sound like grim reading, but I actually found them comforting. Both Chernobyl and Challenger were sudden and catastrophic events, but were actually preceeded by years of experts saying 'look, if you keep doing this it's going to end badly'. I feel better knowing that people do see things going badly before they happen, even if they can't prevent disaster. It's not all blind chaos.
I was expecting to play a lot more computer games this year than I did and I'm not sure why. Over the last 5 or so years I've been working through my Steam library of 300ish games and I'm now down to about 40. These are mostly the cream and the dregs, because I've already sampled everything in between.
I really wanted to like Firewatch, but the whole have-an-emotional-affair-with-your-lying-alcoholic-boss story just didn't sit well with me. And the plot ended up being very Scooby Doo. So my game of the year is Procession to Calvary. It's the exact mix of whimsy, social commentary and puns that I really enjoy. The entire game was made using famous artworks and music in the public domain, following a story of a lady knight who really just wants to murder people. There's a bit of puzzle solving and a bit of stabbing, but mostly it's pretty chill and very enjoyable.
I don't really have goals for number of books read or games finished per year. I think it's a bit arbitrary as a goal, as one "finish" can be 2 hours or 200. And I reject the sunk cost fallacy, so if a game or book (or knitting or weaving project, for that matter) is no longer doing it for me I will give up, I don't care if I'm 9% into it or 90%. (Especially point and click puzzle games that decide that the final challenge should be based not figuring things out but rapid-twitch jumping or fighting. I'm looking at you Broken Sword 3, Deliver us the Moon and
I've spent the tail end of 2024 getting ready to participate in a yarn stashdown during 2025. Prep involved getting the majority of my stash into Ravelry, which was fun but also involved a lot of yarn winding and got a bit tricky on my shoulder. So in an attempt to bring my laissez faire attitude to stash, I gave up winding with 9 skeins left to go. I'll do them later. Or not.
For 2025, my goal is to remember that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Execpt maybe adhering to that goal.
