Mike > Recent Status Updates

Reading at a pace of one page every two minutes makes for slow going, but when I pick it up, it's tough to put down.

If the action stops, send everyone to war!

This is a very slow read, but I'm making progress. The further in I get, the more I laugh at the trappings and inner workings of upper class society in Elizabethan Britain.

I like this book more and more as I go on. As much as one woman is full of virtue and pleases no one, another is full of deceit and pleases everyone by artfulness. But where can it all lead?

We've finally taken an intriguing turn. How much can happen to the characters in this beast of a novel?

There really WAS a dread pirate Roberts, and he wasn't actually dreadful at all.

Don't let the title fool you -- this is the story of the rise and fall of SEGA. It includes a nice condensed history of Nintendo's rise after the Crash in '83, and I'm just now starting to read about the PlayStation. I'm eating up every word.

Bodies are weird, and the laws surrounding them are weird, and the people involved with their disposal are weird, too. I'm really enjoying this book.

History testifies that once-famous people pass out of popular knowledge. Who ever heard of captain John Avery, the Arch-Pirate? Drury Lane staged a play about his exploits during his lifetime!

All the nations in the West Indies (England, Spain, France, and the Netherlands) all commissioned privateers to plunder the other countries' shipping, even when no one was at war. It makes sense when orders from the governing authorities are several weeks in arriving. Jamaica isn't going to protect itself, you know.

Fun-loving, parrot-sporting hearties or bloodthirsty criminals? The answer lies somewhere between the extremes. First fun fact: English Channel pirates were part of organized crime syndicates!

Thus far, a whimsical coming-of-age tale (which is odd for a 40-year-old protagonist) with a slight element of supernatural mystery. I was on board with the prose until a toast was rendered as "Here, here." Hire an editor, please.

What we really need is a language where colorless green ideas can't sleep furiously.

"This work was designed for those with leisure, and not for anyone else -- and to anyone who reads merely to pass the time, nothing can be too long provided it fulfills that function."

No kidding, Boccaccio.

Everyone is wasting away from pining after beautiful people, dying of broken hearts. Never has the word FICTION had more meaning.

No, Giovanni, domestic violence is NOT the way to resolve marital strife.

Ninety-six stories down, four interminable tales to go.

Fourteen stories left. I'm looking forward to the next book, whatever it is.

After a long hiatus, I'm back on the Decameron horse. I've just seventeen stories remaining.

Just over 1/4 of the stories behind me. Keep on rolling...

The only positive depiction of the clergy thus far is a dude who died at the start of a story and subsequently was impersonated by a complete tool, who was afterwards canonized. All the rest have been lecherous monks, lecherous nuns, and incompetent friars.

But one beset merchant extolled St. Julian for bringing him through his trials, and the framework storytellers keep the sabbath. Commentary on social religion?

All sorts of things happen in these stories, and I don't think Boccaccio is interested in forcing his morals upon the reader. People do all the messed up stuff and still come out ahead.

Ah, to live in a blissful world where everyone rises at the same time, all the food is made for you, there's nothing to do but twist garlands from the grasses and entertain one another with stories.

Some of these stories are not that great, though.

Now that we've set up the framework of ten young people taking up residence in a palatial estate just outside Florence during the Plague Years, we can get to the meat of this tome -- the one hundred short stories told by each member of the group.

It works out to 8.5 pages per story. Let's get crackin'.

I guess books half-comprised of MS Paint drawings tend to move faster than other books. I can already tell I'll be re-reading this a bunch.

Boccaccio: women are the weaker sex and more prone to lovesickness, but it's tough to have everyone else make your decisions for you and spend your life locked away in your room, so I wrote these tales to save womenfolk from the loom and the spindle, hoping to provide distraction and pleasure.

I guess that passes for feminism in the 14th century...

The new stories are just as entertaining as the standards from the blog, but some of the old art has been re-drawn. I'm experiencing a little cognitive dissonance between the words I'm expecting to see and those in the book, but I'm still enjoying every page.

Dear authors: if you've already established that the fate of the future essentially centers around one character, possible death scenarios involving that character become inherently meaningless.

Well, my two least-favorite characters are now in the same place as my favorite character. Maybe the effect will be positive.

Still waiting for plot to happen.

We have completely lost the plot.

Now the book is about showcasing characters' abilities, rehashing established plot points, refusing to resolve important ones, and getting preachy about the aftermath of destruction.

Also, I don't care a whit about your characters when they can do no wrong and are their own worst enemies. Spare me.

Let's get on with it. OK, book?