The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

It has been months since I last reviewed anything, even though I finished this some time ago. Wow.
I quite liked The Way of Kings, and it is a pity that I could not find a
picture that does it justice, although that may be physically impossible.
Setup:Very in depth, with at least five consistent viewpoints, and several oneshot viewpoints with their own sidestories. Note: Saying too much would spoil it. I did like it, though.
Execution:Fairly good, although it leaves far more questions than it answers, so perhaps a reason to wait until more have come out.
 Swearing/Crude Language:Fairly mild, with the most common expletive being Storming/Storm it, although I believe that there were a smattering of D-words making up a tiny fraction of the exclamations of a very long book.
Violence:Several fight scenes, lots of secondary character death, some surgery, so on and so forth. Perfect for Timmy!
Other: Fictional religion, several references to various gods also called Heralds, supernatural powers, several characters uttering things both strange and cryptic as they die, talk of special swords severing a persons soul if they cut you, a character is upset about being attracted to his brother's widow.

Children of an Elder God by John Biles and Rod M.

2026 Update: I have an apology to make. I shouldn't have recommended this, because I wasn't actually comfortable with the content. I also really shouldn't have been so oblique about the sexual content warnings, even if I didn't know how to phrase that section without making it seem more intense than it seemed to me at the time. I did like some parts of it quite a bit (the first chapter with the light-versus-darkness energy fields followed by the giant robots mutating to take aspects of their destroyed foe, and also the reinterpretation of LCL as black foul-smelling sludge, plus one scene near the end where Fishwoman Ritsuko Akagi is obliged to kill her mother right after the first nice thing her mother had done for her, which was offer to shelter her and Maya Ibuki during the apocalypse - and curses her for that kindness in such a melancholy way -) but other scenes have stuck with me which I wish had not. It may also be lost media, given the broken image link. Aside from the Sexual Content section, this review is unedited; you get to read a much younger me's phrasing choices.

Another review!

I liked Children of an Elder God quite a lot, but I do need to warn you about some of the content.

• Setup: Neon Genesis Evangelion with the Pseudo-Christian parts replaced with the works of  Howard Phillips Lovecraft (and successors).
• Execution: Like I said, I liked it, but it is fairly faithful to both universes, so not exactly kid friendly all the time.
• Swearing: Bad, the main characters are both teenagers and soldiers, and it is handled mostly realistically, F-Bombs are dropped infrequently, as well as D-words and S-words, both English and German.
• Violence: Again, the Cthulhu Mythos and Neon Genesis Evangelion, together, portrayed fairly faithfully, so you should not be surprised that body horror, blood, and eldritch abominations being eaten by humungous mecha abound.
• Sexual content: More than I was comfortable with, and on reflection, more than I'm comfortable with in a story I recommend (hence the uncertain tone of this post for the last 14 years). Though kept mostly offscreen, there are a couple scenes I've had cause to regret having read. Rape is a recurring theme, as is sexual degeneracy as synonym for the influence of evil powers; either one able (somehow) to transmit the other.
• Religious/Others: Talk of eating souls, "beings" called Outer Gods, talk of cults worshiping beings of great power, talk of being possessed by some of said beings, the whole Violator incident (and its aftermath), general amorality, none of this is portrayed as being good or right, although the soul eating thing is portrayed as a necessary (or at least unavoidable) part of getting stronger in order to defend humanity.

I did like it, and it is probably less disturbing than NGE apparently got near the end, but this is based on the work that brought you Post Apocalypse Stress Disorder (my nickname for it) and eldritch mecha, so if you take offense at enough of the previously listed things, you should probably give this one a miss.
Update: Last chapter has been published, but not available from the main page.

Something Under the Bed is Drooling by Bill Watterson

About : Calvin
Type of book : comic book.
I thought it was pretty funny.
It's about a 6 year old boy who can change his world with his imagination.

Literature course

As I think all of my readers know, I homeschool my children.  This year, we are officially doing a literature course.  The deal is this: children have to choose a certain number of books from my list (below) plus the same number of books of their own choice.  They write a review of each book they read.  We probably discuss it (especially the Shakespeare and Chaucer) both while they're reading and after.  They also each write in a journal.  Because as best I can tell, everything needed in an English course is encompassed in the regular, practical use of English - reading, personal writing, writing for an audience.  We'll probably cover persuasive writing and presenting when we get into politics and/or social studies.
Most of the books for the younger children we get from the library; most of the books for the older children are available for free online.
The list:

Up to age 9 - pick your age from this list, then the same number of others of your own choice
Rascal the Dragon (each book in the series counts as 1)
McCormick-Mathers challenge readers (each story counts as 1)
20th century children's book treasury (each story counts as 1)
Make way for McCloskey
Any Caldecott with words
Any scriptures (one chapter counts as 1)
Other options - just ask!

Age 10+ - half your age and half your age (so 10 reads 5 and 5; 11, 5 and 6 or 6 and 5, etc )
On the revolutions of the Spheres
French for Reading
Novum Organum
Shakespeare - Sonnets
Shakespeare - Plays
Peloponnesian war
Herodotus - histories
Canterbury Tales
Any Jane Austen
Any Louisa May Alcott
Frankenstein
Dracula
The Illiad
The Odyssey
Any scriptures - one book counts as a 1 (e.g. Genesis)
Other options - just ask!

Larklight by Phillip Reeve

Told from the viewpoint of Art Mumby, this is about the adventures that he and his sister Myrtle have across space. Set in the Victorian era and written as if the Victorians were right about everything that they thought about how science was going to advance (steam power for everything, alchemy, inhabitable planets, etc...) I really enjoyed this book.

Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

By LessWrong

In light of my previous scathing review,
let me share a few words on something I actually like today.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is Fanfiction of unusually* high quality**, here is the setup.

The Blurb: "Petunia married a biochemist, and Harry grew up reading science and science fiction. Then came the Hogwarts letter, and a whole new world that had never heard of Science. And new friends, like Hermione, and Professor McGonagall, and Professor Quirrell."

While this is technically accurate, it leaves out some of the more awesome^ parts, like the extracurricular student battles, Harry^^ being a Chessmaster, or the sheer number of shout outs, references, and jokes that make it awesome.

Content Rating: I would put it at Teen/10+
Swearing: Mild to none (I honestly do not remember)
Anything Else: Mild, some battles between students with stunning spells,oh, and the (nonlethal) duel in azkaban
Recommended For: Audiences both mature and geeky enough to enjoy it.

*Not hard. Probably.
**Good writing, solid characters, no need for (drastic) rewrites after posting***
***Apparently, Miles Vorkosigan is still at Hogwarts.
^DISCLAIMER: All opinions expressed are mine, and probably not laws of the universe.
^^And Draco, and Lucius, and Dumbledore, and Professor Quirrell.

Temple Dress Bag Pattern

My Relief Society asked me to make up this pattern; I thought this would be the easiest way to make it available to everyone who might want it. 

These images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.  If you want to use them for something outside the scope of that license, contact me by leaving a comment on this blog (this post or the most recent post), and we will discuss it. (Mostly this means: you can use it, but say where you got it, and ask me first if you want to charge.)