Film Review: Barbie

This about Culture, tagged , was written by for , on July 29, 2023 .No Comments

Barbie (2023) ★★★★★

This might be a “Woke” film, but it is Wokeness with a human cafe.

Film Review: Wheel of Time S01

This about Culture, tagged , , , was written by for , on January 27, 2022 .No Comments

Wheel of Time: Season 1 (2022) ★

Rafe’s adaptation of Robert Jordan’s world of eternal return keeps your eyes glued to the screen just on account of how utterly bad and cringe it is.

Game Review: UnderRail

This about Culture, tagged , , , was written by for , on September 16, 2019 .28 Comments

UNDERRAIL (2015) Rating: 5/5 You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as an ordered, categorized list of all my video game reviews and ratings here: https://akarlin.com/games WARNING: SPOILERS. UnderRail is an isometric turn-based RPG set in the deep future, long after an unspecified disaster has […]

Game Review: Civilization V

This about Culture, tagged , was written by for , on August 8, 2015 .No Comments

Civilization V (2010) ★★ I think it’s by far the worst of the series. This is “Civilization for Dummies,” so to speak (as one reviewed called it). Consider: 1. The AI is primitive, as if it’s actually going backwards rather than forwards with time. Difficulty levels are determined by artificially giving the computer controlled civs […]

Of Rats and Men

This about Culture, tagged , , was written by for , on April 25, 2013 .5 Comments

This is a (very preliminary) prologue to a sci-fi novel I’ve been thinking of writing for some time. It’s called 100 YEARS TO VICTORY, but obviously liable to change. My sole question is: Would you continue reading the rest of this book? It’s been nearly a decade since I built my first cage. It was […]

Book Review: C.S. Friedman – Black Sun Rising

This about Culture, tagged , , was written by for , on April 15, 2013 .1 Comment

Black Sun Rising (Book 1 of the Coldfire Trilogy) by C.S. Friedman, published in 1991. Rating: 3/5. The Coldfire Trilogy is sometimes described as a successful fusion of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. So what better work to start reviewing on this site? I will be forthright: By far the most wondrous and intriguing element of this series […]

All The Books I’ve Read, Running Through My Head. This Is Not Enough.

This about Culture, tagged , , was written by for , on March 31, 2013 .18 Comments

Over the past week I’ve completed one of my most significant projects, though I’m not megalomaniac enough to think it will present much interest to other people. It’s a list of all the books I’ve ever read. Well, not all of them, of course. That’s unrealistic. Since completing it, I’ve remembered a couple more. But […]

Our Lady of Shadows

This about Culture, tagged , , was written by for , on October 13, 2012 .No Comments

An original poem: And there shall come a time of wist and woe, When flesh grows weak and spirit fails, Of dark foreboding (and of secret glee), When I look down into the Abyss. There in its sad and murky depths, Where daemons lurk and spirits fall, The realm of death awaits. With its tenebral […]

The Top 5 Books On Everything

This about Culture, tagged , , was written by for on June 20, 2012 .40 Comments

Good books are of course far better than almost anything you can read in a magazine or find on the Internet. They are also of double the benefit when the reader actually interacts with them, e.g. by writing a review. I have about 25 of these on my two blogs, but they still come very […]

Whiskey Trickles Into Russia’s Drinking Culture

This about Culture, tagged , , was written by for on February 6, 2012 .49 Comments

Russia has a long and proud drinking culture; according to the chronicle of its founding, the main reason it chose Christianity over Islam was the latter’s prohibition of booze. Vodka has been distilled there since at least the 12th century. As of the time of writing, it is the world’s largest spirits market by volume […]

Esperanto Estas La Plej Facila Lingvo En La Mondo

This about Culture, tagged , , , was written by for , on October 9, 2011 .43 Comments

In the course of my Chinese adventures, all other languages started to seem a lot easier. So needless to say that Esperanto, one of the easiest of them all, looks like just a walk in the park now. In particular, I’m interested in what the glossophiles here think about it, i.e. yalensis and Lazy Glossophiliac. Here […]

More On Learning Chinese

This about Culture, tagged , , was written by for , on August 12, 2011 .21 Comments

So today I finished my intensive Chinese class, which I celebrated by drinking lots of 啤酒 (and silently toasting the heroic oppositionistas struggling against UK bourgeois state tyranny). Here is my third set of observations. 1. Most other languages now look really easy, especially Spanish which I’ve long planned to learn but never really found myself […]