I'm trying something a little different today. Rather than actually writing a blog post, I'm literally just speaking it into my microphone and getting rid of all the transcription mistakes afterwards, changing things around to make it sound more coherent. This is all because sometimes the idea of writing a blog post itself can also have more appeal than the process of actually writing it, much like the topic of this post, discussing when the idea of being someone who reads lots of books has more appeal than actually sitting down and reading books for yourself.

I was going to drop the title of challenge run completely because I'd been doing so well, but looking back on it, that was much more relevant to luck than skill, because this part really hurt a lot, and things are only going to get harder from here. Characters who have died so far: Frey, Bord, Vyland Chapter 7 - Lefcandith Gauntlet…

There's something that I've noticed recently that has really started to annoy me: unnecessary announcements. The kind of people I'm talking about here are mostly train drivers/pilots who for absolutely no reason whatsoever will just turn on the loudspeakers and make an announcement which adds absolutely nothing of value, interrupting everyone’s day with information they obviously knew already or could have checked for themselves very easily.

First of all, I would like to apologise to any King's Avatar fans who are reading this review, because while I really enjoy this series, and have lots of good things to say about it, I felt very little of that was actually in this volume. I would say around 1/3rd of it was excellent, while the remaining 2/3rds felt like I was reading volume 3 again and was just kind of awful.

Oh yeah!!! I'm staying up late today. It feels so good! I only ever had the chance to do it a few times when I was young, and I always wanted to do it more. Well, since I'm an adult, now I can! Yeah! It's one of the few advantages of being 26. There is a problem though, and that is that I now love sleep so much too, to a point where I won't stay up unless there is a really good reason, for example being trapped in an underground facility after being kidnapped when your blog's Nigerian Prince investor ran out of money.

Welcome back to this Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon challenge run. Start from the beginning here to catch up on the rules. Let's see if I can survive a few more chapters! Chapter 5 - Champions of Aurelis I went into this fight with quite a lot of nerves having just lost Bord due to a stupid tactical mistake, and now suddenly I had to leave 8 characters behind!

In addition to my serious review of this book, I have quite a lot of random spoiler-filled thoughts that I would also like to share, which didn't really fit into the review. Front Covers I was so pleased when I went online and saw that the English front covers used the same art as the Chinese ones (just without the additional Chinese characters) as they are all so brilliant.

I've decided not to explain it any more, because not much makes sense. All I will say is you can find context here. Much to my amazement, I stumbled into another room of this underground facility at the weekend (or was it last weekend) and found a really cool go-carting track. I learned the ropes, almost crashed a few times, but when I finally finished, I found a huge stockpile of binoculars at the finish line which I eagerly took back to my cell.

Find part 1 containing the rules here. This challenge continues into chapter 3 with no deaths so far! Chapter 3 - A Brush in the Teeth This battle takes place over a mountain pass, and we meet Julian and Leena, who I made escape down the mountain very quickly because I was kind of terrified of them dying. It seemed kind of clear that the best course of action was to wait for them to come down the mountain on the right while checking the castles and villages nearby.

It's been over a year, but I'm now pleased to announce that I've finally completed all three volumes of The Clown in Mandarin Chinese. It was certainly an interesting experience, so I thought I'd relay my thoughts and feelings to those considering making the commitment to give this series a try. World Building and Detail The world of this book is packed to the brim with detail, leaving you feeling extremely immersed as if it could easily be a real place.

I can't believe I seriously had the nerve to state that I was better, despite being locked in this underground facility by kidnappers who accidentality locked themselves out of the building and are as I write still trapped in the swimming pool. The pots and plants that I used to cover and hide the Triwango hoot owl of death have certainly helped, but I keep having dreams of an owl stating "I am the inquisitor!

I've always played Fire Emblem on easy difficulty with the ability to revive dead allies once the chapter has ended, so while I have played quite a bit of fire emblem (completed Awakening and Echoes, played Birthright and Three houses) my experience has never been particularly difficult or challenging. Unfortunately when I picked up Shadow Dragon for the DS, I realised that permadeath was always on, and kind of resented the game for that.

Things have been tough, but I'm doing better. To summarise a huge story, once this blog's funding from its generous Nigerian Prince investor ran out, I was taken to this underground facility against my will by people who were making an AI rip-off of Duolingo called Triwango. Its logo is the Hoot Owl of Death. Something about having a huge three-eyed skeletal death owl on every single wall of this underground facility really started to make me feel stressed every day.

I feel this game is a bit of harmless fun that everyone can enjoy, and something I discovered completely by accident. Do you ever notice that when you're playing a video game, NPCs seem to teleport around to various locations and you have no idea how they got there ahead of you? Well, this is essentially what the game tries to recreate, because the truth is, with a bit of clever planning everyone can be in two places at once.

I felt devastated to hear the news of Keigo Higashino's death because he had written so many books that meant so much to me, and had influenced me in so many ways. There was just something about the way he wrote human nature in its darkest moments that felt so real and believable. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else.

I am reading this series incredibly quickly now that I'm listening to it in audiobook form. While it took me two weeks to read volume 4, this only took one! Well, it was probably 8 days actually, but to me, that's close enough! I was only able to do this because I had a lot more time than usual, so I would be shocked if I could read another one this fast again anytime soon.

First I lost my investment from my Nigerian Prince investor, then I found myself kidnapped in an underground facility with a swimming pool, free food, WiFi access and a water slide to Spain. After that, I started to hallucinate about a creepy green owl following me within the facility, and only then I considered my options about whether or not I should escape…

If you are travelling in China you will inevitably need the toilet when you are outside at some point, and when that happens you might be in for a bit of a surprise. You will enter the bathroom and think "Oh, where is the toilet? This is nothing but a hole in the ground!" Then a few seconds later you will think "Oh, I have to go in a hole in the ground."

It feels like every time I review a volume of the King's Avatar I complain about the character chosen for the book to quite a large level of detail. Since this can distract from the review, I thought it would be a lot easier to just write my ideal volume cover characters here so that it's all in one place, and my reviews can focus more on the actual content of the book!

I wasn’t originally going to write about Huo Wang until I had finished the second book, but then PiXian happened, and I knew I just had to talk about everything straight away, plus I’m way too hyped for the anime! So without further ado, here are my thoughts on chapters 175-280. On the Road If you didn't like the point in the story where they left the cave and travelled around before starting the next arc, then I have some very unfortunate news: there is a lot more of that here.

This book took less than two weeks to listen to, so while it's not the fastest I've ever read a book in Mandarin Chinese, it is definitely the most words I've read of a complete book in that same amount of time, and the only way that was really possible was because I enjoyed it quite a lot. Here are my thoughts!

I think confusion is the best way to describe recent events that have happened to me. It's been an absolute roller-coaster, especially because I have literally been on a roller-coaster, or a two hour water slide through the Earth's crust to what I now understand to be Spain. That was a very weird day. Find out how I got myself locked in this weird underground facility by myself…

I've never looked at the night sky for as long as I did when I was in Mallorca, having seen the eclipse earlier that day. The conditions were just right, and there were just too many stars to count. It was beautiful. But it's always beautiful, and it's not as if I've never seen the night sky before. It doesn't move very much.

Through a series of terrible events, I was kidnapped by some mysterious strangers after the funding from my blog's Nigerian prince investor ran out and I'm still trapped in their underground facility. If you want to know how this happened, start at the beginning here, or if you've read that, you can find out how I got my next blog post out by writing a message hidden on the back of an Uber Eats receipt…

This song translation was requested by anonymous on Tumblr here, and seeing how interesting the lyrics were, I was more than happy to take a look! Feel free to suggest any songs, you can even suggest instrumental songs by mistake and I won't be angry! Song Lyrics 星星眨着眼睛躲在黑夜里亮晶晶你们从上往下望看我是否还纯真 星星眨着眼睛躲在黑夜里亮晶晶为何玫瑰色的黎明会将你们全抹去 The stars are twinkling…

If you need to know the events leading up to this, then please read I'm sorry here. It's been an eventful week to say the least, and one which has given me quite a lot of mysteries to unpack, but I'll start at the beginning. When the blog post money from my Nigerian prince investor ran out, MyBrainIsCompletelyEmpty offices got raided and I found myself dragged into a van and taken to an unknown location against my will.

It was less than a month ago that I finished volume 2, but thanks to listening to the audiobook, I have now finished volume 3 as well! That's right, what took 6 months of reading originally only required 1 month of listening. So what did I think? Not Very Good This is my summary of the book. I just think it was a massive decline in comparison to before as the vast majority of it was just boring and formulaic.

This is a classic mistake that language learners can make. When you learn a language it's absolutely essential to explore advice to find the best methods available, but you can definitely take it a step too far and continue researching for far longer than necessary. When I had already understood immersion and knew what I needed to do, I was still subscribed to lots of language YouTube channels and watching their regular uploads, which probably took up even more time than I spent learning the language in the first place.

If the idea of a disgraced esports pro forced into retirement slowly recovering his former glory in a video game about adventure, swords, guns, dungeons and action appeals to you, shoud you give this anime a try? The answer is no. I thought this show was pretty bad, and the only reason I was able to finish it was because I had also read the book, which was so much more interesting.

I've got an announcement to make. The four posts per week schedule that I have maintained for almost a year is now over. I regret to say that after releasing 219 posts over a 13 month period, I have finally come to the realisation that making so-called 'blog posts' for pretty much just me and a handful of random people is just a deeply inappropriate reaction to the current political situation.

I am so excited for this anime after having just seen the trailer that I had to talk about it immediately! This is easily the book that I've enjoyed the most this year, so I was completely overjoyed to hear that it was getting a Donghua as it's absolutely deserved. I've previously talked about this series many times here, …

Heatwaves are very brutal if you don't have air conditioning and live in a house designed to protect heat from escaping such as those in the UK, however I was able to make my house pretty bearable through following these steps. I hope this can help people the next time we go through a heatwave, and if you are lucky enough to have air conditioning, I hope it helps you appreciate it!

The world cup is over now, and my country, England, got knocked out in the semi-finals, so I thought I’d give an Englishman’s perspective on the world cup in general and talk about what went wrong for us specifically. I think everyone is fully aware of the many problems surrounding this tournament, however I feel it’s important to emphasise that many of the same problems that affected fans, such as extreme travel distance, extreme heat, restrictions on entering countries, and the additional game played in comparison to previous tournaments seriously affected players as well, and I honestly find it a miracle that a lot of the games were as entertaining as they ended up being considering the circumstances behind them.

I gave this series a good shot, and found it quite interesting to write, but I think it's best to end it, and I thought I'd explain why in case anyone has been following along. I was trying to replicate what I had done with playing through all of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate Solo. 4U was a game that I loved as a 16 year old, but its high difficulty really destroyed me and made me give up before I had even reached G Rank, so it was very much a case of trying to fulfil a 10 year old dream, and overcome a serious challenge.

I didn't immediately rush back to report on what I learned in China simply because it's really difficult to notice any progress over such a short amount of time. I was only there for three weeks, and didn't really use any of the measures I used previously to monitor progress. It was pretty much just conversation, which is great, but you are much more focused on communication than trying to learn anything.

I think the title summarises my thoughts pretty well. It's pretty impossible to make a definitive statement such as "I can listen to Mandarin Audiobooks" because how much you understand obviously depends on which book you're listening to and your familiarity. If you are already familiar with the characters, what the story is like, and the author's writing style, it's so much easier to understand and keep going.

Some genres of TV show are just much harder to understand than others, and for me, as I learn mandarin Chinese, a genre that has always eluded me was the imperial palace drama. These stories follow the events that happen surrounding the emperor and their concubines as well as the historical events that took place at the time. This genre in particular is so hard because there is a lot of cultural knowledge and specific mandarin words you need to know, so the only real way you can learn it is to study it.

Immediately my first actual fight with the insect glaive was completely terrible. Zorah Magdaros was such a bad matchup for this! I couldn’t get all three nectars from the magma cores, so they went down incredibly slowly, and the layout of the monster was so confusing to me that when Nergigante appeared, I spent 10 minutes walking around looking for it, only to see it get repelled without me having to do anything.

I genuinely feel like I've gone through enough content to cover 5 books, but no, I've only just managed to finish reading the second King's Avatar book, and there are still 17 more to go! Volume Cover The first thing I want to comment on was the decision to include Su MuCheng on the front cover (of the Chinese edition, which is the one I'm reading) since I wouldn't have considered her as nearly important as Tang Rou or even some of the other supporting characters like Blue River (Lan He), Invasion of steamed buns, or even Chen Guo as she just doesn't appear that often, and while these characters aren't nearly as good as at the game as she is, they get a lot more time on the page.

While on holiday I managed to finish the first book of Dao of The Bizarre Immortal, which covers the first 175 chapters of the online webnovel. To be honest, I didn't think I would be able to read this much, and I only set myself a target to do the first 100 chapters in a year, but I've just kept on going, reading at an extremely fast pace because it was just too good!

The most common thing I have heard from those who have given up learning a language was that they simply couldn't remember any of the words that they tried to learn. But when I try to explain that you're really not supposed to remember any words, it's always met with shock and confusion, so I'm going to try to explain what I mean now.

Welcome back to part 6! It’s been around 4 months since I played this game, mainly due to getting obsessed with MH4U, eventually beating every single quest in G Rank and also playing through Yakuza 0 as well. If this game had captured my attention however, this wouldn’t have happened, so I wondered about what went wrong last time and what I could do differently.

I know gaming cafés are everywhere, but the first time I had ever been to one was on a trip in China. I didn't particularly want to go but everyone else was interested so I just came along to have a look. I don't really enjoy or play multiplayer online games, and the fact that everything was in Chinese made me think I'd spend the entire time just looking for something to do, but I did remember playing when winds meet in Chinese so I gave that a second try for a while.

The amount of time we have waited for George RR Martin's next book is longer than the time taken to release all the previous 5 books. The author is just too busy with TV shows and other books that an event like Covid wasn't enough to make him finish. I've given up on waiting. While I'm sure the author cares about the book deeply, it's undeniable that he cares about lots of other things too, and that he just doesn't have the kind of time to work on the next book.

Many people who live in hotter countries seem to think red weather warnings in the UK are some kind of joke, but they're a massive problem, and I'll explain why. 35 degrees is pretty unbearable to be outside in. If you don't believe me just try standing outside all day in the sun. The only real way it's possible to cope is to be in an air conditioned room, and this where the issues start.

We left off last time having just unlocked 5 star quests, as well as lots and lots of side content! The first monster I went to was Odogaron, who turned out to be really fun. He always moves around so much and makes you stay on your toes. He’s just fun to weave and dodge around, and it’s nice to see someone else get bleed besides Seregios.

I've been on quite a few planes recently, and it made me think of CGP Grey's video where he meticulously went over different plane boarding processes, and what wastes the most time. The thing is, it's all wrong, not the theory on boarding times itself, but the assumption that boarding time actually matters. The thing is that the people on the plane need a lot of time to prepare things, and that's pretty much always longer than the time it takes everyone to board, so how much time boarding wastes doesn't really matter at all.

I think of all the language advice, this one is probably the most misunderstood, because it can definitely help, but not for everyone. I say this because I myself have only been to China on a handful of occasions, each time communicating and enjoying it quite well, but I've met people who have spent up to 10 years in the country without ever really achieving even basic conversational skills.

I have hit the 7 year mark of learning Mandarin Chinese, which feels kind of unreal. I started this blog long before I even began the learning process, meaning you can track my progress from someone who never intended to learn Chinese in the first place, but somehow ended up taking an exam in the language since it was the least bad topic at school to someone who could go to China and have in depth hour long conversations and read lots of books.