Fire Emblem 20th Anniversary Artbook
I couldn’t resist. Nintendo said there are no plans for an English release, so I had to get it imported. It cost some £40 on eBay, but I think it was worth it (mind you, my bank statement hasn’t come through yet).
It’s smaller than I hoped. Bigger than my Gyakuten Kenji Official Complete Guide *sigh*, smaller than the English release of the Phoenix Wright artbook, and the same size as my Gyakuten Saiban fanbook.
Now let’s see what’s inside!
Cast in Shadow
Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara
Cast in Shadow is a fantasy story, set in a world populated by various races of beings and full of magic.
The story follows Kaylin Neya, a young woman, an orphan, who ran away from the fiefs and joined the city’s law enforcement, the Hawks. She has strange markings on her arms and thighs, markings which match those found on children ritually killed in the city. She is then called upon to help track down the killers of these children.
And that’s pretty much all I understood of it. I don’t know why, but I found it hard to relate to the characters, any of them. I felt strangely left in the dark throughout most of this book. Even at the final battle scenes at the end, I felt as if I was watching it from a distance. And I’m short-sighted.
The problem is, Sagara expends so much effort on creating sophisticated and emotive prose at the expense of clarity. Instead, you’re just a casual observer, someone the author doesn’t really want to let in to her secrets, and the book suffers greatly for it. You never really feel as if you are part of the action, you never feel Kaylin’s emotions with her. You don’t feel her fear, her pain, you’re not made to care about what happens to her. As Sagara herself says, ‘It’s the same, after all.’
Le Petit Prince
Un livre à lire à tous les âges de la vie, surtout lorsqu’on se sent perdu, ou quand on croit qu’on a des problèmes insurmontables…
Rien n’est impossible…
Et la vie n’a rien de terrible, d’alienant ou de decevant. Il suffit de tout voir avec l’âme d’un enfant comme Le Petit Prince. Et de la vivre, cette vie, en suivant son cœur.
The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith
‘You see,’ said Mma Ramotswe, casting a glance at the attentive attorney, ‘there are some people in this country, some men, who think that women are soft and can be twisted this way and that. Well I’m not. I can tell you, if you are interested, that I killed a cobra, a big one, on my way here this afternoon.’
‘Oh?’ said Jameson Mopotswane. ‘What did you do?’
‘I cut it in two,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘Two pieces.’
Precious Ramotswe is Botswana’s first ever lady private detective, and owner of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Armed with a sharp and inquisitive mind, her friend Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, and a good dose of humour, Mma Ramotswe is called upon to unravel various mysteries – disappearing husbands, rebellious daughters and stolen cars.
Until one day she is contacted by the father of a missing child, a young boy feared to have been taken for witchcraft and things start to get a little more serious.
This book is a real gem, and the characters and settings are very much different from others in crime fiction, making this a very refreshing read. The author’s observational humour adds to the enjoyment, as does Mma Ramotswe’s fiery, no-nonsense attitude. I highly recommend this and I’m very much looking forward to the rest of the series.
Le Petit Prince
Mais les yeux sont aveugles… il faut chercher avec le coeur…
To anyone else you are just a person, like any other person, but what makes you special to me is what I see in you with my heart.
Just William
William William William!
(That’s not the review. I’m just too lazy to write one just now.)
Better Eyesight Without Glasses
It’s like this: Your science teacher always told you that if your myopic, it means your eyeball is too long and your lens cannot accommodate, and as a result, you get blurred vision, and that this condition is inherent and permanent and nothing can be done to remedy it. This is in fact very very wrong. A clever doctor called W.H. Bates discovered plenty of examples that do not fit in line with the orthodox teaching of bad eyesight. This concludes that the rule must be wrong, because if it was true, there can’t be exceptions, but there were, and orthodox ophthalmologists chose to just ignore those exceptions.
However, this was not satisfactory for him, and he investigated this, and discovered that the reason for poor eyesight is because of mental strain.
Your eyes shouldn’t be trying to see, they just should. As he says, your senses can not act themselves, they are to be acted upon. As soon as your eyes make an effort to see, your eyesight begins to deteriorate. Any eye strain, therefore, is a result of mental strain.
He cites the example of a young girl who had a keen interest in astronomy. She could see the moons of Jupiter with her unaided eye, yet ask her to look at some maths sums on a blackboard just a few metres away, and she became myopic. This is because maths was disagreeable to her. This caused mental strain for her, which in turn caused eye strain and hence reduced vision.
His book, Better Eyesight without Glasses, is rather heavy-going at first; it’s a lot to get your head around. But once you can familiarise yourself with the principles of treatment, it is actually very effective. Now, first and foremost, ditch the specs. They only make your eyes weaker, and create even more strain for your eyes (please read his book for an explanation of why).
Palming
This is the easiest ‘exercise’, once you stop trying! Close your eyes, place the palms of your hands over your eyes, without actually putting any pressure onto your eyes, and think nice things. Just like thinking of disagreeable things reduces your vision, thinking of nice things improves it. Now just lie or sit there, make sure you’re comfortable and relaxed, eyes covered, thinking of nice things, for as long as you wish. Now when you open your eyes, hey presto! you can see the numbers on the clock for the first time without glasses! Great, eh? Like I said, this takes a bit of practice, don’t give up, just make sure you aren’t making any sort of an effort, even unconsciously. The point of this is to relax your mind and body, therefore reducing the strain on your eyes. The longer and more often you do this, the longer the effects will last, till eventually you can get permanent relief. Those whose eye-sight is perfect will be able to see a field so black, that you cannot imagine anything blacker.
Dr Bates’s work has been continued by Tom Quackenbush, of the Natural Vision Center, and you can read success stories here.
I have to say, the exercises are a bit tedious at first, but I’m glad I stuck with them. I’ve been glasses-free for over 3 years now, and though my sight will not become normal without the aid of a Bates teacher (as I wore glasses for so long, the bad habits of my eyes will be so much harder to break), it has certainly improved my vision, so much so that after palming, my bad eye’s vision is equivalent to the vision in my good eye – and of course, my good eye gets even better too. My verdict: it’s certainly worth trying. If you’ve worn specs for a long time, then you will not be able to cure your eyes without the help of a teacher, but if you have never worn glasses, give it a go, you will find it surprisingly successful.
