6-Star Reviews Part 66: Macintosh

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The Tour of California started on Sunday!  Ah, one of the few chances the average American has to watch professional cycling on live television (plus you don't have to get up early for an entire month to do so, unlike with the Tour de France).  On the downside, it means I'll be spending several hours a day parked in front of the TV for the next week, but that's a small price to pay for televised cycling.

After the break, my review of TotalOverflow's Macintosh.

Star Ratings: Why I Bother With Them at All

If you've ever visited this site, you've probably noticed those nifty star ratings I put towards the end of each 6-star review (if you haven't, you may want to get your eyes checked).  Let me let you all in on a little secret: I really dislike giving star ratings to stories.  But despite that, I have no intention of stopping.  If you're interested in finding out why I hate them and why I use them anyway, read below the break.

And if you aren't interested in that, don't fret; reviews (complete with star ratings) continue on Monday.

6-Star Reviews Part 65: A Day for Spike and Twilight

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Just a friendly bit of advice (a bit of advice I seem to forget every few months): make sure you have something to eat before volunteering at a food bank-type organization.  Carting around meals on an empty stomach for several hours is no fun at all.

Jetfire's A Day for Spike and Twilight, below the break.

6-Star Reviews Part 64: The Dread Chitin

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Over the weekend, this site passed 50,000 pageviews.  That's about 49,900 more than I honestly expected when I first started up.  Moreover, 50,000 has been sort of an unspoken goal of mine for a couple of months now; in addition to being a nice, round figure, it's the minimum number of words to a novel!  I don't know why that makes it a more relevant number to me, but it does.  Anyway, thank you all for helping me achieve one of my aspirations for the blog, no matter how arbitrary!

Below the break, my review of Karazor's The Dread Chitin.

6-Star Reviews Part 63: The Thessalonica Legacy

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Just thought I'd share: in a rare concession to modern convenience, I recently bought (okay, was given as a gift) an e-reader.  As such, this is the first story I've ever reviewed which I didn't read off a computer screen!  I have to say, it is a lot easier on the eyes; I can't look at a backlit screen for more than an hour or so without taking a break, but I had no such troubles this time out.  Hopefully, this'll let me read and review a bit faster!

After the break, Dashukta's The Thessalonica Legacy.

For a Change, Let's Talk About Actual Books

First, an update: The Thessalonica Legacy is very long, and I'm still working my way through it.  Moreover, Wednesday and Thursday are both going to be full days for me, so I doubt I'll have much time for reading then.  At this point I still expect to be able to post a review on Friday, but it will probably be sometime in the late afternoon/evening, rather than going up right at midnight like usual (all times US central).  If that expectation changes, I'll throw up another post to let you all know.

But for now, I thought it might be fun to tell you what I read when I'm not going over fanfics!  So I grabbed all the books I'm actively reading at the moment (I'm one of those people who's totally incapable of not being halfway through several books at any given moment), and below the break I'll give each a quick summary and a recommendation.  Then you can all judge me on my literary taste.  Here we go: