3.5 stars if i had a half star. this is a biography about the author's cousin, who unexpectedly became a serial bank robber known as the "floppy hat bandit" in the 60s, and the events leading up to that choice, his capture, and attempted escapes.

i grabbed this from the library while i was there looking for a completely unrelated series. it caught my eye because i, personally, love a good bank robbery story. i think bank heists, art heists, and jewellry heists are fuckin awesome and, y'know, mostly victimless. i don't read true crime very often because i find it exploitative, often handled disrespectfully, and it's just not an industry i'm interested in. however, like i said. mostly victimless crime.

i did enjoy this! got through it in one sitting quite easily. i think it had odd long-winded pacing and took quite some time to get into the bank robbery discussion, with the majority of the first half of the book being a set up and exposition on the author's evangelical background, but it's somewhat relevant to the story so i wasn't too fussed about it. interesting read about something i'd never heard about, did ultimately enjoy it in the end!

i was apprehensive about this for no real reason, i think i just thought it would be a pretty generic kinda DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN situation but then i saw a) how short it was and b) it is also a reasonably small book series so i figured i'd watch a couple of episodes to see how i felt about it.

anyway so like 6hrs later i had finished the whole thing in one sitting and i loved it, oh my gooodddd what a lovely delightful little story. i'd have been happy if this was a one and done thing, but there's supposedly a season 2 on the way so i'm absolutely going to be reading those books in the meantime!! i liked this a lot more than i expected, i think it was very endearing and sweet and a little bit silly goofy but in all the right ways

listen man. listen. the brainworms got to me.

the original modern warfare trilogy was, probably like many other people my age, one of my all time favourite COD series when i was younger. i do not care and have not cared since about any other game in the franchise, aside from a few sporadic black ops games and maybe I kind of liked that random WW2 entry from a few years ago. the reboot series doesn't hold a candle to the original in my opinion, however, i don't have any of my old consoles set up and this is the best i got. played the campaign, had a good time, will not be touching the reboot mw3 because it fucking sucked and i hated it. we begin and end here and i gotta put it on the list because i told myself i'd stop excluding embarassing media in the interest of honesty

this is a re-attempt to get through this book, as i DNF'd it a couple of years ago. the premise is a scoutmaster and a troop of scouts are abandoned on an island with a sinister parasite that threatens to kill them and eat their flesh or whatever. this sounded right up my alley, i loooove body horror so much and i love gross flesh eating worms and shit, i thrive off this. i was severely disappointed on my initial attempt to find out that this book was effectively LORD OF THE FLIES but with worms. i got very bored and eventually put it down, some time in 2020.

this week, i decided to give it another go just because i was gonna be stuck on a long train ride without much to do, so i might as well take it with me and try again after a few years' break. On so many levels, i can understand why people keep recommending me this book but, to be honest, I think my issue is that it's way too long. it's very repetitive and nothing really happens, and it suffers by being bogged down by too much yapping and extended decorative metaphors with cringe prose that are just like....way too much. ugh idk man, it could've been a really good slimlined 200pg book, i think. it kind of ended up being a series of frustratingly poor decision that did not need to happen, and every single character was so painfully cookie-cutter stereotyped (including the author's very evident favourite, who ended up being the 'final girl' of the book and I saw that coming from like, chapter 2), so nothing was overly surprising or compelling, and ultimately yeah it was indeed just LORD OF THE FLIES with a tapeworm.

there was a horror element in the fact that there was a lot of graphic gorey imagery, however, it was presented in such a lame pulpy way that it was just. not good. there's no good build up of suspense or atmosphere or dread because the book just keeps mutilating animals and going BOO! SHOCK VALUE! at you. i would not read this again and i would not have been upset if i didn't try again. i MIGHT. consider. this author's other works, if they are from the POV of adults. i don't think the children here were written very well and that's what made me lose interest in the first place; the second the only adult character is killed off, i lost so much interest.

i didn't know that these started at 2006!! i thought the first was in 2012, i'm a fool. so! this covers CASINO ROYALE (2006), QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2008), SKYFALL (2012), SPECTRE (2015) & NO TIME TO DIE (2021) so i'm adding +5 to the stats counter for this one entry.

some of these. admittedly. are better than others! i liked CASINO ROYALE a lot on its own, but that's because i think every iteration of that film is good. it's gotta be like the sixth time they've done this one as a movie. otherwise, SKYFALL also was very good! i kind of liked SPECTRE maybe? but the rest left a little to be desired. i dont know if i like an overarching plot connecting james bond films, i'm very used to being able to turn one on watching it standalone.

i'm replaying this once again because it's easily one of my favourite things to revisit when i kind of just want to be miserable, yknow? & i'm on a quest to 100% a bunch of my games on steam.

this is a beautiful psychological horror rpg disguised as a cutesy little adventure game. it is a deeply touching story about trauma and grief, very much an all time favourite of mine. i love media that's about childhood friends going through The Horrors and this game has that in more than one way, AND has a beautiful soundtrack that is my go-to background noise (my fav track is easily remember to be patient, not only because it's beautiful but because i adore the area it plays in).

i think this game really speaks to me because it gives me a lot of nostalgia for my own childhood; my childhood best friends and i were a group of four and were so inseperable that any time one of us showed up anywhere without the rest in tow, the first thing people would do is ask "where's the rest of you?". unfortunately something happened, disrupted our lives, and we all drifted apart and scattered. it has been over a decade since i spoke to any of them. it was simpler and easier and nothing in your life will ever be like the bonds you had when you were 12, and this is one of my favourite themes in the game - though it is mostly about facing your mistakes head on and enduring consequences.