RealizationsFollow

I read the following passage from the book "Restoring the
American Dream":

"One must remain steadfast to the moral belief that no matter how "worthy" the cause for which a man's rights are violated, the end never justifies the means. That is to say, no matter how moral or humane one may believe a cause to be, if its attainment requires a violation of the rights of even one man, then the end has been achieved through immoral action.
Therefore, while the needs and desires of certain individuals (whether they be the "poor" or any other vaguely defined group) may constitute a legitimate concern to many people, they nonetheless fall outside the scope of man's natural rights."

I applied this to my thoughts and opinions concerning the recent banning of players. I realize now that I let my hate for RMT cloud my better judgement on the rights of the individual. While doing a great service for the masses (or so I thought), SE did an injustice to those who play the game for fun, but where banned. Blinded by my hate for Gilsellers, I took Square-Enix's side without considering the reprecussions on the innocent.

I offer my sincere apologies to Afterglow, Xellith, and anyone else I offended. Trading insults is unbecoming of my nature, and I feel the fool for taking part in it. People forget the FFXI experience is supposed to be enjoyable. When we loose track of that, some, like myself, turn that experience into hatred.

Good luck, happy hunting, and NM's lookout! Phioness is coming to get ya!!! =^.~=

"May peace favor your sword." Lan, Wheel of Time

76 different NM killed (none quest/mission related)



Edited, Wed Feb 22 17:44:07 2006 by LooTnPlundeR

/sigh

I disagree on this. The last 4 books(not including the newest, I didn't buy it) didn't seem to advance the plot at all and nothing major happened.

Authors I like however:
David Eddings - Belgarid series
Terry Brooks - about everything
Terry Goodkind - series that starts with "Wizard's First Rule"

Wheel of Time rocks. I'll agree that the plot development of books 8-10 was a bit on the slow side. These books focused more on plotting, scheming, and preparations for things to come, but lacked lots of action of the first 7. I think this is just the "Calm before the Storm" a.k.a. Tarmon Gaidon. The magic system, broad array of combat styles, and detail set Robert Jordan on a level of his own. The latest book "Knife of Dreams" was pretty sweet. Mattrim Cauthon is one of my favorite characters, and this book did him justice. Anyone heard any intel/rumors on how many books before he finishes this series? I keep having to reread some of them just to keep track of whats going on.

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series is definitly not a ripoff of Shannara. Books 7 and 8 where somewhat lacking. I just hope that Chainfire is better.

Other favorites:

Christopher Rowley, Bazil Broketail series. Dragons equipped with swords and armor kicking a$$, awesome battle tactics, and some wicked badguys w/ magic (i.e. slitting peoples throats, mixing the blood with mud, a little magic, and poof!! Giant Mudmen.) My personal favorite series.

L.E. Modesitt, Jr., The Saga of Recluce. The Order and Chaos wizards are supersweet (and the names just sound cool.) Each character's plot development is smooth and interesting.

I'll have to check out those recommendations, I'm always looking for new stuff to read. I like series that focus on evil characters (or bad guys turned good,) anyone have any recommendations?
______________

harry potter ftw!

whats a book?

Terry Brooks: Sword of Shanara series
Terry Goodkind: Sword of Truth series
Robert Jordan: Wheel of Time series
R.A. Salvatore: Dark elf series
David Eddings: 3 series kind of redundant but interesting
Anne McGaffrey: Dragonriders of Pern
Mercedes Lackey: Heralds of Valdemar series
Anne Rice: Vampire series
Conan the barbarian series
Forgotten Realms series
Destroyer series
Eragon and Eldest
L.E. Modesitt: Recluse series

I read Harry Potter ^^

I agree with Harry Potter ftw! Even if you saw the movies and didn't like them, just try reading the first couple of chapters of the 1st book. If you're not hooked, then fine, but every person I've ever challenged to read the first 10 pages ended up reading every single one.

Only one more book to go - wonder when it's coming out.

The biggest problems I find with movies that are based on books is that they always leave out some of the good stuff.

While the latest harry potter movie was good to watch it cut out half the suspense that was going on between the characters.

Hitchhikers guide was a decent movie (or at least I liked it) but from some of the jokes my wifes been telling me they left out some good lines. Mind you the movie was made by Disney so that probably explains it altogether.

Other series I like reading other then the ones already mentioned are the Dune series by Frank herbert (and later his son). Peirs Anthony when I can find some although I don't actually have a lot of his work. I'm also a big star wars/Star trek fan so I've got a lot of those books.

I've been rather slow at it but I'm a hard cover fan, I try to collect books while they're in hard cover or sometimes when my book club rereleases them as specials.

So far I've got all the dunes in hard cover (Dune being generally available all the time with the 3 other books just being rereleased lately) I've managed to read up to the 3rd book but haven't started the 4th yet.

Then theres another 4-5 books after that that were done by another family member (His son I think) that I've still to read.

Good books lately have been rather slow, I don't know if its just that authors are taking a break or they haven't been writing anything worth publishing.