Nineteen Eighty-Four (and briefly of Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

I was at one of the local libraries recently. There's a shelf for newly returned books, divided into genres. I checked the scifi/fantasy section to see what people were reading and to my amusement was reminded of a picture (or two) I had seen of someone moving George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four from their fiction section to non-fiction. I didn't move the book to non-fiction but instead picked it to read it myself as I had never done so.

The Talos Principle

The Talos Principle was my sole purchase from Steam's 2018 winter sale. An impulse purchase too, the decision assisted by a deep discount and overall overwhelmingly positive user reviews. It is a puzzle game comparable to Portal although The Turing Test with its philosophical and ethical aspects might be closer.

King Rat

They say an author should write about what they know. King Rat, James Clavell's debut novel, is a result of that advice and quite a vivid one too. It is a semi-fictional story based on the author's time as a prisoner of war at Changi prison camp in Singapore during World War II.

Gai-Jin

Gai-Jin ('foreigner') was the last novel James Clavell wrote for the Asian Saga before his death. Its purpose was to tie together Shōgun and the Struan Noble House that is present in four of the series' books. And indeed, even though set in 1862, 262 years after Shōgun, Gai-Jin references a lot of the older novel's events and characters.

Pillars of Eternity

Pillars of Eternity was quite cheap a year ago in the beat-the-average tier of Humble Paradox Bundle. I paid less than 6€ for it but I could've waited a few months more as the game became even cheaper at the end of the summer when the definitive edition was on the house for Twitch Prime members. But I did get the game's expansions (practically) for free thanks to that.