This is probably my favorite fighting game.

It’s not complex. It doesn’t have an engaging story mode. Each character has perhaps 50 moves at best, not the hundreds that games like Soul Caliber have. And they only have four special moves.

This game is fun because it’s easy to pick up and play, but challenging enough that long play hours and dedication pay off.

Adverbs is, without a doubt, my favorite novel. It’s a book on love. I think that explains it better than any attempt at a summary can, but here goes anyway.

Adverbs is essentially seventeen short stories, all interrelating in confusing and improbable ways. Immediately, its starter, is a fast-paced story about a man who, in the course of almost no time at all, breaks up with his girlfriend, falls in love with his taxi driver, and has his heart broken. Judgementally, its closing tale, is a much softer story about a man who takes a cab to a bar, and talks to the cab driver along the way. In between, there’s Naturally, a story about a dead man and an old high school crush, which would seem at first to have nothing to do with the stories at either end, but which ends up intricately linked with everything else going on.

I know it sounds confusing, and more than a bit pretentious – and it probably is. The book is saved, however, by author Handler, who is a greater master of the nuances of language than any other before him: I would claim that he even beats Nabakov by a considerable amount. You don’t need to follow the stories closely in order to get them: like love, each story stands alone brilliantly, though you might find you understand a bit more if you look at their contexts at some point or another. Most importantly, the stories themselves are lively in a way that represents love perfectly: breathtakingly, giddily hilarious from one vantage point, nearly heartbreaking at others. While some stories are sadder and others happier, both sides are present in every novel, giving this book immense rereadable value.

Part of Handler’s genius lies in the way that each story is told: though each is radically different from one another, every story has immediately identifiable links throughout – some of which Handler himself points out in one of the latter stories. Birds fly in every sky, countless party drinks are ordered, untold volcanoes pour their lava over everything. There are dozens of these at the least, some obvious from the get-go, others almost impossible to point out. While you can follow the symbols, why bother at first? Instead, focus on the simple stories themselves, and appreciate that on closer look, you will see vast patterns and immaculate dances swirling through this book.

My advice to potential readers: read Adverbs slowly, your first time through. It might overwhelm you if you try reading more than a story or two a day. After you’ve read it, though, come back in a month or so. You’ll be awestruck at what changed in the time you’ve been gone. And, hopefully, you’ll find yourself looking at love in a brand-new, wonderful sort of way.

I can’t write a review of this now. But this book is one of the most singular books I have ever read, on par with House of Leaves and Pale Fire. It is one of the most brilliant things in existence, and it should be read at least once – even if the reader only makes it a paragraph in.

I don’t know why I didn’t like this book. Stylistically, it’s not very ornate or confusing. The plot of the book isn’t bad. It’s long, but many books are longer. It’s not very interesting, but many other books are worse.

Perhaps it was the schedule: I had to read this piece-by-piece for English class, rather than on my own. Perhaps it was that I was reading Lolita at the time, a better book by any scale. But I never got into this book.

(Warning: spoilers)

The opening is a complete aside from the main novel: High Fidelity could be read without that introduction without any considerable change in the plot. It’s used, however, to quickly contruct a narrator from his own point of view: we see his past from early on, which indicates that High Fidelity is a story about the present, not about problems of the past. We see, of course, the five girls that most broke Rob’s heart, as well as the style of conveying personal information and obsessive cataloguing through lists. Probably most importantly, however, and probably the most overlooked aspect of the introduction in terms of formal analysis, is this: by starting with a list of glorified break-ups, Nick Hornby immediately draws in his readers. The introduction is catchy and memorable to casual readers – even when it later appears to be nearly superfluous.

(Warning: spoilers)

High Fidelity opens with a turn: a stylistic departure from the current plot. It makes for an interesting introduction, seeing as there is no plot in the beginning to turn from. Laura, the almost-antagonist of the plot, is established from the beginning: not through anything that applies to her own character, but through the narrator’s description of just how unaffected he is by her break-up. Of course, this says more about the narrator’s feelings for Laura than any other opening break-up could have been: if the narrator truly didn’t care about Laura, there would be no reason for him now to recite his former break-ups in retaliation.