Reach for the stars

I've decided that all of the titles in my blog are going to be ridiculous puns, deal with it :)

This blog comes in two parts, the first about Halo: Reach (see title), the second about a book I've just read called 'Looking for Alaska' by John Green.

So Halo: Reach, or Reach, or the game I've been anticipating for like TWO years came out this Tuesday and I've played it end to end and I have to say, its amazingly good. I thought Halo 3 was fantastic but this really blows it out of the water. Reach has so many improvements its impossible to cover them all, but I will say one thing: JETPACKS! Anyone who understands the gamer psyche will get that jetpacks are akin to the Holy Grail of computer games, at least in Halo. The single player is great, the multiplayer is great and its just generally fantastic! Anyone reading this who a)likes FPS' and b)has an Xbox, should go and get Reach now!

Now for the more sensible part of the post where I go all A-level English student on Looking for Alaska. I haven't really read anything like Looking for Alaska before, so it was a completely new experience for me. I usually read sci-fi stuff or 'graphic novels'(read 'comic books') so Alaska was a big change with regards to my reading habits. By the way, I'll try to keep this spoiler free, which is harder than normal considering the books main event! Alaska is a really good book, hands-down. I enjoyed reading it and will no doubt enjoy reading it again. Looking for Alaska is about a boy named Miles Halter who leaves home to attend a boarding school in Alabama. Here he meets the titular Alaska (the book isn't about looking for the state of Alaska, rather a girl names Alaska, fyi) and other students like his room-mate the Colonel and the rest of the supporting characters. The way the book is physically written and laid out leads up to the pivotal moment in the storyline and then subsequently away from it, which really adds a sense of loss to Pudge's experiences at Culver Creek. The way Pudge and the Colonel deal with the 'event' really shows an insight into how we, as people, deal with the unknown. The characters were all well rounded, the setting was very believable and generally the book was a very good read, I'd reccomend it to anyone in the market for a good book :

I get that this probably wasn't a very cohesive blog, but bear with me. I'm new at this :)