They are thinking that they have made billions of dollars, so why stop now?

I also have RockSmith and a bass guitar. However, for 3 years I have been playing in local groups (the last year has been a community open mic where up to a dozen musicians sit around and strum together) and having a lot of fun. The thing is that these are almost all elderly people, self-taught, so they are not trying to become rock stars, just to enjoy playing music together. Playing music I have never heard before has been very good for developing my ear.

I go through periods of playing RockSmith a lot, and then not playing it at all for several months. Discovering user-created tracks that can be added as DLC has been fantastic.

I’m currently reading in 3 languages, but a bit more narrowly than you.

When I was a young teen, and reading SF&F books voraciously (sometimes a book a day, or more if I had them), I ran across the Perry Rhodan series.

Finally something I wouldn’t run out of! It started in Germany in 1961, and published a novella weekly since. (They haven’t missed a week, and are currently past issue 3,000.)

The first 150 or so were translated into English and I scoured used book stores until I had all of them.

Now, 50 years later, I spent a week in Germany and bought issue 3323 in a railway station bookstore. My German was never great, and is now worse, so Google Lens has helped me get through it.

When I came home I did some searching and found all the English translations as e-books. I’ve read a couple dozen of the early ones and they are pretty dreadful. My 14-year-old self was not very discerning.

I also found e-versions of the German originals up to about #2000, which I could read laboriously, and French translations of the first 1,000.

The latter is a game changer because my French is good enough to read with only occasional dictionary lookups. Reading with Google books allows me to tap as word and see the English instantly, so it’s quite convenient.

That would explain why a pencil, which contains a “lead” (actually a polymer or graphite now) is Bleistift

Well, not terribly subtle, but if you are fighting with your spouse and they complain that you never say anything nice about their family, you can respond with:

“Well, I have to say that your in-laws are better than my in-laws”

I don’t know if you have a website, but my $5/month shared web host allows me to set up a git server, and I think many of them are similar.

Or the dozens (hundreds?) of hours that Robin Williams spent as libbing as the genie in Aladdin. I think it was in his contract that they couldn’t even use it anywhere else

I hadn’t thought about it, but those may have been the first books I absolutely adored.

After that, I got into Perry Rhodan, a German science fiction serial that has been published weekly since 1961 (yes, they are past issue #3,300 now).

They translated about 140 into English, and I had every one, hunting through used book shope to complete my collection.

I have gone back to read some, and at least the early ones really were abysmal in writing, plotting and early 1960s prejudices. At the time, the scope of the space opera – and the fact that there were so many of them – thrilled me.

And the out-of-place apostrophe perfects it!

Other people are way ahead of you:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romana_Didulo

Steven Donaldson had his first Thomas Covenant novel rejected by 27 publishers before it was finally bought.

Big Joe Mufferaw, by Canada’s own Stompin’ Tom Connors (because I’m planning to play it at the open mic this Friday).

My crystal radio would beg to differ, sir/madam!

Which Google lens work? And take a picture of each page and feed it to the Google translate engine. It might be the easiest way.

Coincidentally, I speak English, French and Japanese, and am learning Spanish (and I learned German and Sesotho in the distant past). I cheated, however all except Spanish were learned at least partially by immersion in places where they speak it.

Without the manufacturer’s drivers, I couldn’t even print a page of text.

It’s a Brother B&W laser with integrated scanner. About 6 years old, so it should be fully supported. We can’t view toner levels or scan from the printer (press a button on the printer to start a scan and have it automatically accepted by the computer. I have installed the separate driver for this functionality, but it isn’t working).

We haven’t yet tried some features like double-sided printing.

I installed Mint on my wife’s computer last week, and we have had problems getting the printer to print, and then to scan. I’ve installed the manufacturer’s driver a couple of times and it seems to do those functions okay, but some features still don’t work.

Following on what you said, it’s also true that for a long time it was difficult for women to get published in the science fiction genre. Many of them relied on male pseudonyms (i.e. Andre Norton, James Tiptree Jr.).

But OP was speaking specifically about fantasy books, and not specifying only bestsellers.

My guess, with no data to back it up, is that both men and women enjoy writing fantasy and science fiction, and many of them are good at it.

But writing science fiction often requires a science background, and historically there are many more men than women who have that. It is certainly becoming more balanced, but the difference is still there.

So women, who generally don’t have as scientific a background, turn to fantasy where they can create their own worlds.