gamers

Audiobook: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

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by Gabrielle Zevin
Read by Jennifer Kim and Julian Cihi
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: there is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, on-screen instances of some pretty unhealthy BDSM, and some violence. It’s in the Fiction section of the bookstore.

For reference about the title.

It’s really kind of hard to sum this on eup. There is a plot: Sadie and Sam are friends as children, they fall out and meet again as students at MIT And Harvard respectively, and end up making video games togethre with Sams roommate, Marx. But that doesn’t really do this novel justice. It’s really about friendships and all different types of love, and the relationships we make and break and make again. It covers about 40 years, and all the ups and downs in Sadie’s and Sam’s life, set against the backdrop of the games that they have made together over the years.

It didn’t always work for me; I found it to drag sometimes, and at other times I was bored with where the story was going. But in the end, I found it to be sweet and touching, and quite insistent that romantic love, at least as we all think about it, is not the Best Thing Ever, that people can live and thrive with other relationships in their life. It was definitely refreshing in that sense.

And the narration was quite good. She didn’t always do the voices, but I was able to follow the story.

And the narration was lovely. She didn’t do all the voices, but the writing was good enough that I could usually tell who was talking no matter what.

I didn’t absolutely love it, but I really liked it.

Audiobook: You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)

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youreneverweirdby Felicia Day
Read by the author
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some mild swearing and a couple of f-bombs until you get to the second-to-last chapter, where she talks about Gamer Gate and trolls on the internet,  and then there’s a LOT. It’s in the Biography section of the bookstore.

I am not a huge fan of Felicia Day. Don’t get me wrong: I know who she is, I’ve seen some of what she’s done, and I like her. But fan? Not really. And yet, this book appealed to me from the moment I saw the cover (and heard the title). A memoir of an awkward, anxiety-riddled, gamer girl who happens to be a semi-famous actor? Count me in.

And it, as read by Day, was absolutely charming. (I’m sure it was charming in print form, too, but I’d definitely recommend listening to this one.) Day writes about her interesting childhood (homeschooled for “hippie reasons not God reasons”), starting college at 16 (double majoring in math and violin performance), heading to LA and trying to break into the acting business, playing World of Warcraft, and finally, creating her own web show ages before anyone knew what a web show was.

It’s a fascinating journey, and while she has “coffee mug” nuggets of wisdom along the way (I wish I wrote them down; they were pretty great), the best part, for me, was just listening to Day be honest about anxiety, depression, and figuring out how to be the best and most honest person she can be.

She sounds like a delightful person, one I’d happily invite to that dinner party with famous people I’d love to have. And this is an absolutely delightful book.

Graphic Novel Round Up, December 2014

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In Real Life
by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s a couple instances mild swearing and because it’s about economics and gaming, it’s in the teen section of the bookstore. That said, A (who is in 5th grade) read it, understood most of it (at least the general idea), and really liked it. It’s in the teen graphic novel section of the bookstore.

I’ve never read anything by Cory Doctorow, but I was intrigued by this when it came into the store, and after reading a review of it for the Cybils blog I knew I needed to pick this one up.

Anda is a gamer. Which makes her a bit of an anomaly in her new school in Flagstaff, Arizona. So when a woman comes to their tech class, inviting them all to join this new online gaming community, Coarsegold, Anda jumps at the chance. Once inside the game, though, she soon finds out things are not all coming up roses. She hooks up with another player, Sarge, who introduces Anda to the world of gold farming. Actually, Anda and Sarge’s job is to kill off those who are gold farming — harvesting virtual gold for real money.

But then Anda befriends one of the gold farmers, a Chinese boy who goes by the English name, Raymond. She discovers that he’s being forced to work for hours on end without a break, for very little money and no health coverage. So, she gets Involved.

I enjoyed much about this foray into the gaming world. I enjoyed Anda as a character, and that Jen Wang drew her realistically. Even her avatar, which was slimmer and “whiter” than Anda was, wasn’t Barbie perfect. I enjoyed the fact that the introduction to the gamer world was a girl, as well. Especially with gamer-gate, acknowledging that girls are gamers, too (and good at it) is a good thing. Doctorow mentions in his introduction that this is not just about gamers, but it’s also about economics and making a difference. And I could see that as well; it’s a primer how electronic transactions take place and a reminder that in this world, no one is truly ever disconnected from anyone else.

Fascinating.

I Remember Beirut
by Zeina Abirached
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series (loosely speaking): A Game for Swallows
Content: Much like Hidden, this is about the effects of war on everyday people. It’s pretty matter-of-fact, but it feels like an older graphic novel. It’d be in the teen graphic novel section of the bookstore.

This is basically Abirached’s memories of growing up during the war in Lebanon. Her  house was in the middle of what she called “no man’s land”, which was a zone in between the worst of the fighting and the safer places in Beirut. Her memories are organized roughly chronologically, and range from the mundane — how they showered — to the macabre — her brother loved collecting bits of schrapnel — to the sad — when a neighbor had to move because their house got blown up.

Done in the same stark black and white drawings, it’s a reminder that no war is without casualties, and that sometimes those casualties are the everyday lives of people who aren’t even involved in the fighting.