The Anatomy of Super Mario Vol. 1 by Jeremy Parish My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is a matter class on Mario. I thought I knew all there was to know about Mario. Not only have I read a lot of the histories, but I was there. Mario was my first game; the…

Gamers at Work: Stories Behind the Games People Play by Morgan Ramsay My rating: 2 of 5 stars On the negative side, I didn’t realize beforehand this was written by a venture capitalist guy from the point of view of running companies. That made it less fun than if it’d been about the amazing and…

Reinventing Project Management: The Diamond Approach To Successful Growth And Innovation by Aaron J. Shenhar My rating: 3 of 5 stars I’ve been involved in projects from all levels: developer, Project Manager, Manager of PM, and customer of project (technically this is everyone everywhere, but I’m talking about at work). This book has really changed…

Gamers by Thomas K. Carpenter My rating: 3 of 5 stars For some reason, I’ve found myself reading a lot of YA fiction over the last couple years. On the negative side, it appears that Dystopias are the genre du jour. Nothing wrong with them, and I think something about them speaks to teens. When…

Irregular Creatures by Chuck Wendig My rating: 4 of 5 stars This was my first Chuck Wendig book. If I’m thinking of the right author, all I knew about him before going into this is that he apparently likes to use a lot of profanity in his books. This one had more than most, but…

Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James K. Morrow My rating: 4 of 5 stars That is definitely not what I thought it was going to be. I was sure that somehow this actor would be transformed into a monster. What we got instead was a short, witty, and fun book that posited an alternate World War…

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow My rating: 4 of 5 stars In my Homeland review, I mentioned that many of Doctorow’s novels post-Eastern Standard Tribe are depressing reads; especially Little Brother, Homeland, and For the Win. Since he’s trying to spur people to action by making them realize how the world works, they can be…

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars I don’t know what’s different this time. Maybe it’s me; maybe it’s Sir Pratchett. This book just never seemed to have a climax. Had the journey not been sufficiently fun I might have scored it 2 stars. This book reminds me of what was…

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins My rating: 4 of 5 stars So, we have book one: satire of reality TV, book two: propaganda, and now book three: the reality of revolution and civil war. This trilogy is a perfect example of how YA and children’s literature is often subversive – this is why there are so…

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe My rating: 5 of 5 stars My undergraduate degree is Electrical Engineering, but the most important thing I learned was not anything about Maxwell’s Equations or electrons and holes – it was how to view the world in order to ask questions about…

Love Hina, Vol. 12 by Ken Akamatsu My rating: 2 of 5 stars The book continues where the last one left off: with Kanako desperate to get intimate (physically and emotionally) with her adopted brother. While not biological incest, I still am not completely comfortable with it. Of course, coupled with the fact that she’s…

I only have a bit of free time each day – usually no more than about two hours when you add it all up. So whichever of my hobbies tends to catch fire is the one that gets the majority of the attention. 2013 was a pretty good year for video games, but in 2014…