American Gods by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you take Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods and combine it with Scott Snyder’s American Vampire, Vol. 1, you’d have a pretty close approximation of what this book is about. Given that this book has been out since 2001, I’m not going to bother with marking spoilers. I’ll say here at the top that I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who enjoys mythology. Also, not for the faint of heart - lots of profanity, violence, and explicit sex.

For all those who say the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a gun…..

“William Coleman III of Gresham, Oregon, was robbed of his Walther-brand P22 handgun. The gun was stolen by a young man who walked up to Coleman, pulled out his own gun, and said, ‘I like your gun. Give it to me.’”

I hope it’s a little more mature in Windows 10 - I’ll definitely consider it when I update my photography hard drive.

Adobe is doing some pretty despicable stuff - logging EVERY book (whether or not you are using Adobe Digital Editions) and sending it back to a server. ( Here’s the guy who first discovered it).

Why is this an issue? Because the books you read can be used to discriminate against you or, in some countries, land you in jail. In the USA it could put you on the no-fly list. As soon as I get home I’m uninstalling ADE - I’d installed it for the possibility of checking out digital books from the library. Forget it! I’m sticking to the no-DRM books and physical books at the library.

Pwned by Shannen Crane Camp My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In my first status update I was unsure of whether the book would catch on with me. I’d bought it as part of a bundle, and it wasn’t the book that sold me on that bundle. The concept was interesting, but I wasn’t sure. The main character was a girl, in fact a cheerleader. And she played a WoW-like game. A Venn Diagram in which I was one of the cirlces would have pretty much no overlap with Reagan, the main character. Well, other than that I also lived in Oregon, but what was when I was in middle school, not high school. I also wasn’t sure of whether the premise rings true to today’s high school kids. When I left HS nearly 15 years ago, gaming still wasn’t as pop culture as it is today. As I said in the status update, with dude-bros playing Call of Duty, should Reagan actually feel paranoid for playing computer games? Is that the sole provenance of nerds? I think I would have found it slightly more believeable if it was more explicitly about the MMO. I could buy that most people in her high school gamed, but still made fun of her for MMO gaming which still seems to have a tinge of nerd to it. But, in the end, it’s a quibble (a quibble I’ve wasted a paragraph on); a MacGuffin.

I was explaining bands to Scarlett and she wanted to see an example. The only concert movie I had was from the I Fight Dragons Chicago show. I put that on and she rocked out; And asked me to dance with her. The first video (blurry because she’s so close, I think) she is spinning on my finger. The second she’s dancing on her own. I didn’t think to record video until well into things so she’s not going as crazy with the dancing as she had been.

I, Zombie by Hugh Howey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

That was extremely intense. I don’t think I’ll ever look at zombies the same way again. I got this book as part of some pay what you want bundle. I never would have bought it on its own - I’m not a big zombie person. I read World War Z because everyone spoke about how incredibly good it was. And, just like The Walking Dead (pretty much the only other zombie story I consume), World War Z was about the people, not the zombies. Really the enemy could have been a contagion virus or out of control vampires like The Strain.

Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is Simon Peg/Nick Frost meets World of Warcraft. I can’t remember if I got this in the same ebook bundle as Jam or a different one, but I chose Jam of this one to read first because it sounded like I’d enjoy more. I never played WoW or any of its ancestors or any progeny. As of this writing never even played Diablo or any of its clones. So Jam seemed more up my ally - especially after I confirmed it was more of a spiritual successor to Mogworld than a Sequel. (One of the programmers in Mogworld is a character in Jam, but other than references via t-shirts, posters, etc there’s no reason to read Mogworld first) I really only read Mogworld because a) I owned it and b) I really enjoyed Jam.

Chrono Trigger by Michael P. Williams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is exactly what I hoped it would be. It is a deconstruction and reconstruction of the plot; it is an examination of what made the game so special. And it is a chunk of the author’s autobiography.

Unlike the author, and perhaps unlike most Chrono Trigger players, this was my first Square RPG. My brothers and I saw it in a used game sale bin at our local game rental shop. Attracted by Toriyama’s art more than anything else, we bought it for about $20 by combining all our allowances. It is no over exaggeration to say that purchase changed our lives. We had no idea such a game could exist.

Borg Like Me & Other Tales of Art, Eros, and Embedded Systems by Gareth Branwyn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(This ended up becoming almost more like a blog post than a review, but let’s call it new Books Journalism - a riff on new games journalism, which is really just Gonzo from the 70s repackaged for the children of the 80s and 90s)