Nate
I’m not sure what to write about this book. Some of the writing was very well written. The subjects of games and game design all made sense to me as someone who grew up a few hundred feet from the local Donkey Kong game and put way too many quarters in that machine. The plot and sub-plots were often confusing and regularly didn’t ring true to me, but I convinced myself while reading that life is often nonsensical and illogical. I don’t know if that defense of the u-turns and abrupt changes is something that would hold water in a court, but at the time it let me continue reading. Something about it made me want to convince myself to keep reading. I can’t put this book in the top tier of books I’ve read, but the writing was better than most and some of it was very creative and imaginative in ways I was not expecting. It’s hard to put my finger on why I felt pulled through this book. It’s not a common feeling. At times it felt like Ready Player One with its cultural references from a past I lived through. It was almost like someone took Ready Player One threw it in a blender with a bunch of old Atari games, a copy of Grand Theft Auto, and wrapped it in a news report about the Columbine shooting…and then decided to try to make a love story that wasn’t a love story, but a friendship story out of it. Chaotic enough to be interesting, but too confusing to be clear in your mind when you turned the last page.
I’m not sure what to write about this book. Some of the writing was very well written. The subjects of games and game design all made sense to me as someone who grew up a few hundred feet from the local Donkey Kong game and put way too many quarters in that machine. The plot and sub-plots were often confusing and regularly didn’t ring true to me, but I convinced myself while reading that life is often nonsensical and illogical. I don’t know if that defense of the u-turns and abrupt changes is something that would hold water in a court, but at the time it let me continue reading. Something about it made me want to convince myself to keep reading. I can’t put this book in the top tier of books I’ve read, but the writing was better than most and some of it was very creative and imaginative in ways I was not expecting. It’s hard to put my finger on why I felt pulled through this book. It’s not a common feeling. At times it felt like Ready Player One with its cultural references from a past I lived through. It was almost like someone took Ready Player One threw it in a blender with a bunch of old Atari games, a copy of Grand Theft Auto, and wrapped it in a news report about the Columbine shooting…and then decided to try to make a love story that wasn’t a love story, but a friendship story out of it. Chaotic enough to be interesting, but too confusing to be clear in your mind when you turned the last page.
This was a very creative and enlightening look at the Huckleberry Finn story from the viewpoint of Jim (I will think of him as James from now on). I had trouble reconciling the advanced learning of Jim and some of the events which did not completely align with the events/plot of the original Huckleberry Finn (which I read before this as preparation). After suspending my nerd brain from trying to make things line up perfectly, I found myself lost in the story as a new one instead of a different interpretation of an existing one. Being a white male in today’s world, I don’t know if I have the experience, the understanding, or the right to make any kind of judgement about the contents, the themes, or the complicated and intense issues involved. The story moved me. In my opinion, this should be required reading in school. It can sometimes be a tough thing to read what people have done to each other in the name of greed or normalcy or just because they can.
This was a very creative and enlightening look at the Huckleberry Finn story from the viewpoint of Jim (I will think of him as James from now on). I had trouble reconciling the advanced learning of Jim and some of the events which did not completely align with the events/plot of the original Huckleberry Finn (which I read before this as preparation). After suspending my nerd brain from trying to make things line up perfectly, I found myself lost in the story as a new one instead of a different interpretation of an existing one. Being a white male in today’s world, I don’t know if I have the experience, the understanding, or the right to make any kind of judgement about the contents, the themes, or the complicated and intense issues involved. The story moved me. In my opinion, this should be required reading in school. It can sometimes be a tough thing to read what people have done to each other in the name of greed or normalcy or just because they can.
