CBR-III Book #6: The Ultimate History of Video Games - Steven L. Kent

Despite my husband claiming that I am as much a gamer as they come, I don't really feel like one. I think video games are fun and can actually improve our happiness levels and teach us a few new things as well. But beyond that, I really just play the one game. So from my point of view, I don't have a good reason as to why I picked up this book. It has been sitting on my husband's shelf for years before one day I just picked it up and decided to see what it said. A few hours later I was well into it and did not want to put it down. So from my husband's point of view, he says I picked up the book because that's just what a gamer does :)

I absolutely loved this book, much more than I ever expected to. It's as hefty as any college history textbook and so it took me several months to get through (plus I've developed a snail's pace for reading, putting in usually just under 30 minutes a day...I'm pretty bad). But at no point did I feel like putting it down, and it never stopped being interesting and incredibly informative.

Clearly my favorite parts were when Kent writes about video games (and this implies there's more to write about in the book than just games...well, in fact, there is, and more on that later). He provides an excellent history of the origin of video games, way back to the roots of pinball machines (back when they were viewed as sources of gambling and restricted to pool halls and bars, and downright outlawed in some states), through Spacewar, Pong, the arcade explosion, Atari, Odyssey, Coleco, all the way through to Sega, Nintendo, Sony, and so on. Kent attempts to lay out how the technology behind video games originated and evolved (paralleling the history of computers from the vacuum tube to the transistor era). He also follows the evolution of game design, from the surprisingly addicting Pong (a simple tennis simulator) to the intricacy of level design and game world design in The Legend of Zelda. He provides the history behind some of the all-time classics of video games: Space Invaders, Centipede, Pacman, Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, and trust me I could go on and on.

Beyond being a book about video games, it is ultimately a book about the birth, rise, decline, and rebirth of a now multi-billion dollar business. It tells the story of the rise of this huge industry, as told by the very people that built it from the ground up, and those that came later to push it into world-wide phenomenon. It details the humble beginnings of some of the most important business people in the industry today, told in part through actual interviews: Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari), Ralph Baer (inventor of the Odyssey), Steve Jobs (his stint at Atari), Trip Hawkins (founder of Electronic Arts), Minoru Arakawa (first president of Nintendo of America), Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of Donkey Kong, Mario, Zelda, and Star Fox), David Rosen (CEO of Sega), and, again, I could go on and on. And what shouldn't come as a shock at all: the birth of an empire can be downright nasty. Kent doesn't hold back in detailing all the scheming, sleight of hands, out-manuevering, and strong-arming that took place.

Another informative aspect of the book is its account of the societal and cultural impact of video games. There are the funny stories: like Japan having to increase its production of coins because so many were tied up in arcades after Space Invaders was released. The slightly paranoid ones: like all the news coverage devoted to how Japan was trying to slowly take over the American economy given their massive sales of Nintendo Entertainment Systems and even their purchase of the Seattle Mariners baseball team (even though that was Nintendo of America, not of Japan). And the really controversial ones.

Controversy over games and their content has existed from the very beginning, back to the Lieberman hearings in 1993 that focused on Mortal Kombat's realistic use of blood and overly-gruesome fatalities (that hearing brought about the development of the ESRB rating system, similar to what is in place for movies), and through to the tragic events that occurred at Littleton, Colorado in 1999 and how the killers related their crimes to Doom (a first person shooter). The events at Columbine renewed the urgency to address violence in video games and how it was being advertised to children, with hearings beginning just two weeks later (though much more dramatic than the 1993 hearings, no new outcomes or laws came about from this hearing). Kent provides a detailed and non-biased account of both hearings, providing the actual transcripts from the sessions. And I have to mention, in another show of how things really are cosmically aligned, I read through these chapters just as the Supreme Court reached a decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, which finally ruled this summer that video games fall under the same rights as the First Amendment.

The only drawback to the book is just a matter of time. The book was published in 2001, shortly after SEGA discontinued the Dreamcast and Sony released the Playstation 2, and prior to the release of the Game Cube and Xbox. That's a good chunk of history missing. Lord, a full decade! Now I feel old... But really, the book is just begging for a sequel. I sincerely hope Kent decides to pick up the story where he left off and take us through the recent bout of video game innovation, from motion accelerators and sensors to online gaming communities (in my biased opinion, I was sorely disappointed that there was absolutely no mention of Blizzard, creators of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, and World of Warcraft).

As a study of a business and how it impacted our culture, and also as a fun and interesting account of video games, it was very enjoyable. Highly recommend.

CBR-III Book #5: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World - Jane McGonigal

Reality is Broken was a wonderfully thoughtful gift from Subie, who heard McGonigal talk in Boston earlier this year and managed to score a personal signed copy for Rock and me. Thanks Subie!

I had heard about McGonigal just a few days before Subie gave us the book when she was featured over at WoW Insider (World of Warcraft-related news and blog site). I liked her message even though I felt the practical application of what she was saying was not quiet there yet. After reading the book, I still like the message, and I still think the practical application is not quite there yet, but I have a new understanding of how it's possible.

So what is her message? In a nutshell, it is the premise that if we could apply the same kind of productivity and enjoyment to our everyday lives that we devote to games, we could appreciably improve the quality of our lives and make a difference in the world around us. Couched in there too is a defense against those that would claim that games are purely escapist time-wasting activities, that gamers (specifically video gamers) are missing out on life by immersing themselves in games, and that games cannot incite useful or productive work or bring about life-changing opportunities.

McGonigal arranges her book in three sections. The first explores why people like to play games, any games: board games, video games, sports games, puzzle games, word games, pen and paper games, "playground" games, strategy games, and so on and so on. At the surface, games obviously make us happy because they are pastimes, like watching T.V. or reading a book. But deeper down, games make us happy because they challenge us; they push us into tackling seemingly insurmountable odds that we can overcome through creativity, ingenuity, and persistence; and they reward us with intrinsic values such as pride, awe, self-fulfillment, and satisfaction. Games also have the possibility of connecting us as communities (depends on the game).

The second section examines how established game mechanics could potentially be applied to our everyday lives to provide the same challenges and rewards that make games so fun to play. McGonigal argues that one could make a game out of life's difficulties (as she did when she turned her medical recovery following an accident into a game), or our everyday responsibilities, or our social interactions.

The final section presents several examples of real (i.e. currently existing) games that have real-world effects. The argument is that people spend, and have spent, numerous productive man-hours playing games. What if that productivity could be applied in a game that brings about actual change? She discusses several examples of such games (most of which she helped design), but my favorite example she talks about is Foldit, a game in which people manipulate proteins in a 3D virtual environment (comparable to Tetris) to learn what patterns are the most stable. The project's goal is to get gamers to contribute to science by playing.

That is my summary (though not very short) of the major parts I got out of the book, but McGonigal goes into so much more detail about a variety of game-related issues. There is certainly a lot of information here and a lot of insight into the potential future of games and where they're going (specifically, these life-changing games). Like I said, I don't think games are quite there yet. Personally, I think gamers are more likely to spend more hours next week playing the Ocarina of Time re-release than Foldit...but I'm also a jaded, short-sighted person with little to no imagination or foresight. Honestly, I would love to participate in a game that produced real-life results as much as I currently participate in WoW. It would be truly amazing if this is actually where gaming ended up going (and after reading the book I think it's very possible it will).

This brings me to what I liked about the book the best, which was the first section that deals with why games are meaningful, why they make us happy, and why it can be a very good thing to play games. I was nodding in agreement to pretty much every sentence written in the first six chapters (though less so in the chapters that explore how social connections can grow from gaming, contradicting the idea that all gamers are socially stunted recluses...cause, see, I'm socially stunted because I hate people and think every single person out there is an asshole, whether they're in physical or virtual form... but that's just me).

In addition to recommending this book to self-classified gamers, I would highly recommend it to people who don't consider themselves gamers, or who can't comprehend what the big deal is about games, but who have an open mind and interest to learn how games can be important, both for personal happiness and in a potentially larger world-changing sense. In any case, I've always thought that every single person out there is a gamer to some degree. And if you truly are not playing a game of any kind, I would seriously urge you to give it a try. It's quite fun.

CB-III Book #4: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

This is another selection from my deck of cards that I just got around to reading last month. Though, for some reason, I've had a copy of this book since high school. The same copy, mind you. Which means that for ten years (jesus, ten years!) I moved this exact same book across countries and states, from college dormitories, to graduate family housing, to cheap apartment living, to this new house...without having even read it. I swear I'm not a hoarder.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was written by Ken Kesey and published in 1962. Kesey drew from his own experiences as an orderly at a mental health institute to write the book. Told from the perspective of half-Native American patient "Chief" Bromden, it tells the story of Randle McMurphy after he joins the psychiatric ward to avoid staying at a work farm to serve out his prison sentence. The story focuses on the power struggle between McMurphy and the ward's overseer, Nurse Ratched. During the course of the book, McMurphy antagonizes Nurse Ratched, upsets the established routines and rules, and incites the patients to stand up for themselves instead of being intimidated and emasculated. By virtue of his strong, independent, and sexually liberated (for the 50s) character, he becomes a natural leader and source of inspiration for the mentally ill patients, most of whom are in the ward voluntarily (and therefore in control of when they can deem themselves as cured). The narrator's story (Chief Bromden) is also told during the course of the book, though he immediately proves to be an unreliable narrator. Highly paranoid, he is convinced that the entire ward is operated by a mechanical collective known as The Combine that seeks to control society. The story culminates in a series of disturbing events, with some interesting role reversals (that's about as much as I want to say about where the book goes from the main premise so as not to spoil anything, though I imagine it's a fairly well known story at this point).

As a book, it is very straightforward. The narrator may be unreliable but never in the sense that you don't understand or believe what is going on, only in the sense that he is irrationally paranoid and prone to (obvious) hallucinations. The main themes regard authority and rebellion, and the insidious control exerted by Nurse Ratched. The book also comments on the oppressive nature of mental wards at the time that made them comparable to prisons.

The book was successful during the time it was published, particularly as it criticized American institutions during a time of social upheaval. Kesey would go on to consume massive quantities of LSD and become a main figure of the hippy movement (among many other notable things).

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It is a slow starter and doesn't really count as radical or eye-opening in today's age, but it is a good yarn. McMurphy ends up a much more complicated character than I've described here, and there are several notable supporting characters. The ending really shouldn't have taken me by surprise but the last quarter of the book was the most gripping portion for me.

Also, an aside (cause where else can I say it?): the movie is really not that much like the book. I didn't finish the movie because it was all crazy people and lots of yelling and Doc Brown throwing a hissy fit...and the book was not that at all. Unless I missed something in the book, what I took away from it was that the inmates were not that crazy at all, they just weren't conforming to what people expected and they weren't able to conform. Sure, there was some degree of mental instability, but overall I got the impression that they could mostly be helped if not for the domineering and dehumanizing nature of their care. But Jack Nicholson is awesome.

32 down, 20 to go.

CB-III Book #3: The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell

Damn. Well, here I am, finally. It's a very awkward moment right now, finally writing a post after such a long absence. I got no excuse. You would think that my newfound free time would have resulted in an overabundance of posts detailing every tired minutiae of my day. In fact, unemployment has been a very weird time. Sure, I spend a lot of time job-hunting, nitpicking my resume, and writing and rewriting cover letters to suit each job description. But you may be surprised to know that I haven't been playing WoW nonstop for 8 hours for the last two months (which is kind of where I saw my days devolving at first). I think this is a very good thing. I haven't been reading that much either. That's not so good. I have been watching a lot of Netflix streaming. This has had mixed results: on the one hand, I've caught up with some shows I always wanted to try; on the other hand, my brain very nearly turned to mush when I tried to cram as much Buffy and Angel as I could in one week because the stupid PS3 led me to believe that Netflix was removing them from the instant stream (but that will be another post...maybe). And I've been very good about going to the gym every day. The house is generally very clean. Most of the windows finally have curtains, which was no small task actually. I guess I'm saying that it's been a weird time in no specific way but it clearly translated into me losing interest in writing.

On to a book review. This was a very nice birthday present from Subie. I actually finished reading this a couple of months ago.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell is told in two alternating halves, both of them centered on Father Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit missionary. One half details Sandoz's experiences back on Earth following a scientific exploration mission to an alien planet with a diverse team of scientists and other missionaries. The other half details how the space exploration mission came about, beginning with how the different team members came to know each other, how the alien planet was discovered, how the mission was put together, and what happened when the team arrived on the planet. If it was a movie, the scenes following the mission would be very dark and gloomy, probably with an overall blue hue to the film, with very somber dialogue and scenes of human despair; the other half would be very bright and colorful, with quick and witty dialogue, beautiful locations and people, and the overall tone would be one of exploration, adventure, and awe. Eventually, the two halves would meet, on the alien planet, as Sandoz retells the fateful events that occurred towards the end of the mission. The scenes prior to Sandoz's return to Earth would take a dark turn, almost (almost) horror movie-style, while the scenes after his return would see the main character gain some clarity and peace. I see Alfred Molina in the starring role, but I guess those higher up see things differently. The tagline and plot synopsis would reference the overall themes of the book, which are religious faith clashing or coexisting with scientific discovery, the meaning of fate, and the difficulties of First Contact.

Without giving plot points away, I think that describes the overall feeling and story of the book.

At the center of it, the book is really about religious and philosophical inquiry set in the science fiction trope of meeting an alien race for the first time. Several of the characters in the book struggle with their faith when confronted with extreme adversity, asking themselves the typical question of why do bad things happen to good people, how can a path of fate or divine intervention lead to suffering, how can God allow bad things to happen. While I'm not an overly religious person, or a creationist, my own personal faith allows the possibility that something initiated that first super spark that put us here, that there are dusty blueprints sitting in some long-forgotten past. However, I don't really think of God as sitting in a control room, watching over football games, deciding what babies are born alive or stillborn, watching people get married, and jotting down the names of murderers, thieves, and adulterers in a little black book. I think bad things happen to good people because shit happens, life is a crap shoot and often unfair, it is what we make of it, but it is also the random hand we are dealt. While the theological discussion in the book is interesting and well presented, it was not personally compelling and, because of that, I did feel like it slogged down the pace of the book. This is probably the complete opposite of what Russell was going for.

Much more interesting to me was the science fiction storyline that brings together a ragtag group of people as they make an amazing discovery, how they are able to explore the vast reaches of space, and what they find when they get there (though this is by no means completely new territory). I'm fascinated by science fiction stories of First Contact, even though I bet any First Contact with alien intelligent life would lead to violent confrontations and laser blasts in the face. Although the mystery of what happened to the science team on the alien planet kept me somewhat hooked, it's not really that important (you know something happened right off the bat, you just don't know how bad it got).

Overall, it was an interesting read, but not as important to me as it might be to someone else.

Real Life Crits

This post is about a month late. And it was supposed to only be a happy post, dammit, but, as they say, shit happens.

I'll start with the happy part of the post. Rock and I actually moved into our new home on January 14th. It took a tad longer than I expected to settle in (I was still unpacking boxes about two weeks later), but I think things are more or less in place. It does kind of suck that New England decided to have one of the heaviest snow seasons in memory. After hours that turned into days of snow shoveling, snow blower duty, roof raking, roof shoveling, ice sanding, etc., I am officially sick of winter. The downside being that it was a bad time to get a driveway, a roof, and an oil-burning furnace. The upside, of course, being that we have a house! :)

The absolute bitch of it being that I was laid off two days after closing. Yeah...

I don't necessarily want to get into it here. It was devastating for the first week but I've adjusted by now. I've had the house to keep me busy at least. Somewhere in between all the free time and the added responsibility I found the inner housewife that cleans the house every day, cooks and bakes new recipes at least three times a week, and watches hours of Buffy at a time. The job situation is on hold at the moment until my employment authorization kicks in (which may not happen until around May). Though I will start doing the resume polishing/job application thing this week.

Would be nice if winter could be over soon.

CB-III Book #2: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

This is a selection from my deck of cards. Is it something of a testament to the pervasiveness of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov that despite having never read it, or talked to others who have read it, or seen adaptations on it, I already know what it's about? Who doesn't know, more or less, what the book is about? As Nabokov himself suggested, is it any wonder the name Dolores or Lolita stopped being so popular after the publication of this book?

So, I'm not going to delve into the plot. The one sentence plot summary is that this book is about middle-aged Humbert Humbert's obsession with young girls and his eventual relationship with 12-year-old Lolita.

The heart of the book is a study on desire and obsession, a portrait of sexual abuse, and a view of one man's madness. The window dressing, though much more than that because it is the reason why this book is such a masterpiece, is Nabokov's prose. I wouldn't trade the difficult subject matter, or the visceral reaction this book got out of me because of the depth of sexual abuse, for a kinder or less uncomfortable plot if it meant giving up the intricate literary style. Full of puns, allegories, satire, parody, it was, at times, a struggle to read through. I can't remember the last time a book had me running for the dictionary quite as often. There is more allusion, double entendre, sarcasm, mordant wit, and meaning in one sentence of Humbert's ramblings than in any of the best and most long-winded Internet trolls and/or savants out there. Truth be told, it gets to be a bit too much. It was the same thing that happened to me halfway through book 3 or 4 of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Sometimes I just want plain English. That's a slight on me. The book's prose is just perfect.

The subject matter, like I said...much more uncomfortable than I expected. It is not a pornographic book, as many early publishers claimed (and for which they refused to publish). There is nothing explicit but it is still unsettling to tread the mind of a man so obsessed with young children. Because 12-year-old Lo is a child. After reading the book, I am mostly upset at how Lolita has become synonymous with a willfully seductive and sexual young girl, almost laying the blame on the girl for the ensuing sexual adulation by grown men. Lolita in the book is never willfully seductive, she does not seduce Humbert. There is a passage where Humbert says he was, in fact, seduced by Lolita, but I'm not inclined to believe him because throughout the book Humbert proves to be a pretty unreliable narrator, and because on more than one occasion he alters the telling to excuse his behavior to himself. And even if I could be convinced that Lolita actively seduced Humbert, it still does not excuse the years of sexual abuse, dominance, emotional abuse, and near imprisonment that followed. And the fake patriarchy and implied incest just pushes the subject into a whole different level of repulsive. But I'm also being very harsh because the focus could have just as well been any other form of desire, and in that sense it's not so much a story about peadeophilia, but a story of obsession.

It is an interesting picture of an unhealthy obsession, as I more or less expected from what little I knew about the book. I confess I did not expect it to be a description of abuse. I also assumed before starting that Lolita was complicit, but we actually learn so little about her and she is hardly ever given her own voice. All this is just what I gathered from the book. After reading different reviews on it, I see another reason why it's become such a classic novel. There are several different ways of interpreting it and you are very likely to walk away with a different view altogether.

After all that, though, I'm not sure I recommend it. But I wouldn't discourage it, either. I'd say, find out what the fuss is all about for yourself, if you're prepared to go there.

31 down, 21 to go.

CB-III Book #1: The Shattering by Christie Golden

Maybe I shouldn’t have started my Cannonball read with this particular book. It immediately sets up an image that could leave me ostracized. I’ll become that girl. The WoW geek, the fantasy nerd, irredeemably fat and lonely. Though I suppose I shouldn’t cry too much because you would have come to the same conclusion if you took even a passing glance at the rest of my posts. So, the hell with it, here is my review of World of Warcraft: The Shattering.

I will say that this is my first WoW novel. I love the game but the lore behind it is, to put it mildly, confusing. If the Warcraft lore and the LOTR lore were part of the same universe, the entire LOTR trilogy would be the Cliff’s notes version of the Warcraft encyclopedia. It’s pretty massive, so I never bothered to read any canon outside of what the game itself offered.

Then the Cataclysm happened. Suffice it to say that the game I’ve gotten to know over the course of four years changed so drastically that I was back to square one. In terms of game design, it was a huge undertaking by Blizzard when they decided to not just add new pieces or components to the existing game (new levels, if you will), but to rework the entire existing structure nearly from the ground up. In terms of lore, it advanced the story to the next level. MMOs are, almost by definition, static worlds that rarely see any changes. Your character may level up to the cap and defeat the hardest boss to exist in the game...but that same boss will be back there next week, as if nothing happened. With this expansion though, the entire story changed and moved forward and it will never be the same as it was just a month ago.

It was a pretty big deal, is what I’m saying. I decided to pick up this particular book because it sets the stage for what happened between expansions, before and after the world shattering. Despite having some amount of cheese that plagues nearly all fantasy, I was very glad I picked this up, and ended up tearing through it rather quickly.

The book is less about fantasy and magic and more about political machinations, cultural divides, and social interactions. The story focuses on major political shifts happening both for the Horde (the “bad” faction if you will, that includes orcs, trolls, undead, goblins, blood elves, and tauren*) and for the Alliance (the “good” guys, made up of humans, night elves, dwarfs, gnomes, worgen (werewolves!) and draenei (space goat aliens)). Coups, murder plots, honor battles to the death, it’s all here and it takes center stage. There is some amount of good vs. evil simplification, but for the most part, the battles (both internal and external) are never black or white, and no character is without her flaws. This is the first book in a planned trilogy, so not every storyline gets squared away at the end.

As much as I play the game and have some familiarity with the lore characters presented in the book, I still tend to get lost whenever I read WoW blogs. But Golden manages to provide just enough background on the characters to set them up without bogging down the book in excessive detail, while continuing to move the main plot forward. I feel very confident saying that anyone not familiar with this universe could still pick this book up and become immersed in an interesting story with decent characters.

I will admit that some of the dialogue is too happy-go-lucky to ring particularly true, especially when severity would have made the scene better (I’m thinking of one scene in particular when the human king decides to help out the dwarven kingdom). These moments are thankfully rare.

All in all, it’s not a bad way to while away a lazy train commute or a few minutes before bed. It certainly doesn’t break molds in fantasy; rather, it’s soft enough on the fantasy aspect to not scare away those that feel squeamish about it. And it’s definitely a good read for anyone playing the game, who is wondering just what the hell happened to the Warcraft world.

*aside: the tauren are a race of humanoid cows, which is probably the main reason I started playing this in the first place

So Long, 2010

Well, I think it's pretty clear that the holiday season took a definite toll on my free time and my blogging. There is a big hole between right before Thanksgiving and today, but this is how it goes I guess. In any case, I figure New Year's Eve is as good a time as any to reflect on the year that's gone by and think about what's ahead.

It was definitely one of the more eventful years I've had and I'm really glad I was able to document most of it on this blog. I certainly didn't expect such an eventful year to happen 12 months ago. As much as I dislike reading myself, I am glad I've been able to keep track of a few memories along the way.

I started out the year in Honduras. Back then, I was hoping it would be at most another year before I was able to return but sadly it won't happen this time around. With any luck I'll be visiting home sometime in 2011. I miss my family and my friends and Christmas is just not the same not being home, though I can't complain about having spent Christmas with Rock and his family surrounded by yummy food, neat presents, and an intermittent day-long WoW playing session.

But, anyway, some other events: i had my septoplasty, which has been a great improvement; shortly after that, Rock and I tied the knot, assisted by Subie, and even my mom, sister, and brother were able to travel up here for it; Rock and I finally went to Disney World and had the most awesome vacation, even if he was afraid on the plane the whole time; and we rounded out the year by finally taking a big plunge and buying a house.

I guess I can't really say what 2011 will bring, but I do know this: if all goes well, we are done living in communal quarters in two weeks! No more people blasting t.v. at all hours, running up and down stairs, or bringing their loud friends over. We get a whole new list of problems but I am certainly looking forward to being a home-owner.

I'm hoping there's a trip to Honduras in there somewhere. At the least, there is a trip to Chicago for my sister's wedding. Other than that, I guess I don't know.

There is at least one new thing happening for me next year. I'll be joining this crazy crowd called Pajiba as they undergo their traditional Cannonball read. I first became aware of the site and Cannonball through my friend Figgy. She doesn't know it, but part of the inspiration for this blog came from her and her blog and reading her reviews and really liking what she did with it. Anyway, I figured since I was already having a good time reading and reviewing books, I might as well join the community that hooked me into it. I don't think this means the rate of reviews will go up, however :(

Happy New Year everyone.

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

The Remains of the Day is not in my deck of cards. I picked this up because I’ve been hearing a lot about that movie Never Let Me Go, and it just sounds like such a mash-up of Gattaca and The Island that I was wondering why people keep going on about it. And from what I’ve read, it seems that the real driver in the novel is the character development and Kazuo Ishiguro’s prose (and that if that can be translated and captured onto film then the movie will be pretty solid). Now, I’m a sucker for good prose. There’s probably a fine line somewhere in my head where I prefer the way a story is told over what the actual story is or who the characters are. One of the reasons 100 Years of Solitude is my favorite book is because the prose and narrative itself is such a huge part of the novel as a whole. It makes the book fun and interesting and compelling to read. And if I look back at the list of books I’ve blogged about since I started this, the books that stick out the most to me are the ones that were told in interesting ways: All the Pretty Horses, Slaughterhouse-Five, Catch-22, A Handmaid’s Tale. So I was pretty sold on reading Ishiguro after reading so many praises regarding his prose and style. Clearly, this isn’t Never Let Me Go, because that book is all out at my local library, but damn it I was determined to read something by Ishiguro, so here we are.

The Remains of the Day is told from the first person perspective of Mr. Stevens, a butler who once served for one of the grandest houses in pre-WWII England. The story follows him on his vacation, a journey through the countryside, during which he reminisces about his past life, his accomplishments, and his relationship with Miss Kenton, who he is planning to visit at some point during his trip. I was pretty skeptical when I started the book because that is not a particularly interesting plot. But I have to say, Ishiguro writes masterful prose.

Stevens’ recollections (told in flashbacks during his road trip, as if he’s writing a letter to someone, presumably another butler) are mostly about examining his life, to assure himself that he has lived with dignity and purpose because he has served a great man. It’s a quietly sad story that Stevens is telling but he’s too damn proper to come out and say it. In fact, he’s a very unreliable narrator, but there is enough for the reader to read between the lines of the stories he is re-telling and get at the real heart of it. As his unreliable narration continues, the reader gleams that Stevens is actually doubtful, both about his purpose and the greatness of the man he served, and that’s the real tragedy of the story.

The writing is probably the most proper English I’ve ever read, and I think I said the same about Jane Eyre. But where Jane Eyre was boring me to tears (the narration was just too damn dry*), Ishiguro uses it to unfold his story, drawing you in, setting up an environment, and using it to fully describe the character of Mr. Stevens. The novel begins as a study of proper English manners and subtly transforms into a study of character, life lessons, regrets, and missed opportunities. By the time I was halfway in, I couldn’t put it down.

And the heart of the whole novel really is the prose. Ishiguro weaves in Stevens’ flashbacks, unreliability, and melancholy musings, while always maintaining an excruciatingly proper English demeanor. If this was just a story about a butler taking a road trip during which he realizes his life could have been better, it would be pretty straightforward and unremarkable. But the manner of the telling is what makes the entire story interesting and deeply affecting.

Now I need to get my grubby paws on Never Let Me Go. You out there holding on to those copies: return them to the library, now!


* An aside: if I were to explain what “dry prose” means, well I wouldn’t be able to put it into useful words. But it just so happens that I was reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland last night and towards the beginning of the book (chapter 2 or so) there’s the bit about how Alice is all wet because of the pool of tears she created and she meets up with a bunch of other animals that also got caught in the pool and when they finally get out they want to dry off, and so the mouse says “this is the driest thing I know”, and he starts reciting some passage about William the Conqueror (har har, but actually that was pretty funny commentary on Carroll's part). My point being, Lewis Carroll also says prose is dry so that’s good enough for me, and also how weird is it that coincidences like those happen at all. (And, that was quite an aside.)

Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services.

~The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

This is another selection from my 52 Great Books to Read list. Even though The Color Purple falls in the category of books that I know something about because I watched the movie, the only thing I remember about the movie was that I bawled like a baby. So I was already a bit apprehensive about this book, and I went into it assuming it would just end up being a tear-jerker. I don’t necessarily mind being emotionally abused by a book (or a movie) to the point that I’m actually crying, for real. But if I suspect that that’s the entirety of what the experience will offer, I tend to lose interest. It’s the main reason I haven’t watched quite a few movies, because if it sounds so soul-crushingly devastating, I wonder why I would want to go through that. But, like I said, I don’t mind crying during books or movies. The most recent book that had me crying was Deathly Hallows, which I just finished re-reading a few weeks ago. Yeah, I admit it. I was bawling during the two chapters that reveal Snape’s true intentions. You know what’s even worse? I re-read those two chapters a few days later and I was still crying. I own up to it, but I’m not proud.

Anyway, I wasn’t too excited to start this one and I was preparing myself for one long sob story. And what happened instead was so much better. It is a sad story, clearly, but ultimately it’s a story about hope and redemption and finding true happiness. I would now say that it’s actually a pretty damn uplifting story. If every asshole you ever met in the world could turn himself around and find it in himself to become a good person, I would have a much better view of humanity. At least, this book showed me what that view could be.

The book is written entirely as a series of letters, first by the main character Celie, a young African-American woman, to God. Celie has already been tragically abused for someone her age by the time she decides to turn to writing as a way to cope with her emotions and the hardships she endures daily. Eventually, Celie begins to write her letters to her long-lost sister Nettie, once she becomes angry at God for the things that have happened to her. And somewhere in there, Celie discovers letters written by her sister that had been kept from her (Celie). At a young age, Celie is married off to a man who only wants a wife to take care of the house and kids; she is separated from her sister Nettie, who becomes a missionary in Africa; and she is impregnated twice and forced to give up her children. And as crappy as that sounds, and despite the other really crappy things that happen throughout, the story really does grow more and more uplifting. Celie grows stronger, an emotional growth that is flawlessly executed in the tone of her narration.

The book also weaves in the story of a number of characters, including Celie’s sister, Celie’s stepson and his strong willed wife, and Celie’s husband’s mistress, among others. Everyone in the book goes through some kind of change and in some cases, some pretty amazing changes (particularly Celie’s husband).

The book won Walker a Pulitzer Prize and I guess it’s one of the most contested books out there. I’m not particularly interested in looking up what aspects of the book are the most debated, but I would bet a good $5 that scenes of homosexuality take the top of the list rather than scenes of domestic abuse. I’m not in the mood to get riled up and find out, though.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Even the writing style of presenting the story in letters worked out much better than I thought it would. And for a book with such a sad premise, it ends up being a pretty happy story. Surprisingly, I didn’t even cry at all.

30 down, 22 to go.

Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

Wide Sargasso Sea is Jane Rhys' response to Charlotte Bronte's "madwoman in the attic" character, depicted in Jane Eyre as Bertha Mason. In Bronte's novel, Bertha only represents an obstacle between Rochester and Jane, and his source of unhappiness. She is briefly described as Creole, foreign, lunatic, and not belonging to the same world that Rochester and Jane belong to.

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys (a Creole herself) writes a story for Bertha, and gives her a voice and a distinct identity, that of Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole heiress. The novel follows her life, from her childhood growing up in the West Indies to her arranged marriage to Mr. Rochester, through the deterioration of their marriage, her relocation to England, and her eventual complete mental breakdown. As a sample of post-colonial literature, the novel explores racial inequalities, colonization, assimilation, and the parallels and differences between colonists and the colonized.

I wasn't aware of the connection to Jane Eyre before starting the book. I had already read Jane Eyre a few months ago as part of this same reading list and the character of Bertha Mason didn't grab my attention beyond being the mystery behind the story and the one reason Rochester and Jane couldn't be together. Rhys' story fits so well with the narrative already presented in Jane Eyre, that it feels like a necessary prequel that makes the story complete. Bronte's character Bertha is merely a caricature; Rhys' Antoinette is alive and complex; also deeply disturbed, yes, but the backstory sets up the events that happen in Thornfield Hall perfectly.

So, why Bertha - Antoinette? The novel explores issues of identity and assimilation. Rochester, in his role as patriarchal English colonist, assigns Antoinette a new identity, and renames her as Bertha. In fact, Rochester is pretty much a jerk this entire book too. Like Antoinette, however, his backstory is also fleshed out further, for example his relationship with his father and brother. Antoinette's progression into madness plays out throughout the entire novel, getting increasingly worse until the last third of the book when she is living in England and has lost all sense of self.

I would recommend reading this after reading Jane Eyre. I can think of no other prequel that complements the original story so well (though, the book works as a standalone read as well due to the lush descriptions and heavy symbolism). Are there any other good prequels out there? Seriously, I'm asking...


29 down, 23 to go.

Sin's Adventures in Wonderland

Many thanks to Rock and Subie for the pictures featured below. Looking back, none of the ones on here are actually mine :)

Rock and I took a 6 day vacation to Disney World in Orlando around mid-September (seriously, time flies). Subie joined us for the first four days. We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and had access to all the parks and also took a day to see Universal Studios. And I’ll just get this stated now; it was seriously one of the best vacations ever! Below, a lengthy list from Bad to Awesome of how it went, and a few pictures that are not in any particular order.

The BAD

- Dear lord, are there lines. Lines for rides, lines for food, lines for the bathroom, lines for the bus, lines to take pictures…I do not like lines. That said the longest line we voluntarily stood in was 45 minutes long to see a 30-minute scene of “The Lion King on Broadway Show” at Animal Kingdom (which was awesome). I say voluntarily, because the longest line we actually stood in was about an hour and a half long, after the Electrical Magic parade at Magic Kingdom just to get out of the park and onto our resort bus. Guess who was not a happy tourist that day? Poor Rock and Subie, evil Sin came out and it was not good for anybody :-(

- The walking. Yeah, yeah, it’s an obvious one, but it had to be said. We were so exhausted when we got back, we slept twelve hours straight the next day. That’s not an exaggeration. And maybe the walking wouldn't have been so bad but for the horde. Not the WoW Horde. I'd take lovable orcs, trolls, and the walking undead over the thousands of tiny feet and hands that were swarming every inch of the place and rending the air apart with their furious high-pitched squeals. Yes, I don't necessarily like kids, but the magic of Disney is that you get used to them pretty quick. So much so, that I didn't even remember I had an opinion on it till Rock pointed out that Magic Kingdom is the unofficial spokeperson for birth control. So true.

- Rock on a plane. To be fair, he’s not afraid of heights or of small spaces, it was the “dear god, we’re trusting this human-made piece of metal to not crash 35,000 feet” that got to him. Outwardly he seemed ok, but I was really nervous for him…poor Rock.

- Disney Quest’s Build Your Own Rollercoaster. Rock and I built it together and, thinking it would just be a movie of the ride, we went ahead and put in all the crazy loops and figure eights and jumps. And then we’re ushered into a capsule that will simulate the experience. Holy hell. Ok, disclaimer: I am NOT a fan of rollercoasters. I’ll go so far as to say I hate rollercoasters and don’t see the attraction in them, at all. I was not prepared for this ride to feel like an actual rollercoaster but, I don’t know how they do it, you can feel the acceleration (I have been in rollercoasters before, once or twice) and the capsule does flip you upside down and sideways and it jumps and all the rest of it. It was the closest thing to a rollercoaster I rode during the entire trip and it took me completely by surprise.

- That’s about it for badness. I complain about lines but honestly, since it was off-season at the parks, we got into the rides we wanted in 20 minutes or less, and about 80% of the time we just got to walk right on with no waiting.

The GOOD

- Disney Quest. It was pretty awesome to play some old school arcades as well as some immersive virtual games all in the same floor space (and five stories of it!). Unfortunately, the virtual games already feel terribly dated and we get better graphics and motion-controls from a Wii. The place was probably the bomb not even five years ago, but it could use a major overhaul. Why hasn’t Disney partnered up with Microsoft or Sony to showcase some in-the-works technology? Which leads me to:

- 3D, 4D, and virtual-immersion attractions. The rides that use 3D technology are still fun in their own right, either because they have cute stories (the PhilharMagic is adorable, with Donald Duck running through various Disney storylines like Fantasia, The Lion King, and The Little Mermaid), or have interesting 4D effects (smoke, water sprays, smells, seat movements, lighting effects, human actors), but with the 3D saturation clogging up every local movie theater, the charm has faded a bit. Clearly, just a few years ago, this would have been THE place to experience some solid, fun 3D action. The 4D elements still keep the rides alive, but the 3D technology is now second fiddle.

- The craziness of it all. I spent most of the trip remarking on the strangeness of certain jobs. I mean, someone’s job out there is to be the Sebastian the Crab puppeteer on the Voyage of the Little Mermaid. The show was cute and whacked out but I seriously spent the entire show feeling bad for the guy that has to activate the smoke machine and light effects (though it’s probably just a computer at this point). The kid in me loves seeing the guys in the mouse costumes and the actors dressed up as the Princesses, but I find myself just thinking “how weird is that?” I don’t know, we met “Mary Poppins” at breakfast and she came over to talk to us and I felt like such a dumbass for talking to a woman in a costume pretending to be Mary Poppins, when this woman knows I am not five and therefore don’t actually believe she is Mary Poppins, so we both know she is just a woman in a costume pretending to be Mary Poppins, and that just makes the whole thing…awkward. But she was very adorable.

- Wizarding World at Harry Potter. I’m aghast at myself for putting this here and not in the Awesome category below. They did a fantastic job with the architecture and building facades, and Hogwarts is built to a pretty awesome scale. But there wasn’t a lot of content. The entire place is essentially one big store (shocking, I know) but I was disappointed to see that some things weren’t pushed far enough. Like the candy store from the books (the name escapes me). The candy in the store is your generic grocery store candy: peach rings, Swedish fish, jelly beans, etc. I was really hoping for an actual confectionary, where they make the candy right in the store and you can watch. The joke shop was cute but you can’t play with any of the stuff so you can’t really tell what’s inside the boxes. I didn’t get on the rides because I’m a chicken and they didn’t have any mild versions from what I could tell (no 3D virtual immersion type rides, although Subie tells me the Hogwarts castle ride was close enough). I felt very silly for doing this but of course I tried the “butterbeer” and “pumpkin juice.” The butterbeer was cream soda with extra foam (whipped cream I think) and the pumpkin juice tasted just like pumpkin pie. Very cute and silly. Finally they had an acapella group made up of “students” and of course they sang the "toil and trouble" song, and a few other things. I love acapella so that was a neat surprise.

The AWESOME

- Everything else. But I really should elaborate.

- THE FOOD. Oh my god, the food. I really didn’t expect the food to be all that great, for some reason, and to be honest some things were pretty unremarkable (like all of the quick service/fast food counters in the parks), but we went to some pretty awesome restaurants. My favorites were the ones in the Animal Kingdom Lodge where we stayed. There was an Indian-inspired restaurant (Sanaa) and an African-inspired buffet (Boma) that made me sad I couldn’t keep eating.

- The pool and hot tub at the hotel, and the water park. I’m so glad I got to do some actual swimming this summer. I want regular access to a pool so badly. We only went to Blizzard Beach (not Typhoon Lagoon) where we rode a really fun raft ride.

- All of the parks. I’m trying to rate them but I really can’t. All of the parks feel different enough that I just can’t compare them.

- Epcot: I loved Epcot’s Soaring ride even if I was freaking out for the first few minutes, and Spaceship Earth is very cool (though the storyline ends with Jobs building the first Mac so Disney really needs to update this and add some more scenes at the end…I can’t really get misty-eyed over the first Mac when I have a much better computer that fits in my pocket). World Showcase was very neat but we didn’t have time to see any of the live performances. We did see the belly-dancer in the Morocco restaurant; she wasn’t super authentic but, as Subie pointed out, it is a family restaurant.

- Hollywood Studios: this was the smallest park and it doesn’t offer a ton of rides. I loved the Indiana Jones stunt show, more so than the Sinbad stunt show at Universal Studios, but overall Hollywood Studios paled in comparison to Universal. I also loved the 50’s Cafe, which really feels like you stepped into someone’s house from a 50’s TV show. And they had amazing fried chicken and s ‘mores :-) I’m also very glad I got a FastPass for the Toy Story ride because, while it was extremely cute and fun, it does not justify an 80-minute wait in line at all (the standby time for the queue when we redeemed our FastPass).

- Magic Kingdom: I loved this park more than I expected to, I think because it has the most stuff out of any other park. We bought tickets to Mickey’s Not-So-Very-Scary Halloween party, which ended up being absolutely awesome. When I planned the trip, I didn’t devote a full day to MK, thinking it would be mostly kid stuff. So at the last minute we bought tickets to the Halloween thing, which was a trick-or-treat event at the park from 7 to midnight, but the rides are also open. It was awesome because, while everyone else stood in line to get candy, we got to just walk onto all the rides. We walked straight up to the Haunted Mansion twice (best ride ever!). In the end, we went to MK three times: one night for the Electrical Parade, again for the Halloween event, and on the day we left for another three hours. The Halloween parade was more fun than I expected, especially because the crowd was pretty small so we got front row seats (as opposed to the Electrical Parade where it was packed and we had tons of people in front of us).

- Animal Kingdom: Rock didn’t really like this one, and I admit I didn’t like how confusing the layout is, but I absolutely love seeing animals and the whole place is essentially one giant zoo. I wasn’t convinced that the Safari felt like a real safari, like other reviewers have said, but as far as zoos go, it was great to drive through all the animal habitats. Different, at least. The Lion King show had acrobats, singers, and dancers, so obviously that ranked high with me. I was upset I didn’t think to get FastPasses for the Dinosaur ride, because by the time we wanted to ride it, the line was 45 minutes long. At least we rode the Jurassic Park ride at Universal.

- Universal Studios: this place is huge! And I think the themes are even more cracked out than Disney’s. They have a Dr. Seuss section where everything (even the trees) looks like the books. They have an ancient temple section that has the Poseidon ride and this restaurant that resembles a cave. I liked the Jurassic Park section, I was not expecting that big drop at the end of that ride but it was fun. They have a comic strip section which had great buildings but I didn’t really recognize the comic strips (it’s older ones like Hagar, Popeye, stuff like that). The superhero section was fantastic and my favorite pictures will forever be Rock posing with Cyclops, Wolverine, and Captain America. Shame there was no Spiderman. The Spiderman ride was my favorite of the entire trip, hands down, even if I had to shut my eyes for a few seconds cause I was getting motion sick. We did the obligatory Jaws and Rock got soaked :-) and saw the Terminator 2 4D show, which is a 3D movie with some parts played by live actors. Very cheesy but very fun. And I think Universal does the movie theme much better, they have entire streets that really feel like actual movie sets, and Disney doesn’t really do that.

So I rambled for thousands of words and there are still other things I could talk about. It was a great trip and we were pretty lucky, the weather was great, the crowds weren’t too bad (most of the time), we got on a lot of rides, and I think I ended up seeing about 90% of the stuff I wanted to (which is way better than I expected). And we rode the Haunted Mansion ride four times all told :-) That’s enough of a win right there.

My Kingdom for a Ram

Despite what it looks like, what with the numerous posts on the subject, I don't necessarily want to post about WoW all the time. I love the game but even I understand that this makes me seem, well, just plain hopeless. But every now and then things happen that I just need to write about. In my geeky head, it is as if mystical goings-on occur that nudge my faith in super-cosmic powers just a wee bit more. Such a thing happened this Tuesday night.

Those that read my recent ramblings on aquiring a certain purple dragon, obtained by doing many Herculean feats revolving around in-game holidays for the better part of a year (some of those occuring during actual real-life holidays and events, so I leave it up to you to decide how much I ignored my real life friends, family, and duties for virtual duties), may remember that one such holiday was Brewfest. And some of those very attentive readers may even realize that it's been a full year since the last Brewfest and that this year's festivities were upon us just a few weeks ago. Ah, but how time flies.

Trust it to real life to get in the way again, however. My Disney vacation (post still in the works; there were A LOT of pictures) intersected with the start of the holiday so there were four days lost, during which I could have consumed virtual beer as opposed to the real beer I did consume (it was tasty, to be fair). But more importantly, that was four days during which I could not fight the Brewfest boss for a miniscule chance at obtaining one, or both, of the very very very rare mounts that he drops. I was...not pleased.

I went to work at once upon my return. Last year I had seen one mount drop in 14 days and obviously lost the roll. This year: the gods were kind! I got one of the mounts on my third day of trying! It was exhilirating. And I was only the tiniest bit disappointed.

The reason the boss drops two mounts is because they are faction-aligned. One mount is designed off the Kodo mount that is exclusive to the Horde (my faction) and the other is designed off the Ram mount that is exclusive to the Alliance (the filthy enemy). Except these Brewfest mounts can be used by either faction. And well, I already have Kodos. I have many Kodos. Several colored Kodos. This does not make the drop any less sought after. I was certainly happier than a clam, but...a Kodo is not a Ram (hey, that rhymed!).

I kept going. I diligently killed the boss everyday for my daily attempt. I heard many horror stories of people having to destroy several beautiful Rams because they already had one and the item could not be traded. The days ticked down and hope was dwindling.

Tuesday, the last day, dawned and i didn't even realize it, I was so sure the festival ended the next day. With a heavy heart I arrived home that day to face my last attempt for the year. Hope was rock bottom. There was no "tomorrow is a new day" for my character. This was it.

And then, the stars aligned! The fates swirled, gushed, spun, gargled, and spit out a shiny Ram! I could barely believe it! It was EXACTLY like every cliche movie ending where the main character faces insurmountable odds and then, at the last second, evil is vanquished, the bad guy is killed, the guy catches up to the girl, the ring falls into the fire, all of it, but BETTER because I had no idea it would happen that way! It was glorious. Just...beautiful.

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

I have to put up my Disney vacation post soon but I need to arrange my pictures first, so I figured I would put up this post quickly in the meantime. This is another book from my deck of cards.

A few weeks ago I came across this illustration, which I’m sure is pretty well known by now (it’s actually over a year old). I like the drawing, and it is especially helpful in this case because it almost sums up Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: he imagined all of these things happening at the same time.

Montag is a fireman who has only ever been taught to start fires, not to put them out. In this dystopian novel, books have been banned and are illegal, and any houses suspected or known to have books are burned down. The story follows Montag as he begins to question the reasoning behind the book burning, and as he meets others who teach him that things were very different once. That’s about it for plot, without giving away the ending. It’s a short book and a simple storyline but the significance is in the message. I feel lazy doing what I’m about to do but I love these passages from the book and they portray what Bradbury was trying to get across pretty well, and certainly better than I could. Besides, I think people are already fairly familiar with the book’s message. Like Orwell and Huxley, Bradbury was issuing a warning, for people to not get complacent, to not allow themselves to be lulled, to wake up.

“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won’t be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I’ve tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I’ll think I’m responding to the play, when it’s only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don’t care. I just like solid entertainment.”

“…when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities in the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved by any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.”

“There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we’ll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.”

Unlike Orwell and Huxley, however, Bradbury didn't place the blame on the government first, but rather on the people. He saw people's interest in entertainment and television as catalysts for their disinterest in reading and in literature, a movement which government would take advantage of for their own purposes (in the book's case, to wage a long war indefinitely).

In the book, government has taken control of information, the truth can be modified and presented to the people as the government sees fit, and the people are complacent with it all because the ‘truth’ is good and entertainment is always on. The other message here is the harmful effects of a lack of education, either when it's taken away from people or when people don't want it anymore.

It's an interesting take, the idea that people can bring about their own dystopian future, not because there will be supremely powerful governments, but because people will forego their own free will, their own education, in exchange for comfort and pleasure (I'm resisting making aggrandizing comparisons to today's society because I'm not equipped or prepared to make that kind of post but, well, it doesn't exactly sound like science fiction, does it?). The book is more famously known as a warning against censorship and state-sponsored banning, but Bradbury has always emphasized that he was more concerned about people's interest in literature in the first place (though he appreciated the irony of his book being censored by Ballantine editors to remove swear words).

28 down, 24 to go.

The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time . . . Time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

In The Handmaid's Tale, the United States' government has been overthrown by a totalitarian theocracy. This would be enough to make the current society a religious fundamentalist Nazi-like state, but there is also the added bonus that procreation and births have greatly diminished (either for environmental or social reason that are not fully explained). It has that Children of Men storyline going on. Now, you combine a patriarchal, male-driven, extremely religious, chauvinist society with declining birth rates and you end up with the story of Rachel and Leah from the Bible Remixed. That story tells of an infertile Rachel who used handmaids as proxies to have children for her:

And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.

And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath witheld from thee the fruit of the womb?

And she said, Behold my maid Billah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.
- Genesis 30:1-3

How messed up is that passage? Anyway, in the world of Gilead, handmaids such as the narrator are the first generation of women to be used as concubines for the wealthy elite class in order to bear them children.

The novel, as narrated by Offred (not her real name, just a moniker meaning she belongs to Fred, the head of the elite family that she serves), immediately plunges us into this strange new world where women are not allowed to read, they wear huge costumes to cover their entire body including most of their face, they must be chaperoned at all times, and public hangings are the daily ritual. Right away I'm thinking "yeah, right," eye-roll. I think the story begins to gain an eerie believability when Offred describes her life prior to the coup. She was married. She had a child. She had a job, a mother, she went to college. She describes herself as "I am thirty-three years old. I have brown hair. I stand five [feet] seven [inches] without shoes" (I immediately cast Natalie Portman in the role, though she is considerably shorter I think). That juxtaposition, the description that things were perfectly normal "before" until everything started to degrade and eventually became a bizarre reality, is what most captivated me about the story.

The Handmaid's Tale is thought provoking because, as strange and unlikely as the Gilead society may seem to us today, these things have already happened. Subjugation of the few by the many, total government control and societal shutdown, unchecked repression, trading freedom for security and progress. And that's just the larger themes. The book also explores sexual violence, social conservatism, religious fanaticism, censorship. Hell, these things are still happening. Atwood pushes these themes to the extreme, into territory that we can only hope is really just the stuff of fiction. She has said: "this is a book about what happens when certain casually held attitudes about women are taken to their logical conclusion." As a skeptic, I want to shrug off this comment as a lot of hot air. But as a woman, I already deal with enough male-centered, misogynistic views, and a noticeable dose of fear. I think a lot of other women do too, and the themes in the book are not completely off the wall.

Two themes from the book profoundly shook me and, to be perfectly frank, downright scared me. The first is when Offred begins to doubt whether her husband Luke harbors the same anti-feminist beliefs as the rest of society:

"He doesn't mind this, I thought. He doesn't mind it at all. Maybe he even likes it. We are not each other's anymore. Instead, I am his. Unworthy, unjust, untrue. But that is what happened. So Luke: what I want to ask you know, what I need to know is, Was I right? Because we never talked about it. By the time I could have done that, I was afraid to. I couldn't afford to lose you."

It is a very sad and lonely moment where she wonders if she might lose all support. Wondering if someone you trust without question could betray you has to be the loneliest and most soul-crushing realization.

The other moments that were very discomforting were when Offred is trying to find the motivation, not just to keep living, but to accept that this is her new life and that the old one isn't coming back. Makes me wonder where my motivation would come from if my life were turned upside down. It is the backbone to any apocalypse/survivor/dystopian story and it always makes me wonder how I would survive, if at all. And those types of questions are definitely not just relegated to fiction.

The narrative uses stream of consciousness heavily and is almost too poetic most of the time to ring true, but in the book's epilogue we learn why Offred's narrative is like this. For such a short book, it takes on some hefty themes, presents very complex characters, and tells a unique story.

Another good pick out of my deck of cards. Thanks for the loaner, Subie!

I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance.

If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.

It isn't a story I'm telling.

It's also a story I'm telling, in my head, as I go along.

Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden. But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else.

Even where there is no one.

Loremaster Sinnh

Loremaster was an achievement that I resisted for a long time. It just sounded like the most time-consuming achievement that would end up requiring a lot of grinding and running back and forth. What do you expect from an achievement that asks you to complete 2,705 quests? That's a pretty big number! So I always looked in awe at people sporting their Loremaster titles but I also felt bad for the poor bastards that must have spent hours and hours every day grinding out all the last quests. As you can probably guess, I ended up being no better...

Gold Tag

I was actually relatively well on my way towards the Loremaster title before I actively started working for it. I had gone through all the Northrend quests (875 of them) and picked up the Northrend Loremaster achievement as a way to earn gold for my epic flying training. With that, I was already well past the 50% mark, more or less (obviously, a lot of quests, probably 35% or so, were completed during the leveling up process).

Now I just needed to make up my mind. That extra nudge came when Blizzard released a new patch that would let you query their server in order to find out which quests you had and had not completed. Previously, there was no way to keep track, unless you had a fine memory :( and/or spent some time tracking and filtering quests on wowhead.com. But now Blizzard had released the key. Pretty soon, add-on developers integrated the server query into their programs and created a compact little tool for telling you what quests you were missing and where to find them. Suddenly going back to the level 20 through level 60 zones where I had quested nearly two years ago didn't sound so daunting. At least I knew where to go and who to see when I got there. And so I did. Others may bemoan that the achievement got easier with quest tracking and to those I say: the best part is that my title and tabard look just like yours :)

Every time I wear the tabard, my reaction is something like "oh, it's hideous...I LOVE it!"

Once I decided to get started, I heeded Rock's advice, who slapped me upside the head (metaphorically speaking) because I was going to do Outland Loremaster before doing Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms Loremaster, and that was just crazy balls because the upcoming expansion will make the current Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms Loremasters go the way of the dodo, thus it would make sense to focus on the ones that might be going away. So thank you, Rock.

THEN I settled on starting with Eastern Kingdoms, as rumor has it that it's the easier of the two old world Loremaster achievements to do. And it's true! There are a ton of quests there, much more than you'll need for the EK achievement (I didn't even step foot in the Badlands and I still got the achievement). Most of that time was spent weeping in corners in the Blackrock Spire dungeons because I was horribly lost, and coming quite close to tearing hairs out when some random quest giver sent me to those dungeons for the umpteenth time.

By the time I got EK Loremaster, I could navigate Blackrock Spire with my eyes closed. It’s all about the little victories.

It is still on my bucket list that I have to do the Fallen Hero of the Horde quest line that starts somewhere outside Stonard. I even got the achievement without doing any of that, but I hear it is quite epic. Some of the highlights I did do for EK included: the Tirion quest line in Eastern Plaguelands to save his son; the ghost Pamela quest line to bring peace to a little girl's soul and restore her dad through a pretty badass battle; the quest line to obtain the key to Scholomance, including unlocking the ghost town of Caer Darrow; and the Blackrock Spire quests that reward you with wolf pup and spider pets.

Then I moved on to Kalimdor. People weren't kidding that Kalimdor would be a pain to complete. It is quite a battle to seek out the last 30 or so quests you need to finish. It's even more maddening to spend a couple hours on a single quest only to turn it in and find out it didn't count towards the achievement (there was much swearing involved). But Kalimdor does have some of my all-time favorite zones: Winterspring, Un'Goro Crater, Azshara, and the Shimmering Flats in Thousand Needles.

I love that the majority of the Un'Goro quests are a love letter to Nintendo: there's the quest to kill the gorillas that drop empty barrels, the quest to help “Linken” remember his identity by bringing him his Sword of Mastery, and the quest to help Larion or Muigin who reward you with a zapper to kill carnivorous plants. I also found a very out of the way quest in Azshara to help Kim’jael retrieve, among other things, his stuffed chicken and his wizzlegoober :) Wailing Caverns has a neat storyline and the quest to recover Cuergo's Gold is pretty amusing. However, hunting down five different animals in the Barrens to get items that begin quests does stick out as the most time consuming pain-in-the-rear portion of the entire Loremaster experience.

The quest line starts when you discover a sunken raft with a compass, a map, and a key.

But, with the old world zones out of the way, the rest of the trek was relatively painless. All that was left was three zones in Outland. I say that like it was just a trifle, but Netherstorm had 120 quests to complete, Shadowmoon Valley had 90, and Blade’s Edge Mountain had 86. So there was still some work to be done, but at least Outland marks the start of Blizzard's revamped quest mechanics, where quests didn't take you halfway across the world to continue or complete. Most quests are contained inside the zone and progressing through the quests is just a much better experience overall. I especially loved Shadowmoon Valley, which has the extremely long and lore-filled The Cipher of Damnation quest line. I also liked the Blade’s Edge quests to help the ogres and eventually become their queen, and the quests from the troll that got buried up to his neck and is out for revenge.

You can barely see me but there I am, right in the middle.

Finishing Loremaster in Outland really made me sad that I didn't experience end-game content during the Burning Crusade expansion as I have during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. I haven't even stepped foot inside most of the Outland dungeons, even on my alts. That's definitely something I plan to do on my death knight or my alliance shaman.

And pretty soon that was it. Loremaster, done. Add one more poor slob to the pile. To be fair, it really didn't end up being as time consuming as I thought it would be. I even got several other achievements along the way, like The Keymaster, and I maxed out my reputations with the other Horde factions and got The Ambassador. I even got The Seeker achievement (Complete 3,000 quests), which I actually completed before I got Loremaster. That seems backwards to me, but I guess I ended up doing WAY more quests than I needed to. The craziest part is that there are still a ton of quests I didn't do, so I wonder how many there actually are in the game. According to my character's statistics on the WoW Armory, I've completed 3,170 quests. Lord! 0_0 And I wonder why I don't really remember them all.

Another fun quest in Netherstorm to save Bessy the Cow...who doesn't love cows?

Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein

Finally, it comes to this. It’s quite a feat really, I can’t remember the last time I got so impatient with a book that I just tossed it aside and never looked back. I certainly don’t think I’ve ever tossed a book aside with as much disdain and relief. Hell, I even finished the first Twilight book all the way through. So, unfortunately (or, rather, appropriately) Stranger in a Strange Land will now have this infamy for me: god, I hated this book.

First, a quick background. The book tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human born on Mars during a failed expedition. He is raised by Martians until a second expedition brings him home, sometime during his early adulthood. The book then focuses on Smith’s interactions with Earth’s culture, and basically examines humanity and society from an outsider’s perspective (Smith’s bewilderment when he learns about money, clothes, God, etc, and how he tries to understand such things, or “grok” them). In a nutshell, that’s about it, eventually Smith focuses on religion and begins teaching Earthlings his point of view, which is derived from what he’s learned about Earth religion and combined with his Martian beliefs. I don’t believe the book calls it a cult but, come on. Anyway, I think he royally pisses people off but I didn’t read past the part where his new religion is getting off the ground and gaining a strong following.

The book, published sometime in 1961, became a favorite of the hippie movement, which is no surprise given it’s themes of paganism, sexual freedom, anti-government, individual liberty, so on. It won the Hugo Award for best fiction of the year and, according to Wikipedia anyway, it’s considered one of the most important works of science fiction. I mean, so far all of the books on that 52 books list have been groundbreaking and important in some way. So just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t…I don’t know, I can’t say great because it really wasn’t to me, but I guess I can say that it’s important. There’s even a real life religion (cult?) that exists today that is partly based on the religion created by Smith in the book.

I may really hate the book, but I certainly can admire it for a few reasons: for the time when it was published, it was very radical. A lot of scenes were edited out from the original publishing because they were considered to be too much for audiences (I’m assuming they’re referring to the commune scenes with free love, sexual freedom, multiple partners, what have you). The themes explored in the book were probably considered taboo back then, and probably still are to this day. And it has been embraced by thousands of people, it sparked a real-life religious movement, and it pioneered a real-life social movement as well. I don’t know how many other books out there have done that.

There are also other elements about the book that I will admit I can’t fault it for. Feeling dated, for example. This was written in the 60’s, that’s literally a different world to me. It’s the same thing as looking past Star Trek’s (the original series) miniskirts, beehives, and glossy filters. It was just a different time, it is allowed to feel dated. You can argue that there are plenty of works out there that don’t necessarily feel dated, but I think that’s just a bonus. If it feels dated, oh well.

I also can’t fault it too much for being set in an alternate reality that I didn’t believe in or like. This is science fiction, it’s supposed to be a completely alien environment, and while I completely did not believe in the environment, that’s not the books fault. Finally, I can’t fault it for producing emotional reactions from me that were unpleasant. For instance, I cringed during the scene where two of the main characters started having sex in the middle of the commune. Call me a prude, I probably am, but that was just painful to read. I’m sure I’ve read other books that elicited an unpleasant reaction, its part of the experience.

HOWEVER, I have MANY other issues that I think are completely the book’s fault. The entire book is incredibly preachy. It really feels like it’s just a vehicle for Heinlein to spout out every tiny minutiae of his beliefs. Ultimately, that’s what books are for an author, but dear god, good authors know how to do this without becoming a pain in the butt. It was just too preachy, entire pages of characters not really doing anything expect having a huge back and forth about this one thing or another. They didn’t even sound like real people. That’s the other thing. None of the characters were even remotely interesting, none of them had any unique personality, and at the end of the day I cared absolutely nothing for any of them. The “plot” may sound interesting in a nutshell (an outsider inspecting and dissecting our day to day lives while teaching us new things about ourselves in the process) but it was just drowned in pages and pages of preaching.

The famous parts, the ones about Smith becoming a new-age prophet and leading a new social movement, don’t happen till the last third of the book. Everything before it is legal battles regarding his inheritance (he’s the heir to everyone on the first failed expedition, and all of their estates), then goes on about…god I don’t even remember. The point is, it was all boring. It was a chore to keep flipping pages. There was absolutely no emotional investment required, all the characters were flat and shallow, and the plot happened in between huge segments of preaching about why society is wrong and what beliefs are the truths. A lot of people argue that some people just don’t get the book’s message. That’s crap. I “got” the message, I’m just not buying it.

Finally, I keep having a debate with myself. I found the book extremely hard to relate to. While the point is to hold up our society to a magnifying glass and allow us to examine ourselves as an outsider would, I could not relate to the society depicted in the book.

“But its science fiction, it doesn’t have to even remotely resemble the society you know.”

Yes, ok, but then that kind of misses the point of having the reader reflect about his own society.

“But other science fiction works (let’s take Star Trek again because Rock and I have been on a Star Trek marathon for the past year) present completely different societies and you can still relate to them.”

I don’t know, like I said, I didn’t believe in the environment or the way people acted and reacted, but I can’t necessarily fault the book for that. I feel the same about Klingons, for example…”today is a good day to die?” The. Hell? But if the point of the book is to get us to question ourselves, then shouldn’t it resemble us? Ugh, well, to me it didn’t, so take that as you will. I’m never thinking about that book again.