Tag: Video Game of the Year

WWW Wednesday – February 28, 2024

Ryan1 Comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Death in Her HandsQuite on a whim, I decided to start reading Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh; I was glancing at my shelf wondering what I wanted to read next, and I realized that I hadn’t read any of her books in a minute and this one was just sitting right there. I’m just under halfway through at the moment, and while I am enjoying it, it is also a little slow. Much of it has been about Vesta, the elderly main character, slowly divulging details about her life as we follow her stream of consciousness after finding a note in the woods talking about a supposedly murdered girl who is nowhere in sight. I had thought a more direct mystery would be at the heart of this story, but it seems it is much more about the narratives we weave on our own about the world around us, as well as how we go about constructing narrative for creative writing. I’m intrigued to see where this will go.

Recently Finished

Video Game of the YearOver the weekend I managed to finally finish reading Video Game of the Year by Jordan Minor. Though I enjoyed it fine, I once again felt that he indulged himself a little too much with editorializing, this time in particular about games by the studio FromSoftware; if he wanted to talk about the conversations around game difficulty with their games, fine, but I didn’t need a personal anecdote on why he doesn’t like them and feels like they don’t respect his time. It’s a shame, because I know he is capable of writing entries in a more personally detached way because that’s how the earlier entries were done. I’m sure there’s a wealth of places to read Minor’s opinions elsewhere, and I hope this book brings people to those places, but this wasn’t the stage for them. I won’t be giving this book a full review, but I’d rate it a 3.5 out of 5.

Reading Next

Shuna's JourneyThe next book I plan on reading soon is something I picked up at the library after randomly coming across it: Shuna’s Journey by Hayao Miyazaki. This manga was originally published all the way back in 1983 but only saw a release in English in 2022. I’m a fan of Miyazaki’s animation work and had no idea he’d authored/illustrated any manga, so it was an easy choice to pick this up. I’d been needing a comic to read next too, and while this isn’t from the backlog of books I own, it’s still nice to have found something that immediately grabbed my interest. The aesthetics remind me of some of his films, but it appears that this is an original story unconnected to any of those.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – February 21, 2024

Ryan2 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Video Game of the YearI’m still chipping away at Video Game of the Year by Jordan Minor, though I’ve been making more of a concerted effort this week to getting it finished, and I’m happy to report that I feel like I’m in the home stretch. I’m still enjoying the book well enough, though as it has started to cover more modern games I have found Minor to be a little too opinionated at times; this isn’t to say that the topics and issues he brings up aren’t relevant to the background details around the games being discussed, I just feel he occasionally digresses a little too much and editorializes more than I would want from a book like this.

Recently Finished

The GhostI’m especially happy that I was able to finish The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens over the weekend, making good on a recent commitment to reading through more books from the library instead of buying them. Though my progress was a little slower due to it being nonfiction, I enjoyed this book quite a lot, and it got me thinking about how so little seems to actually change over time. Even hundreds of years ago, skeptics were publishing very similar arguments against ghosts as skeptics make now. It’s also really amusing to learn that phantasmagoria, which involved lighting effects creating ghostly effects on a stage, came first; the effect wasn’t created because that’s how people reported seeing ghosts, people started reporting seeing ghosts as floating, glowing apparitions after those shows became popular.

Reading Next

I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to start reading next, but what I do know is that it’s going to be fiction. I don’t have anything against nonfiction, but there’s been a little too much of that going around for my liking. I need more narrative in my life now.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – February 7, 2024

RyanLeave a comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

The GhostI’m still plucking away at Video Game of the Year by Jordan Minor; I’m still enjoying it too, but don’t have much more to say about it at this time. Alongside it, I’ve managed to be able to start The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens since I last updated. My reservation at the library finally came through, and since then I’ve managed to read almost 120 pages. I’m a little disappointed I haven’t read more, but I do find I’m a little slower with nonfiction, typically, so it is what it is. In any case, I’m finding the book really interesting, giving a hyper-focus on the history of ghost folklore in Britain specifically. I had no idea, for instance, that hundreds of years ago there was a harder distinction between a ghost, being the soul of a departed person, and a spirit, which can be considered an inhuman entity masquerading as a dead person.

Recently Finished

I haven’t finished anything in a couple of weeks. Last week I didn’t post because I took a trip out of town, and I haven’t picked up anything shorter to read recently either. Hopefully, I can make a greater push to finish what I’m currently reading relatively soon so that I’m not spending all of February finishing these up.

Reading Next

At the moment, I’m really not sure what I want to be reading next. What I find most vexing (in a small way) is that I can’t immediately think of any comics I want to get to. I had a number of series last year that I was eager to finish, but with them done I’m still feeling a little in-between things and indecisive. Hopefully I’ll settle on something more concrete soon.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – January 24, 2024

Ryan1 Comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Video Game of the YearI’m still slowly making my way through Video Game of the Year by Jordan Minor; ideally, I want to read two entries a day, but I haven’t quite gotten myself there yet. Still, I read at least two when I do pick it up, and it’s making for some great bit-sized reading. I’ve reached the 1990s, so it’s starting to get into games I actually have some experience with, with the exception of PC titles that passed me by. I’m really enjoying the addition of the “Extra Life” section after each entry that highlights another game of that year, as well as other semi-related titles, so that any possibly glaring omissions get some attention. The medium is full of great games after all, but only one can be featured for each year. I’m glad Minor was able to find a way to make room for so much more.

Recently Finished

AnnihilationI’m happy to report that I managed to finish Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer the other day, sticking to my plan to get it finished before the end of January. I’m also really pleased with how different this book was from the film, as it feels like I can appreciate them better as separate entities now. By its very nature, as the story we’re reading was written by “the biologist” in a field journal, it’s painful yet tantalizing how much has been left mysterious. It’s clear that horrors lurk in Area X, and lifeforms there undergo startling changes in form, but why and how this is all happening and what has happened there as reported in past field journals is so hinted at yet uncertain that I can’t wait to read more. It seems the sequel, Authority, may be written more like a conventional novel (I am speculating), or at least from a more knowledgeable perspective, which I love as a shift in format, starting with an account written in the field—full of discovery and speculation—and then shifting to something more authoritative to grow our understanding.

Reading Next

I’m still holding out hope that The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens will be returned to the library soon, so for now I’m just going to focus on Video Game of the Year and hope my patience pays off.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – January 17, 2024

Ryan2 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Video Game of the YearI hadn’t made much progress last week due to the January lull, which is why I didn’t post, but I have been chipping away at Video Game of the Year by Jordan Minor, which is a year-by-year guide to some of the most influential video games of each year from 1977 to 2022. Some early entries have been unsurprising, such as the likes of Pong and Pac-Man, but within each entry is a great look into the industry climate that helped shape these games and the technical limitations that they had to work with. I’m hoping I don’t plod along with this for too long, but I’m enjoying it regardless.

AnnihilationAlso, on a whim, I started reading Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer on Monday, though I was too tired to fully take advantage of my available reading time; if I wasn’t so fatigued, I probably would’ve finished it. Though it’s been a while since I’ve seen the film adaptation, I’m still taken a little aback at how different the book is from it in terms of presentation, even though the premise is more or less the same. I’m really enjoying it as a cosmic horror story all the same though, and I’m frankly relishing the fact that I’m not sure what to expect. With starting this book, and hopefully finishing it imminently, I’ve decided to commit to reading through the whole trilogy this year; getting the first one finished so early is a good start.

Recently Finished

The Employees (2)On Sunday, I managed to read through the entirety of The Employees by Olga Ravn, a science fiction novella told through report statements from the crew of a ship that has taken on strange objects that are having an effect on the them, both human and humanoid alike. At times, this book was a little too stream of consciousness for me, as the statements being read are transcribed from characters speaking, so oftentimes it felt as though I was reading rambling or jumbled thoughts, leaving me worried some details went over my head; it felt not unlike when I struggle to follow poetry, though not nearly as bad. However, this conveyed the idea of the crew’s states of mind slowly being compromised really well, and a clear story eventually emerged that I really enjoyed. I’m a little behind on the reviews I want to write, but hopefully I’ll get one up for this one.

Reading Next

The GhostThe next book I want to read is The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens. Though I don’t believe in ghosts, I find ghost stories and the mythology around them fascinating. For a long time I had wanted to buy this book, but I decided last month or so to read it from the library instead. I actually had the book in my possession in December, but I realized that I wasn’t going to have time to get to it until the new year and somebody else had a reservation on it, so I just returned it without starting. I’ve got a hold on it now again and I’m hoping to be able to take it out again soon.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.