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Sadly, I found this rather dull. It's literary criticism about Infocom-style text adventure games. Because this is a pretty new field (the games have been around for decades, but apparently nobody has given them a serious critical reading), the author spends a good deal of time just defining terms and providing a history of the genre.

Montfort spends an early chapter arguing that text adventure games are descendants of riddles, a more established literary form. This seems to be the meaty idea in the book, but I felt it wasn't very well-developed. Perhaps I'm just not used to reading criticism, but it seemed like he was constantly telling the reader about the point he was about to make, rather than making the point.

I'm tempted to play a bunch of the recent works he describes. I didn't get much more out of the book than that, though.

Amazon suggested this while I was looking at the page for Gormenghast. Sounds interesting...

...Interesting to read. Seems to be trying to be almost Homeric. Lots of epithets and poetic description. I found it a little slow...

...I think I've given up on this. I keep starting other books instead of finishing it (always a bad sign), and I've noticed that when I do read it, I'm skimming over most of the description to get to the plot. Since there's a huge amount of description and fairly little plot, the exercise seems pointless...

Documents the tragic case of a Hmong girl with severe epilepsy and the numerous communication failures caused by the cultural disconnect between the girl's parents and her doctors. Pretty painful to even read about, especially because of my phobias about brain damage. Lots of that "oh, this can't possibly end well" feeling.

The book did a good job of presenting both sides. It's clear that both the doctors and the parents mean well, and the decisions that each side makes are understandable. But both sides have complex sets of assumptions that don't mesh at all. The language barrier is formidable, but it's a small part of the disconnect.

Fast-paced. Starts out like a typical cyberpunk novel, but quickly veers off in other directions. Gives lots of glimpses of an interesting world, but rushes through to an unsatisfying conclusion. A quick, fun read.

I grabbed this off the shelf, wondering if I'd ever actually read it. The first page caught my interest immediately. It turned out to be great. Poetic re-workings of Grimm tales. Wonderful use of language. Contrarian mindset.

Thoroughly fun. Now I'm eager to play the new version of Sid Meier's Pirates! when it comes out.

Dave loaned me a copy. Easily my least favorite of the Lord of the Rings. I found the big battle scenes pretty dull, but they were positively riveting compared to the slogging-across-Mordor scenes.

Very cyberpunky. Lots of futuristic slang and fast-forward description. Lots of symbolism.

A very interesting portrait. It spends a lot of time on the obsessive, anti-social aspects of Newton's personality: his feuds with Hooke and Liebniz, his delving into theology, his alchemical researches, his sulking refusal to publish his research in a venue that would provide criticism. Engaging. A surprisingly quick read.

Now that I've been called a Darcyist, I guess I have to find out just what it means. Melissa was kind enough to loan me her copy.

Quite fun. I was particularly fond of Mr. Bennet. His sense of humor at the absurdity of the entire situation was very entertaining. Rooting for Elizabeth is easy, of course. Her refusal to put up with arrogant nonsense is refreshing.

Witty and thought-provoking. I particularly enjoyed the early chapters (dominated by the musings of Lord Henry Wotton), with their delightful turns of phrase.

Won a copy on eBay. Now that I see the cover, I'm sure I've never read this one before, which means I had read Death of the Necromancer before.

The book starts slowly. Too many unimportant characters are named, with too little to distinguish them. However, once the important characters take over, the story does get going nicely. It turns out to be a fun adventure, with sympathetic (though not "nice") characters.

I'm psyched to read what Wells does with this world, now that she's a more experienced writer.

Maybe it's just that I happened to be reading the Castle Falkenstein rulebook before reading this, but there are striking similarities between the details Wells mentions and those in New Europa.

Dave loaned me a copy. Good, though slow in places.