Sunday, July 6, 2008

Videa games and robots.

A brief non-book related recommendation post.
So since I just got access to STL's public library system as of today (and boy, I was super impressed with their collections and super unimpressed with the level of service the employees provided) I have not been reading much in the past week. This week though I start my YALSA class on RA for teens so I've got to pick some books tomorrow and I'll be back in the reading groove.
In the meantime though I bought my first ever video game for the PS3 and I saw Wall-E. I am super dooper extra into the video game, Folklore.
The graphics and story are amazing and the general play/battles are easy enough that someone like me (read: someone who only plays Rock Band) can actually play without feeling inadequate and undergamed. The cutaway scenes have a couple of formats, some are little movies, and some are like lightly animated comic books, but as I said, all of the graphics are amazing. And the story is a mystery that you, as two different main characters (also an interesting twist, you get to go through the plot as two different characters)get to unravel. It is so similar to getting to actually be a character in a book I have completely fallen in love. With a videa game.



As I mentioned I also saw Wall-E and I absolutely loved how much character Pixar fits into robots, which are by our definition lifeless automatons. The storyline is great and has a wonderful cautionary tale feel to it, but not in a bad or condescending way. Rediscovering the joy of living on earth, of seeing with your own eyes instead of through a screen is never a bad plotpoint IMHO. I can't really say too much about it. It is cute and entertaining and funny and smart.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Hiatus

This blog is briefly going to slow down on posts. My personal and professional life is exploding in the best possible of ways and as a result I'm all over the midwest for the next month. I'll try to update whenever possible. I just finished Edward Bloor's Tangerine and I'm in the middle of his London Calling.(Do recommend) I've got tons of great audiobook like Zadie Smith's On Beauty (a little long but a great character driven plot with excellent audio performance) and Joan Bauer's Peeled (so fun). I even tried an experiment of reading a Rex Libris (superhero librarian!) while listening to "Wrong Hands" (superheroic hands!) but it didn't go so well. So I'll still be reading and thinking on materials and I'll try to keep the Library Thing and Shelfari current if nothing else. I also just started a goodreads.com account so there is a lot of great stuff going to come the way of this blog, but for just now I need a little time to get everything else settled down.