It has been MONTHS (AprilMayJuneJuly?) since I posted the books that I've been reading.  It's that lovely snowball of shame, that gets rolling when you're busy, then just has more momentum when you have to post about later and ... well, it's summer.  Snowballs have no place in New York in August.

( Books (23) )


( Games (2) )
There are a bunch more games that I've dabbled with but don't feel qualified to review as "read".  Onward, then...

February was a month of games.  I wanted to get a few games in while I knew that I could draw on Gamelab's library.  I also was looking, more than usual, for things to zone out to, especially on the subway.  I decided to close out a few games that I'd had sitting around but hadn't completed, too.

( Books (2) )
( Games (5) )

Unfortunately, this month's reading review has been cut short. I wrote more than I ever had for all but two of the books and games, and then ... I had spent so long composing that LJ timed out and asked me to reload and repost. Losing everything. It has done this before, so I usually copy everything to the clipboard first, but this time I forgot. Argh.

( Books (5), with some mad spoilers for books by Holly Black that you should read. )

( Games (3) )

In Progress: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, for February's Post-Apocalyptic Book Club, Life in a Medieval Village by the Gies.

I actually read quite a bit in December, and played quite a bit. Go me! It still doesn't look like all that much, because I started a few things that I didn't finish, and I don't count those. But I've started to get a bit more conscious about giving myself time to read and not feel bad about it-- and about finishing things once I've started them.

( Books (3) )

( Games (3) )

Very little reading in November. I've been feeling escapist, so there's more than the usual escapism and gaming in here... not to say that games must be escapist.

( Books (2) )


( Games (2) )

In progress: The Journey to Wild Divine, How Computer Games Help Children Learn, My Best Science Fiction Story

Is that really it? Yikes, I'm slowing down ... and playing too much TWEWY.

I'm pretty sure that October was actually only about two weeks long. Certainly, the first couple of actual calendar weeks seem like they didn't happen, and I'd generally prefer to forget them. Half of my coworkers were let go, I was trying to move over to a new project, the previous one was only just finishing, and another project that was supposed to end really didn't. I didn't restrict my feelings on that to the workday very well, so the month's reading was escapist.

( Books )
( Games )

In-progress: Homo Ludens, by Johan Huizinga; Valdis Story, by Kyron Ramsey; Frozzd by Jesse Venbrux.

August

Iiiit's Indie Comics Month! I've never declared one proscriptively before, nor have I now. But that's what I've been reading this month, mostly because I have had enough stress at work that I just can't tolerate "work" at home or on the subway. No write-ups this time because my computer has decided to pause between every third and fourth word I type.

( August Reading )

LibraryThing feeds several of my monkeys: my bibliophilia, my organizational compulsion, my love of archival and collection completion ... so it should be only natural that I sign up and scanscanscan my stuff! I got an account a while ago, but it was only recently, when I got a CueCat scanner, that I could really get going with the archival and tagging.

• My library.
• My gaming collection.
• My hypertext collection.
• My travel guides.

Whee! Sure, I'm starting with the easy targets-- the small collections that I can mostly scan. It'll be a while before I'm able to enter, say, ali_wildgoose 's Japan reference collection, or our comics, or, say, fiction. But for now, that monkey is fed...

Following the noble footsteps of halifax_slasher , I filled out the "Meet your Daemon" quiz, and I met Theonilla, who is currently a fox:


Now, I don't really agree with the attributes that they've used to choose dear Theonilla, but I can't deny that foxes have been quite present in the last year... coming in second in their relevant-frequency in my life only perhaps to various cephalopods. ali_wildgoose  brought a beautiful fox mask from Florence for me. I worked on a project for work where there were people who wore animal masks, and the fox was the one animal of eight that we chose to prototype. I read The Fox Woman. One thing that I do like about them is that everyone seems ambivalent about them-- not 'neutral', but 'ambivalent'. They're wily ... in an evil way. They're cute ... unless they're eating your chickens. They're graceful ... as they skulk about trying to bewitch your lover. There are worse animals, I suppose.

So ... do you agree? What do *you* think I am?

I was pretty reserved at New York Comic-Con this year, both in my time there and in what I picked up. Last year I went crazy, and picked up everything that looked interesting. The Dealers' Room and Artists' Alley were in the same space, which made it all feel like one huge show. This year the two areas were a floor apart, dividing my time; my gut reaction was that there were also many fewer small presses and scrappy rising artists. I'm not sure about that, though. It just felt like there were more big booths,

The end result was that I picked up a small fraction of what I came home with last year. This year, though, I have LibraryThing to help me: Here's my NYC Comic-Con 2007 Haul!

Reviews pending, when I have a chance to read some of them. All I can say now is that I'm disappointed with the Beowulf and that my mind is totally effing blown by The Keepers of the Maser.