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nicknicknicknick

nicknicknicknick@bookwyrm.social

Joined 4 years ago

books.

he/him/ho-hum. montréal, canada nicknicknicknick.net

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nicknicknicknick's books

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2024 Reading Goal

Success! nicknicknicknick has read 26 of 24 books.

Jordan Magnuson: Game Poems (2023, Amherst College Press) 3 stars

About the Book

From the publisher: Scholars, critics, and creators describe certain videogames as being …

Game Poems

3 stars

1) "Poetry may be playful in nature, but not all games feel poetic, and in my experience the videogames that feel most poetic are often those that have least in common with traditional games. My interest is not so much in considering poetry in light of play, but in considering (and making) videogames in light of poetry."

2) "Where fiction is concerned with what happens next, lyric poetry is concerned with what happens now."

3) "While we will be working toward a loose definition that might help us to identify and discuss 'game poems,' the point is not primarily to properly interpret or categorize these games, or get at their True Meaning, but rather to see if a close lyric reading can enhance our appreciation for any given game; whether considering these games as game poems can give us something to think about, something to talk about."

4) "Poetic …

David K. Seitz: A Different Trek (2023, University of Nebraska Press) 5 stars

A Different Trek

4 stars

1) "Star Trek is often hailed for its prophetic dimensions, both anticipating technological 'innovation' and using allegory and optimistic visions of a utopian future to comment critically on war, racism, and capitalist inequality here and now. But Trek has almost always articulated this futurity through starships, explorers, and other images of mobility—and leaving places behind, as the late artist and critic John Berger observed, has a way of concealing consequences. DS9's stationary allegorical geography meant from the outset that it would be, as series writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe puts it, a 'show ... about consequences.' The series juxtaposes multiple clashing political, economic, and cultural perspectives embedded in a single contested place, one far from the glitz of the Enterprise or the manicured lawns of Starfleet Headquarters. It foregrounds contradictions between the Federation's comfortable core and its misunderstood and exploited Bajoran periphery, from the outside looking in. Instead of …

Leonard Cohen: Beautiful Losers (1970, Cape) 3 stars

One of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, Beautiful Losers is Cohen’ s most …

Losers

2 stars

Content warning lewd

Leonard Cohen: The Favorite Game (2003, Vintage Books) 4 stars

The Favourite Game

4 stars

Content warning language

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper (Paperback, Simon & Brown) 4 stars

Specially printed limited edition release for the Miskatonic Literary Society.

The Yellow Wall-Paper

4 stars

1) "It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity–but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it."

2) "John is a physician, and PERHAPS–(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)–PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster."

3) "It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls. The paint …

Jody Rosen: Two Wheels Good (Paperback, 2023, Crown Publishing Group, The) 4 stars

A panoramic revisionist portrait of the nineteenth-century invention that is transforming the twenty-first-century world

"Excellent …

Two Wheels Good

3 stars

1) "The connection we make between cycling and flying is metaphorical. You might even call it spiritual: an expression of the powerful feelings of freedom and exhilaration we experience when we ride bikes. But it is also a response to a physical fact. If cyclists imagine themselves to be flying, it is because, in a sense, they are. When you ride a bicycle, you're airborne. The wheels that spin beneath you slip a continuous band of compressed air between the bike and the road, holding you aloft. That floating feeling, that sensation of airy buoyancy, is heightened by the way the bike bears your body: your legs do the work of propelling the vehicle, but the job of supporting your body weight is outsourced to the bicycle itself. Today you can attach an inflatable saddle to your seat post and sit back on a pillow of air even as your …

Alyse Knorr: GoldenEye 007 (2022, Boss Fight LLC) 4 stars

Murder in the Close Distance

3 stars

1) "The Stamper brothers' talent had shined from an early age. Chris started tinkering with electronics as a young boy and eventually built his own computer in college. He got his first programming job—in arcade games—before he had even graduated. Meanwhile, Tim brought to the table an artistic eye and a knack for graphic design. Uncanny business sense combined with excellent creative instincts and big dreams had led the Stamper brothers to enormous success in their earliest days as a company, when they produced games under the trading name 'Ultimate Play the Game,' chosen because, in Tim's words, 'it was representative of our products: the ultimate games.' In May 1983, Ultimate's very first release—a 2D shooting platformer called Jetpac—hit it big on the ZX Spectrum home computer, selling 300,000 copies. Considering about one million people owned a Spectrum at the time, this was, in Chris's words, 'incredible penetration for …