On The Paper Trail: Gamers...in the Library?!

Note: this was taken by Coldguy's side project On the Paper Trail which goes and reviews book based on video games. For more up to dates notes check out On the Paper Trail.

Howdy gamers, welcome to the first stop on the trail and in this installment we are going to talk about video games and libraries. Sure you may think that these two things would not go hand in hand with one another however recently studies have shown that this can be a power house mix to attract teenagers and children to the hallowed book hall.

So the goal of this book is simple: get more people to the library and have video games to be one of those "services" that are made available to the patrons. Eli Neiburger is both a librarian and a gamer and has seen his hobby become a major success in his district and has the plan to make it a success for your own.

Now as you might imagination the core of this book is not for "gamers" but rather librarians who may or may not know about video games. Therefore several parts of this book address things like which games you should look into, what consoles you may want to get, what cabling is required to set up an event and the logistics of the event to attract people into coming.

As a facilitator it does an amazing job into breaking down the various aspects of planning of the tournament season at your library, from convincing a person who does not think video games belong in the library to using your budget to get the most bang for your buck. It breaks things done into simple terms and tells even the non technologist how to pull an event like this off and keep the gamers coming in.

As a gamer the biggest takeaway from this is the tournament system they use to ensure that no one would be bored at the event. As well as how the rules need to be both structured enough to be understood and flexible enough to change on the fly in case an issue arises. This in combination with how to set up a room for a tourney comes into play if you were wanting to set up one at a convention, your basement, or in another public space. This is a great guide to ensure you get the maximum amount of fun from the experienced player to the novice.

All in all this book was made for librarians, as it was published by the ALA directly. Yes the American Library Association has published a book on how to create video game tournaments at your local library to encourage gamers to come. If that alone does not tell you that libraries are not cool I am not sure what will. If you are an adult that wants to run a tournament to attract people to come and keep coming back to your public venue this is right up your alley.

As for a gamer this is something you may want to skip since it deals with more of an open venue management rather then the nuts and bolts on setting up ways to get the clan structure set. Plus since it is an ALA book the price point of this one is $50. Which in my opinion is way too much for you to go and purchase this title, my best suggestion is to check this out at your local library (heck my library had it on its shelves for me to go and check out) take some notes and return when finished. You can check out the book on Amazon which provides you with a nice Kindle version for those reading on the electronic device.

WRA Episode 19- Orphans of Chaos (part 2)

Warning! Readers Advisory! returns this week with a special treat for all.

The second half of the Orphans of Chaos two-parter sees the Bard facing off in a duel against the fiendish Dorian Grey (played by Reuben David), as well as digging into the madness and perversity of this book in a last ditch effort to escape the In-Between Place, the Place Which Is In-Between.

There is something about Mogworld

Hello everyone, for those who have not seen it yet, I will link you to the book club where I talked about the latest novel from Yahzee Crowshaw, Mogworld.



So after this review post posted to the masses, one can say I received a lot of hate mail. I know I was going to be in the minority when it came to this book. There are certain things that really rubbed me the wrong way with it and instead of sending dozens of messages to people about it, I will lump them here for your enjoyment.

1) They never went to the real world only to a cyber vision of the real world since the admin tools were there.

Well to be honest this was something I got wrong, however the reason I got this wrong was in part due to the author. Throughout the entire book when it came to locations and setting up areas for the characters to explore, describing the atmosphere was nothing more then an after thought.

Case in point when they went and talked to the king it was described a Salvador Dali castle. How much time were they there for? Maybe a half of a chapter before being sent to a dungeon of the castle which one would assume is the same, but was never specified. He goes from one action scene to another action scene with only a passing mention on the environment.

So yes they were actually in an office like cyber environment where the admin tools were and yes the programmers disappeared when they "logged out" however it was so awkwardly worded you could imagine why I would be confused.

2) Why did you think this was a fantasy book when it was supposed to be a sci-fi one from the start?

Again, when I go and pick up books I tend to not read the back covers nor the amazon description which SPOILED PART OF THE BOOK. I knew that it takes place in an MMO environment, but to have it LITERALLY in an MMO was something I did not see coming. Once that hits you so abruptly it makes everything that was built up including the motivation of the NPC moot and then makes further actions a confusing mess since we already know the twist of the book about a quarter of the way into the book. Plus I checked again the genre it is listed under is indeed a graphic novel, when there is no graphics in this novel.

3) You are so stupid the characters were SUPPOSED to be assholes.

Really? You are going to say that since I do not care for people who were willing to not bond with each other to the point that they would often get on their nerves that makes them good characters? I am sorry they are assholes, and characters that I clearly would not give a shit about and get pissed when character motivation change on the drop of a hat negating EVERY action they did prior.

4) You suck for not liking the book

That's fine, I am not saying that the book is terrible all I said was that after the first act it took such a nose dive to bad that I was pissed off that he could not keep the same level of writing through the entire story. Plus I do not like books that others do, I am a reader of many books you can enjoy it, I just didn't.

5) Yahzee was a competent writer you asshole

Ok I see where your frustration is at meaning I think he did bad overall. My competent argument was referring to having a story start in one tone and end it in another. It was like if he gave up on character development, conflict resolution, and well plot elements went from really well done to very lazily hasted. In a word it was the disappointment factor, to simply downgrade your writing the further you went in a book is something which I can not call competent, it is more lazy then anything else.

6) Yahzee is the shit how dare you say bad things about him

This is where my famous writer line was supposed to save me, when I read a book I take no consideration on who actually wrote the book. Sure a famous celebrity may have written it but the name on the cover does not a good book make (see Steven King). I hold the merit of the book based upon the story in which it presents to me, not on the writer personally. You can have someone that has written bad books suddenly turn out an awesome story, again it is the do not judge a book by its cover principle.

As for my views of Yahzee; I think he is ok. Not my cup of tea, but can understand the appeal of watching his reviews. Something things turn me off about him like the constant use of dick jokes and the mentioning of Peter Molyneux (seriously he is a used car salesman the less you listen to him the better you will actually see the faults of the used car). I do know people that have met the guy and they told me he is a cool dude. I was not attacking the person, I was attacking the writing.

7) Why did you spoil the book I didn't read it yet

Have you ever seen a prior episode? Heck have you ever been to a book club before? Yes it assumes that you have read the entire book and already know the ending of it. Plus it took me over an hour to spoil the ending, and I placed 2 spoiler warnings (and midrolls) to warn you about this.

8) Sadpanda is going to htee you forever now

He may htae me, but I will still loe him.

9) Why so seriously critical when you go and read a book?

Why do people point out inconstancies in the background of a movie when it does not effect the overall scene? Critics need to be nit picky, some do it better then others.

I hope that answers most of your questions please feel free to post a comment if you feel there is something I left out. Take care.

WRA Episode 18- Orphans of Chaos (part 1)

Warning! Readers Advisory! returns once again, giving you the first episode of a two parter. John C. Wright's Orphans of Chaos is a morass of fetishism and bugfuck diatribes on the nature of reality. So crazy, it took two parts!

Enjoy.

WRA Episode 17- The Scent of Shadows

Warning! Readers Advisory! is back with a review of Vicki Pettersson's The Scent of Shadows.

Generally, I like to say something a little witty about a book first. But...oh god, this book is just made of fail.

My thoughts on PC Reading

Hello everyone this is your pal Coldguy and wanted to go and say that yes we are still looking for people to welcome this happy site with numerous written, video, audio book reviews feel free to send me a message with your work to get the ball rolling.

Now I wanted to talk about something interesting today and that is reading on the PC.  I have stated that I plan on getting a Kindle in the near future I am just waiting for the funds to be available or a good sale hits the device before swinging it up.  However since I like to read in advance for podcast I needed to go and pick up a book to read, one of the titles that looked interesting was available for the kindle, cost half the price, and would ship to me 2 weeks faster then if I received a physical copy.  So I took the plunge and decided to read this book off of my computer.

First off the program overall is a nice program, the kindle on PC does the job of reading books very well and does not add much fluff into the fold.  Your opening screen requires you to sign into amazon for obvious reason, and then you are on a blue screen with book covers.  You are given 3 free books (hurray) all of which have been free on the public domain (boo).  The titles are Aesop's Fables, Pride and Prejudice (with no zombies), and Treasure Island.  If you have not read them before at least 2 of them are going to be enjoyable to glance at.

Next you goal is to go and select the cover of the book you want to pick up, once done then poof book opens and you are reading it.  Now a nice feature is that the font adjusts to the size of the program, so if you are multitasking you can have it to the side of the window and glance at the book as you use your computer or simply have it take the full screen and have it large enough for the person behind you to go and read it as well.  You can either use the arrow keys to move pages or the mouse, it also auto saves your last position on the book in case you need to come back to the program and the images are nice enough to stand out and capture what it was meant to do on paper.

Now the only major issue I have with this program is...the color of the paper.  Sounds trivial I know however it caused my eyes to go insane when attempt a long term reading session.  The color is white, as white as the text box you are reading in right now.  Now here is the thing with white, yes it does provide a nice contrasting color, but it also requires the majority of eye muscles to actually look at it (black being the total opposite).  When you read a book the paper is not white, it is an off white color that uses less strain in your eyes to read the text.

Now when reading something online that is short you are not going to get a strain since you are moving on to another article, story, or website.  You are not going to experience the pain I felt when reading for an hour in front of a computer screen, so my suggestion have a variety of font and paper colors and allow us to change it to something that the reader enjoys.

Now the biggest issue is simply, you are on a computer reading.  The back-lit screen is not paper and the amount that you can read is going to slow down as well.  A book that would normally take me an afternoon or two took me a week and a half to complete.  It was not the fault of the book but the fault of the presentation of the book.  I work 8 hours a day in front of a computer monitor so your mileage may very but went I need to concentrate on reading I like to be away from a lit screen and distractions that could take me away from me reading the book itself.

Often times I would get an email, a direct message, or a notification for me to check something else on the computer that would pull me away from the story and would often go and distract me from the actual book I was trying to read.  Which is why I think ultimately reading a book on a computer or a cell phone is nice but not ideal.  There is too much to pull you out of the story that unless it grips you closely by it will be very hard to keep yourself focused.

Warning! Readers Advisory! (episode 16)

Greetings, BiblioManiacs!

For those not familiar, my name is Derek the Bard. I run a little show called Warning! Readers Advisory! wherein I review books (and occasionally delve into library issues). I'm just finishing up my Masters of Information (what the Masters of Library Science transformed into), and coupled with a love of literature I put together this show back in October.

See...everyone knows what books they love. They know good books. But...what about all the bad, odd, and just plain weird books out there? Well, this is the show for them! From the terrors of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight to the just plain weirdness of Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein, WRA covers them all.

In this, the 16th episode, I tackle the reason why being a great actor doesn't necessarily make you a great author. This is Amber Benson's Death's Daughter. Enjoy.