Simpson's Paradox

Raina Telgemeier’s ‘Sisters’

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Meg

I know I’m supposed to say that I’m familiar with Raina Telgemeier’s work because she’s won basically every award for YA fiction and/or comics ever, but actually I stumbled across her amazing graphic novel versions of The Baby-Sitters Club. Claudia Kishi’s outfits are on point, man. Would recommend the graphic version to anyone with a soft spot for the series, so, basically any girls in our thirties, then.

Sisters continues the autobiographical story from Smile, this time revisiting Raina’s relationship with her sister. The story hinges on a family vacation, driving cross-country to visit relatives, with flashbacks to other family memories. I loved how some moments were so terribly dated (But familiar! I remember Walkman batteries as a precious commodity, too!) and some were universal (Some of my students are hitting the terrible stage of being no longer adorable little children but not quite independent teenagers, either).

My favorite part involves a certain pet snake escaping into a car. Like Raina, I also have a younger sister who wanted every animal ever as her pet, but my parents drew the line at fish, newts, hamsters, gerbils, a turtle, a rabbit, and a dog, so I had to wait for college to live with a pet snake. Unlike Raina’s sister’s snake, my roommate Kristine’s snake never made an escape attempt… or at least, if it did, Kristine successfully hid it from me… (Note to self: Do not investigate this too closely.)

Sisters is a quiet story about sharing space with the people who share your genes, and about how the people who make you the craziest can also keep you sane.

I’ve started using LinkVehicle for my blog adverts, and have been pretty happy with them. It’s not quite as set-and-forget as Google ads, because I actually have to choose my ads and update them, but the payout is higher. Plus their gaming-related ads are for Bejeweled, Flappy Bird and Pac-Man, instead of off-shore gambling. Let me know what you think, especially blogger friends who have more experience with ad networks.

Posted in Chapel Hill | Tagged Books, graphic novels, Netgalley, Raina Telgemeier, Sisters | 2 Comments

Target Audience

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Meg

Did you know that teaching full-time is time consuming? I’m pretty sure I came to that realization last summer, too, actually. The actual teaching load is a lot easier this summer, because I’m much more comfortable with the curriculum, with the students’ age groups, and with Fusion in general. But now I’m lead teacher, which means I have to care when other people have problems in their classrooms. Geez. And I’m supposed to help them. So that’s stressful, you know, with the concern for others and trying to be helpful and taking on leadership responsibilities and blah blah blah.

Anyway, this summer’s work takes up time and energy, which means less for my blog. I always look forward to a new book or a new game at the weekend, but if a backlog of review copies starts to build up, it becomes stressful and too much like Work and Responsibility and we can’t have that, can we? So I’d decided not to pursue any other reviews until after summer classes, or until I’d cleared my NetGalley queue, whichever comes first.

But this morning I got this:

‘Pride and Prejudice’ as manga!?!?!

A Jane Austen manga?!?!? How often am I going to get something so perfect for me? I can’t possibly turn that down! Of course I will review it! Right now!

Then, I got home and had an offer for Six of One, about a modern-day Tudor fan meeting the six wives of Henry VIII at a magical bachelorette. How often am I going to get a book about drunken Tudor ladies? Sounds like it was written expressly for me! So of course I want it!

I guess I can find enough time to read about Mr. Darcy or the Tudors.

Posted in Books, Chapel Hill | Tagged Bookblogger, Books, henry viii, jane austen, Mr. Darcy, Netgalley, pride and prejudice, Six of One | Leave a comment

Feminist Magical Realism, in Cambridge, Plus Books

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Meg

Menna Van Praag’s The House at the End of Hope Street is magical realism set in Cambridge, which pretty much explains exactly why I wanted to read it.

A young Cambridge grad student, Alba, stumbles upon a house she’s never really noticed before. The house host, Peggy, isn’t at all surprised to see her, since the house at the end of Hope Street draws in women, and gives them ninety-nine days to sort out their problems.

Alba naturally decides to stay, which is exactly what we should all do if a magic house offers us ninety-nine days to fix our lives. The house is constantly giving the residents what they need, whether that’s producing ingredients to cook tasty meals, good books to read, a delicious chocolate cake for breakfast, or a closet full of exactly the sort of dresses a resident might want to wear. I mean, I’d go live there tomorrow, and I’m not even having the Worst Time Of My Entire Life.

Past residents of the house hang around in chatty photos. I can’t say I knew the name of every previous resident, but you don’t actually have to recognize them all in order to enjoy the halls filled with women who’ve found Hope Street at the lowest point in their lives, and gone on to literary, artistic, and historical success. Agatha Christie, Dorothy Parker, Virginia Woolf, and Sylvia Plath comment from their picture frames. Also, there’s a ghost visiting Alba. It’s the feminist history dorm at Hogwarts, is what I’m saying.

When I receive ARCs, I usually try to read and review the book reasonably close to launch date. But in this case, I read the book a few times before writing any reactions. There was just so much going on that my first read was as fast as possible, turning pages quickly to see what would happen with the ghost, Alba’s jerk professor, Peggy’s elderly boyfriend, and everything else. In that order.

My second time through, I had more time to spend with other residents of Hope Street, both human and magical. Carmen and Greer are trying to sort out their own problems in their own 99 days, plus the collection of photos keeps up a running commentary. And the secondary characters, found around the bars, bookshops, and libraries of Cambridge (Cambridge is a pretty great city for drinking and reading, which may be part of why I like it so much)., all had their own goals and quirks.

An ensemble novel is bound to be a couple thin moments, of course. Two residents find themselves involved with the same man, and when it all comes out, the women basically scowl, then shrug and move on to better men. Also, Alba’s family is Gothic-horror bad, right down to bribery and secretly destroying letters before they reach their destination, and that seems a bit mustache-twirling Evil Villain in a world of delicately nuanced characters.

Alba’s storyline is so deeply connected to literature, and on my second read, I noticed more ties between the books read and the characters’ situations. Although I love Jane Austen, Middlemarch, Howard’s End, and most of Alba’s reading list, A Room With a View features pretty heavily, and that one never made much impression on me. Might be time for a reread.

Feminist magical realism, set in one of my favorite cities, with books. Even better than I’d expected!

I received an eARC of this novel from the publisher, which has never stopped me from snarking about a bad book. As always, all opinions are my own.

Posted in Books | Tagged Book review, Bookblogger, Cambridge, magical realism, Menna van Praag, Netgalley, The House At The End Of Hope Street | 4 Comments

Rollers of the Realm

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Meg

I had the chance to check out Phantom Compass‘ Rollers of The Realm at this year’s SXSW , where it was a finalist for the SXSW Gamer’s Voice award. Rollers of the Realm is a pinball-RPG hybrid, which sounds a bit like an experimental game jam prompt or a drunken IndieCade conversation, but the result is polished and playable.

In Rollers of the Realm, players manage a traditional adventuring party of typical RPG characters like a healer, a rogue, a melee fighter, and so forth. Each of these is a pinball, and Phantom Compass manages to inject a surprising amount of character into the pinballs. The fighter is a big grayish pinball, who brings a lot of force and a lot of damage, but he’s too big to get through certain areas, and requires the little rogue to slip into those spaces. There’s also a healer, used to revive party member pinballs or damaged pinball-flippers, and other adventurers with special attacks and bonuses for the pinball battles. There are ten playable RPG characters/pinball styles in all, although I didn’t see all of them at SXSW.

Like any good RPG, the adventuring party in Rollers of the Realm will gain XP, gold, loot, and special abilities after successful combats. Phantom Compass promises over thirty campaign levels, including chances to gain gold and score, creating 6 to 8 hours of gameplay.

Phantom Compass’ previous releases include Dionysian Dream , an educational murder mystery based on the Bacchae, and a free iPad game, based on the kids’ TV series Guardians Evolution. But Rollers of the Realm has gained the most attention, winning a Best In Play award at GDC Play, and being nominated for an IndieCade award, as well as winning SXSW honors.

Phantom Compass’ Rollers of the Realm is expected to launch this fall.

More Rollers:

Posted in Austin, Chapel Hill | Tagged GDC, indiecade, SxSW | Leave a comment

Enjoying It Wrong

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Meg

Some days, it’s hard to like things.

I’m super excited about this latte! I say, and the internet laughs back at me, a stupid (white, thirtyish) lady with my cliched Starbucks drink. Dumb for enjoying the foam patterns and the seasonal flavors, and double-dumb for even thinking about Instagramming that, a silly sheep who just blindly enjoys the things that are marketed to my white-thirtyish-lady demographic. Starbucks coffee is burnt (Apparently? This is a thing?), I’m clearly enjoying it wrong.

I’m super excited about this game! I say, and the world shouts back that games are for guys, that girls don’t really play games, or don’t play real games, because I am a girl and once a girl enjoys a game it becomes a casual game and not a real game anymore. I’m reminded over and over that gaming is a subculture not meant for me, that I must correctly recount obscure games trivia to prove that I legitimately enjoy a pastime not expressly designed for me, and I’m clearly enjoying games all wrong.

The internet points out, again and again, those who are missing the Real Point(™) by snapping selfies or using their phones. Two pieces titled, in typical BuzzFeed hyperbole, 23 Pictures That Prove Society is Doomed and 28 People the Deserve The Own Special Place In Hell (Actual titles. No, I am not linking them.) are collections of pictures, including people snapping photos of dinners out, museum exhibits or sunsets. Society is doomed and you’re going to hell for snapping a photo, you frivolous social media user, the posts say. And also, click to share this listicle with your Facebook friends!

This attitude, that Instagramming an entree or snapping a selfie, is somehow the wrong way to enjoy a nice time, is weird, and it’s particularly hilarious when social media is mocked on BuzzFeed. Don’t use your phone to CREATE content, just consume Buzzfeed’s content! Don’t share your own content, share Buzzfeed links instead!

Presumably, someone had to take the snarky photo of someone taking a photo of a sunset, the Mona Lisa, or their favorite entree, and if given the choice, I’d rather be snapping the picture of something I love.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you all that I plan take more photos, blog more books, review more games, and share more of the stuff I like, in whatever ways I feel like.

Posted in Chapel Hill | Tagged Chapel Hill, coffee, games, Personal, Starbucks | 5 Comments

Everyone Knows That

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Meg

One of my littlest students from my afterschool classes in is back my summer class this week. He’s an adorable and intense 8-year-old who runs Linux at home and says Fusion is at least easier than Eclipse, but he can have a little difficulty with which way letters should face, and with reading social cues from others. Mostly because he’s so little, but he seems to struggle with social cues even more than other students who are the same age.

Anyway, this student walked up to me at lunch today, and told me shyly that he’d reinvented his hero loads of different times in his other classes.

“Noah! You’re not supposed to change to change your core concept after Monday.” I said, taking a deep breath before beginning damage control on app design disaster.

“Just kidding! Everyone knows that! I fooled you!” he giggled, and when he saw me start to giggle, he laughed harder.

(That is some brilliant comedy from an eight-year-old.)

Posted in Chapel Hill | 1 Comment

Blog Book Tour: Children of the Gods

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Meg

Children of the Gods: The Talon Project is a short, self-published story of investigative reporter Micheal Cohen receiving either the greatest tip of his career, or a huge set-up. An aging Kentucky politician and his beauty-queen wife invite Cohen to their home, where the mysterious Bible code is revealed. This explains that the different lifespans in the Old Testament are actually alien races (Adams and Methuselahs lived longer than average humans), the Milky Way is the Garden of Eden, and that humans have made alien contact multiple times… or it’s all a massive set-up from someone Cohen has skewered in his columns.

The ending is a bit of a cliffhanger, and a few plot threads are left unanswered, so I expect this to be the first of a sci-fi series.

You can enter the blog book tour’s raffle here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received a copy of this book from Whirlwind Virtual Book Tours for review.

Posted in Chapel Hill | Tagged sci-fi | Leave a comment

Saturday With Harold

Posted on July 20, 2014 by Meg

Star Wars Pez Dispensers

On Saturday, Harold and I went out to Winston-Salem to pick up some Star Trek ~~toys~~ communicators. Apparently there still are some Trek collectibles that he doesn’t own! He’d dome some kind of trade with the shop owner at Heroes Con, where he swapped some of the nerd paraphernali he didn’t want for the kind of nerd paraphernalia he does want. Somehow he did not actually end up with more space, but he was pretty pleased with his new toys.

Then we stopped at the bookstore. Sure, I have about a dozen eARCs on my Kindle, but a couple months ago, a friend from Fortnite got me into audiobooks for the long drive. After GoT, I’ve listened to The Hunger Games, because obvious, and Citizen Girl (a lovely Manhattan story, although I deeply disagreed with the portrayal of game developers). This time, I picked up Chasing Harry Winston and Operation Mincemeat. (If you’re a history reader at all, check out The Man Who Never Was, a very readable account of Operation Mincemeat.) I had a small credit from the last time I sold some books I didn’t want anymore, somehow I did not actually end up with more space.

I was happy to bump into some friends from Fortnite at the bookstore, too! Even though I just love teaching the YD kids game design, I miss my team at the game studio. Plus, it was funny to run into friends in a city where none of us live. (Look, Harold, I called Greensboro a city without putting mock-quotes around it!) (But I totally typed it in an ironic tone.)

And I got to explain that we were just, you know, driving across the state to get Harold some Star Trek communicators. As one does on a Saturday.

Posted in Chapel Hill, North Carolina | Tagged Fortnite, game design, games, Greensboro, Harold, Instagram, The Hunger Games | Leave a comment

Realistic Teenagers in Jennifer Mathieu’s ‘The Truth About Alice”

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Meg

The Truth About Alice deals deftly with teenage sexuality and identity in a small Texas town.

Everyone in Healy, Texas knows that slutty Alice Franklin slept with two guys in the same night (I shudder to think about high school rumors in the age of mass texting), and basically killed the star football player by sexting with him while he was trying to drive, and probably got an abortion afterwards. The novel moves between several high school students, all discussing what they know about Alice, and readers quickly discover that doesn’t quite add up to what everyone knows is true. More importantly, each narrator has their own secrets and motivations.

The story never becomes a morality tale or Afterschool Special. Instead, debut author Jennifer Mathieu takes on homosexuality, underage drinking, abortion, and eating disorders, all with compassion. She really shines in the complicated relationships between teenagers and their parents.

Alice is a pretty likeable heroine, flawed and realistic. She’s susceptible to these rumors because she’s experimented with guys (although not, actually, sleeping with either of the guys in question) and had boyfriends before. Characters question Alice’s choices, and through her, their own choices, for a subtle story about peer pressure and teenage cruelty. Yet even the cruelest and most vengeful characters have sympathetic traits.

The story’s ending felts somewhat rushed, partly because we only get Alice’s POV at the very end, and also because — spoilers — after a novel of pitch-perfect teenage reactions and awkward interactions, Alice’s final realization that she’s not going to stay in small-town Texas forever felt somewhat underwhelming.

Overall, a sympathetic and realistic story of peer pressure, teenage relationships, and finally independence.

I received an eARC of this novel from the publisher, which has never stopped me from snarking about books I don’t like. All opinions are my own.

More Truth About Alice

Posted in Books, Chapel Hill | Tagged Bookblogger, Jennifer Mathieu, Netgalley, The Truth About Alice | Leave a comment

Editorial and Supernatural Adventures in ‘Ghost Train To New Orleans’

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Meg

My cousin Andrea got me The Shambling Guide to New York City for Christmas, and I just loved it. Then I received an ARC of Ghost Train to New Orleans, the second book of Zoe and her adventures. I like to think that I’ve gotten Club Monstrosity, Monsters In Your Neighborhood, Ghost Train To New Orleans, etc. because I’m some kind of influencer in the non-porno modern supernatural genre, but I imagine that I’m actually on some publisher’s list as Mrs. Screamland.

The Shambling Guide to New York City begins with aspiring editor Zoe moving from Raleigh to New York to rebuild her life after a pretty disastrous ending of job and relationship, and stumbling into a new job writing a supernatural travel guide. Because that’s the kind of job you can only have in New York.

I’m a great fan of urban supernatural novels, Good ones blend the real weirdness and true history of the city with convincing supernaturals. I’m not a huge fan of the almost-obligatory werewolf makeouts, though. (Once in college, my roommate lent me a Laurel K. Hamilton vampire/werewolf porno, on the totally logical premise that I enjoy both supernatural fiction and bodice rippers, and I have still not recovered from it.)

In New York, Zoe joins a team of assorted supernaturals working on a coterie travel guide, in a disused theater. Her new staff includes vampires (hungry for human blood), zombies (hungry for human brains), an incubus (hungry for Something Else), a baby dragon (only 200 years old, aww!), a death goddess (who can see Zoe’s lifespan), and a water sprite (who does not want to eat Zoe at all).

Some humans work for the city’s Public Works, keeping an eye on the supernatural residents, although most humans don’t really recognize coterie things, thanks to a combination of the supernatural glamour and the humans constantly rushing in Manhattan.

Over the course of the novel, Zoe discovers that she’s a citytalker, not just an everyday human with a knack for being the right place at the right time. Citytalkers (which I mentally replaced with Urbvocatrix or Polislallia, because classics) can communicate with the spirit of city they’re in, meeting the city’s real personality.

Even though Zoe was born a citytalker, the spirit of Raleigh never spoke to her while she lived there. This is because the city of Raleigh probably only points out how much cheaper a cul-de-sac McMansion is in North Carolina than up north. While Manhattan has secrets and excitement, history and factions, the city of Raleigh probably only speaks to members of the homeowner’s association.

Well, actually, the second book explains that there’s another reason why Zoe only hears New York (although I think my rationale makes perfect sense).

Zoe’s supernatural and editorial adventures continue in Ghost Train to New Orleans, as she, along with her mostly-human Public Works boyfriend and some of her coterie travel-writing team head to New Orleans for their second travel guide. The snarky supernaturals, the coterie hidden in plain sight, and other things enjoyed in the first novel were all here. I realized in reading Ghost Train that a lot of what I’d loved in The Shambling Guide was the blend of supernatural weird and average-day-in-New-York weird. Ghost Train did the same for New Orleans, or at least, what I imagine New Orleans to be.

As the story unfolds, we learn more about Zoe’s background and about coterie history. Dramatic moments managed to be creepy without being gross, which is a hard line for dark supernatural fiction to find.

Unfortunately, having so many kinds of superpowered coterie makes it a little hard to keep track. So a citytalker when possessed by a ghost does what to a zoetist now? What do demons eat again? If a zombie got in a fight with a golem, who would win?

After a while, it seemed that every single character knew more about the supernatural world than Zoe and none of them could be bothered to explain in full, resulting in an endless series of revelations that need to be kept secret from everyone who wasn’t in on the revelations. This became a bit frustrating, because what I knew about the novel’s world was constantly changing, but in many ways it felt like a setup for the next book.

I preferred Shambling Guide to Ghost Train, but I’m still excited to read the third novel to see how it all comes together for Zoe.

Posted in Brooklyn, New York City, North Carolina, Raleigh | Tagged Book review, booka, Club Monstrosity, fiction, Ghost Train to New Orleans, Monsters In Your Neighborhood, Mur Lafferty, Netgalley, New York: North Carolina, The Shambling Guide to New York City, travel | 1 Comment