Sean

Here is a photo of my buddy's tiny daughter (the one with the headphones that aren't plugged in) and the two neighbor kids who came over to play video games.

I think this is actually a good suggestion. I don't think it would've solved a lot of the core issues I have with the game but it would've been an obvious (not necessarily bad) move to make the game about something.

Agreed although Yiddish Policeman's Union or Wonderboys is a faster read.

Check out John Dollar.

Here's the thing. If you're going to make that the rationale for taking away or, I should say, distributing a palette of player actions, you have to go the whole goddamn way. I can't just walk up behind him like a buffoon and not have my character react. If FC3 were an adventure game, Jayson you would either approach or "use" that pirate and Jayson would say "Hell no; no fucking way. We gotta get the fuck outta here," and you would actually learn something about the character. Because the player has no way of expressing intent in games like this OTHER THAN TO MURDER PEOPLE creating the scenario where I'm a reluctant murderer is folly from the outset. Furthermore, I meet up with Dennis and then it's "buy a gun and start killing guys," and my "character" has no problems with that. Probably because of my courage tattoo.

Totally agreed. It's just the best. Opal is such a strong character; she's so respected across the spectrum of the experience (within the book, by the author, by the reader) so that all of her flaws that could easily be tropes just make her a person. So good.

Yeah; it's really lame. When it comes to judging a book by it's cover, in terms of Evidence, I was only familiar with the paperback cover -- which depicts two flowers nestling the book's title with a young female figure and a companion out of focus in the background. It's a warm depiction of romance iconography. The blurb on the front says "one of the most originally depicted romances..." or something like that. Whereas it was incredibly refreshing to receive my used, first edition the hardbound copy in the mail (fourteen cents on amazon!). Big, dynamic font overlaid with swirling electrons and atomic structure over an enigmatic salt flat. It felt much less gendered to me and anchored more in the milieu of the book as opposed to any one specific theme. Maybe I'm re-gendering the cover with my appreciation of it; I don't know, but it is fascinating to me that as a book "goes mass" (ie: a large paperback printing) the marketing of it narrows towards a female audience (in this case, although, Sarah, you and Chris are talking about the industry as a whole).

I had (maybe) heard of the book before but it didn't ring a clear bell when reading Telegraph (other than I knew it was a real book and found it unnatural but not off-putting that all the characters had read it). Also, apparently you would be surprised by the vast amount of stuff I don't know about.

There's no Kindle version, apologies. Also, I think this book, in its original publishing, targeted a broader literary audience. I have my suspicions that once it was up for the Pulitzer and NBA Simon and Schuster decided to market it towards a predominantly female crowd and pumping up the poetry and romance. What I'm saying is, while it is definitely poetic and romantic, it's probably not what you think. I'm just 50 pages in and loving it.

Yeah -- the characters talk a bit about superheroes throughout and even got into the racial history of a lot of Marvel characters (Archy admitting that all of his favorites were white) and it seemed like content that was there for Chabon to pull from given the body of research he did for Kavalier and Klay.

FTFY.

Tremendous

I believe the first sentence of this week's Valve DOTA 2 Update Blog will please the readers. http://blog.dota2.com/2012/10/twice-the-horns/

AND IT WAS. PS: I wrote that.

We're puffin' up our buddies. Idle Thumbs 73: Pegasus Launch Chris, Jake, and Sean are reunited with Steve and Nick live at PAX 2012 to discuss the mechanical virtues of aesthetics and scale, and also video games. Doug Tabacco escapes throngs of adoring Walking Dead fans to launch a new website live under the hot lights of the Pegasus Theater. Recorded with regrettably substandard audio quality. It won't happen again. Games Discussed: Spy Party, Gone Home, The Walking Dead, Day-Z Direct episode download. iTunes page. Feed RSS. Episode page.

I suspect this to be a true statement. Broadbent is an incredible talent.

What line of work are you in?

I took Chris's point as being "no matter what, technology changes fast. any author of the internet age can't do something like what mitchell here did and not think it's going to sound dated" specifically for the reasons you're describing. For me the futurist use of brands as common nouns dates the book itself (as opposed to it always being (and feeling like) a futurist story written in 2004). I think the book would've benefited from not going down that route as the rest of the book feels pretty timeless.

Chabon pulled out all the stops on Kavalier and Klay -- the vocab in that book is intense. It's funny, because of Kavalier I don't find myself scrambling for words (but I might just be ignoring ones I don't know too...)

FWIW, a lot of good points have been pointed out here and via twitter about the role of fiction in the book. (Somni seeing the Cavendish movie, etc.) that I wish we would've talked about in greater detail. Definitely feel like we're learning how to do this.

One-way on the Funicular Railway is the title of my forthcoming novel.

Yep.

Started it tonight!

We'll talk about the "necessity" of pre/post threads. You might be right. (Although Chris/Jake are really thoughtful about how they set this stuff up so I'm sure there are some solid reasons. We've also set up a *gasp* FACEBOOK PAGE (facebook.com/idlebookclub) (which we hate) but it is good at keeping a list of the books we're going to read up to date (and obviously getting the word out about the cast). December's book is Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins.

OH YEAH