This book is a combination of an essay collection and memoirs, with the focus on how an obsession with video games guided the author\u2019s life. Since the author became a professional comedian, the writing is hilarious. I was laughing out loud fairly often, and a lot of the stories hit close to home for me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My video game memories started one or two generations earlier than the author\u2019s. He got hooked on the NES, while I was obsessed with the Atari 2600. I also played games on the Apple ][ computer, and then the NES. Then there was a long gap before I got back into gaming. A lot of this book takes place in that gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of the author\u2019s favorite memories paralleled some of mine – his recollections of his favorite arcade reminded me of a mystical experience I had in a Pismo Beach hidden and mostly empty arcade. Or visiting an arcade owned by a friend of Josh Simon, my neighbor, and how the owner gave us quarters painted red so he would know that they were his money and not the general public\u2019s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The author does a short stint at a game magazine, which reminded me of when I interviewed at PC Gamer for a writing job about 30 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there were a lot of events that felt pretty real to me while reading them. The comedy was well-written too, but sometimes the self-deprecating style got a little stale. Some of the essays felt a little like filler to me – but one essay on a friend who died prematurely was especially good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I really enjoyed the book! The next book I am reading is The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This book is a combination of an essay collection and memoirs, with the focus on how an obsession with video games guided the author\u2019s life. Since the author became a professional comedian, the writing is hilarious. I was laughing out loud fairly often, and a lot of the stories hit close to home for me. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-Zk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}