Now that Game of Thrones Season 7 is over, fans have to find other stuff to talk about for the next year (or maybe more). There were some great moments in Season 7, but there were a lot of pacing issues, and the dialogue wasn’t always as sharp as in previous seasons.
Game of Thrones Seasons 1-4 were so awesome because the TV show could directly use so much great material from the books. Now that the show has passed the books, the quality of the HBO series has gotten worse (in some ways) every season. Some fans blame the TV writers/directors/producers. I understand that. But maybe some blame could go to the author of the books, George R.R. Martin. Without original source material to work with, the TV show seems to struggle a bit. If he had sped up his writing, maybe the last few seasons of the TV show would have been better.
It’s probably too late for the new books to help what’s left of the TV show, but maybe George R.R. Martin should hurry up and finish the darn books anyway!
(image via wikimedia)
It’s easy for fans to be mad at George R.R. Martin. Last week the Game of Thrones author announced that he won’t be able meet the January, 2016 deadline for his long-awaited 6th book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter.
Some readers are angry with George R.R. Martin, claiming that he is taking too long with these books. It’s been several years since the last novel, he’s working on other projects, his blog posts are long when he should be writing books instead, and the HBO series has caught up with his books. In other words, fans are getting restless.
I understand. I don’t read the Song of Ice and Fire series, but I empathize with frustrated fans. When I was a kid, I got depressed after I saw The Empire Strikes Back because there was a cliffhanger…
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Tomorrow is the first day of school in my area, and today my two daughters are miserable. When I was a kid, the day before the first day of school was worse than the first day of school. For some reason, I couldn’t think of anything else that day except that school was coming and that it sucked.
As bad as school was, it rarely deserved the anxiety that it caused the day before it began. Even so, school still sucked back then, and according to my daughters (who are both reasonably successful at school), it still sucks now.
The classroom seems peaceful now, but some kid just farted. (image via wikimedia)
If you’re a student and you think school sucks, you’re not alone. There’s a certain point where all kids start to hate school. Most kids like school during their early elementary years, but something happens around 4th or 5th grade. Kids start being aware of other things around them. And at some point, kids realize school isn’t that great. In fact, it sucks.
Even teachers agree that school sucks. Teachers are mostly there because they’re getting paid (which is reasonable), and even money can’t make them enjoy the experience. If you’re in school (student or teacher) and you’re depressed, don’t worry about it. It’s normal to be depressed at school.
Famous author JRR Tolkien got depressed when he taught, and he was a college professor. His negative feelings from teaching inspired him to write The…
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At the end of my annual physical, my doctor told me I probably need to make a couple lifestyle changes. She suggested that if I exercise more and eat more leafy greens, I could probably extend my life by a few years. I told her I didn’t need to do that because I read a lot of books.
For future reference, don’t tell your doctor that your health plan consists of reading all the time. Even if your doctor has a sense of humor, which is unlikely, you’ll get lectured about healthy lifestyle choices, such as exercise and a healthy diet. Reading a lot, despite some recent research, probably won’t be one of your doctor’s recommendations.
That’s okay. When it comes to medical advice, don’t listen to me; listen to your doctor.
Get up and live your life, you bookworm!! (image via wikimedia)
Everybody who enjoys reading knows there are a lot of benefits from it. People can become more knowledgeable when they read. People who read fiction have more empathy than people who don’t read. Reading can also improve our critical thinking skills. Now a study shows that reading makes us live longer too.
The study shows (supposedly) that people who read 3 ½ hours a week or more live at least two years longer than people who don’t. There are a few more numbers in this study, but I don’t like numbers, even though I probably should like numbers because I like to read. Then again, I don’t like to read math books, so it makes sense that I don’t like numbers. Still, it seems like two years is the average extended lifespan for people who read books.
Wait a minute.
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Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is probably the first book I’ve ever read that makes a reference to Robotron, my favorite arcade video game from the 1980s. In fact, Ready Player One makes references to a bunch of stuff from the 1980s. The first couple chapters of Ready Player One have already made references to a bunch of 80s pop culture like, Oingo Boingo, Family Ties, John Hughes movies, and, of course… video games like Robotron.
As somebody who grew up in the 80s, I appreciate seeing all these references. It’s part of what makes Ready Player One fun to read.
I could be biased. Maybe I appreciate this book so much because I’ve finally discovered somebody who loves Robotron as much as I did. Back when we’d play arcade games in the mall or at the pool hall, and everybody else was obsessed with crap like Frogger or Donkey Kong, I was wasting quarters on Robotron. Nobody listened to me when I told them how awesome Robotron was. Of course, I have a monotone voice, so my passion sounded forced, but it should have been obvious to them. Here’s a perfect description of Robotron from Ready Player One:
I booted up my emulator and selected Robotron: 2084, one of my all-time favorite games. I’d always loved its frenetic pace and brutal simplicity. Robotron was all about instinct and reflexes. Playing old videogames never failed to clear my mind and set me at ease. If I was feeling or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game’s two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It’s just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.
I spent a few hours blasting through wave after wave of Brains, Spheroids, Quarks, and Hulks in my unending battle to Save the Last Human Family! But eventually my fingers started to cramp up and I began to lose my rhythm. When that happened at this level, things deteriorated quickly. I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: GAME OVER.
I remember the Robotron wrist. As a guy in high school, you couldn’t complain that your wrist hurt from playing Robotron because people would make fun of you, accusing you of hurting your hand doing something that had nothing to do with Robotron.
Ready Player One could be a lousy book and I wouldn’t recognize that simply because the narrator and I share a love for Robotron. I bonded with this book, at least with a couple pages of it. I understand that not everybody loves the 1980s. To me, a little bit of Oingo Boingo goes a long way. Family Ties was good for only a few seasons. I liked only a couple of John Hughes’s movies. But Robotron…. I could never get enough of Robotron.
Now that Ready Player One is being made into a movie, I’m not so sure that it will be successful. Its strength as a book might be its weakness as a movie. A few million people buying a book makes a book a blockbuster. Only a few million people seeing a Spielberg movie would be a disaster, and I’m not sure that a movie based on so much 80s culture and video games will be that appealing. I like the 1980s, and I like what I’ve read so far of Ready Player One, but I’m not sure I want to see it as a Spielberg movie.
Then again, maybe Robotron will be in the movie. I’ve always wanted to see Robotron in a movie. It might be worth it to see Ready Player One just to see Robotron in a movie. Sigh! I miss Robotron.
(image via wikimedia)
I don’t remember the last names of the guys who lived on my dorm floor at the State University. I remember my roommate Kirk, and I think of guys like Eric and Tim and Shane, but the most memorable guy was named Ted Tinkle. Everybody liked saying Ted Tinkle. We weren’t making fun of him when we said his last name. We just liked the way his full name sounded, and it fit his personality.
Ted Tinkle wasn’t dumb, but he was a little scatterbrained sometimes. He would occasionally show up to classes on the wrong day. One professor would shake his head whenever he saw Ted Tinkle and mutter “Ted Tinkle, Ted Tinkle.” Ted Tinkle sometimes called his friends the wrong name. It took him at least a month to call me Jimmy instead of Johnny. I was willing to let it go, but my roommate Kirk usually corrected him for me. Ted Tinkle always looked shocked that he had gotten my name wrong and would apologize afterward.
I was jealous of Ted Tinkle because he had a cool girlfriend. She was cute, and I was the only friend of his that she’d talk to a lot. She knew about comic books and science fiction, and she understood all the nerd references I made. Ted was a good-looking good-natured jock, not talented enough to get any athletic scholarships but good enough to be a stud in the intramural leagues. Ted Tinkle’s girlfriend would hang out with me while he was participating in his league games, and he didn’t care. He knew I wasn’t going to hit on his girlfriend.
His girlfriend’s name was Paula, but I don’t remember her last name. You’d think I’d remember her last name, especially since I remember her boyfriend’s name, but it’s been over 30 years.
Paula always wore jean skirts. It was the mid-1980s, and it didn’t matter what the weather was, she always wore jean skirts. Back then, I was a sucker for jean skirts. A couple guys once mentioned (when Ted Tinkle wasn’t around) that Paula seemed to always have a jean skirt on, and they meant it as criticism, but I didn’t care. I was a fan.
Paula and I occasionally ate breakfast together in the dorm cafeteria because we were two of the few early risers in our dorm. Every once in a while, it felt like Paula was my girlfriend, but I had to be careful with something like that. Looking back, she must have known that I had a thing for her, so what she did kind of ticks me off now. But it was 30 years ago, and I have to let this stuff go.
One morning we were eating breakfast, and out of nowhere Paula asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?”
A bunch of ideas staggered through my head. Was Paula breaking up with Ted Tinkle? If she was breaking up with Ted Tinkle, how long would I have to wait before I made my move on his ex-girlfriend? Would he get pissed off I went out with his ex-girlfriend? I mean, Paula was awesome and would be worth it, but this kind of thing could be really awkward. Then I remembered that I had to answer the question.
“Not right now,” I said.
Not right now, what a dumb answer, I thought. I should have just said no. Sometimes when I write about my past, I get mad at myself for the stupid stuff I did and said. “Not right now” was pretty stupid, but this is just the beginning of what happened at the University Library later that semester
Anyway, I was trying to play it cool because I thought Paula was about to tell me something about her relationship with Ted Tinkle, and whatever it was, I was going to act like it wasn’t a big deal to me. I couldn’t act like I was excited they were going to break up. I had to be neutral but sympathetic. Since I was a guy with a monotone voice, I could do neutral, but I had to be careful with sympathetic.
Paula took a breath and asked, “What do you think about Brenda?”
Brenda?
Damn.
What a lousy thing to do to a guy, I thought. Paula could have led off with the question about Brenda instead of getting my hopes up and then crushing them. A woman should never ask a guy if he has a girlfriend, not unless she’s interested in him. Back then, I didn’t think Paula knew what she was doing, but I’ve changed my mind. That has to be a high or an adrenaline rush for a woman, dangling availability in front of a guy and then snatching it back.
Paula explained how she and Brenda, the girl who had talked to me at the University Library, lived on the same floor. Brenda thought very highly of me, she said. She mentioned that Brenda always talked about our conversation at the University Library. Brenda was available, Paula said. That was it. Brenda was available. I didn’t really care for Brenda too much, though.
Even worse, I realized Ted Tinkle’s girlfriend was a meddler. I knew meddlers could be trouble, but I didn’t know how bad this was going to get. Suddenly, I didn’t like Ted Tinkle’s girlfriend anymore. It’s funny how quickly things like that can change.
*****
To be continued in University Library: Scooter!
And you can start at the beginning with University Library: State School .
When it comes to Game of Thrones, it’s tough to avoid spoilers. Hackers have released scripts and scenes from upcoming episodes. YouTubers have put up videos of those scenes without spoiler alerts before the episode was even broadcast. Fans have talked about spoilers on message boarders without warning anyone. I’ve learned this year that if you want to avoid spoilers about Game of Thrones, you have to avoid Game of Thrones until you’re ready to watch it.
But you’re safe with me. Here are some lessons I’ve learned from watching Game of Thrones (spoiler-free past Season 6).
Lesson #1- Do NOT sit on that throne.
Out of all the reasons to watch Game of Thrones (violence, nudity, ripped-from-history storylines), learning life lessons isn’t one of them. Nobody watches Game of Thrones for morality lessons. If they do, they’re probably disappointed.
Sympathetic characters get killed in horrible ways, and villains seem to thrive. That’s a horrible morality lesson. But if you don’t watch with a good vs. evil perspective, Game of Thrones can give you some practical advice about how to be successful (and avoid getting yourself killed)
All of the lessons below are taken from Game of Thrones quotes. I’m not going to explain the context of the quotes (except for a couple) because that might potentially spoil the show for somebody who hasn’t watched it yet. But even if you haven’t watched it, you can learn from these quotes. Plus, if you use these quotes in…
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My youngest daughter doesn’t understand why Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is such a big deal. She’s reading it now, and so far she thinks it’s overrated. I’ve told her that the whole Harry Potter thing was new to people 15-20 years ago, but my daughter has been surrounded by Harry Potter stuff (books and movies) her whole life. It seems stale because she was raised with it.
Even though Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was a landmark blockbuster, it still has its flaws. At the very least, it has a few “bad” sentences in it. But I’m not going to mention that to my daughter.
Even award-winning, record-breaking debut novels can have bad sentences.
Maybe Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone isn’t a classic novel yet, but it probably will be. It’s been over 15 years since it was published, and people are still reading it. Most books are forgotten months after they were published. I’m betting the Harry Potter books will continue to be read for several generations, so I’ll go ahead and call it a classic now. If I’m wrong, 50 years from now people can come back and mock me for it.
Whether it’s a classic or not, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone has some bad sentences in it. It’s easy for for me to spot bad sentences because I’ve written a lot of them in my time. If my English teachers would have red-marked my paper for writing something similar, then it’s a bad sentence. If my writing group peers…
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When I picked up Paradise Valley by C.J. Box, I didn’t realize it was a serial killer novel. Seriously, from the cover, Paradise Valley doesn’t look like a serial killer novel. Usually there’s a bloody weapon or a terrified woman on the cover of a serial killer novel, but the image here is almost peaceful.
It was my fault that I didn’t know Paradise Valley was a serial killer book. I usually read the book jacket before I grab a book, but since this was a bestseller on the library’s New Arrivals shelf, I snatched it before an old lady next to me could get to it (I don’t mean old lady in a derogatory way. It’s just her most noticeable characteristic. To her, I’d probably be the bald guy, or the awkward guy, or that guy who looks like a serial killer).
Anyway, she gave me a dirty look when I picked it off the shelf, and I would have asked her if she was interested in it, but she had a cart. Once a library book goes into a cart, it’s not coming out.
I saw several James Patterson books in that cart, so I knew the old lady was more concerned with quantity than quality. The next time I go to the library, I’ll pretend to slide a copy of Finnegans Wake from the bestsellers shelf and suggest it to the old lady. If she’s going to give me a dirty look anyway, I might as well give her a reason.
Looking back, I should have given her Paradise Valley. I’m not saying it’s bad or anything. It’s just a serial killer book. I’ve read so many serial killer novels that most of them seem generic now. At least in Paradise Valley, the detective already knows who the killer is and is trying to set a trap, so we didn’t get the typical shock and horror and piecing together of clues. The reader doesn’t have to go through all that learning curve stuff again.
Amazon calls Paradise Valley Book 4 in the Highway Quartet, but some reviewers are calling it book 3 in a trilogy, so I’ll go with what Amazon says. Either way, it’s not the first book in the series, but it didn’t take long to figure out what has been going on, even though I hadn’t read the previous books. It’s often frustrating trying to read the 4th book in a series first. Then again, if you can read the 4th book and understand what’s going on right away, why would you read the first three books?
The serial killer’s name in Paradise Valley is the Lizard King, and it makes sense once it’s explained. The Lizard King isn’t the worst serial killer name ever. James Patterson made up a serial killer called The Dealer. That was pretty bad. I think The Dealer should have been the official end of serial killers. I’m not for limiting free expression, but if I could limit free expression in any one area, I’d probably say no more serial killer novels, at least for a few years.
I mean, as far as free expression goes, hate speech is bad, and some people want to limit that, but you can argue about who determines what hate speech really is. Reasonable people can disagree about what actually makes hate speech and what its boundaries are. But more serial killer novels? If we say no more serial killer novels, is anybody really going to be outraged?
If it happens, it’s not C.J. Box’s fault that serial killer novels would get banned. Paradise Valley just happened to be the book that caught my attention, that certain book that was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I’d blame James Patterson and The Dealer. When you need a literary scapegoat, always blame James Patterson.
*****
Before you read another book that you’re not sure about, check out Dysfunctional Book Reviews!
Writers tend to despise rules. That kind of independence is what inspires us to express ourselves, and we use words instead of voices or music or visuals (or property destruction) to make our point.
The rules about writing below aren’t necessarily rules; maybe they’re more like tips or guidelines, but whatever they are, they help a busy but lazy guy like me get some form of writing done almost every day.
If I’m going to write every day, I’m definitely not going to use one of these! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In every writer’s class I’ve taken and every writer’s group I’ve been in, there was always somebody who said that the most important rule to writing was to “write every day.” I’m usually pretty good at following rules, but this one has always been stated with such pomposity that I’ve wanted to argue, except I’m a quiet person who doesn’t like to make scenes, so I’ve always kept my mouth shut.
Writing every day is a great rule if you’re a full-time writer, but I have a full-time job that has nothing to do with writing, and I have a family, so it’s not easy to simply “write every day.” Life is stressful, and trying to write every day (when I tried it) made it even worse. In order to write…
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I was going to start off by saying that The Lying Game by Ruth Ware has a stupid title. But then I thought maybe stupid is a harsh word. As an aspiring author, I should be more precise and diplomatic with my word choice.
Maybe it’s better to say that The Lying Game is not the best book title in the world. To be fair, I’m not sure what the best book title in the world is, but The Lying Game is probably not it.
First of all, the word game is overused in book titles nowadays. Just offhand, I can think of The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, Game of Thrones, The Most Dangerous Game, and The Westing Game. Even James Patterson is cashing in on the word game with Murder Games. The word game always implies something deadly in fiction. Book authors are supposed to be masters of the written word. They could at least use a thesaurus and come up with an original word.
Plus, this lying game in The Lying Game was made up (from what I’ve read) by a few teenage girls. The female characters would lie to people and see if their lies were believed or not. This sounds like something teenage girls would do. I’ve never been a teenage girl, but I’m a dad with two of them.
Plus, when I was a teenage boy, I dealt with a lot of teenage girls, and this lying game sounds like something girls might do, but they probably wouldn’t call it a lying game. That’s too obvious. Girls would make a code word or code phrase for a lying game. If an adult hears girls talking about a lying game, the adult knows what’s going on, and girls who are lying as a form of entertainment would probably be more clever than that.
Since I’ve never been a teenage girl, the code phrase that I would have used would be different from what teen girls would use. I was a chess club type nerd boy in school, so I would have come up with something stupid like The Polygraph Society. Then I would have lost every challenge because I’ve always been a crappy liar. I was a crappy chess player too.
It sounds like the characters in The Lying Game did something as teenagers that is coming back to haunt them as adults. It’s one of those books that’s told in a bunch of flashbacks while the character’s thinking. So far, there’s only been one narrator, and I’m not sure how reliable she is. It seems like I’ve read a lot of books structured like this recently, so I’m tempted to skip to the last couple chapters just to see what the big deal is. 20 years ago, I would have considered that as cheating, but I’m older now without as much time left (I don’t mean that in a cryptic way; I’m busy with a job and a family… and pets. If it weren’t for the damn pets….).
I know I have to be careful when I’m critical of books. An author like Ruth Ware is making a bunch of money and millions of people are reading her books, while I have a blog and a couple ebooks that a few people maybe have read. So there’s a good chance that I’m wrong about all of this. Maybe there’s no good synonym for the word game in the thesaurus. Maybe somebody Ruth Ware knows actually played a lying game and called it a lying game.
I would ask my daughters what code phrase they would use for a lying game, but I don’t want to give them ideas that can be used against me. I think they have enough of those already.
*****
What do you think? Is The Lying Game a good title? If you’ve ever been a teenage girl, what code name would you come up with for a lying game?
Dysfunctional Literacy 