Max Pemberton (Author)
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Friday, 30 November 2018
#10: Where Does it Hurt?: What the Junior Doctor did next
Max Pemberton (Author)
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Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books: Children's/Young Adult Book Picks November 2018 - US Post Two
Mari Mancusi - The Camelot Code, Book #1 The Once and Future Geek - Published by Disney-Hyperion (November 20, 2018) - ISBN-13: 978-1368010849 - Hardback
When young Arthur of Camelot accidentally time-travels to the 21st century and Googles himself, he discovers the not-so-happily ever after in store for him once he pulls the sword from the stone. Yes, he'll go from squire to sovereign basically overnight, but he'll also lose the love of his life to his best friend and eventually die in battle. What's a once-and-future king to do? Easy: stay in the future, where he'll actually have a future-and join the football team instead.
Now, with the help of the great wizard Merlin, modern-day gamer-geeks Sophie and Stu find themselves in a race against time to get that sword pulled from the stone and the stubborn soon-to-be-king Arthur back to the past where he belongs. Complicating the plan? Lady Morgana-Arthur's sister and greatest enemy-has traveled to the future as well, determined to take Arthur out and seize the throne. Can Sophie and Stu use their gaming abilities to defeat the evil Morgana and set the timeline right? With the very existence of their friendship, their families, and the world as they know it (including pepperoni pizza!) at stake, they'll use every skill, power-up, and cheat code they know in their quest to save the day.
Stephanie Burgis - The Girl with the Dragon Heart - Published by Bloomsbury Children's Books (November 6, 2018) - ISBN-13: 978-1681196978 - Hardback
Silke has always been good at spinning the truth and storytelling. So good that, just years after arriving in the kingdom as a penniless orphan, she has found her way to working for the most splendid chocolate makers in the city as a master promoter. Although Silke loves her work at the Chocolate Heart, she's certain it's not going to last, and what Silke wants more than anything is somewhere to call home--somewhere safe. But when your best friend is a dragon-turned-hot-tempered-girl, trouble is always right around the corner.
Then Silke gets the opportunity she's been waiting for: the Crown Princess personally asks her to spy on the Elfenwald royal family during their first visit to the kingdom. In return, Silke will have the home she's always wanted in the secure palace. But Silke has her own dark, secret reasons for not trusting fairies . . . and her mission isn't as simple as she hoped. Soon, she discovers that her city is in danger--and that maybe it's more her home than she ever realized.
Can Silke find out the truth about the fairies while keeping her own secrets hidden?
Lyra Selene - Amber & Dusk - Scholastic Press (November 27, 2018) -
- ISBN-13: 978-1338210033 - Hardback
So Sylvie sets off toward the Amber City, a glittering jewel under a sun that never sets, to take what is hers.
But her hope for a better life is quickly dimmed. The empress invites her in only as part of a wicked wager among her powerful courtiers. Sylvie must assume a new name, Mirage, and begin to navigate secretive social circles and deadly games of intrigue in order to claim her spot. Soon it becomes apparent that nothing is as it appears and no one, including her cruel yet captivating sponsor, Sunder, will answer her questions. As Mirage strives to seize what should be her rightful place, she'll have to consider whether it is worth the price she must pay.
An extraordinary, vividly rendered YA debut.
Melanie Sumrow - The Prophet Calls - Published by Yellow Jacket (November 6, 2018) - ISBN-13: 978-1499807554 - Hardback
Gentry Forrester feels lucky to live among God's chosen people in the Prophet's compound, but when music is outlawed, Gentry and her older brother, Tanner, sneak out of the community. When they return, all bets are off as the Prophet exercises his control.
Born into a polygamous community in the foothills of New Mexico, Gentry Forrester feels lucky to live among God's chosen, apart from the outside world and its "evils."
On her thirteenth birthday, Gentry receives a new violin from her father and, more than anything, she wants to play at the Santa Fe Music Festival with her brother, Tanner. But then the Prophet calls from prison and announces he has outlawed music in their community and now forbids women to leave.
Determined to play, Gentry and Tanner sneak out. But once they return, the Prophet exercises control from prison, and it has devastating consequences for Gentry and her family. Soon, everything Gentry has known is turned upside down. She begins to question the Prophet's teachings and his revelations, especially when his latest orders put Gentry's family in danger. Can Gentry find a way to protect herself and her family from the Prophet and escape the only life she's ever known?
This realistic, powerful story of family, bravery, and following your dreams is a can't-miss debut novel from Melanie Sumrow.
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“A Madmaid’s Tale” – Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates
"Picture the face of Elisabeth Moss. Do you see her as Betty from Mad Men? Or do you see her as June/Offred in The Handmaid's Tale? It might be, given that time has passed, given that one show is current and one show has ended, that you see her beneath the strange wimple, caught in that curious im/possible future. Imagine, then, for an instant, that there was a way of reviving Mad Men and doing a cross-over show, A Madmaid's Tale, if you will, in which June/Offred is spirited back in time to confront an alternate version of herself, Betty. That, kind of, is what Joyce Carol Oates is up to in her umpty-nineteenth novel, Hazards of Time Travel."
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“A Madmaid’s Tale” – Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates
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Thursday, 29 November 2018
#10: Normal People
Sally Rooney (Author)
(98)Buy new:
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Use Your Want to Read Shelf to Drop Holiday Hints
<spoiler>This post is sponsored by Simon and Schuster.</spoiler>
You hold the gift in your hands, gauging its weight. You imagine the possibilities as your fingers tear into the wrapping paper, casting aside pieces of ribbon and tape, to reveal…
A phone charger. A novelty keychain. Socks.
It's time to face the truth: You're hard to shop for. Your long-suffering friends and family have been forced, once again, to search aimlessly for something, anything, to wrap and hand over.
"You shouldn't have," you say, a little too earnestly, as you glance around for a gift receipt.
There's a better way. This holiday season ensure a merry situation for all by sharing your Want to Read shelf with your loved ones.
Not familiar with your Want to Read shelf? Learn all about it here.
The benefits of sharing your Want to Read shelf:
You'll increase your chances of receiving a book—a book!—as a gift.
This will be a book you actually want.
You'll save your friends and family the headache of wondering what to get you.
No guilt! This isn't a phone or a puppy. Books are delightfully affordable treasures, especially if you avoid putting brand-new hardcovers on your list.
To see what's already on your Want to Read shelf, click here.
Wish you could create a new shelf? You can! If your Want to Read shelf is too long or full of books you already own, then custom shelves are the way to go. Find out how to make one here. You can be as creative as you want with the name of your shelf—from Wishlist to Please Buy Me These Books, Billy.
And this bookish strategy works all year long, for birthdays, anniversaries, and every other gift-giving situation. Suggest trading Want to Read shelves with your loved ones who read, and you'll make your shopping easier, too.
We wish you a holiday season (and beyond) full of books, readers!
Have you had success sharing your Want to Read shelf with your friends and family? Tell us about it in the comments!
Check out more recent blogs:
Goodreads Hack: How to Create Custom Bookshelves
Goodreads Hack: The Power of the Want to Read Shelf
Goodreads Hack: Scan a Book Cover!
posted by Hayley on November, 29
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#5: Normal People
Sally Rooney (Author)
(97)Buy new:
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Trash & Treasure: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Trash & Treasure is a miscellany of monthly opinions on SFF, fandom and general geekness from Foz Meadows.
I was four when I first – and, to my best recollection, last – watched the original She-Ra. I loved her as a preschool-aged kid, and then, because it was the very early 90s and you couldn’t rewatch anything unless it was live-to-air or you’d taped it to VHS, I lost access to her completely. Even so, I was excited when I heard about Netflix’s plans to reboot the show, not least due to the showrunning involvement of Adventure Time alum Noelle Stevenson, whose graphic novel Nimona I profoundly enjoyed. Given that I haven’t seen the original She-Ra in nearly thirty years, it’s fair to say that my memories of it are thin at best: what I recall most strongly isn’t so much the show itself, but how it made my child self feel. I remember lofting a pretend sword at preschool as I invoked the power of Grayskull to become She-Ra, tunelessly singing the theme song, and I remember colourful, disconnected flashes of the show itself, most clearly about an episode where one character was revealed to be the mother of another. To my child self, it was a powerful, formative moment in my understanding of narrative: though I couldn’t now tell you which characters were involved, what mattered was how it felt to gain a new understanding of them – to feel that stories could grow.
In Stevenson’s new She-Ra, teen protagonist Adora and her best friend, Catra, have been raised and trained as soldiers by the Horde. Under the sharp, manipulative tutelage of Shadow Weaver, they’ve been taught to view the princesses of the Rebellion – and their magic – as evil, uncontrolled, dangerous. But when an illicit joyride through enemy territory sees the pair separated, Adora comes into contact with an ancient relic: the Sword of Power, which grants her the ability to transform into the warrior-princess She-Ra, as well as offering tantalising glimpses of the past. Before Adora can come to terms with this, she’s thrust into the company of the rebel princess Glimmer and her best friend, Bow, who try – and partially succeed – to take her prisoner. As the trio wrangle over the sword, circumstances force them into an uneasy alliance, until Adora, already questioning her view of the world, is witness to an unprovoked Horde attack on a peaceful settlement. This prompts Adora to switch sides, only to learn that the attack is being led by Catra, charged by Shadow Weaver to bring Adora back to the Horde. Though Adora pleads with Catra to defect with her, Catra, stung by what she sees as a betrayal of their friendship, refuses – leaving Adora, along with Glimmer and Bow, to combat the Horde and reform the faltering Princess Alliance together.
The resulting story is a magical, coming-of-age, queer fantasy adventure that’s equal parts delightful and moving. In addition to completely revamping the character designs, Stevenson has brought to the show a wonderful, unapologetic deconstruction of heteronormativity that nonetheless pays homage to the original. Princesses Netossa and Spinnerella, though marginal characters thus far, are in a loving relationship, while every aspect of Adora and Catra’s friends-to-enemies narrative is saturated with angsty, romantic tension. In the Princess Prom episode, Catra and Scorpia and Adora and Glimmer respectively go as couples to a dance, and my poor bisexual heart is yet to recover – indeed, may never fully do so – from the aesthetic of Catra in a fitted red suit with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, an untied bow tie hung around her neck.
On the subject of Stevenson’s new character designs: it has not escaped notice that certain adult men have thrown a fit because the predominantly teenage characters in a show aimed at young girls don’t look as adult and mainstream-fuckable as their eighties predecessors. Spinnerella isn’t thin, they wail! She-Ra wears shorts! Scorpia has short hair! Nobody is sufficiently feminine! What is this SJW bullshit, and how dare it ruin a show that was absolutely meant to belong to them and their sexual tastes forever! To which I say, in my very best Rita Repulsa voice: cry harder, babies. Listen: the original He-Man and She-Ra were camp as fuck, and you panting porndogs have the nerve to complain that Stevenson is gaying the story up now? What part of a flying rainbow unicorn and twunks in spandex and crop-tops did you think was heterosexual? Go sob into your favourite anime body-pillow about it; I’m sure your cotton-synthetic waifu will be suitably sympathetic. The rest of us have a show to watch.
Korrasami
In terms of structure, She-Ra is comprised of only partially self-contained episodes: while certain events are resolved each time, the greater emphasis is on their role in a longer, overarching narrative. While She-Ra is far from the first animated show to use this structure in recent years, it really hit home how truly groundbreaking – and, indeed, trendsetting – Nickleodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel show, Avatar: The Legend of Korra have been on Western animation. When Airbender first came out in 2005, there was very little like it outside of anime. Though Western cartoons had flirted with long-form narratives in the eighties and nineties, as per cult classics like The Mysterious Cities of Gold and Gargoyles – and, less well-known, The Twins of Destiny – the medium was otherwise dominated by shows which, like the sitcoms of the time, favoured discreet, week-to-week adventures and unchanging characterisation. Airbender was revolutionary, not only in terms of its overarching narrative, but in the depth and consistency of its worldbuilding, the quality of the writing and the diversity of its characters.
In particular, Airbender showcased POC in non-European settings, earning praise for the strength and individuality of its women: heroines Katara, Toph and Suki, and antagonists Azula, Mei and Ty Lee. It was this success that lead to the sequel show, Legend of Korra, being developed around the titular female protagonist: not only was the original setting rich enough to merit continuation, but the fanbase itself had proven that a female lead would be viable. Airing from 2012 to 2015, Legend of Korra ended on another groundbreaking note: with the confirmation of a queer relationship between Korra and her friend Asami. Though showrunner Bryan Konietzko said himself that the Korrasami pairing as depicted on screen “falls short” of being a total representational victory, it was nonetheless impactful. At the same time, Rebecca Sugar’s still-ongoing Steven Universe, which first aired in 2013, has taken the queer rep ball and run with it from the very first season: without these shows, I would argue, we would not have the new She-Ra.
Viewed objectively, it shouldn’t be surprising that the rise of complex characterisation and long-game narratives in cartoons has coincided with their steady inclusion of queer representation: after all, the presence of the latter is closely tied to the existence of the former. Closely tied, but not exclusively so: even in cartoonlandia, there’s room for queerness that just is, as much a part of the story as magic and comic shenanigans. And yet, as with Legend of Korra, it took until the literal final episodes of both Gravity Falls and Adventure Time for the queer relationships long hinted at in each show – Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland in Gravity Falls, Marcline and Princess Bubblegum in Adventure Time – to be made explicit. Gravity Falls ended in 2016, a year after Korra; Adventure Time in late 2018. Also this year, Voltron: Legendary Defender – like She-Ra, an eighties cartoon successfully rebooted by Netlifx and now in its seventh season – revealed one of its protagonists, Shiro, to be a gay man. Though fandom responses to the episode in question have been mixed (I won’t weigh in on them here, as I haven’t yet seen it), Shiro’s sexuality is part of the slow yet steady inclusion of queerness in cartoons.
As such, She-Ra owes a debt to both Avatar and Steven Universe: Avatar for paving the way for diverse, longform cartoon narratives, and Steven Universe for proving the appeal of queerness as both a narrative element and a visual aesthetic. And the more I think about it, the more I find this latter element to be more subversive, more powerful and more fundamentally necessary than is often realised. In the wealth of critical discourse surrounding Steven Universe, much is made – and rightly so – of the ways in which Steven’s portrayal challenges toxic masculinity. What I haven’t seen discussed, however, is the fact that the show is likewise subversive of toxic femininity. Or rather, it is discussed, but not in that language: instead, it’s incorporated into the praise afforded the show’s queer female characters – their body-types, personalities and character arcs.
Which brings us back to She-Ra, and the reason why its unapologetically queer aesthetic strikes me as so important. At a fundamental level, toxic femininity is rooted in heteronormativity and performative beauty standards: in the absolute necessity of women meeting a narrow, rigid standard of What Is Feminine And Acceptable to earn the approval of men, even – and sometimes especially – if this means competing with one another. Queerness, however, has a very different concept of beauty, one in which traditional feminine aesthetics are situated, not as the only or most acceptable way for women (or anyone, for that matter) to look, but as one of a number of options; nor is the success of that aesthetic viewed as dependent on the simultaneous possession of a particular bodytype. Non-toxic femininity therefore comes to have significant overlap with representations of what, in contrast, have come to be viewed and accepted as queer aesthetics. What’s so significant about Noelle Stevenson’s designs for She-Ra, therefore, isn’t just that they reject heteronormativity, but that in doing so, they offer young girls a version of femininity which, regardless of sexuality, isn’t predicated on straight male approval.
Mermista
Which is, in turn, why the aforementioned men online are so very angry about She-Ra. It’s not just that the show itself is aimed at a female audience – that was always true. It’s that this version of She-Ra is actively promoting a version of feminine beauty that isn’t contingent on being a uniform species of thin, busty and, overwhelmingly, white, and which therefore isn’t tailored to mainstream male preferences. It’s princess culture – quite literally, given the premise – but without the toxicity. Glimmer is short and stocky, with mixed-race parentage and short pink hair. Perfuma is tall and blonde, but lanky rather than willowy, with brown skin and freckles. Mermista is brown with compact curves and thick black hair, while Frosta is short and no-nonsense, with Asian features. The closest character to the traditional princess aesthetic is Adora/She-Ra – but even then, her costume is paired with shorts rather than a skirt (a detail I love on multiple levels, not least because it makes for more functional costuming for the thousands of little girls who’ll doubtless want to dress up as her) and her hair as Adora is much shorter, worn in a ponytail instead of lose.
These might seem like small things individually, but while other princess or girl-group shows have often depicted girls with slightly different skin tones and hair colours, this is usually done to create a visual rainbow effect – and, on a practical level, to help differentiate characters whose bodies and faces are otherwise more or less identical. Barbie and Bratz, both doll lines with their own cartoons, are the obvious examples of body-face sameness paired with different colouration, as are the various Disney princesses. But the problem is ubiquitous in girl-oriented cartoons: Winx Club, Shimmer and Shine, Lego Elves: Secrets of Elvendale – even My Little Pony isn’t exempt, thanks to the Equestria Girls spinoff. (And if you think the brony market of adult straight men obsessed with MLP played no part in Hasbro’s decision to make skinny, identical, humanesque versions of cartoon horses, for all that many bronies professed to dislike the Equestria Girls – well. I’d think again.) And whatever else can be said of the original She-Ra, it’s hard to argue that the female characters didn’t share a body-type – something that becomes even more obvious when you put the original women alongside Stevenson’s versions. But now, we have a show where the fun, positive aspects of traditional femininity are celebrated along with diverse bodytypes: where being queer or fat or brown – or all three at once, even – doesn’t mean you can’t be beautiful, or a princess. And that, I would argue, is a deeply necessary message for all young viewers to hear.
There’s a lot to be said about the substance of the new She-Ra otherwise – the characterisation in particular is wonderful, as is the fraught relationship between Adora and Catra – but rather than go into detail about it here, I’d encourage you watch it yourself. I don’t know how long it will be before the next season comes out, but I’m already looking forward to it – and in the meantime, my five year old son has already started a rewatch.
The post Trash & Treasure: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power appeared first on The Book Smugglers.
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“A posthumous greatest hits collection” – Night Train by Thom Jones
"As an introduction to Thom Jones, it's pretty damn great. As a final tip of the cap, it's noteworthy and respectable to his legacy. And as an entertainment, as a collection of stories in their own right, it's up there with the best."
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“A posthumous greatest hits collection” – Night Train by Thom Jones
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Nick Cook - Fractured Light: (Fractured Light Trilogy Bk1) - Mr Ripley's Enchanted Book Review
THEY UNCOVERED A THREAT TO EVERY PERSON ON THE PLANET.
NOW AN INVISIBLE ENEMY IS HUNTING THEM DOWN.
What would you do if you started to see something lurking in the shadows of our everyday world?
That's the reality that Jake Stevens has been pitched into and now he’s questioning his sanity.
Jake’s been an outsider in his hometown Stoneham, England, ever since his life was shattered when his father's experiment into dark energy exploded, killing himself and many others.
When Jake witnesses a satellite crash-landing and starts to receive garbled messages that hint at a conspiracy, a chain of events is unleashed that will threaten the very existence of all life on Earth in a dystopian nightmare.
Can Jake, and the best friend that he froze out of his life, Chloe Haze, a coding genius who’s heavily entrenched with the underground hacking network, figure out the connections of the mystery that link all the events before it’s too late?
This book comes with the following warning: Watch the DARKNESS because the SHADOWS are coming for you. This is the first book in the Fractured Light Trilogy that has been recently self-published (August 2018). The overall appearance of the book is brilliant. In fact, the cracking book cover illustration by Ryan Schwarz featured in this year's book cover wars. Sadly, I see no accreditation to the artist in the book. Nevertheless, in my opinion, he has done an amazing job by making the book appealing to all potential readers.
The reading experience is an epic sci-fi story which has been written with intelligence and includes some fantastic detail. This surely is down to the research and the author's passion for the subjects he has written about within the novel. I was very impressed (and even slightly thrilled) to enjoy this book as much as I did. I was instantly hooked from the first page and when I had to put it down, I felt like I needed to pick it back up again to carry on reading. I have not felt like this about a book for some time within the YA/teenage genre.
The book for me is set in the here and now. Ordinary lives are found to be caught up in an extraordinary situation which could be reflected in our future advancements of technology/sciences. The plot is extremely imaginative; I loved the Artificial Intelligence aspect to the well-worked plot. It really pulled me into the story and sucked me into the world of stars and beyond. I loved the Tesla car scene - this was very creative and captured the essence of the story.
The characters are really well written, especially Jake and Chloe. They felt like real teenagers as you could certainly relate to them. Their personalities definitely shone through and each personal backstory made the adventure more realistic. I was certainly engaged in the ongoing plot. The book certainly has everything that I love in it - bumps, scrapes, near misses and plenty of immersive action sequences.
This is pure five-star entertainment full of exhilarating and non-stop action. It is littered with factual references and heartwarming character relationships. The book has a great ending to a fabulous story which leaves you feeling satisfied. It will make you want to read the next book in the series .... which is exactly what I'm reading now! The next book, Fading Light, has already been published so you can track down a copy now. It will make a great Christmas present and, at the same time, you'll also be supporting a self-published author.
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Wednesday, 28 November 2018
#9: Heroes
Stephen Fry (Author)
(11)Buy new:
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#10: The Frame-Up (The Golden Arrow Mysteries Book 1)
Meghan Scott Molin (Author)
(20)Buy new: £3.98
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I Am Known: Representation in Videogames
Summer has turned into fall, the weather still hot and sticky in Southern Illinois, and I’m in grad school. I’m the only person of color in the Fiction half of my MFA. One of two, maybe three in the entire program. The only international student. One of very, very few brown faces in this little college town. The fractions of otherness are a depressing equation, and it never solves in my favour.
I’m a long way from home.
I am alone in my matchbox-sized studio, playing What Remains of Edith Finch. Videogames, always a delight, have become my last bastion of sanity in grad school, a way to refill my creative well while taking a break from the written word.
Edith walks through an empty house haunted by memories of her once-large, once-beloved family. All dead. All gone. She adds to a hand-drawn family tree in a notebook, inking in faces to match the names tucked between branches and leaves as she visits each abandoned bedroom.
When we find our way to her mother’s room, the first thing that catches my eye is the familiar colours and geometric shapes of the wall hangings. We look through her mother’s dusty belongings—photos, travel booklets, an itinerary, a calendar—and it slowly dawns on me that Edith’s father was Indian. That she and her brothers were born in India. I keep reading, and realize her father was from Calcutta.
Calcutta. My hometown. My Calcutta, where I lived all my life before I left for America and grad school.
(I roll my eyes a little at the pictures of Edith’s well-meaning white mother surrounded by skinny brown children at a non-profit, but that’s nothing, means nothing, compared to suddenly hearing the name of your home when you least expected it.)
I forget the quest progression for a while. I’m suddenly mad at the game for being in first person, leaving me unable to see anything but Edith’s outstretched hands—hands whose exposed fingers I’m staring at now, wondering, are they the same colour as mine? Have they been the same colour, all this time, and I missed it because of the gloom and the dust and the lighting in this creaky old house?
I run up and down the stairs in the manor, ramming Edith up against walls and hitting zoom so I can stare into framed family photos. In those few blurred and fractured pixels, probably stock photos pulled from the internet and stamped with the artificial textures of age, I search for hints of desi in Edith and her brothers’ faces. A nose, a mouth, eyes that I can recognize.
Are you like me? Am I like you?
Am I not alone?
I’m playing Overwatch. I don’t use voice chat when I play, though I have a perfectly good mic. I’m self-conscious of my accent, of giving myself away as a woman, as not-American, and what that might invite.
I’m playing as Satya Vaswani, also known as Symmetra. She’s Indian, a STEM prodigy. Her skin is even darker than mine. She’s proud and precise; many of her voice lines are sarcastic, unimpressed, unflinching. She has an accent.
I’m really, really good at playing Symmetra.
I win Play of the Game. There are sore losers saying derisive things in chat. I summon my courage, hit the voice button, and repeat one of Symmetra’s snarkier voice lines. They’re stunned briefly into silence before lapsing into a chorus of what the fuck and holy shit.
I am cackling internally with delight the rest of the night, unable to say exactly why I feel so pleased.
Later in Edith Finch, moving through the unhappy memories of her brother Lewis’ last days of life, the game presents me with a choice: did he dream of finding his prince, or his princess? I don’t even have to think before I hit prince. The sequence that follows makes me cry.
Lewis could have been just a lonely boy, and I would have felt for him. But now I know he’s brown and I know he’s queer and I know he felt like he didn’t belong… and my heart breaks in two. His pain is as familiar as the shape of my own hands, and also like a lightning rod, too brilliant and electric to touch. I hold it close, even as its blade scrapes the bottom of my heart, because he’s like me, he’s like me, he’s like me.
He’s like me. I am not alone.
I am known.
I feel the same way when I play Death of the Outsider, later that year, and watch a black woman talk about the girl she loved when they were young. Billie Lurk is scarred and disabled, bisexual, grumpy. Billie Lurk isn’t pretty. Billie Lurk faces tragedy, and is knocked down, and builds herself back up again. She carves her way through a world that tries to grind people like her down under its heel, and she doesn’t break.
Billie Lurk means everything to me. 
And unlike Lewis, Billie Lurk gets to live. She gets to win. She can choose to set aside revenge, at the game’s very climax, and show compassion to another innocent victim instead.
I used to play a lot of MMORPGs. When the game allowed it, I often gave my character brown skin. It felt right, but it wasn’t the same. My skin isn’t an unlockable, a limited-edition special event item, an option in a character creation page. I didn’t get to choose it. I don’t get to take it off when I exit to desktop.
And if I did, the world around me wouldn’t continue unchanged.
I play Prey, where I declare my Morgan to be a woman. An Asian woman. We begin in Morgan’s apartment, which means that when I exit it, the second living human I see in the game is a desi woman. The shock actually makes me stutter to a halt and stare for a while. Her name is Patricia Varma, and she’s a technician, kneeling to fix something in the hallway.
I keep playing. I take in the facts of Morgan’s life—the pressure to perform, to please demanding parents, to measure up to an impressive older sibling, and I nod. This is a familiar song. I know the words by heart. You may think it a small thing, letting her be Asian rather than white, but that one miniscule tilt of the prism refracts the story into many-hued layers of significance for me. It means more when Morgan jeopardizes her own health to push her experiments further. It means more when I get to say she dated her female co-worker, and later in the game, temporarily abandon rationality in an ill-advised, risky bid to bring Mikhaila her medicine and save her life.
Patricia Varma dies soon into the game, but, well, so does pretty much everyone else in Prey. I don’t hold it against Bethesda, because…
Because, though it takes a stunningly long time to dawn on me, its world is the most diverse I have ever seen.
Under glass domes curving against the star-shattered vastness of space, I walk through the battered halls of a space station, and I see people of colour every way I turn. Desi, Asian, black, Latinx; engineers, technicians, security officers, psychologists. I find them hiding in their quarters, holding the line against alien attackers, protecting small clusters of survivors. I listen in on the audio logs and read the emails of two queer women falling in love.
I don’t see it for a long while. But then something prompts me to try to count the white men I’ve met in the game’s supporting cast, and I can’t come up with more than two, maybe three.
They’re outnumbered three to one.
In the moment, I’m only surprised it took me that long. Yes, I was busy—tracking, collecting, shooting, solving—but I’m usually quick to notice when a space is most or all white. Every marginalized person is; we feel it in our bones. So why, when the reverse happened, was I oblivious for half the game?
Did I let down my guard? Even blood-stained, glass-strewn, snapped wires and tables knocked over and black alien ichor tracked across every surface, did this world filled with people like me feel right?
Months later, I write this essay in a world on fire. Queer, brown, immigrant; everything I am seems like everything America hates. America is burning, and the people who think people like me don’t get to live and prosper, let alone have our stories told, are very loud. As loud as the voice in the back of my skull that reminds me, periodically, that I was stupid to try to make a life here, that it’s not too late to turn and run.
And most people don’t think much of videogames, and maybe they’re not worth much in the grand scheme of things, but it comforts me to know that millions of people are out there playing a game with a woman who sounds like me. A game where humanity went to the stars and took people like me along.
That we lived. That the future includes us.
My mirror is someone else’s window. I need to see myself just as much as you need to see me. I need to know I’m not alone, and you need to know I exist. In a medium that might just be the future of storytelling, or at least a kind of storytelling we’ve never seen before, I hope you have to see my hands on your screen and see the world through my eyes. I hope my stories get inside your head. I hope you are suffused with them, blasted on all sides, until your ability to see me as Other has been entirely scoured away and you know in your skin and your every brain cell what I struggle each day to tell the world: I’m here. I deserve. I live.
I’m not alone. And in my stories, I am known.
The post I Am Known: Representation in Videogames appeared first on The Book Smugglers.
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#5: 2,024 QI Facts To Stop You In Your Tracks
John Lloyd (Author), James Harkin (Author), Anne Miller (Author)
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“A Daily Mail reader’s nightmare” – The Study Circle by Haroun Khan
"The Study Circle is, in part, about the burden of history – the near history of kinships and shared, growing pains, as well as far history: all that ‘Once we were Warriors’ spiel that gets handed down the generations, becoming a chain around one’s neck. The novel is also Khan’s primal scream – he demands that you see his world beyond the 2D cartoons that you’re fed; he wants you to acknowledge the living, breathing contradiction that he is. And I know exactly how he feels" - Tamim Sadikali reviews The Study Circle by Haroun Khan
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“A Daily Mail reader’s nightmare” – The Study Circle by Haroun Khan
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44 Short Books to Help You Reach Your Reading Challenge Goal
You're almost there.
Your Reading Challenge goal is just within reach and we're cheering for you right from the sidelines. Because whether you've pledged 15 books or 150 books this year, the commitment to read more is a worthy endeavor.
So if you need a little nudge, these short books might give you the power-up you're looking for.
And since every reader has their own definition of "short," we’ve sorted these books based on their number of pages. We've also listed a variety of genres and subjects, from recent releases including Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer to classics including Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
Don’t forget to add what catches your eye to your Want to Read shelf and let us know which short books you recommend in the comments.
Less Than 100 Pages
Less Than 200 Pages
Less Than 300 Pages
Which short books would you recommend? Share them with us in the comments!
Check out more recent blogs:
36 Short Audiobooks to Help Boost Your Reading Challenge
The Books That Can Save Your Reading Challenge
Hot Reading Challenge Tips from Pros Who Read More Than 100 Books a Year
posted by Marie on November, 26
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