|
|
Free Counter
NEW BOOKS,
LOW PRICES,
Shipped in Canada
straight to you
from the bookshelves of
THE MAGPIE
on Commercial Drive!
Only A Beginning:
An Anarchist Anthology,
ed. by Allan Antliff,
C$29.95 plus shipping
Click to Order
Roots of Revolution:
A history of the populist and socialist movements in 19th Century Russia, intro by Isaiah Berlin, by Franco Venturi,
C$14.95 plus shipping
Click to Order
The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot:
by Larry J Schaaf
C$42.00 plus shipping
Click to Order
Contemporary Seaside Houses,
C$39.99 plus shipping
Click to Order
Best Movies of the 70s
by Jurgen Muller,
C$16.99 plus shipping
Click to Order
Erotic Cinema
ed. by Douglas Keesey and Paul Duncan,
C$27.99 plus shipping
Click to Order
Metro:
The story of the underground railway,
by David Bennett,
C$12.99 plus shipping (was $39.95)
Click to Order
Van Day Truex:
The man who defined Twentieth-Century taste and style,
by Adam Lewis,
C$11.99 plus shipping (was $57.99)
Click to Order
Window to the Future:
The golden age of television marketing and advertising,
ed. by Steve Kosareff,
C$13.99 plus shipping (was $28.00)
Click to Order
|
 |
Books we're reading this month
The Medium of the Video Game edited by Mark J P Wolf (University of Texas Press, 2003)
Academic books are known for two things: big words and small readership. This tome of videogame criticism certainly has the former, but it doesn't deserve the latter. While the series of essays is ripe with words like "diegesis" and "genrification," it's still engaging (and somewhat humourous to see PONG and Mortal Kombat treated with such a serious tone).
Most of the authors in the collection use film analogies extensively, forgetting that videogames have roots in comic books, board games, action figures, pinball, and various other media as well. They also limit themselves to a very small sample of games from which they mistakenly try to generalize universal principles and properties. That said, editor Wolf's pieces on time and space in videogames are intriguing efforts to initiate a theoretical engagement with the medium. Reading the book is an exciting glimpse into the creation of a new field of study.
- Chris LaVigne <clavigne@republic-news.org> |
|
|
|
|
|
