Wil Wheaton > Recent Status Updates

This keeps surprising me. It's a lot of fun, and has more of a character based narrative than the other Lit RPGs I DNF.

I have never read juvenile or YA from this era (1952), until I started this a couple of days ago.

It's very specific to the time it was written, and it shows, but it ages much better than, say, Ringworld (which, yikes).

It's also the first in a YA adventure series, so it strikes those notes often.

I'm enjoying it the same way I enjoy watching a classic TV show, seeing it through the lens of when it was written.

This is the first Lit RPG book I have attempted that isn't a slog. It's the first one I've read that has a story and characters that engage me, holding my attention. Lit RPG tropes aren't the focus of the narrative, so that entire meta aspect is a lot of fun. This may be the first Lit RPG I finish.

Disclosure: John is a friend and mentor, so I usually get to read his stuff before publication. That said, I am really enjoying this. The first third introduces you to the characters, and around the time you've become invested in them, IT happens. That's where I am right now.

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I'm enjoying the irreverence and the characters. The prose is so funny and clever.

She writes so beautifully, and is telling me such a compelling story, I'm deliberately taking my time with this.

I love everything about this book.

Joan Didion, where have you been all my life?

I loved this the first time I read it. I picked it up again to reread, as I planned to go through the whole Hyperion canon this year.

But after about 175 pages and a little over two hours, it has not grabbed me, or held me, the way it did when I was a different person 15 years or so ago.

I still respect it, I'm still so glad I read it once before, but I'm abandoning the reread.

So I may end up abandoning this re-read, because I'm not enjoying Hyperion NEARLY as much this time as I recall. It feels really slow and ponderous, and I just slogged through an entire chapter that was essentially military science fiction that in 2019 feels like a parody of men writing war fantasies.

I'll give it another 50 pages or 1 hour, and make a decision then.

Reading this for the second time, because I don't remember much about it other than the broad strokes.

First read this when I was 12, and it's a big reason I am a writer.

I'm about to start work on my own collection of short, supernatural horror, so I'm re-reading NIGHT SHIFT to reconnect with the ideas and images that originally inspired me to start telling my own stories. I'm so happy to report that this book has held up extremely well.

I'm beginning to question everything I thought I knew about American history.

Part of this that I wasn't expecting is how we get to see the people behind the myth of the filmmakers we've loved for decades. DePalma did stuff to his actors on CARRIE that would get him run out of the industry today, and I kind of wish I could un-know that.

Thinking of all the times my father screamed at me, made me feel worthless, and my mother stood by and let him.

Thinking about how I've been carrying my implacable father's rage for 46 years, and deciding that I don't deserve to feel worthless, because his anger and implacability isn't my fault.

This book is very hard to read, and it is stirring up a lot of pain, but it's also helping me heal.

I've been watching The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs every night on Shudder, and I'm about halfway through it. This book dovetails quite nicely with that experience.