NJ resident selling most my games.

WhiteLantern12 · 2012-05-25T19:44:03.450265+00:00

We should organize a 3-day meetup where we play all 50 games the OP is getting rid of in one sitting.

WhiteLantern12 · 2012-05-25T19:35:51.215455+00:00

I'm in Central Jersey as well, and I'm definitely interested in taking some games off your hands. I would potentially be willing to buy them all off you in bulk and then list them individually here or elsewhere since I have the time for it. PM me.

Monsieurjkb · 4 days

His new book of essays Farther Away came out last month, but I haven't read it yet.

Monsieurjkb · 4 days

I haven't read Burns' book, but I'll throw out a couple points that might be helpful to think about when writing about Franzen and Wallace and whatever the kids these days are calling what they write.

Both Franzen and Wallace started out in kind of the same place at kind of the same time, but they each went off in very different directions in the 90s. If you haven't already, I would suggest reading Franzen's essays on fiction in How to Be Alone and how his vision differs from Wallace's in "E Unibus Pluram."

I see Gaddis, Wallace and Franzen as choosing three different routes from a common origin. Gaddis kept his day job so his writing would remain truly art, while also getting progressively angrier and more difficult to read (gross oversimplification, I know). Franzen decided to take his writing to the reader and write more overtly for a wider audience. Wallace tried to have it both ways, working very hard to try to get readers to do the hard work of reading him, and we all know how that turned out.

I did a conference paper last year on, for lack of a better term, "metanarration" in The Pale King and Philip Roth's Operation Shylock, where you have a narrative "I" claiming to be the author and writing in a non-fiction/memoir mode claiming it to be true/the truth. In all the reviews of The Pale King that I read, it was dismissed as a failed metafictional ploy, and criticism on Roth was much more hostile (isn't it always?).

But in both cases, the default position of the critics was that the author was trying to put one over on them. Wallace's "prank" never gets off the ground; Roth keeps his going until the last page, making it all the more of a betrayal.

It all boils down to a lack of trust in the relationship between author and reader. And I think that a lot of postmodern literature in the last 20-odd years may have worked to erode that trust. For me, these two books, along with The Corrections and Freedom, represent different approaches to trying to win that trust back.

joanofarf · 4 days

The Times is now reporting that Ravi was sentenced to 30 days in jail. The Star Ledger has been live blogging the proceedings.

doctormaxvonsydow · 5 days

I bought Forbidden Island and enjoyed it a lot at first but felt like I mastered it pretty quickly.

I did like the co-op aspect a lot, and recently bought Pandemic based on that fact and the recommendations here for co-op games.

As soon as I started reading the directions, I said to myself, "Oh, this sounds just like Forbidden Island!"

The mechanic is essentially the same, just with some added complications, which make it more challenging and thus, more fun to play.

Apokalyps · 5 days

Delete all your shortcuts, then download and install Launchy.

Lord_Snow9899 · 6 days

I'm not sure how contrapuntal reading, as I understand it, applies.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that ASOIAF is somehow post-colonial literature. I was thinking about contrapuntal reading in broader terms as just reading against the text itself, which, really, seems to be what a lot of feminist, queer and Marxist criticism does these days as well, albeit with a different focus.

I suppose ASOIAF can be read allegorically or as mythology, but the fact that it seems to be a pastiche of histories and mythologies cobbled together for the purposes of entertainment prevents it from being taken seriously as such.

This could be a potential jumping off point for analysis: Which histories and mythologies is Martin pulling from, and what aspects does he take from each? What does he leave out? And what, if any, broader conclusions can we draw about the series from that collection of choices?

That being said, I have no idea if such an exercise would prove to be valuable at all since I haven't seen anyone attempt it. But the opportunity exists.

And why do that when the literary world is full of fiction that doesn't isolate itself from the world in the way that fantasy does?

Fantasy isolates its setting from the world, but if the series has sold over 15 million copies and spawned a popular HBO show, it is most definitely a part of our world, and a fairly large one as books go these days.

Lord_Snow9899 · 6 days

While a lot of contemporary literary analysis may tend toward the mimetic, there's a long and rich history of allegorical readings of canonical literature as well (i.e., The Faerie Queene, The Divine Comedy). A lot of second-wave feminist literature and post-colonial literature is also based heavily in the allegorical/mythological realm.

Take Brienne for example. We could attempt to do a feminist reading of the character, but because of the genre we have no real world references, no cultural spectrum within which to place her. We can say it is a medieval setting, but is it? It's a quasi-medieval setting, the rules of which depend entirely on Martin.

It would be a mistake to analyze A Song of Ice and Fire in general, and the character of Brienne in particular, within a historically medieval culture because, as you point out, the rules of the world depend entirely on Martin.

We can, however, look at the cultural moment in which Martin himself is writing and how it affects the books and is reflected within them, a la Edward Said's "contrapuntal reading."

Lord_Snow9899 · 6 days

What makes a book worthy of serious literary analysis?

"A fun narrative and great character work" seem like a decent starting point, no?

PoochieMcPoochmuffin · 7 days

it's time to grow up and start reading adult fiction.

It might be time for you to start re-reading it if you think Portnoy is a psychopath.

Chrille-Jan · 7 days

Although he's talking about fiction in general, I think this Philip Roth quote from his essay collection Reading Myself and Others kind of nails it:

The world of fiction, in fact, frees us from the circumscriptions that society places upon feeling; one of the greatnesses of the art is that it allows both the writer and the reader to respond to experience in ways not always available in day-to-day conduct….

We judge at a different level of our being, for not only are we judging with the aid of new feelings but without the necessity of having to act upon judgment. Ceasing for a while to be upright citizens, we drop into another layer of consciousness. And this expansion of moral consciousness, the exploration of moral fantasy, is of considerable value to a man and to society.

bnhammond21 · 10 days

Sequel Insurgent just came out as well.

darkeva93 · 15 days

Surprisingly, the Krauszer's on Bordentown Rd. in South Amboy.

joanofarf · 15 days

So did I when I first saw it.

joanofarf · 16 days

When was that?

joanofarf

TROPHY CASE

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