Reflections in the Pond

I admitted a few posts ago that I’m a terrible speller. I have been all my life.  I just have a heck of a time sounding out words.  And now I can easily explain why.  Watch this move of Ed Rondthaler, former president of the American Literacy Council and author of The Dictionary of Simplified American Spelling, showing just how messed up the English language really is.

Ed Rondthaler on English Spelling

And why doesn’t comb rhyme with tomb?

I’m going to confess to something right away, to clear the air.  I expected to not like this book.  I figured it was yet another attempt by the media, as it were, to tar and feather video games and blame them for all the ills of the world.  Thankfully, I was wrong.  Video Game Play and Addiction: A Guide for Parents by Kourosh Dini, MD is a smart book about how, for good or bad, video games are changing our world and our children.  Kourosh Dini is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, making him more qualified than some to comment on the issue.  He is also a gamer, and that puts him and his opinions head and shoulders above most other pundits.

Video Game Play and Addiction isn’t playing the blame game.  Dini, instead, takes time to teach parents about different genres of video games, pointing out what what children can learn from them.  He writes about how gamers are different; how they believe in success through hard work and in personal responsibility (all learned through video game play).  I’m very pleased by how Dini first focuses on what is good about video games, before moving on to the discussion about addiction.

The meat of the book, though, is about addiction and violence.  And here, Dini is very even-handed.  He provides a list “Problematic Playing Questions” for parents to use when they suspect an addiction problem, as well as some possible solutions.  Happily, he doesn’t advocate a cold-turkey stop, but rather more restrained and tolerant solutions.  He also is clearly presents his belief that parents and caregivers need to be aware of what video games their children are playing, and to make good use of tools like the ESRB rating system.

This isn’t a perfect book, though.  There seems to be a bit too much of a focus on MMORPGs.  Given that most media attention and parental concern seems to be focused on first-person shooters (Gears of War, etc.) and sandbox games (Grand Theft Auto 4), I’m surprised they weren’t talked about more.  And, in the technical arena, Dini suffers from the sin of wordiness, but who am I to throw stones in that department?

Overall, I would recommend this book to a parent looking to learn more about video games, and hope that they take away from it that video games aren’t necessarily the problem.  Dini’s “Problematic Playing Questions” and suggestions for overcoming areas of difficulty make this book well worth the cover price.

Buy Video Game Play and Addiction: A Guide for Parents by Kourosh Dini, MD from Amazon.

Learn more about it at the book’s website: http://videogameplayandaddiction.com

Today, November 11th, is Remembrance Day here in Canada and other Commonwealth countries.  It is a day originally set aside to commemorate the end of World War 1, but has been continually expanded to commemorate all those citizens of Commonwealth countries that have taken part in any war or peace keeping action up to the current day.  It is a time when we think about what our freedom has cost in terms of life and personal sacrifice, and to reflect on what needs to be done to ensure everyone experiences freedom.

I guess that brings up the question of what freedom really is, and whether we are right to impose our ideas of freedom on other people.  So many things in this world are subjective: religion, freedom, love.  What shouldn’t be subjective is human rights.  And that is what we need to fight for: the preservation of human rights, both here and abroad.

I am deeply grateful for the sacrifice Canadian men and women are making overseas, just as I am so incredibly grateful for all the sacrifices made in the past.  And while I will do my best to make sure that Baby Man understands these sacrifices too, I hope that he will never be called upon to do so himself.  May he and all his children grow up in a peaceful world.

Image Source: http://flickr.com/photos/34427466731@N01/1402612 Used under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license.

I seem to be hitting one of those walls that I come to every couple of months.  Nothing is really wrong; the Baby Man is awesome, confidently learning to walk all on his own it seems; the husband is doing well, helping out as best he can.  It is me and the cat that aren’t doing very well.  She is getting very old, and I suspect she hasn’t much time left.  She spends most of the day asleep now, and cries for attention nearly all night.  This keeps me awake, and adds to the sleep deprivation I am trying so hard to recover from.  Really, it figures that as Baby Man happily sleeps for 13 hours a night, I’m kept awake by the cat.

So, with all of this, the NaNoWriMo isn’t happening.  I’ve got 215 words, which isn’t that bad I guess.  It is 215 more words than I have written this year.  Knitting isn’t going well either.  I’m just too damn tired to fiddle with bloody cables.  Thank the gods that my holiday shopping is nearly done.  One more shopping trip, and I can avoid all stores until the new year, when it is time to birthday shop for Baby Man.

What I most need right now is a good night of sleep (preferably 12 hours), and a whole day to watch Jane Austen movies and work on cross stitch.  I think the likelihood of any of that is nil.

I really don’t want to write this review, but part of the agreement required when taking part in the Mini Book Expo for Bloggers is that you must review the books you are sent, even if you don’t finish them.  I didn’t finish City of Pillars by Dominic Peloso.  I wanted to finish it.  I wanted to like it.  But I didn’t.

The book has a good premise: a man is mistakenly given a cryptic manuscript and must do everything he can to stay alive when the bad guys come looking for it.  I’m sure there is more to the book than that, as the back cover promises “an ancient, worldwide conspiracy”, but I didn’t get that far.

Sadly, this book just isn’t particular well written.  It suffers from many technical errors, like wordiness, telling instead of showing, and many, many passive sentences.  It is told in the first person, and yet we are told too many times what other characters are thinking.  Take this passage as an example:

“Who are you, and what crime would you like to report?” said the officer mechanically.  his badge said ‘Frank Daly’.  He had been working a long shift and was a bit tired.  He had manned the desk for almost a year now and had heard it all.  His main function was to stop all of the nuts from bothering the real detectives.  He resented his job.

Now, unless the protagonist went out for a beer with Frank later, there is no way he could know any of this.  It breaks the suspension of disbelief that an author has to create to make his story successful.

And that brings me to what was most disappointing to me.  By telling this story in the first person from a distance of eight or ten years, the tension is taken out of the book.  Clearly the author survives the pulse-pounding showdowns he is recounting.  I never became hooked, and gave up after about 80 pages.

I do think that there is a seed of a great story here.  And I think with the help of a good editor, and maybe a shift to a third person perspective, this could have been a great book.  I’m interested in seeing what Peloso writes next, and hope that it is the great book that the City of Pillars could have been.

• Buy City of Pillars from Amazon.com
• Publisher: Invisible College Press

And to add some fun to this post, here is a picture of the Baby Man reviewing a book.  He says, “Yum!”

Well done!  That is all.

I was tagged by Beverly over at So This is Wonderland for this meme.

The rules:

• Link to the person or persons who tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Write 6 random things about yourself.
• Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them.
• Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
• Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

And Six Random Things About Me:

• I have a listing on IMDB.  Seriously.  Can you find me?
• I have a collection of over 600 books.  I’m much more restrained when it comes to buying books now, though, since I hardly have time to read.
• I once saw a ghost.  Seriously.  My dad saw the same lady at a different time.
• I can’t spell.  Thank goodness for spell check.  Although, I’ve found as I get older my spelling is actually getting better.  Except for all those damn words that break the rules, like receive.
• I was a tom boy growing up, and now I do things like sew, cross stitch and knit.  Yet, I still sort of think of myself as a tom boy.  I love video games and don’t give a damn about shoes and make-up.
• I am very particular about my salads.  They must meet certain requirements before I will eat them.  No dandelion leaves (generally in a field greens salad), for example, or large pieces of iceberg lettuce rib.

I wasn’t able to come up with 6 people to tag.  I’m very shy and don’t really comment on other people’s blogs.  (Random Fact 7 for free!)  And a couple of the people I was going to tag have already done this meme.  Here is who I did tag:

• Owldaughter