Mister No Sayı: 143 kitap serbest oDF biçim

Tingting Cat madongting75b9 — A curious book. The title character's story gets submerged in a story about the marriage of Levin and subplots about various other characters, many of who have little or no contact with AK. Things stop periodically for descriptions of local election practices, snipe hunting, and wheat harvesting. For a finish Tolstoy spends the 30 pages on Levin's understanding of the Meaning of Life, an understanding that is directly contradictory to AK's understanding. While the book tends to meander from scene to scene and the characters often come across as simpletons, every so often Tolstoy takes a turn and everything becomes very complex. Part of the greatness of the book, I suspect, comes from the tendency of the characters to take over from Tolstoy and create lives that don't fit his didactic molds. In any case, a book that lives up to its reputation.

Su Huihui huihuisu1220 — Great story...very heartfelt.

Leonardo Milani leomilani — I sought out this book after reading the blurb about it in the NY Times. Well, guiltily, I was really drawn in by the author's description of the game "Chore Wars" and I was eager to try it out. A game based on chores. Yup. And I found it was something I wanted to play. Realizing that keyed me into her entire argument. That if I can hunt down a book after hearing about a game based on *chores*, her theory that games make the hard parts of our lives a little easier and can ultimately make us more productive might have some credibility. And indeed it did. The first 3/4 of the book was a page-turner. I loved reading about the various kinds of games that companies or individuals devised to make various elements of "real life" either more enjoyable or more productive (usually both). Virgin's "A Day in the Clouds" sounded like the best way to spend a transatlantic flight. Her underlying theories about how games give up palpable rewards and encourages our natural proclivities to productivity were winning and I, for the most part, believed them. She occasionally has the tendency to invoke her graduate student roots, however, and at times she drifts into "I'm writing a thesis" mode which can dull the prose but it makes for a convincing objective argument. The final parts of the book lag, however. She relies far too much on her "Look what I've done" experiences, like designing games for the Olympics and creating post-apocalyptic "You should recycle" online pseudo-game experiences. Her arguments that games such as these will impact our (and our planet's) longevity seemed to falter a bit here. Many of the games she described sounded too much to me like 7th grade "Earth Day" projects rather than plausible ways to reduce our carbon footprint. But overall, I highly recommend the book. Her general premise, that games have been overlooked and unfairly demonized, is correct. Games actually can encourage our productivity, and applied in the right setting, can actually increase both our contributions to society and increase our feeling of personal accomplishment. And hey, if you can kill zombies while you're doing all that, why not?