This Book Came With Its Own Video Game!
At least, you're given the author's website where you can go to play the game. Just go to www.jasonrekulak.com and click on the bar on the top of the page where it says "play the game" and enter the 8-bit world of The Impossible Fortress, a game where the hero has to enter the fortress and rescue a kidnapped princess. And there's nothing Mario about it ... in Jason Rekulak's debut novel of the same name (ISBN 9781501158131) we take a trip back to spring 1987!
I was fifteen.
1987, when Commodore 64s were state of the art and U2 was considered a one-hit wonder. Essentially, to the world of my teenage years, except I didn't grow up in Wetbridge, New Jersey and was hardly an aspiring computer programmer (though I did write one or two text adventures with my friend Stephen, when BASIC was still the language to use), but with Billy Marvin and Mary Zelinsky collaborating on this game, it's also an unconventional coming of age.
Another thing I'd say -- growing up is ugly.
AND this book will not be seen in stores until February 7 next year. It's an advanced reader copy I got a hold of at Main Street Books last week free with a purchase of yet another book from my childhood, a biography of Thomas Edison I remember reading in fourth grade. At least, I remember the exchange documented between him and his first school teacher, the one whose response made Edison's mom pull him from school and have him taught at home.
Bring back memories, I really need them.
And the ways and means the particular ethnic group known as Jews have preserved and to a degree solidified their "place in history" as perpetual scapegoats for the wrath of God as well as God's especially chosen people have entered much of our memory. From the reading I did -- and once I got started, I couldn't stop! -- in Adam Kirsch's The People and the Books (ISBN 9780393241761), the Columbia University takes us through more or less thirty-two centuries of writing.
Thirty-two centuries in eighteen books.
From the book of Deuteronomy (the traditional fifth book of -- read written by -- Moses) to Sholom Aleichem's Tevye stories (who's probably better know to you and I from Fiddler on the Roof) we find a variety of voices who have as much doubt and certainty about God (or to use my parentheses the last time today and as an orthodox Jew would say, G-d) as you and I do, maybe more so because they're looking from the inside out. Well worth reading, and living out a better life by.
Then comes the snow.
Yesterday was our second snow day this year so far. I say so far because as I look outside wind is still blowing snow over the ground and yesterday was so bad that a no travel advisory was gradually issued over the whole blinking state! So we stayed in yesterday as we stayed in last Wednesday, and Martha, Sarah, Jeffrey, and I got to stay in and rest up -- though she had to drive to her office before getting word of the Code White from Trinity for all non-essential personnel to stay home!
Kids got in school at ten this morning.
AND it was a fight getting them there from our street. Minot Public School did give us the option if our roads were too bad and we didn't feel safe going out with them to stay home, but I don't think Sarah despite her protestations could have handled that again. How did she have a fever but no temperature? After last night's board game on "Minotpoly", a high school version of Monopoly using local -- well, as of the late 1980s -- properties I believed we wanted to spend more time together.
And not just plugged in,
David
I was fifteen.
1987, when Commodore 64s were state of the art and U2 was considered a one-hit wonder. Essentially, to the world of my teenage years, except I didn't grow up in Wetbridge, New Jersey and was hardly an aspiring computer programmer (though I did write one or two text adventures with my friend Stephen, when BASIC was still the language to use), but with Billy Marvin and Mary Zelinsky collaborating on this game, it's also an unconventional coming of age.
Another thing I'd say -- growing up is ugly.
AND this book will not be seen in stores until February 7 next year. It's an advanced reader copy I got a hold of at Main Street Books last week free with a purchase of yet another book from my childhood, a biography of Thomas Edison I remember reading in fourth grade. At least, I remember the exchange documented between him and his first school teacher, the one whose response made Edison's mom pull him from school and have him taught at home.
Bring back memories, I really need them.
And the ways and means the particular ethnic group known as Jews have preserved and to a degree solidified their "place in history" as perpetual scapegoats for the wrath of God as well as God's especially chosen people have entered much of our memory. From the reading I did -- and once I got started, I couldn't stop! -- in Adam Kirsch's The People and the Books (ISBN 9780393241761), the Columbia University takes us through more or less thirty-two centuries of writing.
Thirty-two centuries in eighteen books.
From the book of Deuteronomy (the traditional fifth book of -- read written by -- Moses) to Sholom Aleichem's Tevye stories (who's probably better know to you and I from Fiddler on the Roof) we find a variety of voices who have as much doubt and certainty about God (or to use my parentheses the last time today and as an orthodox Jew would say, G-d) as you and I do, maybe more so because they're looking from the inside out. Well worth reading, and living out a better life by.
Then comes the snow.
Yesterday was our second snow day this year so far. I say so far because as I look outside wind is still blowing snow over the ground and yesterday was so bad that a no travel advisory was gradually issued over the whole blinking state! So we stayed in yesterday as we stayed in last Wednesday, and Martha, Sarah, Jeffrey, and I got to stay in and rest up -- though she had to drive to her office before getting word of the Code White from Trinity for all non-essential personnel to stay home!
Kids got in school at ten this morning.
AND it was a fight getting them there from our street. Minot Public School did give us the option if our roads were too bad and we didn't feel safe going out with them to stay home, but I don't think Sarah despite her protestations could have handled that again. How did she have a fever but no temperature? After last night's board game on "Minotpoly", a high school version of Monopoly using local -- well, as of the late 1980s -- properties I believed we wanted to spend more time together.
And not just plugged in,
David
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