Tag: Video Games

ARC, Books, Quotes

Book 302: Stone Mattress – Margaret Atwood

Geoff W

Atwood is an incredible writer and story teller and there’s really not much more that needs to be said, so when I saw her newest collection of short stories I knew I had to request it! I received a copy from the publisher, in return for my honest opinion:

Spectactular.

That would be a little cruel, to leave it just at that even though it would still describe it perfectly. Below, you’ll find a one-to-two sentence review of each of the nine tales and a single quote from each.

On a different note, if you haven’t heard Margaret Atwood is the first author of the future library! This is a project where authors are asked to write a work and it won’t be read for 100 years. This makes me both incredibly happy, as she writes such fantastic speculative/near future fiction, but also sad that I won’t be able to read it! It’s a fascinating project and I could go into it in detail, but really you should just read about The Future Library at The Guardian.

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Culture Corner

Culture Corner – April 2014

Geoff W

 

2014 03-28 When is it Art?Most of this post will be about my awesome Nerd Weekend with Pax East 2014 and Captain America, but to start I’ll pretend to be much artsier than I really am.

If you’ve followed this blog for a while you know I’m obsessed with miniature street art. More recently I’ve been focusing on text and wondering whether text is art and if not where do they merge/diverge. I’m guessing this comes from starting to listen to the 99% Invisible podcasts a few weeks ago. A few weeks before I started listening I had to go to Lowell, MA for the a day long conference (which was actually a lot of fun) and one of the first things I noticed in this former industrial town was all of the text: old industrial signs, old advertisements, building/company sings and street signs. And then I just happened to look down at the cross walk (I was looking for the ridged spinning thing for blind people) and I noticed the above text. And I just thought it was kind of cool and even though it’s totally practical, it’s become a part of public space and to me is a type of art! And now for the nerdiness!

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Culture Corner

Culture Corner – March 2014

Geoff W

If I thought last month was Cultural, this month was an explosion. Seriously I started the day after I posted the February Culture Corner and haven’t stopped. From Oscar movies and video games to live theater and seeing podcasts live, you name it and it feels like I did it! At the very least look at the pictures and if you see something cool read that paragraph, sorry the post is so long! I’m still exhausted from the month.

2014 02-08 The OscarsI’m not sure why I didn’t include my visit to the movies to see August: Osage County in last months’ blog post, perhaps because I was momentarily obsessed with Frozen? Either way it worked out as I saw The Dallas Buyers Club the weekend after that posted. And what do they all have in common? The Oscars! I so rarely see Oscar nominated films, but these three I knew I wanted to see and I’m so glad I did. Both August: Osage County and The Dallas Buyers Club left me emotionally drained, but they are definitely worth seeing. I still can’t get over how much weight Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey lost for the films! And what was the most interesting part of the film is that it shows a part of the AIDS epidemic that isn’t often highlighted.

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Updates

March 2013 Recap

Geoff W

And just like that March is over. If possible it went by even faster than February. Part of this comes from how ridiculously busy I was this month, but I think part of it came from the fact that spring looks like it might’ve finally arrived in Boston (but I’m not holding my breath just yet.) From realizing that I’ve been at my job for almost 6 months, to starting CrossFit (I’ll write more about this later) and having a social life for the first time in ages, I’ve been crazy busy.

2013 03-25 Messy Desk at WorkOutside of reading and books, things have been great if hectic, I realized a couple of days ago that on April 15th I will have been at my job for six months and that’s just crazy! I’m still loving it and can’t wait to see what happens over the next six months. My desk is to the right, because no post is complete without pictures. It pretty much will look like that for the next two weeks (if not longer) because I’m right in the middle of a busy period as I’m running phone-a-thon, but I love it because I work with students and they’re hilarious. And things are only going to get busier as we have a lot of events between now and mid-June and my sister graduates from her MA program in May so that just adds to my business.

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Updates

November 2011 Update

Geoff W

Better late than never…or something along those lines.

I waited to post November’s update as I knew I would surpass my 50-book goal for 2011! You can read about book 50 here, but it was only posted yesterday so hopefully you read it.

Now this isn’t a huge to-do as I usually read more books than this (and technically have read 51 already), but I actually kept up with posting about each book which is MAJOR for me. I found the accompanying image on socialdino.com – but it’s made me think I should try and create a line of similar photos for when I pass the various milestones in a year. Oh the numerous ideas I’m always coming up with…

What a crazy month, so not only did I pass my 50 book goal for the year, but I apparently finished 10 books since the October update. I didn’t do it last month, but the nifty pages read stat graphic from Goodreads is here:

That’s a lot of pages. More so than I reported on Goodreads last year (2010 total was 16,975 pages). Next year should be a bit more interesting as I’ve joined two challenges and I’ll build a page for them later, but for now you can see the Mount TBR Challenge and the Back to the Classics Challenge by clicking the links.

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