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The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games
by Jesper Juul
The Nutshell:
Using the lenses of psychology, philosophy, game design, and fiction, New York University gaming scholar Juul explores the strange paradox of video games: we hate losing, but we only like games in which we lose most of the time.
Literary Lovechild Of:
Jane McGonigal’s Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World and Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch.
You'll Find It On Your Bookshelf If:
You’re a loser. But in the nice sense of the term.
Cocktail Party Fodder:
Video games have gotten easier. In the early days, developers designed using the arcade model, which gave players a limited number of lives in games like Super Mario Bros. In the 1990s, they started giving players infinite lives in single-player games like Uncharted 2.
For Optimal Benefit:
Play Juul’s “Suicide Game” and get an extra-twisted taste of the book’s central paradox—that we enjoy failure. In this case, the goal of the game is for the protagonist to die.
Snap Judgment:
Juul’s essay is lean, pleasingly bold, and follows through on an intriguing premise.
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Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology
by Caroline Paul, drawings by Wendy MacNaughton
The Nutshell:
Shortly after writer Paul began dating artist MacNaughton, Paul’s beloved cat Tibby disappeared. When Tibby reappeared five weeks later and a half-pound heavier, Paul reacted with joy—and bought a GPS system and a CatCam so that going forward, she could see where Tibby was sleeping (and eating) around.
Literary Lovechild Of:
Sandra Cisneros’ Have You Seen Marie? and Vicki Myron’s Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World.
You'll Find It On Your Bookshelf If:
You can make room for it amid all your cat figurines.
Cocktail Party Fodder:
Somewhere, there’s a guy working out of a garage making GPS systems especially designed for cats, says Paul, who ordered one for Tibby off a website she describes as “strange … full of crude drawings and stiff English.”
For Optimal Benefit:
Read before investing in history’s most expensive and technologically advanced scratching post.
Snap Judgment:
Cute without being treacly, Lost Cat has an appeal that even dog partisans will have to acknowledge.
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Fatal Flaws: How a Misfolded Protein Baffled Scientists and Changed the Way We Look at the Brain
by Jay Ingram
The Nutshell:
Science writer Ingram unravels the scientific mystery of prions, protein molecules that, when misshapen in the brain, are behind fatal ailments like mad-cow disease.
Literary Lovechild Of:
Francis Crick’s Of Molecules and Men and David M. Oshinsky’s Polio: An American Story.
You'll Find It On Your Bookshelf If:
When you think protein, you don’t think about red meat, leafy vegetables, and legumes—you think amino acids like valine and methionine.
Cocktail Party Fodder:
You can’t donate blood in the United States or Canada if you spent a significant amount of time in Western Europe between 1980 and 1996, because you might be incubating mad-cow-like prions. Might be. Calm down.
For Optimal Benefit:
Put down the cheeseburger before picking up this book.
Snap Judgment:
Ingram’s tales of discovery, though told with suspense and careful clarity, would carry more weight if the author pulled back to explain their broader significance.