You

I doubt Mr. Grossman is thrilled to be constantly compared to Ernie Cline's READY PLAYER ONE. Well, he can rest easy here. The two books are night and day, matched only in their root: the cultural debt we owe to video games. YOU is partly a history of game design, partly a crash course in game mecha......more

An account of making video games at a fictional video game company. This sounds right up my alley, right? Unfortunately, it fell short of my high expectations. The writing is noticeably sloppy at times, like when the narrator somehow knows everything another character is thinking, feeling, and seein......more

I missed my Xbox while I was in England. I had access to one for the first half the year, during which time I managed to be completely disappointed by Assassin’s Creed 3. Then I moved, and Xbox-playing became a faded memory for a while. So when I came back home for the summer, one of the first thing......more

I went into reading this book with high hopes, because I thought a novel about making video games, with a mystery involved, would be interesting. But... The first problem is that whoever wrote the jacket copy made false promises. The main character, Russell, gets a job with old high school friends at......more

You surprised me. I don't mean that it surprised me in that it was better or worse than I expected; I loved Soon I Will Be Invincible and the buzz around the book gave me the impression that it would be a good read. Austin Grossman's You surprised me because it didn't take the easy roads, the handy e......more