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    Gamelife: A Memoir
    Gamelife: A Memoir
    Gamelife: A Memoir
    Audiobook6 hours

    Gamelife: A Memoir

    Written by Michael W. Clune

    Narrated by Peter Berkrot

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In telling the story of his youth through seven computer games, critically acclaimed author Michael W. Clune (White Out) captures the part of childhood we live alone.

    You have been awakened.
    Floppy disk inserted, computer turned on, a whirring, and then this sentence, followed by a blinking cursor. So begins Suspended, the first computer game to obsess seven-year-old Michael, to worm into his head and change his sense of reality. Thirty years later he will write: "Computer games have taught me the things you can't learn from people."

    Gamelife is the memoir of a childhood transformed by technology. Afternoons spent gazing at pixelated maps and mazes train Michael's eyes for the uncanny side of 1980s suburban Illinois. A game about pirates yields clues to the drama of cafeteria politics and locker-room hazing. And in the year of his parents' divorce, a spaceflight simulator opens a hole in reality.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateSep 15, 2015
    ISBN9781427271150
    Gamelife: A Memoir
    Author

    Michael W. Clune

    Michael W. Clune is Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of Gamelife, Writing Against Time, American Literature and the Free Market, and A Defense of Judgment.

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    Reviews for Gamelife

    3.5/5

    15 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Like one long prose poem, this book is full of revelation and beauty. And mystery. And games. We get snippets of childhood told through eyes pixelated with computer games, and not much else.

      My take-aways:
      - numbers hold power
      - two dimensions are better than three
      - being a kid sucks

      Seriously though, this was super well written, and as long as you don't mind an intangible plot, I highly recommend it. Especially for lovers of video games.
    • 3/5
      I spent half an hour trying to figure out the shorthand for this book. It's a description we try to come up with for all the entertainment we tell others about: Oh, this movie's like Batman but with zombies. That book is like Dickens if he got bored halfway through and just filled out the rest with random sentences (oh wait, that's regular Dickens).

      I failed in this case. It's not really like anything. The best example I can give is it's the memoir equivalent of "literary fiction" - as defined as a genre novel that uses big words, flowing prose and a disjointed rhythm enough that people call it a work of "literature" instead of a book. It could just as easily have been fiction. The distinction really doesn't matter in this case.

      It's the story of a childhood lived through videogames. It's a story that many probably relate to, though I hope to God not too much. Clune definitely writes with a voice that can keep you interested (in the way that someone grabbing you by the throat and pulls your face right next to theirs keeps you "interested"), and the man knows his way around a videogame. I was wavering the whole way through, but I guess it says something when my biggest complaint is that I really wanted to know what happened after it ended.
    • 5/5
      Did you grow up in the 80's and 90's spending thousands of hours playing computer games by yourself? Do you enjoy reading creepy memoirs that uncannily describe your own childhood? Then this is book is for you. Pick it up and prepare to receive insights into the deep questions you ask yourself about the gaming life that no one else seems to talk about. You know who you are and what I am talking about. Find this book, read it, and then think about it.