Gamelife: A Memoir

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.