Token Female Gamer

Ready Player One is the latest geeky book phenomenon by Ernest Cline and also the January book for the Geek Girl Book Club.

Set in a dystopian future; economic and environmental catastrophes have resulted in a huge worldwide resource shortage. Anyone who can afford it escapes his or her poverty stricken existence by plugging into the virtual OASIS, an immersive Massively Multiplayer Online Game.

Upon his death, the creator of OASIS, wills his entire fortune, billions of dollars and controlling shares in the OASIS Company, to the first person that can find the three virtual keys he has hidden inside the game. Massive treasure hunting fever sweeps the world.

Five years later, not a single key has been found. Until Wade, a young man who, like most of his peers, grew up plugged into the OASIS simulation. He discovers, through luck, tenacity and a bit of brains, the first of the three keys. Pandemonium ensues and we get to come along for the ride.

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I do so love to close out most years with a glance back at my performance, be it cringe-tastic or worthy of a small pat on the back. Though I prefer the pats, I do tend to learn more from those cringy moments. =D

2011-

Reading Challenge didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped. I started off strong, but burned out around October. Though I only read 35,101 pages of the 50k I had planned, I still managed to hit the 100 books read tally. It does look like 50k pages is a bit ambitious, life is a bit too busy. Maybe I’ll aim for 40k this year.

91 Posts this year, eighteen of those reviews. Always a goal to ramp that up a bit and I think I managed that nearing the end of the year. One thing that helped was realizing that not everything I post has to be a five page dissertation. Soundbites are fine sometimes.

Tumblr was a big fail. I so don’t have time for extended social media. Sorry. What it really comes down to is that ultimately the site is here to give me an opportunity to get more writing in. Though I would like to get my post count up, I have more chance of succeeding, if that is what I focus on instead of trying to juggle various social media extensions.

Podcasting was fun, though its not something I’m very good at. Like all things, I would need more practice to get better at it. Though I have run out of spare time to do more Podcasts with the Mulititap folks, I might record some of my own. Eventually.

One great thing about having the site, is that it has encouraged me to branch out and try a larger variety of games. I think 2011 was particularly successful in this regard. (Taking a break from WoW was also a huge help.) =p

Knowing that I will be reviewing something also makes me struggle through more of the content. I’m always trying to give the game more of a chance, so I can review it with as much information on hand as possible.

Overall a pretty good year for TFG. Onward to 2012! <3

Finally a book club that has books I would actually want to read!! I’m so on board for this. =D

I finally updated my pages read yesterday and something tells me that I might not make the 50k pages I was aiming for. Granted I still have 26 days left, which is only 636 pages a day.

Yeah that’s not going to happen. Oh well. I still managed to read 94 books, giving me a fair chance at hitting 100 books this year. So yaay.

Moving right along, ElfQuest was one of my all time favorite graphic novels when I was younger. I just found out that every single edition is online!! http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html

Not quite as good as the real thing, but since they are all out of print I thought it a pretty decent find. =)

Super awesome bonus, someone made a fan film. It’s all the female characters which is great, but thats only half the story. Ah well. Its quite impressive production quality. http://elfquestfantrailer.com/

So I am only at 57% of my pages in my 50,000 page book reading challenge! With only four months left, I’m clearly falling behind a bit. Ah well.

At this point if I hit 40,000 pages I will be happy. =D

Well, its now a little over half way through the year and I’m only at 17,500 pages read. Waaaay behind. Going to have to start reading magazines or something. Maybe I should start counting quest text as pages. Guild chat? Okay that’s probably a bit too much like cheating.

Still I’m almost 8000 pages behind which is a bit daunting. Maybe I should start counting graphic novels at least. I mean they qualify as books, at least according to Goodreads. Hmmmmm.

Last night I finally made 85 with my hunter (in World of Warcraft), which means I now have three characters at max level.
(Yes, lots of my spare time has been taken up with leveling. That and reading, as I am desperately trying to read my ten books for this month. Darn that needing to sleep. ~sigh~ Just means my post count takes a hit in the junk.)

Actually having three characters at max level is rather unusual for me. I’m not a poly-character sort of person. But Cataclysm has been so darn frustrating I have found myself with nothing else to do. Its gotten so bad I even broke down and started doing achievements!! ~shudder~

Well Patch 4.1 finally came out this week, which was supposed to be the Cataclysm revamp, and hopefully bring WoW back to resembling its previous Lich King incarnation a bit more. This has been the big reason I have held off reviewing Cataclysm, but its looking like the changes were not drastic enough to really effect the game much. Ah well.

Guess I will go on leveling characters and getting achievements. I do have two accounts, which leaves me lots of room for leveling characters. =D

Just recalculated how many pages I have read thus far. 11,934 doesn’t sound like quite enough for mid April, but it turns out its roughly 24%. Which puts me far closer to on schedule than I expected. =D

Only 38,066 pages left to go!!

<3

There is nothing quite as rejuvenating as a fabulously large comic book (and more) convention only thirty minutes from my house. WonderCon is so close I don’t have to fly anywhere, stay in expensive hotels, and curb spending because my carrying capacity on the plane is limited. All the fun without any of the drawbacks. Certainly one of the huge perks of city living, one that I would be remiss in not enjoying to the fullest.

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