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Lucky Wander Boy
by
D.B. Weiss
Adam Pennyman is ruled by an obsession of his own creation: the Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainments, an encyclopedic directory referencing every video game ever played. But his chronicling hits a snag when Adam realizes that no matter where he looks, he can find nothing about “Lucky Wander Boy,” the game that meant the world to him as a kid.
Then his luck starts to turn: A...more
Then his luck starts to turn: A...more
Paperback, 288 pages
Published
February 25th 2003
by Plume
(first published 2003)
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Community Reviews
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Jun 28, 2007
mango
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anyone who knows what a top-loader is
Shelves:
thebigcabbage
the wind-up nintendo chronicle. existential crisis by way of video games. you may not be satisfied at the end, but isn't that the way with books that seem to promise the secret of life?
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Like the Object of Importance, the novel holds a mirror to the entire life experience by using the profound affect of the entertainment arts as a vessel. Though the narrative is fluid, the ideology present is at times choppy, yet it concludes eloquently - in a way that forgives all faults (in a major way).
This is Weiss’ first book. I’d like to say something knowing, like “… and it shows” but I can never tell. I loved Douglas Coupland’s first book, Generation X in 1992. I really enjoyed Glen David Gold’s Carter Beats the Devil (Another Michelle pick!) last year. But I don’t know that they particularly struck me as “first books” in of themselves.
Anyway, did I like it? I enjoyed it, but the main character is pretty unlikeable. He’s selfish, a loser, and not very sympathetic. I feel bad for everyone...more
Anyway, did I like it? I enjoyed it, but the main character is pretty unlikeable. He’s selfish, a loser, and not very sympathetic. I feel bad for everyone...more
If you've ever wanted to look into a very old game, LWB captures this feeling well. And it offers more than some bad old games you may remember as better than they were. Because really, enough is preserved that we can look into games as we need. They're often under 64k RAM too, so disassembly's not impossible. In LWB, the game is poorly documented, and nobody knows how to win it.
I feel so fortunate I've been able to dig up old games and really look into them with save states and so forth. You ca...more
I feel so fortunate I've been able to dig up old games and really look into them with save states and so forth. You ca...more
Lucky Wander Boy by d. b. Weiss was a good book about taking the love of video games and making a career out of it. I like what Weiss did with the story with this novel. Adam Pennyman, the main character started playing video games for all of his life. He would use video games to escape reality. He also used it to try to deal with his problems he was facing in his life. I connected with the main character in this sense because this is what I have done and do. Weiss has the main character go thro...more
Adam Pennyman revolves around every video game ever made. The one that meant the world to him was Lucky Wander Boy, but cant find anything relating to it. His luck turns when he lands a copywriting job at Portal Entertainment, the monolithic media company that holds the film rights to the “Lucky Wander Boy” concept. Soon Adam embarks on a journey through the corporate sprawl of Hollywood that will ultimately lead him to the game’s beautiful creator, Araki Itachi. But even with the help of a pluc...more
Probably more 3.5 or 3.75 stars or something... it's not quite a 4-star but I certainly enjoyed it more than most stuff I have ranked at 3-stars on here.
Okay, so I just read this in basically two sittings between today and yesterday and whenever I do that with a book of fiction it's a sign that: a) it's not as challenging as the stuff I normally read (a "break," if you will), and b) it's probably using a narrative device that lies somewhere between central-conflict-theory & "something myster...more
Okay, so I just read this in basically two sittings between today and yesterday and whenever I do that with a book of fiction it's a sign that: a) it's not as challenging as the stuff I normally read (a "break," if you will), and b) it's probably using a narrative device that lies somewhere between central-conflict-theory & "something myster...more
Because of the naive way in which the book waxed video-game pseudo-philosophy, I assumed that the frequent essays were meant as tongue-in-cheek. As the book developed and I started to expect the big-payoff, I slowly realized that the author was actually a yuppie-California-twit, that lacked even a fundamental shred of irony about his cringe-worthy, undergraduate-level musings.
Or maybe the whole book was absolutely tongue-in-cheek, I genuinely can't tell. The narrative portions of the book seeme...more
Or maybe the whole book was absolutely tongue-in-cheek, I genuinely can't tell. The narrative portions of the book seeme...more
I thought this was a pretty facinating concept for a book. This was the second book I read in Afghanistan. I took a number of books with me that "i have been meaning to get around to,"...you know those books right? I always seem to be buying books and slipping behind on ones I already own! Anyhow, Shannon has been telling me to try this goodreads site and because she trusted me and started my favorite series of all time I figured I owed her one :)
Anyhow, about this book...if you like classic vid...more
Anyhow, about this book...if you like classic vid...more
I felt the book did a good job of tying to intertwine aspects of video games and story (the replays, philosophical theorems present in and presented by video games etc.), and many of his insights about the world were very interesting. This constant over-intellectual analysis of video games goes a long way to explain why we enjoy video games so much, but (of course) the ramifications of these insights are highly over-valued by their (gradually) insane creator. I enjoyed the meta-concept of the bo...more
This book was quite interesting from a sort of "its cool to be a geek" perspective but then it got kind of weird about 3/4 of the way through The ending was anticlimactic too. But oh well.
D.B. Weiss' first novel, "Lucky Wander Boy", is a story seemingly about a young man who ruins his life because of his obsession with the video games of his youth, and one game in particular - Lucky Wander Boy. But don't be fooled! The Video games that populate this book are every bit the McGuffin as was the black bird of Hitchcock's "Maltese Falcon". As you read, you will become increasingly aware that the story is really about something very different. It explores the protagonist Adam Pennyman'...more
DB Weiss' ambitious debut is decidedly uneven, but the flashes of brilliance it displays more than compensates for it's uneven plotting. One man's search for the most obscure video game ever made leads him to write a philosophical treatise that dissects classic arcade games from DONKEY KONG and PAC-MAN to DOUBLE DRAGON. These little interludes are where the story really shines. It's when the focus shifts back to the rather unlikeable main character that the book tends to drift, but it's never le...more
This was similar to Ready Player One with it's 80s video game nostalgie, but I think this was better. I heard of this a few years ago when a prof. had assigned it for reading for his class. Then I noticed D.B. Weiss was one of the writers for the HBO Game of Thrones series, and he hasn't published any other books. So it got me curious: how do you get hired to write for an HBO series after having only written one book, and what is that book like? And I think the title is great.
I'd like to read mo...more
I'd like to read mo...more
Mar 07, 2008
Jeff Duarte
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anyone who enjoys video games entirely too much
I grew up playing video games. I can still remember on my brother's fifth birthday, my parents coming home with a Nintendo Entertainment System. Up until that point, my only experience with any sort of video game system was my friend Matt's Atari 2600. As I've gotten older, video games have progressed from fad to kids toy to niche market to mainstream entertainment. And as I've gotten older and my tastes have changed, video games have always been there, from that now seemingly-archaic 8-Bit NES...more
If you love classic video games (PacMan, Donkey Kong, Galaxian, etc), consider this a must read. It even includes references to MAME and arcade emulation. It's a quest novel where the author in on the trail of a seemingly mythical classic game. The main character's attempt to write an analysis of the meaning/significance of these games ("The Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainments") that appears interspersed in the chapters is a hoot.
Quotes:
"A geek is a person, male or female, with an abiding, obse...more
Quotes:
"A geek is a person, male or female, with an abiding, obse...more
A sacred mind-bending video game that transcends Earth, time and space? Or is it obsession stretched into madness? The ending of this is one of the best endings I've read in forever. Lucky Wander Boy is a must read for those of us who grew up during the golden age of the video game and got our first taste of the pixelated world addiction. Lots of interesting facts of the era nicely weaved into the fictional story. Oh, and there are some corporatate jerk characters who are fun to hate!
this book opens with an incredible story about MICROSURGEON for the intellivision and the way videogames can blur the boundaries of the world when you're a child. but earnest, inventive games writing is soon overtaken by the banal conflicts of an unlikeable protagonist, and i couldn't bring myself to care enough to finish the book.
the stories in the beginning are what games journalism should be, talking about experience rather than GRAPHIXX but holy shit the main character is loathsome and annoying and what all gamers shouldnt be
whether thats a POINT the author was trying to make DOESNT MATTER THE GUY IS FUCKING INSUFFERABLE AND RUINED THE POTENTIAL OF THE BOOK
whether thats a POINT the author was trying to make DOESNT MATTER THE GUY IS FUCKING INSUFFERABLE AND RUINED THE POTENTIAL OF THE BOOK
I consider myself lucky to have stumbled upon this book. The essays on arcade games are awesome. The ending is thought-provoking. It took me two reads to even partially get the meaning of it. The author knows his philosophy very much. If you're the type who likes to read non-mainstream fiction, this is one of them.
The only book I hated more then this one is Conrads Heart of Darkness. Ugh I can remember struggling through this book and wishing I could burn the thing...too bad it belongs to my husband and still lives on my bookshelf. Taunting me. Maybe I will go chuck it in the garbage disposal.
The Stranger for the millennium generation geek/otaku; stuffed with absurd and pretentious trivia that only signators of the "Stop Dr. Uwe Boll" petition could care about.
A wonderfully funny book.
A wonderfully funny book.
Like the players of the fictitious video game of the title, I didn't make it to level three in this book. I finished it, but I only enjoyed the first two-thirds of the narrators lucky wanderings and cataloging of early arcade video games, a fresh take on Thoreau's "life of quiet desperation." I lost it at part 3, in which the narrator also loses it, throwing away anything more meaningful than masturbation in a fit of mayhem and anti-social and improbable plot twists. In the end, there are no lik...more
A new take on the old archetype of the all-consuming, life-ending quest. I wish the book he references repeatedly, Leng T'che, was real; I'd read it in a heartbeat.
NEVER would have picked this up if it weren't for Matt S. Well written, great story, can't wait to see how it ends...
I seem to have read a plethora of books with the word "luck" in the title. Weird. A grown up version of the choose your own ending books, but not as good as how you remember them.
Aug 11, 2011
Kajah
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Videogamers, surrealists
Recommended to Kajah by:
Aaron Schievee
This was a really fun book. I read it a pretty long time ago and only because I was really into gaming, but it's actually a very interesing and somewhat profound little book. I remember someone describing it as a "modern day Don Quixote" which is pretty apt. A purposless, unambitious, thirty-something, while writting a "Catolog of Obsolute Entertainment" remembers a game from his childhood that he was obsessed with and ends up taking his life on a surreal, delusional journey that I thought was e...more
Awesome book. Does for video games what FIGHT CLUB did for Ikea.
wow, what an amazing "genre unto itself" novel that hardly anyone seems to know about; if you like projects such as "house of leaves" and "the raw shark texts," you'll find that this novel kicks the ass of them both. effortlessly blending a snotty slacker tale of too much free time, a jaded media story about the dot-com years, and a trippy sci-fi concept regarding mysterious '80s videogames that no one can track down again, "lucky wander boy" (weiss' first novel, by the way) is a sleeper treat,...more
Started off with a touch of eccentricity, and focus on obsessions with cataloging and video games, two things I relate to easily. The structure was a bit odd but nothing too unusual -- until you get to about page 177 and the entire book goes off a WTF cliff and never recovers.
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