Well, I like chocolate likely more than the next woman. But what I really covet is a great book.

So in honor of Valentine’s Day, I put together a list of science fiction books that satisfy both my geeky and romantic soul.

Cordelia’s Honor and A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Bujold is the author who pulled me back into reading science fiction. I read the classics growing up, with Robert Heinlein a particular favorite, but after a while, it was difficult to find excellent science fiction that also featured three-dimensional characters. Then a fellow romance writer insisted I read Cordelia’s Honor.

It’s the story of how Cordelia Naismith, a women from a completely open galactic culture, and Aral Vorkosigan, a man from a brutal backward planet, fall in love and then try to bring the best of both their cultures together to change Aral’s planet for the better. What I love most about Bujold’s work is how unpredictable it is. Aral and Cordelia are on opposite sides of a war, yes, but that doesn’t play out the same as any other book that I’ve read. There’s intense action but the consequences of those actions are fully explored. At the end, I adored these characters and wished their universe was real.

For those looking at the cover above and thinking “David Weber,” I have to apologize. It’s not a particularly good representation of the book. There is a sword but Cordelia doesn’t have a captain’s chair and I can’t recall her ever wearing a green dress. Bujold in general needs better covers.

While Cordelia’s Honor is the first book in the Vorkosigan series, A Civil Campaign is one of the later ones. It’s focused on the romance Aral and Cordelia’s son,  Miles. But, like all Bujold’s books, it’s far more than that. The book is a conscious echo of the best Regency romances from Jane Austen and others and, like those novels, explores the culture around them through the prism of the romance.

It also has one of the most embarrassing and yet funniest dinner scenes I’ve ever read. Poor Miles. Even though he deserves it.

Linnea Sinclair’s Gabriel’s Ghost and Finder’s Keepers. I recommended Sinclair’s books for the holiday gift guide as well as she’s one of my current favorite writers. She combines the fast-pace and the detailed world building of galactic science fiction with an excellent romance. It’s a hard combination to pull off and Sinclair does it with panache and fun.

Catherine Asaro’s Primary Inversion and Quantum Rose. A Nebula-award winning author, Asaro has a PhD. from Harvard in physics. Her galactic stories of the Skolian Empire showcases that knowledge. These are two of my favorites. Quantum Rose is a good place to start as it’s told mostly from the point of view of a women on a rural planet who must find a way to use the newcomers from the Empire to help her people.

Karin Shah’s Starjacked. Shah is an author I found through an on-line group dedicated to SF Romance. She had a free short story available on her blog that I enjoyed, especially because of a well-written hand-to-hand fight scene. This is only available in ebook form but for those looking for a last-minute gift, that might be an advantage since it can be downloaded instantly.

The Key by Pauline Baird Jones. Jones counts among her readers a rocket scientist who works for NASA. The heroine of this book is an Air Force pilot who crashes on an inhospitable planet during an intergalactic war.

For those who are woefully short of funds this year, there are still options.

The Baen Free Library includes books by Bujold, Andre Norton, Mercedes Lackey, David Drake and David Weber, among many others. And The Gutenberg Project has a ton of free science fiction in the public domain. Of course, it’s not all romance, but among the many authors there’s likely to be something that she will enjoy.

Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America by Patrick Carr & Maria Kefalas

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the majority of our readership doesn’t live in a rural area. I mean, the majority of America’s population doesn’t live in a rural area—that’s what makes it rural, right? Up until about two years ago, neither did I. But since moving to a small rural town in western Kansas (population: 800) just over two years ago, I’ve become very interested and involved in community development, and particularly in the issues surrounding youth and young adults. One significant issue that comes up again and again is this: Is there a solution to the “brain drain”—that is, the reality that the brightest kids often leave for bigger cities and don’t come back? Is the solution to attract more kids back after college, to improve the education of the kids who are planning to stay, or something else entirely?

And, for those of you who don’t live in rural America: does it matter?

Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas, a husband-and-wife team of sociologists, spent nearly seven years researching this topic. They lived for a time in a rural town in northeastern Iowa (which they’ve called “Ellis”) and interviewed hundreds of people, mostly focusing on the young adults who graduated from Ellis’ high school in the 1990s. What they found makes for a fascinating story about the “hollowing out” of middle America, and they argue unequivocally that, yes, it matters, whether you live in New York City or Tribune, Kansas.

The Four Types of Young Adults

They sorted their subjects into four basic categories: Achievers, Stayers, Seekers, and Returners. Achievers are the ones who show promise early on, the ones who are academically (or sometimes athletically) gifted, and typically leave their small communities for college, never to return. Stayers are those who take over the family business or get a job during high school and end up living out their adult lives in the same town. Seekers are those who can’t wait to leave but don’t have the grades or scholarships to do it; they often end up in the military as an escape. Returners are those who come back to their small town after leaving; sometimes out of a sense of responsibility and purpose but often because the outside world turned out to be less pleasant or more challenging than they expected.

The Root of the Problem

This is, of course, a vast oversimplification of the book. Carr and Kefalas devote an entire chapter to each of the four groups, outlining the reasons many of these young people make their respective decisions. Some of what they found is surprising, but a lot of it isn’t. Rural communities expend a disproportionate amount of effort, resources, and training on the very kids that aren’t likely to stay; and the ones who stay often get little attention. It’s a point of pride to be say you had a part in somebody’s success, of course, and it’s become an ingrained habit to send off promising young adults to make something of themselves. However, this inefficient practice is what has gutted so many small communities across the Midwest and it has had a devastating effect.

What troubles me the most is that when they talked to administrators at the Ellis high school, there was no surprise that their smartest kids were being put on a path to leave: it’s what they’d always done, and they knew they were doing it. The problem lies in the fact that decades-old behavior is very hard to change. After you spend ten years training a kid to think he’s “too good” for his small town, can you turn around and convince him that he should stay?

Why It Matters

This matters to me personally, because I struggle between two opinions: wanting to make my own community a place that thrives and attracts more young people; and wanting more for my own children (and the kids I meet here), for them to have experiences and encounter diversity that simply doesn’t exist here. (For instance, I am the only Asian male in the entire county.) Carr and Kefalas make a compelling argument for why the rural brain drain matters (both to the rural communities but also for the entire nation) and then offer some of their insight on possible solutions.

It’s a huge problem that will not be solved easily, and the authors aren’t selling a magic bullet that will address everything. Simply building amenities is not enough to attract young professionals if there aren’t jobs. Small towns have to find a way to give the academically gifted kids the best possible education while laying the foundation for them to return; at the same time, this needs to be balanced by programs that address the Stayers, giving them necessary job skills for the modern post-industrial economy and acknowledging their importance to the survival of small communities. Immigration is a touchy subject, but in many cases the influx of immigrants will play an important part in sustaining small-town economies; finding a way to integrate newcomers is crucial.

There aren’t a lot of easy answers, but Carr and Kefalas do a great job of digging into some of the causes of the hollowing out. I found the writing easy to read and a good mix of the anecdotal and statistical. I highly recommend Hollowing Out the Middle, particularly for those who live in small-town America, but even for those who don’t. This is not a problem that will be solved without support from the majority of the population that lives in metropolitan areas.

You can purchase Hollowing Out the Middle from Amazon or your favorite bookseller. Also, visit HollowingOutTheMiddle.com for more information, including a book trailer and the preface to the book.

Jonathan Liu reads as much as he possibly can. This is an edited version of his review on his books blog.

As a kid, I loved reading Encyclopedia Brown books, even when I was old enough that the mysteries were really simple to solve and I realized how absurd it was that Chief Brown needed his son’s help to solve cases. I didn’t read quite as much Hardy Boys, except for one summer when my younger brother and I plowed through the local library’s collection of them. Marc Burnett has taken both series, added a dash of Lemony Snicket and a knowing wink, and come up with “America’s next great kid detective:” Steve Brixton.

The first book, The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity, introduces us to twelve-year-old Steve. Steve is obsessed with the Bailey Brothers Mysteries and always carries a copy of The Bailey Brothers’ Detective Handbook in his backpack. He has a secret book-box in which he’s stashed his detective notebook (including his list of the Fifty-Nine Greatest Books of All Time: the Handbook and the other 58 books in the Bailey Brothers series). He’s even a card-carrying detective, thanks to the twelve cereal box tops and $1.95 he’d mailed in for his Genuine Detective’s Investigation License.

Steve goes to the library to check out a book about Early American Needlework for a school report, and suddenly it seems the whole world is after him: men in black jumpsuits and greasepaint break rappel through the skylight, and a black van squeals up to the library doors. Without giving away too much of the plot, I can tell you that the rest of the story involves Librarians, a sailor disguise, running from the cops, and some very shady characters, who are all after “Detective” Steve Brixton. Ironically, Steve has to solve a mystery to prove that he’s not really a detective, clear his name and just maybe help save one of America’s most important secrets.

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity was published in October 2009; a paperback version should be out this May. Unfortunately Steve Brixton’s “official website” at brixtonbrothers.com is still just a placeholder, though it promises to teach you tips and tricks to help you become a private investigator. You can, however read an excerpt on Simon and Schuster’s site.

I came across the book at the library and was intrigued by the goofy text on the back cover and the over-the-top cover illustration. (Of course, you can’t judge a book by its cover, so I read it in a day.) It’s recommended for ages 8-12, but any adults who grew up on Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown are sure to get some laughs, too. I loved the way Steve discovers that what works for the Bailey Brothers doesn’t always work in real life; but at the same time the adults in Steve’s world are fairly ridiculous and easily misled and do act somewhat like characters from Encyclopedia Brown. It’s parody and homage at the same time.

Buy The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity from Amazon, or check it out at your local library!

Wired: Secret agent librarians! Kid detectives! Fake moustaches! What’s not to love?

Tired: Not a whole lot, actually—Steve Brixton makes Encyclopedia’s job look easy.

Geeks like books and we want our kids to like books. If you are obsessive like me, you have the urge to catalog those books. Or maybe, in this age of online information consumption, you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to read more books this year. Or maybe you want a place where the grandparents can see what books the kids have so you don’t end up with multiple copies of The Cat in the Hat.

There are are several online tools that can help you out. GoodReads, LibraryThing and Shelfari each allow you to catalog your books online and interact with other readers.

I have been an avid user of LibraryThing since 2008. I started using it to catalog my book collection while home on paternity leave. I chose LibraryThing because it allowed me to manually enter books that were not on the site. (Back in 2008, the GoodReads and Shelfari libraries were limited to books listed on Amazon.com and I have about 200 vintage books that are not listed on Amazon.) I have happily been using LibraryThing, with over 1,200 books in my online catalog.  LibraryThing has been good to me, so I am hesitant to move. I have also received some books for free through their early reviewer program.

I’m trying read more books this year so I thought it would be a good time to look back at these three sites and evaluate them again.

Organization

My number one priority is cataloging and organizing my books. I want to track the books I’ve read and the books I own in one place. I take advantage of my local library, so I don’t own all of the books I have read. Conversely, I have not read all of the books I own.

LibraryThing is the clear winner when it comes to organization because of the many ways it allows you to organize your books. LibraryThing uses “collections” as the first level of organization. All of the books are in “Your Library” and then you can add more collections. Since the collections are not exclusive, books can be in multiple collections. My collections are Currently reading, Publisher provided, Reviewed, Read but unowned, To read and Read in 2010. LibraryThing also allows for extensive use of tags so you can organize within a collection and across collections.

Instead of collections, Goodreads uses “shelves.” I have Currently reading, To-read, Borrowed, Publisher Provided and Read in 2010. You can create you own shelves. For some reason, the ownership status setting for a book is separate from the shelves. There is no tagging.

Shelfari has six “shelves”: Plan to read, Reading, Read, Own, Favorites and Wish list.  You can’t add more shelves, but you can use tags to organize your books.

Import and Export

The import/export feature is only useful if you already have a book collection in an existing database and want to move it to one of these sites or if you want to move from one site to another. All three have the ability to import and export books from a spreadsheet. So I exported my collection from LibraryThing to each of Shelfari and GoodReads, expecting my vintage book collection not to make it through the import process.

I was right. GoodReads and Shelfari failed to recognize most of those vintage books. I ended up with 1082 books in Shelfari after manually adding 100 or so books. The import to Goodreads resulted in 967 books, but I did not manually add any books.

User Interface

When I originally evaluated these sites in 2008, Shelfari had the best visuals. Unfortunately, it looks like Shelfari has been frozen in time. The site still shows the book covers sitting on a wood grain bookshelf which was an interesting approach two years ago, but now looks dated. It also shows the least amount of information about the books.

LibraryThing is the least attractive of the three. It seems to have focused on providing a user interface full of information. I found it the easiest to use, but I had the most familiarity with it.

I think GoodReads has the best looking user interface of the three. It has a simple color scheme and straight-forward graphics and icons.

Mobile View

All three have a stripped down mobile view of their sites that worked great on my iPhone. Of the three, GoodReads has the most functionality squeezed onto the small iPhone screen, while still being readable. LibraryThing announced a new LibraryThing Anywhere, but they haven’t released it yet.

Community

All three sites have an active community of users sharing information about books.  Each has lots of forums and groups to narrow the discussions to discrete topics.

All three allow you to import your contacts to see if anyone you know is also using the site and create a connection with them. All three allow you to import a list of email addresses to find connections. GoodReads can also find connections through Facebook and Twitter. I have very few connections on the sites. Lots of connections on one would be a good reason to select one site over another. An online community is a reason to use one of these sites instead of a desktop database.

GoodReads labels itself as the “social network for readers.” So its approach is much more like FaceBook for books than LibraryThing or Shelfari. With LibraryThing, the emphasis is on your catalog. GoodReads emphasizes updates from your connections. The GoodReads home page is like the Facebook home page, with the updates from your connections front and center.

Integration with Other Application

Goodreads has a nice integration with Twitter and Facebook allowing you to send book updates to those sites. LibraryThing and Shelfari both have Facebook applications but they are far behind GoodReads.

Widgets

All three sites have widgets that allow you to show part of your collection on your own website or blog. LibraryThing has the widest assortment of widgets and a robust ability to customize those widgets. The other two sites are much more limited in what you can display. You can see a LibraryThing widget below that displays the books I have read so far in 2010, customized with the colors from the GeekDad banner.

Cost

All three sites are free. LibraryThing requires you to buy a membership if you want to have more than 250 books in your catalog. They have a yearly membership rate and lifetime membership rate. I bought the $25 lifetime membership. GoodReads display advertisements and “featured books.” Shelfari also displays advertisements and has financial backing from its parent, Amazon.com.

Results

After working with all three sites for the past month, I concluded that LibraryThing is the best site of the three for maintaining and organizing your book collection. GoodReads is close second if you want to share your reading habits with your friends. Shelfari is a distant third.

No, print is not dead. As GeekDad Editor Emeritus, Chris Anderson, wrote in Free:

“For all their cost disadvantages, dead trees smeared into sheets still have excellent battery life, screen resolution, and portability, to say nothing about looking lovely on shelves.”

As for me, I’m going to continue with LibraryThing as my primary catalog. I also like GoodReads so I’m going to duplicate my reading efforts going forward with GoodReads, but not bother to go back and fill in the blanks. If you are using either site, let me know your thoughts and connect with me.

• Doug on LibraryThing
• Doug on GoodReads

Masterpiece Comics by R. Sikoryak

My kids are probably among the last whose family gets a daily newspaper with substantial, if somewhat dated, funny pages. (As I learned by reading his Twitter feed today, the 14-year-old gets a particular kick out of the absurdity of Mark Trail.) And of course, having access to their dad’s comic book collection, they’re familiar with a lot of superhero history as well. In fact, if there’s one area of classic literature that we’ve slacked off on, it’s … classic literature. OK, I’ve read them Kafka’s cool story about a guy who turns into a giant cockroach, but given my homeschooling policy of skipping all the stuff that most students forget as soon as they’re out of high school, we’ve managed to avoid some staples like The Scarlet Letter and Crime and Punishment.

Well, it looks I’ve inadvertently hit upon a solution. I had never heard of the artist and writer R. Sikoryak before I came across his collection Masterpiece Comics in a college bookstore. But it seemed like something GeekTeen John would enjoy, so I asked Montreal-based publisher Drawn & Quarterly for a copy. Apparently, I was right.

Here’s the GeekTeen’s review:
It seems like a parent’s dream: a comic book based on classic plays and books. This dream has become a reality with the new book Masterpiece Comics. Masterpiece Comics is a collection of comics by R. Sikoryak that is a mixture of classic comics like Blondie and Little Lulu and classic literature like Macbeth and Crime and Punishment. The mix actually works very well; both mediums manage to compliment each other without losing anything in the process.

From Masterpiece Comics by R. Sikoryak

The stories in the book are very varied and diverse. Some of the stories include “Mephistofield” a Garfield version of the old German legend of Faust, and Superman becomes Albert Camus’ character in the 1942 novel The Stranger.

I thought the book was very good. The art is almost identical to the comics they’re parodying. I liked how Sikoryak made the comic characters fit the classic characters they represent. The only problem I found with this book is that I didn’t know some of novels and comics, but that didn’t really deter my enjoyment of the book.

Masterpiece Comics is good for teens and up. There is some nudity [Mom's Note: Think Blondie and Dagwood in the Garden of Eden] so it’s not for young kids. You also might want to have your kids read the novels before or after reading this book to understand it more. At the very least, this book will inspire your kids to start reading the classics.

Instant Egghead Guide: Physics

You’ve gotta love a book that follows “Chapter One: Matter” with “Chapter Two: Quantum Theory.” The Instant Egghead Guide: Physics by Brian Clegg and Scientific American does just that, and then continues on through chapters about Light, Relativity, Forces and Energy. The cover calls it “60-Second Science,” and each subject is a two-page spread that takes about a minute or two to read. The chapter about matter, for instance, is broken down into subjects such as atomic structure, various phases of matter, string theory and the big bang.

Each subject has three short sections: The Basics, On the Frontier, and Cocktail Party Tidbits. The Basics is just that: a very simple, straightforward explanation of the topic at hand. On the Frontier is usually a little extra information, sometimes but not always about the current state of knowledge on a subject, or perhaps an example of how this bit of information is used in practical applications. Cocktail Party Tidbits is the fun stuff: little trivia about Einstein or a snarky remark Feynman once made.

My main complaint: the book tends to shy away from using formulas, probably to make things more accessible for the “Math is hard!” contingent, but I ran into this sentence which I had trouble parsing until I realized they were using the parentheses as in math, rather than as in English:

As mechanical work is the force applied times the distance moved, and power is work divided by time, then power is also force times (distance over time)—that is, force times velocity.

(The other potential source of confusion is spelling out “times” in a formula which also includes “time.”) I don’t know if avoiding mathematical notation really does anyone any favors or just muddles things a bit. Fortunately, this sort of thing didn’t occur too often but this particular case stood out for me.

Also, I think this is the first time I’ve read an entire physics book without a single diagram in it, which is a shame. I think a few well-constructed diagrams would have gone a long way toward making some key concepts easier to understand and remember.

Those of you who are physics geeks most likely won’t learn anything new from this book (except some nifty trivia that will come in handy next time you’re at a cocktail party, whatever that is). But if you need a refresher course—if, say, your high schooler starts asking you about things you haven’t studied since you were in high school—this is a handy book to have around.  With a little over 100 topics, you can spend just a few minutes a day and get a pretty good overview of physics in a short period of time. At the very least, it’ll help you get a few more of the jokes on The Big Bang Theory.

The Instant Egghead Guide: Physics is available from Amazon or other fine booksellers.

Wired: A broad overview of physics in bite-sized, easy-to-swallow chunks.

Tired: Some diagrams and mathematical formulas would have been nice.

Note: St. Martin’s Press provided a review copy of the book for GeekDad.

Image: Scholastic Press

I started Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games late last Saturday night, planning for a little wind-down reading before going to bed. My neck and wrists and back crackled when I finally got out of my chair at almost 3:30 Sunday morning, having been unable to keep from reading the whole thing in one sitting.

It’s been awhile since a novel grabbed me that fiercely.

Granted, this is a Young Adult book, so the writing’s not complex and it reads easily, but it was Collins’ story – one of a ruthless Capitol state which forces the children of its outlying districts to compete in annual battles to the death – which kept me in a constant state of “just one more chapter.” (At least until about two-thirds of the way through, when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to go to sleep without reaching the end.)

I managed to take a couple days to read the sequel, Catching Fire – good enough to have landed the number four spot on Time magazine’s list of 2009’s best fiction books – a more than worthy sequel and a middle act of The Empire Strikes Back proportions. The as-yet-unnamed third book in the series is set for an Aug. 24 release.

What made this experience all the more enjoyable was the fact that I hadn’t heard of The Hunger Games at all until just before Christmas – these books came to me solely on the recommendation of my 12-year-old daughter.

She’s been a reader for years, and while we’ve shared a good amount of geeky material like The Hobbit and the Harry Potter series, she’s also got a sizable pile of books that hold no interest for me. These two are the first ones she’s discovered and specifically brought to me with, “Hey, Dad, I really think you’d like this.”

That’s cool and rewarding enough by itself; that she was spot-on in her assessment is just extra layers of awesome.

Photo: Ethan Gilsdorf

Author Ethan Gilsdorf, Globe Pequot Press and Froobi.com have teamed up to offer a special opportunity to win one of 10 free autographed copies of Gilsdorf’s critically-acclaimed book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.

As reviewed here on GeekDad, the book is an exploration and celebration of fantasy and gaming subcultures. While cleaning out his parents’ house, Ethan stumbles upon the Dungeons & Dragons paraphernalia of his youth (should sound familiar to anyone reading Ken’s Top 10 D&D Modules I Found in Storage posts). This starts him on a journey into all manner of escapist hobbies: live action role-playing, castle-building, MMORPGs, and Lord of the Rings fandom.

I had the chance to meet Ethan at last year’s DragonCon and we caught up a few weeks back for an email interview.

Check it out, as well as details on how to win a free copy of the book, after the jump.

Photo: Ethan Gilsdorf

GeekDad: You first started playing D&D when your mother suffered her brain aneurysm. What was it specifically about the game that drew you to it?

Ethan Gilsdorf: I think for me, on the surface, D&D offered escape–quite literally into another world, one not poisoned by the troubles of my home life and my disabled mother. But I think the appeal was also about more than that. I think to my geeky and introverted adolescent self, not being part of the “in” crowd (and few of us were), I felt about as powerful as a three-foot hobbit on a basketball team. The locker room was scarier than any dungeon. So I and my misfit, brainy friends needed something to do together that mimicked the camaraderie and fellowship that team sports denied me. D&D fulfilled that.

There was also another key reason: the adult world seemed arbitrary and at times scary. Topsy-turvy. So D&D helped give shape and order to a chaotic adolescence. I had learned that in the adult world, fate was chaotic and uncertain. Guidelines for success were arbitrary. Mothers could disappear and I was powerless to stop it or rescue her or heal her. In D&D, there were healing spells. And while I could not slay my mother (not that, consciously, I wanted to, but in many ways she was my foe), I could slay orcs and goblins and dragons and other evil forces–the ones with red glowing eyes and horned heads. Perhaps the game world reminded me that some conflicts could be black and white. D&D lets players be the hero, the paladin and the assassin and the healer. We get to try out other aspects of our personalities that, in “real life,” are denied to us. And I wanted to be tested and scared and go on adventures and take risks, but in a safe place. With D&D, at least there was a rule book and we knew what we needed to roll to hit and kill and escape death again and again.

The last reason? Because it felt good to do things I could not do in real life. To be a hero. To kill the dragon, or ride the purple worm. To shoot fireballs from my fingertips. Take that, jocks! Take that, prom queen! Ha!

GD: Was there ever any attempts by your mother or other powers-that-be to prevent you from playing the game (ridiculous and untrue associations with the occult, etc.)?

EG: Nope, remarkably, no one in my family ever questioned or challenged my D&D obsession. I think because I was so introverted and shy, the various parental figures in my life were simply pleased that I’d found a group of guys to hang with and stay out of trouble. Compared to getting girls pregnant or driving while drunk, D&D was harmless. My folks may not have understood the game, but they never worried we were summoning demons from the 7th plane of hell. After I came home after my weekly D&D night, they’d often ask, “So, how was the game? Who won?” I’d have to remind them, there was no winner or loser. There was just the endless story that would be continued next week.

GD: When you decided you had grown out of D&D, did you replace it with other “fringe” hobbies, or did you make a specific effort to avoid geekier pastimes?

EG: I had other hobbies for sure, but they weren’t really on the fringe. I was a filmmaker, and radio DJ, and a poet and writer, so I went to movies, collected records, and amassed a collection of books (mostly poetry). Is poetry on the fringe? I suppose so. Is collecting LPs an entry to a world of specialized knowledge and trivia, like D&D? I think so. We all want to be masters of some field or be experts at something. But yes, I certainly made a point of embracing less socially “risky” activities when I went off to college. I remember wanting cool friends and to learn to drink beer and get laid and just be normal. But my geeky, fantasy-driven past was inside me, and kept haunting me.

GD: Was it because you were ashamed of your past?

EG: I was to a certain extent ashamed of my D&D and Tolkien obsession. I remember being at college and the local Society for Creative Anachronism group came to campus to recruit college kids and give sword-fighting demos. I tried it out once or twice, but I remember not feeling like I fit in anymore. I was an odd realization because in a way, the SCA was my people. But I shunned them and said to myself I was too cool to dress in medieval garb and spar in the quad. I wanted to sit on a ratty couch and drink beer and wear my vintage football jacket, and do so ironically. I was too into being ironic by then to embrace the SCA or any other serious, geeky “escapist” pursuit.

GD: What about now? Do you feel that you no longer need escapism, or do you think you’ve just replaced your passion for D&D with something else?

EG: I do think that the place I go when I “escape” has changed, but like all of us, I do need escape. I’m not sure my need for escape is any less. It’s just been transmogrified into something else. I think I’ve always believed that the 20th and, recently, the 21st centuries were not for me. I am afflicted by “medieval moments.” I will be walking in the woods and the modern world will fall away, and I will forget my Gore-Tex and my cell phone and I will be in some other era. Sometimes another place. I will pretend or actually see elves, orcs, beasts. It’s that out-of-time-and-space sensation that I’m seeking, like a woman in my book, Elyse, who sought that fleeting “magic moment” when, at an SCA event, she felt like she had shaken off the weight of the present day to travel to another era in history. The medieval castle project called Guédelon that I visit in another chapter, where workers are dressed in period tunics and are building a castle using only medieval tools and technology, offers another kind of very tempting escape–to leave the modern world of cubicles and white collar work and immerse oneself in hard, physical labor borne of another era. I really wanted to spend a few weeks there chiseling rocks and mixing mortar.

Photo: Ethan Gilsdorf

GD: It was when you discovered a trunk full of your old role-playing gear that you began to reevaluate the nature of fantasy and gaming. This discovery essentially spurred you on your “quest” to write the book. What was in that box? How did you feel when you opened it up?

EG: That box was filled with all my old D&D gear–just as I (and my childhood friend JP, who taught me the game) had left it 20 years before. My old brown shopping bag-covered Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual, a gray felt bag of dice, and 3-ring binders of rules and character sheets, unused pads of graph and hex paper, and lots and lots of maps of dungeons and worlds. There were also other RPGs like Gamma World and Boot Hill.

How did I feel? Excited. Thrilled. Eager to play again. Then, a wave of warning: fear, apprehension, concern I’d get sucked back in. D&D had always occupied an ambivalent place in my life. I loved the game but it was a reminder of the geeky stammering shy boy I had tried to shed.

GD: One guy plays World of Warcraft religiously. Another plays fantasy football and watches sports on TV. Are these two guys more similar than they think? How does one’s choice of escapism, whether acceptable by societal norms, affect its nature? Is one more “healthy” than another one just because it’s more mainstream?

EG: This is an issue I write about this in my book. I think both fantasy football and fantasy games are very similar. Whether on the level of hobby or interest or obsession, they are comparable. Both involve stats and numbers, mastery of tactics and strategy, and a willingness to slog through lower levels/”the regular season” to reach level 80/the “championship.” And let’s face it: football is a war game.

Personally, I think they are both equally healthy, and both equally susceptible to addiction or “taking the game too far.” The difference is in the double standard that society places on these two activities. WoW is seen as a pointless “fantasy” world, full of frivolity, or conversely, brutal violence. Football (whether real or imaginary) is part of the cultural thread of our country. Playing football, like the army, teaches brotherhood and toughness and teamwork and hard work and discipline. I think online communities can create the same social networks, but because WoW and its ilk are “games” and not “sports,” the culture applies a double standard.

It’s unfortunate, but I think it’s gradually changing–it’s changed a lot since I was a kid in the 1980s. Generations who game now are bringing widespread acceptability to gaming, and I think the fact that there are sports games for the home console means that playing a video game, in general, will be increasingly seen as a legitimate way to waste one’s leisure time.

Oops. Did I say, “waste”? I meant, “spend”

GD: Is the popularity of the fantasy genre a result of any particular aspect of western culture? Is it because we haven’t been shipped off to war like our fathers, or because it’s hard to feel heroic while sitting in a cubicle?

EG: That’s an interesting idea–that fantasy heroics exist because we haven’t ourselves experienced war. Although Tolkien and C.S. Lewis both fought in World War I and lost many of their comrades, they turned to fantasy I think as a way to explore good and evil and other great themes (loyalty, love, sacrifice, fellowship, fighting the good fight, etc). The other problem with that idea is that a lot of war veterans and those currently serving in Iraq play a lot of fantasy games–from D&D to WoW.

I think a few other reasons explain the rise of fantasy. The world has become a more complicated place. Imaginary worlds offer tempting other possibilities where we might feel more welcome, or be more proficient or successful. We also lack rites of passage or other ways for people to feel heroic, to do great deeds and to fulfill their desires to pick up a sword or axe and solve problems in a primal way. Games, fantasy, science fiction, comic books allow folks to experience this, if only vicariously.

Daniel Gauthier as Frodo, walking with the Middle-earth contingent in the Dragon*Con parade. (Photo: Dave Nelson)

Grand troubles we want to unravel–like good versus evil–seem only solvable in our imaginations. Outside the movie theater, the real terrorists slip through our fingers, but in our imaginations, and on the movie screens, we can take revenge and win and kill the evil forces. Vanquishing the “bad guys” seems do-able in a fantasy world because all the villains raspy voices, glowing red eyes, and blood-stained helmets. We all know reality offers no such sharp divisions. But these hero stories played out in games, books, movies, and even kids’ schoolyard antics involve villains, heroes, and monsters for good reason: so we can face and overcome our fears in a good-guy, bad-guy, clear-cut world. Delving into these black-and-white worlds can also make our own conflicts, personal or political, seem more manageable. Fantasy’s apocalyptic, end-of-civilization scenarios, by comparison, make our troubles seem simpler.

GD: Have you returned the the fold, as it were? Do you consider yourself a geek today? If so, what character would you play in a D&D campaign?

EG: I consider myself a geek for sure. But while I used to be a hardcore Dungeons & Dragons player (maybe addict?), nowadays I seem more attracted to fantasy movies and books than gaming. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have the time to immerse myself in role-playing games, or I just haven’t connected with a group of friends who also like to game. I’d say in general, I tend towards “escaping” into a fantasy realm like Tolkien’s Middle-earth more so than playing Xbox or World of Warcraft. Besides, I never had all that good hand-eye coordination.

At the moment, I’d say my nerdly ways are being fulfilled vicariously by interacting with others. One of the joys of being on tour and traveling across the US, is meeting so many other fantasy freaks and gaming geeks. I’ve spoken to so many folks who are dying to share their stories of how they got into gaming or what role fantasy plays in their lives.

As for my dream character, I think it would have be a brooding, half-elf ranger. Or a battle-scarred dwarf fighter. I’ve always been drawn to the characters who lurk in the shadows, and are connected to nature and the earth, or prefer the darkness of the underground. I always found those lawful good paladin types too straight-laced and Boy Scout-like. Probably too much like me.

Thanks again to Ethan Gilsdorf, for his excellent travel memoir and for taking the time to talk geeky with me.

If you want to read his book, hit up Froobi.com to enter to win a free signed copy. The contest is open until 1/13/2010.

Visit the Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks website for more information.

This means Harry Potter gets in because all the movies belong to the 21st century. But Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel started in the 20th century, so we excluded them. No worries, Joss Whedon, Dr. Horrible made the cut.

Websites were trickier, given how much frequently they update their content, so we did not enforce start dates on them.

Overall, the big winner appears to be: Pixar!

Pixar appears to have nowhere to go but up.

There was also a heavy dose of Star Wars among the geek kids’ favorites. Not the prequel movies, but various videogames and the Clone Wars cartoon, which had the nice effect of bonding old-school Star Wars geek parents with their kids in many geek homes. And, under comics, we noticed that many independent creators made the list for producing some awesome books and strips that appeal to all ages, including Owly, Girl Genius and Bone, none of which originally came from the big publishers.

Note: Game consoles were put together with the toys, while the accompanying videogames went under, well, videogames.

And now, onto the lists:

Best Movies

Best Books

Best Toys & Videogames

Best Websites

Best Television

Best Comic Books

Best Music

A page from Carol Coogan’s new book Backyard Naturalist Vol. III

Even in chilly upstate New York, nature artist Carol Coogan tries to sketch outdoors whenever she can. Carol writes and illustrates a weekly column for my local newspaper called “Backyard Naturalist.” I have always loved her little vignettes of wildlife, and last year, when the kids and I were studying biology I even thought about contacting Carol for advice on getting kids to draw from nature.

As it happened, Carol contacted me first, to tell me about her volumes of collected columns. Backyard Naturalist Volume I and Volume II are available online, and Volume III (see image above) is coming out soon.  Naturally, I took the opportunity to send Carol some of the questions I had. Here is what she wrote in response:

How did you start doing nature drawings?

I have been interested in nature since I was a little kid. I remember being interested in birds and bugs when I was 5 years old. Any time there was a program on TV about wildlife, I was glued to the set. My parent used to take our family camping and to the ocean every year, and I was always fascinated with the animals, fish, shells, frogs, plants, trees, etc… and the different habitats and environments. I started drawing when I was a child, and have always kept a sketchbook and/or journal of some sort, as long as I can remember. But I began to focus more exclusively on natural science subjects once I went to college for art. Eventually, I began keeping a special sketchbook/journal just for nature, after I bought the book The Art of Field Sketching by Clare Walker Leslie.

Do you work from life, photos, still lifes, stuffed animals?

Nature Artist Carol Coogan

I prefer to sketch quickly using a pencil, or a black ink marker or rapidograph

pen, working directly from what I see in real life. I go for nature walks or hikes, or look at what I see happening in my own neighborhood or backyard. Sometimes I even sketch from looking out the window of my house, or from the car if I am parked somewhere, or someone else is driving. I later will look through nature guides when I go back home, and rework the drawings to better refect the details, shapes and colors of the actual subject. I love pen & ink, and often leave my art as simple line or cross-hatching drawings. But sometimes I also add watercolors or colored pencil later. When I am crunched for time, or when it is too cold a day in winter to draw outside, I’ll take photographs of what interests me, and sketch from the photographs. Sometimes I “layout” a scene using a digital computer program called PhotoShop, arranging a couple of different images into a collage, and then draw from that. I especially like to ask questions. How was that bird able to do that? Why was that plant growing that way? What was that bug doing? Then I’ll research the subject and try to answer my own questions. It’s like sleuthing, or trying to solve a puzzle.

How do you find your subjects?

I often go for nature walks or hikes, especially at local parks, environmental centers, or nature preserves, or wherever I happen to be. I am always keen to observe whatever is around me in nature, no matter where I am. Even in a shopping mall parking lot. Nature is everywhere. You can even see all sorts of interesting things between the cracks of a sidewalk. Plants growing. Ants crawling. I especially like noticing what is happening in my own neighborhood or backyard. Or from looking out of the windows of my house. Or even from my car. Sometimes I will notice an interesting bird or plant growing along the side of the road while driving in my car, and look it up in my nature guides later in the day, finding out it’s name, learning all I that can about it. Or I may sketch it from memory, and re-draw it or make corrections to the original drawing later, after I’ve learn more about it, or from looking at pictures of it later.

How much research do you do, and what resources would you recommend?

I do a lot of research, but often I can learn a lot from my own first hand observations of the natural world. Nothing beats a first hand account of what was seen or heard or experienced right on site, seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears. But I also consult a variety of guide books, as well as Internet sites. And I even will find out if there is a specific scientist who is an expert or specializes in a particular natural science subject that interests me, and then contact them with a question or to learn more interesting information. It’s important to get more than one source for your facts. The Internet is not always reliable.

How does nature drawing feed into/enhance nature appreciation? Aside from the obvious, is doing a nature drawing different from doing nature photography, and if so, how?

There is nothing like observing nature and responding to it first hand, reacting to your own personal experience, observation, and the feelings you have about the other creatures, and plants you share your life with. Seasonal changes are constantly in motion, but nature drawing can connect you to a sense of place, and help you feel more in tune with what is happening at that very moment. It makes you feel more appreciative of the world in an intimate and personal way. In sketching what you see, you learn a lot that can’t be learned in books, or by watching TV, or looking at photographs. Through observation to using your hand to draw to inspiring your brain to ask questions and have recognitions, you gain a great deal of knowledge. It’s very gratifying. You feel like, “Hey, I discovered this!” But whether you keep a sketchbook, or a writing journal, or take photographs of the natural world, as long as you take time to be in the present moment and notice what is going on around you, it’s a valuable and rewarding experience. You may find yourself asking, “Why is that bird singing right now? What are those flowers in bloom? Can those clouds tell the weather feel like? Is the moon full, and where in the sky is it rising tonight? Why? As well as being valuable scientifically and educationally, it can also be creatively inspiring, and even spiritual. It informs your place and relationship in the world, in time, and in season. And it’s fun! Overall though, I think drawing is more intimate, creating a connection that can’t be replicated with a camera.

What nature artists do you enjoy?

I enjoy the work of almost all nature artists. I do prefer a bit of abstraction, spontaneity and personal interpretation of a subject, though, rather than an absolutely photo-realistic art style. I like the work of some commercial illustrators, like Jack Unruh, for their origianality of expression, quirkiness and comfortable looseness of line, as well as the work of members of the Natural Science Illustrator Guild, and local wildlife artists like Wayne Trimm and my friend David Kiphuth. I enjoy the “how to keep a nature journal” books written by Clare Walker Leslie, Cathy Johnson, and Hannah Hinchman. Actually, though, I most enjoy looking at individual sketchbooks kept, not only by artists, but also by regular folks who aren’t artists, and especially by children. Each person’s different take on nature is so interesting. Everyone has their own energy, quality, and unique way of using squiggles, scribbles, scratchings, lines and handwritten notes. Each person’s individual impressions and expressions are always interesting to note. Sometimes someone else may have a way of describing something in a way that is totally surprising to me. They may help me notice something in a new way that I may never have thought of before. I love that.

Do you have any suggestions for getting kids to do nature drawings? Either encouraging kids who are already inclined but don’t know where to start, or kids who need prodding to go outside and/or pay attention to nature?

My son's drawing of a tomato plant

There are thousands of little stories and dramas going on in the natural world all the time. For kids who seem reluctant to engage in outdoor activities, it may help to inspire an interest in nature from that angle. Also, if an adult in a child’s life is interested in the natural world, it’s more likely that a child will follow suit, than if the adult in their life seems disinterested. If all a child has around them is monitors with games and movies and the Internet, they may develop a distance and disinterest in the natural world. Kids need opportunities to go outside and touch, feel, see, hear and experience nature, but more importantly, they need someone in their life – a teacher, a family member, a friend – to do it with them, to mention and bring their attention to it. To help them notice the seasons, cycles, rhythms and recurring events in nature. The loud buzzing sound of cicadas in the summer? What time birds begin to chirp in the morning? When leaves start changing colors in the fall, or when the days start to seem shorter. When birds form flocks and fly away? What birds stay around all winter? Why do some birds stay, and others migrate to warmer areas? When does the first snowfall occur? How do mammals like mice, squirrels, chipmunks, skunks, and raccoons survive the coldest days of the year? When do the days seem longer again? When do the first green buds form on a tree? What are the first flowers to bloom in your neighborhood? When and where do you notice butterflies, bees and other bugs? It’s also fun and empowering to learn to identify different kinds of birds, and plants and animals by name. This inspires more interest. Rather than seeing a “bird,” you see a “black capped chickadee,” and it has a call that sounds like, “chick-a-dee-dee-dee!” That’s more interesting.

Writing or sketching about these things gives children their very own place to put their thoughts, words drawings and feelings. It’s important to let them do it in a way that feels right to them, without judgment as to whether it’s “good” or not. Sketchbooks are not meant to be perfect like a fine art painting you’d see in a gallery or museum. It’s important to really observe what you see, hear, smell, experience, etc… take good notes, and try to make your drawings as accurate as possible, but the observing and mark-making itself is where the real learning takes place. Things can be looked up later and corrections made or information added. It’s even OK to draw something, and then redraw a line right over it to correct the shape or size. It’s OK if art in a sketchbook doesn’t look professional. In fact, it’s better. Sketchbooks are more interesting when the drawings are a bit messy. That why it’s called a sketch. It’s a drawing that helps you learn. It has character and personalty. My sketchbook is quite messy and many of the drawings look like scribbles, or even stiff, stick-like markings, because in a sketchbook, I’m just gathering information, not trying to make beautiful art. I may use this information gathered from my sketches later though, to help me when I do decide to make a more detailed and beautiful piece of artwork. The more you sketch, the easier it gets to jot things down loosely and confidently. And the better an artist you may become. The more you practice doing anything, the better you will get at doing it. But half the fun is in the watching, looking, noticing, asking yourself questions, and then trying to find out the answers to your questions, like you are a nature detective. Who knows, you may become an expert on some particular bird or animal or plant that no one else has really paid much attention to before. You may even become a biologist, or natural scientist, veterinarian, environmentalist, or artist, or writer, all of those things.

You can learn more about Carol, and see examples of her work, at Directory of Illustration, Upstate Artist Guild, and her Cafe Press shop.