Ready Reader One

The Stories We Tell With, About, and Around Videogames

Mike Sell editor Megan Amber Condis editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Louisiana State University Press

Published:12th Jun '24

Currently unavailable, currently targeted to be due back around 15th November 2024, but could change

Ready Reader One cover

Ready Reader One explores the many ways literature depicts, engages with, and imagines videogames and gamers. The diverse group of authors included in this collection take an expansive view of "videogame literature," with essays that consider written works ranging from life writing to speculative fiction to videogame guides created for the internet. In an age of ever-increasing gamification, in which gaming literacy is important to understanding popular culture and technological power, Ready Reader One examines the role of videogame literature in explaining not only how we play videogames, but how we read and write about them.

Ready Reader One curates a lively and playful collection of essays, perspectives, and stories that redefine gaming, gaming as literature, and alternative (and often underrepresented) definitions of what it means to be a gamer. Ready Reader One is earnest, accessible, colorful, and definitely teachable: Press Start to Begin!" - Edmond Chang, associate professor of English, Ohio University

"Focused on 'videogame literature,' this collection not only addresses a significant void in the study of videogames and culture but also compellingly argues for the political urgency of critical engagements with gaming literacies." - Timothy J. Welsh, managing editor, Journal of Games Criticism

"From close readings of novels and life writing that represent the experience of gameplay, to detailed studies of game walkthroughs as a genre, these brilliant essays will sharpen our sensitivity to the many, and sometimes unexpected, places we might read games around us." - Alistair Brown, assistant professor of digital humanities and modern literature, Durham University, UK

ISBN: 9780807180891

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 24mm

Weight: 272g

358 pages