{"id":118,"date":"2008-07-30T22:01:35","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T05:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=118"},"modified":"2008-07-30T22:01:35","modified_gmt":"2008-07-31T05:01:35","slug":"hello-world-bsraydekwtdwt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=118","title":{"rendered":"Hello World: BSRAYDEKWTDWT"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the Comic-Con this year, had the pleasure of randomly stumbling across the Igloo Tornado<\/a> booth. Last year, I bought the awesome Tom Neely<\/a> book, The Blot<\/a>, and have enjoyed some great mailing list fodder as a result.<\/p>\n

This year, I was excited to discover that Jason Shiga<\/a> was perched at the booth. Shiga\u2019s Bookhunter<\/a> is easily one of the funniest, most entertaining books I\u2019ve read. A detective action thriller, Bookhunter follows a determined agent on the lookout for library related chicanery.<\/p>\n

Based on this book alone, I pretty much bought the other Shiga titles on the table. Including this:<\/p>\n

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It wasn\u2019t until looking through the book, later, that I realized that this is easily a contender in my newly created genre: Books So Ridiculously Awesome You Don\u2019t Even Know What To Do With Them (BSRAYDEKWTDWT). Really, look at this book. It looks awesome and you won\u2019t know how to read it (the book will in fact chastise you if you program it incorrectly).<\/p>\n


\nSee, the book is divided into two smaller sections. As a result, the book is a programmable comic story run by a \u201cpaper engine.\u201d The directions are intuitive and fun. The result is a surprisingly difficult set of puzzle adventures.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I went back the next day to buy as many copies of Hello World as I could afford for friends. Unfortunately, that only meant two more. Self published, printed, and bound, Hello World can\u2019t be the easiest book to produce on a large scale. However, considering the amount of complex thought that has gone into revving up this engine, I\u2019d hope more people will get to see this at some point.<\/p>\n

Well done, Shiga.<\/p>\n

Tell people this is awesome:<\/h3>