Thalia @ Pictures in the Words

Geez, you guys, I can't answer this! I mean...I really can't. It's just not possible. There are books I've loved and books I've hated, and one book I think is flawless, but I can't say any of them are my all-time favorite. I can't even give a group of all-time favorites. I rate some books five stars, but I can't necessarily call them "favorites". Sometimes your favorites aren't perfect. I love books too much to even PICK a group of favorites. I'd feel too bad about leaving something out. :(

SO INSTEAD OF DOING THAT (since there is in fact a book listed up there and it isn't my "all time" favorite), I'M JUST GOING TO RECOMMEND A BOOK THAT I LOVED THAT PRETTY MUCH NOBODY ELSE KNOWS ABOUT. <3

So here's a story, so we can go out of this challenge with a bang!

Ico: Castle in the Mist: The the beautiful dork I am, I was watching my YouTube subscriptions a few years ago, and this video came up made by one of my YT friends. ("Ico", if you don't already know, is a video game from 2001.) And I'd never played the game when I'd watched this video, but the video made me kind of...well, sob...a lot...

And LO AND BEHOLD, WE ACTUALLY OWNED THE GAME ALREADY. (Same game that my older brother recommended to me a looooooooooooong time ago, and I...well, I never played it. I kind of owed my older brother a huge apology.)

Anyway, the game just captured my heart. I'm a video game junkie in the world of RPGs--I suck at shooters, so my brothers always creamed me in Halo and the like, but get me with an RPG and I will learn everything about that world I possibly can. This is a particularly short game, as far as RPGs go--there aren't any items or "weapons" or inventory or anything. The menu consists of "quit" and "options". It only took me about eight hours the first time I played. And it's just BEAUTIFUL, and if you own a PS2 or a PS3 (since the original is for PS2 and the HD remake is on PS3), you should REALLY GO BUY IT.

So I loved this game, and for my birthday I made myself an Ico video. And in the summer of 2011, right after I started this blog, I was researching stuff about the then-new HD remake for PS3 coming out that year, when I stumbled on a pre-order of Ico: Castle in the Mist. AN ICO BOOK OKAY. IT WAS A BOOK. ABOUT ONE OF MY FAVORITE VIDEO GAMES. And I flipped out and pre-ordered it, and I read it the day it was released all in one sitting, and I was the first review for it on GR which was awesome.

I loved it. It made me cry, it made me laugh on occasion, and I loved the insight to the game. It's basically extended Ico fanfiction, because it explains a lot of the "before sacrifice" stuff (which didn't really match my head, but oh well) and a bunch of stuff from the other character's point of view (hahah, I love that this game only actually has three characters), and I loved it. I loved it because I loved the game, and I acknowledge right now that I have no idea if it'll be boring or lame or something if you've never played the game, but I fell in love with it. And so few people have read it, and every time I'm on GoodReads and someone asks me to recommend them a book, or one of my favorite books, my standalone choice always goes to Ico, because so few people have heard of it at all. (Probably half of the to-read shelvings are my doing, hahah.)

So yeah. I like to ramble, and maybe I convinced you to play Ico or go read this book, or something, but you really need to do one or the other, because your life will be better from it. <3

(I went to link the video that inspired me so much, but I've just found out my friend deleted her YT account and the video is gone, and I want to cry because I miss her but I also loved that video so dang much and uuhgghhghdfghjksdfh curse my absence from YT since I started reviewing.)

(And now I feel like writing a ramble about why video games help children.)