I'm the first to admit that I'm not a gamer.  I have pretty poor hand-eye coordination and struggle playing the simplest games, even in real life.  I suck at ten-pin bowling and this is probably the simplest game going!

I can get engaged very simply by watching my other half quite happily battering a zombie to death with a crow bar or hockey stick.  Games like BioShock and Resident Evil are engaging and very easily drag you in.  For someone like myself, who proudly announcers her non-gaming ability and has limits on the amount of gore she (or he) can comfortably deal with, there has to be a middle ground.

Well my particular release is reading.  I nearly always have a book in my hands and my son has, since leaving college, emulated this habit.  Before he left college his tome of choice was Harry Potter and the (whatever) and don't think I haven't tried.  I encouraged him to start the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett.  I love Pratchett's novels.  They are full of humour and even the character Death has a sense of humour.  I think he found the Discworld series a little too verbose however. 

So, after much deliberation, he's now reading Eragon by Christopher Paolini (with the rest of the Inheritance books waiting on the sidelines) and complaining how the movie moguls in Hollywood ruined the series by messing with the story.  Well, yes, they did!  Although I love the premise of the film Eragon, I was disappointed as it seemed to run a little slowly and lost much of the action promised in the book.  Also, time seemed to go by so quickly in the film, whereas in the books it takes much longer for Eragon to reach his destination.  Anyway, I digress...

I did a bit of searching and I stumbled across the perfect solution for my son (and probably me too).  There's a whole series of Resident Evil books available and I think these will be well received.  In fact, my other half would probably read them too.  These are going on my To Buy list and I might even get them on e-book format first.