“It’s saving humanity!” “It’s just like reading a book!” “It’s just like partying!” These and many other excuses can be found in Suzy Hansen’s amusing article on gaming and relationships, a connection that I suspect goes far deeper than anyone cares to admit.
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (Bat Segundo interview with Bissell)
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious. 
There was a time, back when I myself was beset with “Pac-Man Fever”, when an article like this would be unthinkable. Because, back then, video gamers didn’t have girlfriends to abandon. Then the Playstation came along, with its hip ad campaigns, seducing useful members of society into a deadly electronic web.
I was recovering from my own Nintendo addiction at the time. I had discovered a world of friends, women, and excessive drinking. Just when I shed my love of videogames, gaming became “cool”.
God I feel old.
Rasp: I think it was before the PlayStation. The NES seized the boys-bonding-around-a-console idea established with the Atari 2600 and took it one step further. It offered stuff like Duck Hunt, Zelda and Super Mario Brothers to broaden the appeal. Video game consoles were about more than boys. And in fact the boyhood could be put in abeyance well into adulthood. Results? Overgrown boys and the women who love them.