Weekly Book Recommendations (September 20)

It's been a while since I've had the bandwidth for the blog stuff, but here's a catch up on the books front

My Brother's Keeper by Tim Powers: Powers returns to his classic poets series - previously seen with Lord Byron and William Ashbless in Anubis Gates, Christina Rossetti in Hide Me Among the Graves, and Byron, Keats, and Shelley in Stress of her Regard - focusing on the Bronte family. When I tell people I'm reading a book about the Bronte family it makes it sound escholarly and me erudite. When I add "Fighting Werewolves!" it makes it sound awesome and me like a huge nerd. This is not peak Powers, but aside from Anubis Gates I've never been as sold on these secret history books compared to his others. Still, I enjoyed it quite a bit. 

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L Sayers: I was split on including this but felt I enjoyed it enough at the end to merit a recommendation. Sayers style is... odd. There's a density to the text that requires more work than, say, Christie, and she is so rooted in the class mores of the British interwar period that it felt even more class conscious than Christie (which I did not expect) and emphasized how much the past was another country; it felt at times in this (and in the one I'm currently reading) that it's a SF/F Novel where there is world building being done that has to be absorbed and applied to make sense of the puzzle being presented. The biggest issue is that so many of the characters, even the admirable ones, were just mean spirited towards some of the others for reasons that mostly make sense in the UK class sense. Still, it was a solid, fair, nested mystery with a good resolution. 

The Complete Flash Gordon Library volumes 1 and 2 - On the Planet Mongo and The Tyrant of Mongo: If you can get past, like, the first few panels of the series include some really jarring racial caricatures from the 1930's before our heroes get to Mongo this is really good. It's never free from the yellow peril tropes but the artwork is as good as Hal Foster's on Prince Valiant (the highest compliment I can give for a comic strip) and stories rollick along. Ming is a great, smart, long term villain where Flash develops a plan and Ming see through it and blocks it, rather than having him be a buffoon who is perpetually outwitted by the hero where you can't tell why they're still in power. Does it rely on too many formula beats that suffer when there isn't a week of time between each strip? Yes. Every place they visit has a beautiful princess who falls for Flash and does things that make Dale jealous; they never get anywhere without crashing their ship, Flash is reduced to near death about 6 times in these two volumes. Still, it is solid storytelling in the pulp vein. You could do worse than emulating it in your pulp heroes campaign. 

Weekly Book Recommendations (September 3)

This Week's Reads

The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis: Grandmaster Willis is in true form here, with one of her classic romantic comedy SF farces. This one is remarkably grounded, taking place in the relative here and now of Earth in the 2020's, where our heroine is in Roswell trying to support her friend's wedding ceremony while keeping up with her unspoken contract of convincing said friend to not marry the latest in her series of bad decisions - in this case an obsessed UFOlogist  who wants the wedding held in the Roswell UFO museum - when she is abducted by an actual alien. Shenanigans ensue. This is a light, fun, funny summer read. 

Forced Perspectives by Tim Powers: another recent novel by someone who had long since proven their chops beyond any measure, Powers is returning to the Haunted Los Angeles of the Vickery and Castine series. It's kind of hard to recommend a Powers book without explaining it, and explaining it ruins some of the fun. So in brief this has to do with Hollywood, Cecil B DeMille, 1960's B movies, Egyptology, and a return to Powers' motif of people trying to find a way to avoid the afterlife and subsequent judgement. It's not his best work, but that's a really, really high bar and I'm looking forward to finding book 3 with these characters 

Due to my commitment to only comment positively on things I will not be mentioning the other recent read - something from the cheap dimestore paperbacks of the 1980's D&D/SG stories that would now be called Isekai - but gee howdy did the light pure plot writing style contain some absolutely horrible elements and pushing through to the end deus ex machina was a mistake. 

 

Weekly Book Recommendations (August 23)

The Hidden Halls of Hazakor by Scott Fitzgerald Gray: This is a sizable softcover tome, some 70 pages, full of what can only be described as what The Keep on the Borderlands would be if it were written today, but someone without Gary's prose stylings. I bought the book to read and then pass on to the teen library RPG section, as this is designed for 12+ year olds to read and learn to run their first dungeon. In that it is very well done, providing a fleshed out 'home base' with some internal mysteries for the PCs to work from and the Tomb logically divided up into key-access areas so the PCs don't get in over their heads and the GM knows what's accessible and what to prepare for in any given session, with scattered GM advice on how to handle the sorts of table problems likely to arise in this bit. In general I like it, for all that I'm not a fan of the 5E mechanics its built on: this is an adventure with training wheels on, and we need those. It is fascinating to compare it to the Tomb of the Serpent King, which is the OSR take on the same concept and so much more spare in the verbiage and not looking for teachable moments between players so much as teaching the players how a dungeon works. Now the library has both; it will be interesting to see what the kids do with them. 

Weekly Book Recommendation (August 16)

Hellboy Omnibus, volume 1 The Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola (John Byrne scripted the first arc): I do nothing to hide my deep love for Atomic Robo, but there's no avoiding the conclusion that without Hellboy there's not an Atomic Robo. I bought this volume for my Robo-loving daughter but she was never able to get into it because of the creepy horror aspects. Not so much a concern for me. I need to get the other 3 omnibus volumes on my "please buy me for presents" lists. The artwork is so distinctly Mignola and so vibrantly alive while still being cloaked in shadows. The plotting has this strange sticatto beat that is also distinctively Mignola, with minimal dialogue that acts as connective tissue between the stories while crisply defining the characters. There really is nothing else like it. If you haven't read it, you should. 

Weekly Book Recommendations (August 9)

This Week's Reads

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis: This really is a grand master at the top of her powers. Willis' ability to show rather than tell, and to drive real emotional connection to the characters, come together into an amazing farce jumping across multiple time periods. For some reason it came up in conversation and then I had to explain it to my daughter and then I had to reread it and now she's reading it and giggling incessantly. It's that sort of book.

Summer's End and other one page adventures by Ben Milton: A quick 24 page zine with 12 short adventures geared for Knave 2E, this is clever and fun and will definitely be seeing some use both at the table and as inspiration. 

Weekly Book Recommendations (July 26)

This week's reads: 

The Collected Fantasies, Vol 1: The End of the Story by Clark Ashton Smith: I have been wanting to read this for a long time and it finally popped as a birthday present from my denuded Amazon list. So good. From the first sentence of the first story he had published Smith is revealed as a singular voice in weird fiction. Not everything in this is a banger, and there's a decent amount of casual racism in the first half of the 20th century mold (mostly of someone having the distinctive physical characteristics of x or y "race" as a means of personality shorthand) but offhand I (as cis het white guy) didn't see anything too egregious. Yes, the queen of the hidden African tribe immediately falls for the white explorer who enters their confines, but he also falls for her and it does appear to be a love match of equals for their time together so; and yes, he repeats the trope in another story but there the white explorer counts upon his natural superiority to the locals and the women and gets a delightful comeuppance from it. Many of these tales end in the classic Weird Tales fashion of shocking reveal sudden stop, while others come to more traditional endings and even some narrator codas; he switches up perspectives from first to third person, his narrators feel distinct enough to not come to a sense of sameness... it's all solid stuff. Good enough that I'm pulling concepts from it for my upcoming parallel to New Salem: Renaissance view of how to do supers in an ACAB world

The 1983 Annual Worlds Best SF edited by Donald A Wollheim: Earlier this year I read the 1981 volume and there wasn't enough in it for me to recommend it. This one, however, has enough solid stories to justify a recommendation. I'm never sure on these because SF is always as much about the "now" as it is the future or past, and at 1983 it's an almost unbridgeable gulf in zeitgeist - and I lived through it! in this volume the Scourge (James White), Pawn's Gambit (Timothy Zahn) and Swarm (Bruce Sterling) are solid tales of first contact puzzles approached in very different ways; A Letter from the Clearys is a good enough tale from Connie Willis about families post the apocalypse hanging over us all in the 80's that felt a little Eudora Welty to me (compliment!), and Written in Water (Tanith Lee) and Souls (Joanna Russ) are powerfully emotionally evocative, and the latter kept me up much too late so I could finish it before turning off the light. I don't think I've read enough Russ and need to rectify that. Since I only say positive things on this here blog (most days) I'll say the rest are fine to meh, but there's more good than bad in this one. 

Astro City Volume 1 and Volume 2: Potato chips, team. Once you start you have to keep going till there ain't no more. Volume 2, Confession, is just outstanding. And I have a signed issue in that run!

Weekly Book Recommendations (July 19)

This Week's Reads

Astro City Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, Volume 8: These are like potato chips; you can't read just one. Busiek and Anderson have such a singular voice on this series that if you like it you generally adore it. There's a stretch in some of these were the stories are downers (a couple "I'm willing to do good but super heroics/intersecting with superhumans is too damn dangerous") that are weakened by being right on top of each other, but otherwise this is all really good stuff. 

Another in my occasional "Not Recommendations But I Need To Talk About It":

Miracleman: The Silver Age by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham: I, like so many people, was looking forward to the completion of this story, halted in 1993 by Eclipse comics implosion. When the shenanigans settled and the creators could finish the book with Marvel in 2023 I was interested, but didn't track it down until this week. I was ultimately disappointed. I'm sure the time lapse - even if Gaiman had the scripts completed back then they were doubtless edited some, and Buckingham's art style has changed over time (of course it has!) - which gives the book a bit of a disjointed feel. 

Spoilers ahead

Weekly Book Recommendations (July 12)

This week's reads

Knave Second Edition: I was in Ben Milton's Kickstarter for this hyper stripped down version of D&D for OSR play. I gotta admit that for what it is designed to do it is pretty sweet. Milton designed the game to run for 5th graders (about 10-11 year olds for those of you not in the states), and honestly with the inclusion of another adult GM at the library I kind of want to start next school year shifting over to Knave and run Tomb of the Serpent King followed by cobbling stuff from the Dyson Logos map set I just Humble Bundled. Lots of the book is random tables to provide inspiration or specificity on magical or weird things at the drop of a hat, and that's great. I'm not 100% sold on the magic systems, but they make sense internally and produce an interesting world, so I'm not gonna kvetch.

Astro City: The Dark Age (which is in two volumes): This was originally meant to be the second volume of Marvels which didn't focus on Phil Sheldon (the sequel that did continue to focus on Sheldon did come out, and it's much less intricate than this), eventually making its way to Astro City. It's a solid read on it's own - a little overlong perhaps - but there's an extra layer of fun in tying each of these back to their birthplace Marvel plotlines. It's obvious that the Blue Knight is the Punisher, for example, but the whole sequence at the end of book 3 I was sure was tied to Serpent Throne stuff from the Avengers originally, through Busiek's redacted notes, was meant to take place in the Hellfire Club during the Dark Phoenix plot. I think it works better here then it would have in Marvels volume 2, because the creative team was able to make up what they needed to move the story forward and not be locked into the continuity (even if playing games with that continuity is it's own sort of fun). 

Astro City is a great resource for anyone trying to follow the V&V mold and build a campaign from scratch. All of the characters are very distinctly their own things while still being recognizable as their comics inspirations. Once they're set, Busiek plays out their stories in a logical way, taking them further from their inspirations, just as your own campaign would do. He locks down hard points in the extensive history early on, and then comes back and builds on them piece by piece as needed. Time passes, characters change and grow. Most game worlds (and independent publishers) have their own Superman, their own Batman, but none of them feel as well realized to me as Samaritan and Confessor. Check these out if you haven't before, if only for game inspiration.

 

Weekly Book Recommendation (June 28)

This week's reads

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett: This is the 31st of the Discworld books, and my initial read had me slot it as one of his lesser efforts. The kiddo just read it and raved about it, which made me revisit and kick it up a notch. An interesting analysis of war and national pride and faith. 

Comeback by Dick Francis: Once again, it turns out this Dick Francis guy wrote good horse thrillers. I wonder if anyone else noticed this. And again, that these are almost all free standing stories without returning characters and wildly different plots is wonderful because I just have no freaking clue what will happen next. 

The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin: This was meant to be volumes 2 and 3 of her Great Cities trilogy, but as she was working on it Covid came and radically altered the New York she was writing about. This book absolutely feels like the key scenes outline of what was meant to be a more complex pair of books. I get why she had to walk away and why she couldn't completely walk away, and it's a fun read, but it's not a patch on The City We Became. I recommend you read this one immediately after that one just to see how it ends.

Weekly Book Recommendation (June 21)

This week's reads:

Christa Comes out of Her Shell by Abbi Waxman: This was just wonderful. 90% of the book from Christa's first person narration and Waxman admirably creates a protagonist who is a pleasure to be with even when she is making dumb decisions, because Waxman has spent the time letting you know where Christa is damaged and how she is healing. And the book spends equal time showing how her family - damaged by celebrity and the early death of a parent - are likewise healing. The romance plot is believable and the prospective partner likable. The tension of the plot follows logically from the edge case premise (Christa's dad was a Steve Irwin-like international celebrity nationalist who died in a plane crash 25 years ago who has reappeared alive). No one is stupid for reasons of plot or romance novel beat structure. I just enjoyed the heck out of this. 

Just Stab Me Now by Jill Bearup: This is delightfully meta. Bearup is a YouTuber who in 2022 did a run of YouTube Shorts about a fantasy author who held auditions for the ingenue of her new series and rather than a 20 year old waif of a princess she got a 36 year old widowed mother of two with a shocking propensity to hide knives on her person and no fucks left to give who looks exactly like the author. The short's humor came from the negotiation of the author, Caroline, trying to get the heroine, Rosamund, to follow the enemies-to-lovers romance fiction beat structure with Rosamund fighting the inanity of it. Bearup's fans demanded more, and then when the sequence came to a conclusion asked where the book was in enough numbers that Bearup, who has only ever written fanfic, decided to self publish the novel. So we have the layer of Caroline's work life, then Caroline as writer with her (hot) editor, then Caroline negotiating with Rosamund and the two male leads meant to be her love triangle (and her Hot Enemy has the face of Caroline's Hot Editor), and finally Rosamund story itself, as she doesn't remember the talking to Caroline when she's in the plot. It's... cute. It really is. But it's also clearly her first full novel so while it has a ton of energy it doesn't have as much polish. Still, vivacious and unkempt beats sterile perfection every day. 

 

Weekly Book Recommendations (June 14)

The Godfather by Mario Puzo: Puzo's writing style is a perfect example of how to keep the reader engaged while making absolutely no demands on them. Everything is quickly and cleanly explained, backstories or side tales are offset in their own sections and delivered in the same voice with the same presentation, and all details you might ever want to know (and many that you likely don't in the sense of "what is this doing here? why are we tracking these people for this bit? Ah well I'm in for the ride....") are given freely. If this sounds like a knock on it, it's not. There is absolutely a space for this sort of book and Puzo nails it. There are the usual possible complaints about how this romanticized the Mafia, but pretty much all Mafia fiction does that, and Puzo uses it to good effect when there's a sudden moment of brutal violence (never explicitly described, usually off screen) which knocks you back. 

I had always heard that the film version of the Godfather was so much superior to the book, but having seeing the movie for the first time a couple years back (on the full screen with Pacino doing a Q&A after, which is probably the best way to have seen it) and now read the book, I don't agree. The screenplay is pretty much the book with the "why am I reading about this person?" sections cut out, with the book's utter lack of obfuscation making it clear to the actors exactly what the characters are feeling in any one moment. Sure it's a good film, but not that much better than the book. Maybe it's my lack of boomer great-director nostalgia, my general distaste for Mafia fiction, or something else. But this isn't a movie review, it's a book recommendation, and if you liked the movie, you'll like the book. 

Weekly Book Recommendations (June 7)

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie: You all know this one, right? Well, if all you know are the myriad film and TV versions I do recommend you go back to the original and give it a read. Yes, it's full of between the wars British classism and temperament of nationality stereotypes but the writing is sharp, incisive, funny at points, and leads up to a satisfying conclusion even if you already know the ending. I'm a big fan of these stories as movies and will likely now track down more of the originals. 

NOT RECOMMENDED BUT WANT TO COMMENT ON

The Prince of the Marshes And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq by Rory Stewart: I had put this on my wish list in 2006 under the theory that it might help me make sense of the culsterfuck/omnishambles that was the Iraq Occupation, and also that maybe it might make good fodder for a gaming setting. I only ended up with a copy of the book this Christmas, and having tried it I'm sad to say it didn't do either. At this remove there's just no sense to make of the catastrophic mess that was postwar Iraq, and Stewart, a British citizen with some experience in the Arab world and some diplomatic experience, is just too earnest in presenting things. He had nothing to do with the planning or execution of the war, and appears to honestly have thought he might be able to at first accomplish, and later salvage, something beneficial to the Iraqi people out of a mess not his making. I appreciate that, but he also lacks a journalists/storytellers instincts to make the book really engaging to me - it may be his recitation of events, but it feels dry most of the time and clearly futile - which may be more about me than him. If these sorts of books are your jam, this one is technically well written but its hard to make sense of the mess that he was in. 

Weekly Book Recommendations (May 31)

Bad Trips: a monstrous RPG road trip across America by Finn Gallagher: this was something I picked up during the big Kickstarter event in February. I've never, ever, been a fan of FATE (every exposure I've had since it first came out has been negative) so Monster of the Week was never on my radar, — EDIT: friend of the Blog Joshua Kronengold pointed out that MotW is a Powered by the Apocalypse game and not FATE so maybe I will pick it up — but I love my some cryptozoology RPG ever since I ran a one shot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer set in early 1900's Yale with a "raised by wolves" boy as one of the heroes fighting a cryptid, so I figured I could repurpose this to some other system. Gallagher has produced something truly fun here, and if like me you're not a FATE fan it'll be trivial to convert to a GUMSHOE or d6 system or any other game. The concept here is 12 "episodes" of monster hunting across the US, and each episode is clear, clean, thematically distinct, and immediately feels playable. None have a ton of detail, but that's a plus for me since it makes it easy to work out the specifics. Highly recommended. 

Weekly Book Recommendations (May 24)

The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse: This memoir of life on the campaign trail for the 1972 election is both highly informative of how the political process is constantly mutating but remarkably stable in some ways, a cautionary tale of the nature of the press and politics today that SHOULD NOT still be as relevant as it is, and a great way to fill in gaps of your awareness of the Watergate affair. Also this is my first real dive into Spiro Agnew and that he was bounced from politics for COMPLETELY DIFFERENT corruption than Richard Nixon is just the chefs kiss of the dumpster fire of that time period. 

The Plastic Man Archives Volume 1 by Jack Cole: This is rough in the way that a lot of early 1940's comics are rough - the wartime jingoism at points, the casual racism of the era, etc. - but I still come down on recommending it just because Cole's panel compositions are just amazing, his creativity with the character is off the charts for the time period, and many of the plots are just batshit crazy. Like, if I tried to explain them to you, you would not believe me. 

Weekly Book Recommendations (April 26)

Coming as a surprise to no one, I finished rereading Batman '66 this week! 

Batman 66 Vol 5 by Jeff Parker and others: This ones a strange beast because it focuses on integrating all the villains that don't appear in the TV show but do appear in the comics. That changes the tone a bit, but it's worth it for watching the Adam West Batman completely take the piss out of the Bane character/inevitable story arc. 

Batman '66 Meets the Man from UNCLE by Jeff Parker and David Hahn: This is really the coda of Parker's work on the series, closing up some loose ends. It's clear Parker loves the UNCLE franchise as much as he loves the '66 Batman, and the story almost works beginning to end. That's a feat because these 6 issues crossovers get very ragged with the Batman '66 style of ever issue having a midpoint break things look bleak moment to capture the 2-part TV show. 

Batman '66 Meets Steed and Mrs. Peel by Ian Edginton and Matthew Dow Smith: This was a reeeeeal close call on whether to put this as a recommendation, and it's kinda here for completeness reasons. I wanted this to be so much better, and it would have been if it were a lot shorter. Still, it's the Avengers and Batman, so it's got a baseline charm, I suspect it would have been a notch higher if Parker had been more involved.

Batman '66 Meets the Green Hornet by Kevin Smith, Ralph Garman, Ty Templeton: OK, this is just fun. The fact that our protagonists are constantly turning on each other makes the extra length of a 6 issue series work, and the plans of the teamed-up General Gumm and Joker legit work in the goofy obsessed comic book villain sense. Plus the artwork is vibrant and bast paced. Big thumbs up. 

Weekly Book Recommendations (April 19)

This weeks reads

Batman '66 Volumes 1-4 by Jeff Parker and various Artists. For my money, these are the best Batman comics of the 21st century. But I also think Brave and the Bold is the best animated Batman series, so you make the call. This book perfectly captures the feel 1966 TV show. If you like those, find these. It's so much damn fun.

Friday Book (and Movie) Recommendations (April 12)

This Week's Read

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: so there's this anecdote about Scooby-Doo where other animators from the time period complain "why didn't my crappy kids cartoon become a cultural icon and this one did?" 

Because it did. Because Zeitgeist. Because I watched Scooby-Doo and Jabberjaw and Speed Buggy and all the rest of them and somehow Scooby-Doo is indefinably slightly better. Because suck up and deal. This is kind of what it's like reading the "Daring" "Contrarian" one-start reviews all one after another on Goodreads. Seeing one person brag that they originally gave it a 5 start review that they reversed to one star after reading Armada and realizing that Klein was a "one trick pony" in terms of his authorial voice is just the cherry on top of the social media trend chasing sundae. In the course of a decade the book went from beloved to derided because enough people on line decided they could get more engagement attacking it. 

Now, I'm not going to say that RPO is a great book. It's not - it's an early century B list book that somehow hit at just the right time with just the right marketing for people with a lot of talent invest in a film version of it. It's the Julie & Julia of the SF market. But what it is a damn engaging, quick read, laser targeted at Gen-Xers that clearly deeply loves the trivia it's tossing at you while still taking it, and the obsession of it, to task. 

There isn't a moment outside the OASIS where Wade isn't commenting on how the world was falling apart just because everyone decided it was too much effort to give a shit any more, where everyone had run away into an artificial reality, and ownership of that might be the last resource to stop the world from falling apart if you could stop it from falling completely under corporate control. There's no where left to run to. But the creators of this place are either forcing you to relive their childhoods in a fantasy realm OASIS, or built a fantasy realm retreat for themselves in the real world. They could change things, but its too much fun watching people play the game. Memorizing the trivia. Making it "matter". While as Wade keeps commenting, the world is imploding and saving it requires playing a perfect game of Joust. It's absurd, and Wade's voice make it clear that Cline knows it's absurd. 

I read it when it came out and enjoyed it for the B list fun it was - it's got just about as much heft as Starter Villain even if it's targeting different villains and audiences -  and the reread basically confirmed this. I did reread this after Netflix kicked the movie at me, but that's not what I'm recommending (it was... meh?) 

Godzilla X Kong from Legendary Pictures: Took the older kiddo, loved it. It's pure unadulterated B movie cheese. If you like the other Mosterverse films, you'll like this one. Again, it's not art, but it was a wonderful father/daughter bonding experience and it was just a ton of fun. 

Friday Book Recommendations (April 5)

This week's read 

Starter Villain by John Sclazi: Very much in the tone of Kaiju Preservation Society, Scalzo tosses out a fun romp tackling the concept of "James Bond Villainy" as the last book handled "Giant Monsters". I gave it to my daughter for her Easter basket. She read it between 8 and 11 AM and handed it to me, so I could read it from 4-7PM. It's surprisingly deep for something as breezy as it is. 

Failure to Communicate by Kaia Sønderby: recommended by a friend when I said I was looking for more diverse authors, this is a SF book about an autistic woman in the future who acts as an interspecies translator and diplomat as she has already had to learn how her own species communicates. The broader universe is quickly understandable (an alliance of species in a currently cold war with a conquering slaver race ala Original Series Star Trek) because those elements are there for both the novel's mystery framework and the unique perspective of being in the protagonist/narrators head. If this is what Sønderby's early work is like I'll be tracking her career with interest. 

Friday Book Recommendations (Mar 29)

I didn't so much miss last week as not finish any books I considered worth recommending. Which is why this week I was up from 2 am -5 am finishing this, which I have been savoring my way through for the last 9 months. Don't say I never do anything for you. 

The Best of Catherynne M. Valente, Volume One by Catherynne M. Valente: This book is a delight from start to finish. Her prose style is so distinctive that every story feels like meeting an old friend with a spectacular new saga, and her sense of compassion for humanity and sense of humor makes every such saga a reason to linger over coffee all afternoon to hear it. I can't recommend this highly enough. 

Friday Book Recommendations (Mar 15)

This week's reads: 

Dogs in the Vineyard by D. Vincent Baker: My work on my Lore24 setting caused me to pull this one back out and give it a proper read. It's quite clever in a lot of ways - the worldbuilding is solid, the voice to the reader is open and generally explicable (though sometimes I had to double back to make sure of something), and the dice mechanic is neat. I think as with many experimental games it gets caught up in its own dice mechanical games where the mechanic itself becomes the game, but I'd need to play it to see. I know I've run into that problem myself sometimes. Still, by making the players think about storytelling and how they interact with the game differently, Baker did great work here. 

A Stroke of the Pen by Terry Pratchett: These are some? Most? All? of the  "lost" Pratchett stories that he had alluded to from his days as a newspaperman. And they're cute. They're not much more than that, and they don't try to be. They are made to raise a smile, maybe a chuckle, take up several column inches, and then you move on to read about trade negotiations or Cold War tensions. But in them you can see the flashes of brilliance and the bare bones of storytelling that will eventually grow into Sir Terry. If you're a fan of the man, these are worth the time.