What are you currently reading?

[steve ridgway]

There are tales of soldiers being forced to paint dirty snow white in the winter and withered grass green in the summer ahead of a general's inspection at a military unit.

This is the general mentality of trying to impress higher authorities. When the Queen visited the university I was attending they painted all the corridors she was going to walk along and all those leading off that she would be able to see down. Just those. And bussed in a load of schoolchildren who were given flags to wave in case no university students showed up. That's what I heard anyway .

[AnotherSpin]

This is the general mentality of trying to impress higher authorities. When the Queen visited the university I was attending they painted all the corridors she was going to walk along and all those leading off that she would be able to see down. Just those. And bussed in a load of schoolchildren who were given flags to wave in case no university students showed up. That's what I heard anyway .

Of course. I also tidied up the scattered garments in the apartment and washed the piles of dishes in the sink before my wife came back from the dacha.

[Mandryka]

This is the general mentality of trying to impress higher authorities. When the Queen visited the university I was attending they painted all the corridors she was going to walk along and all those leading off that she would be able to see down. Just those. And bussed in a load of schoolchildren who were given flags to wave in case no university students showed up. That's what I heard anyway .

Decorators say that the Queen never knew what fresh air smells like, because wherever she went, they'd just painted.

[JBS]

I suspect the phenomenon was known in Victorian England.

[hopefullytrusting]

Intense and mind-altering: Adams's Fundamentals of Game Design:



A testament to the power of technical communication.

Doubling-up. Salen and Zimmerman's Rules of Play.



Also, going to be going on a massive book spending spree tonight, hopefully.

[JBS]

Doubling-up. Salen and Zimmerman's Rules of Play.



Also, going to be going on a massive book spending spree tonight, hopefully.

Looking forward to a full debriefing.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers.

[ritter]

Selections from T.S. Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, as presented in volume 1 of the Faber edition of the Collected Prose.



The Sacred Wood (from 1920) appears in fragmentary form in this volume, because those essays that were later revised and included in Selected Essays (1932) are presented in volume 2 of this series.

[hopefullytrusting]

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers.

So, depressingly good, good from start to finish, in my opinion.

Hopefully, I'll be done with my two videogame tomes sometime this week.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

So, depressingly good, good from start to finish, in my opinion.

Hopefully, I'll be done with my two videogame tomes sometime this week.

Deep South in the USA..
I read it in English a few years ago. Now reading it in Japanese. Watched the movie several times.

[Papy Oli]

Took a break from Flaubert last night and read Poe's the Fall of the House of Usher.

 

[JBS]

[Papy Oli]

A couple more tales:

Edgar Allan Poe - Metzengerstein
Edgar Allan Poe - Le Duc de l'Omelette

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Do you like the book and/or his haiku poems?
My hotel was very close to his cemetery when I was in Tokyo last year. I jogged and passed by the cemetery every morning and afternoon.

[AnotherSpin]

We had a small volume of Bashō's poetry in Russian translations by Vera Markova at home, bought by my mother. It seems to me that her translations were very good. At some moment, I finally managed to enter Bashō's world — or decided I had — and from that moment on, the book was always with me. For several years, I carried it in my jacket pocket almost constantly. Years went by, and I gave this book to my daughter, who lives in another country.

[JBS]

Do you like the book and/or his haiku poems?
My hotel was very close to his cemetery when I was in Tokyo last year. I jogged and passed by the cemetery every morning and afternoon.

Certainly worth reading, but I have the feeling there are crowds of allusions and references I'm missing: Barnhill annotates some, but a minimal amount (which might be good in the Way of Basho:

The notes may be there
Or maybe they are not there.
Either way, move on.)
 

[SimonNZ]

Coincidentally I decided just the other day that I need to read Basho's travel journal Narrow Road To The Deep North in the very near future, after having a critic highlight a section on Basho coming across an orphaned three year old.

but right now having both of these on the go:

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Certainly worth reading, but I have the feeling there are crowds of allusions and references I'm missing: Barnhill annotates some, but a minimal amount (which might be good in the Way of Basho:

The notes may be there
Or maybe they are not there.
Either way, move on.)
 

😆😆  Nice haiku!

[hopefullytrusting]

Looking forward to a full debriefing.

Okay, I have finally completed both the texts, and I will say, first off, you will almost assuredly come away liking the playing of videogames less (the sausage-getting-made analogy fits here).

I am not a videogame designer (nor do I have any aspirations to become one), but these are standard texts (Adams more than Salen & Zimmerman) for those who wish to walk down that path. (I read these books to bolster my ability to speak more intelligently on the subject with my peers, as part of the work I do revolves around intercultural rhetoric - in theory, at least, and videogames are the apotheosis of cultural artifacts, as nearly all of them, in fact, I cannot think of a single one that is not intercultural).

Out of these two, Salen & Zimmerman is more theoretical, and Adams is much more practical. This is due in part to when they were written, as Salen & Zimmerman was written during the nascent stage of videogames being taken seriously in academia, while by the time Adams came around it was already well established.

You can also tell that the scale and scope of Salen & Zimmerman exceeded the author's capacity - this is made patently obvious the further they get away from rules and play, when they try to enter the domain of culture and rhetoric (they are rudimental on the latter two, while experts on the former two). Adams, on the other hand, does not deviate outside his area of authority, and therefore his book is more solid (coherent and consistent), but less bold and daring, so you will not be blown away by any of his insights if you are familiar with videogames as a subject.

Both of these texts are thick, and not just thick but dense, so I cannot recommend them to anyone not very seriously invested in the subject. This is my job, so I am being paid to read, and if I were asked which to suggest between the two - it would be Adams, as much of what Salen & Zimmerman theorized about, especially regarding play, was in the early days of narratology versus ludology, which means it is now outdated and would be a waste of time if you aren't someone interested in the history of the topic.

[Florestan]

Okay, I have finally completed both the texts, and I will say, first off, you will almost assuredly come away liking the playing of videogames less (the sausage-getting-made analogy fits here).

I am not a videogame designer (nor do I have any aspirations to become one), but these are standard texts (Adams more than Salen & Zimmerman) for those who wish to walk down that path. (I read these books to bolster my ability to speak more intelligently on the subject with my peers, as part of the work I do revolves around intercultural rhetoric - in theory, at least, and videogames are the apotheosis of cultural artifacts, as nearly all of them, in fact, I cannot think of a single one that is not intercultural).

Out of these two, Salen & Zimmerman is more theoretical, and Adams is much more practical. This is due in part to when they were written, as Salen & Zimmerman was written during the nascent stage of videogames being taken seriously in academia, while by the time Adams came around it was already well established.

You can also tell that the scale and scope of Salen & Zimmerman exceeded the author's capacity - this is made patently obvious the further they get away from rules and play, when they try to enter the domain of culture and rhetoric (they are rudimental on the latter two, while experts on the former two). Adams, on the other hand, does not deviate outside his area of authority, and therefore his book is more solid (coherent and consistent), but less bold and daring, so you will not be blown away by any of his insights if you are familiar with videogames as a subject.

Both of these texts are thick, and not just think but dense, so I cannot recommend them to anyone not very seriously invested in the subject. This is my job, so I am being paid to read, and if I were asked which to suggest between the two - it would be Adams, as much of what Salen & Zimmerman theorized about, especially regarding play, was in the early days of narratology versus ludology, which means it is now outdated and would be a waste of time if you aren't someone interested in the history of the topic.

I did not understand a iota of what little I've been reading of the above, but I commend your passionate enjoyment of, and involvement in, a topic I have zero interest in. A welcome reminder that the world at alrge is vastly larger than one's own.