Book Review - The Devil's Storybooks

I'm not sure when or how this book landed on my bookshelf but I found it there recently and decided to give it a read. I'm glad I did. The Devil's Storybooks is a collection of twenty short stories. It sounds like this was originally published as two separate books but the edition I have includes the stories from both books in one collection. 

Written for children, each of the stories are rather short with most being fewer than 10 pages and some quite a bit shorter than that. The language is simple and evocative and would be great for reading aloud to smaller children. My edition also includes illustrations with each story that makes for a lot of fun.

Board Game Review - Broken and Beautiful

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer. Something that might otherwise be discarded becomes something unique, valuable and beautiful. The game Broken and Beautiful uses the art of Kintsugi as the theme. 

The game is played over multiple rounds. Players take turns selecting cards to create sets of bowls, plates, cups, jars and other pottery and servingware. Players can either add the card to their collection or sell it (discard it) for gold to be used later. After each player has selected two cards through a "snake draft" process there will be two remaining face up cards. Those cards determine what will be broken. Any player with a matching type of pottery must "break" their pieces by rotating the card sideways. 

Broken dishes and pottery are worth zero points. Thus, players may use the gold they received when discarding other cards to repair their broken items. Broken items regain their original scoring potential while also gaining additional scoring benefits, making them more precious.

The small deck and simple rules result in a quick play time while still showing some depth of strategy that may have some tricky decisions. Depending on what cards are available, it can be tough deciding whether to take a card and use it to score or cash it in for gold in case one of your other high-scoring cards gets broken.

Book Review - The Midnight Library

Trigger Warning: Suicide & Depression

Life is hard. Life is messy. That is at the heart of the narrative in The Midnight Library. Nora is a woman in her thirties feeling intensely dissatisfied with her life. She not only feels that she has failed to achieve her own goals and potential but worries that she has ruined the lives of others. After the events of one particularly awful day, she decides to kill herself.

The afterlife she finds herself in isn't anything she would have expected. Rather, she enters a library with what appears to be endless rows of books. She quickly meets Mrs. Elm who acts as a sort of spirit guide and caretaker of the library. Mrs. Elm is in the form of Nora's childhood librarian who was a kind of solace during hard times in her youth.

Mrs. Elm explains that each one of the books represents an alternate version of Nora's life. It is a life in which different decisions were made that created different outcomes. Nora now has the unique opportunity to select a book and take her place in that life to see if it is the life she would like to return to. If the book/life she selects doesn't meet Nora's desires she will return to the library and select another book again and again until she finds her perfect life.

Board Game Review - Good Cop, Bad Cop (third edition)

Good Cop, Bad Cop is a great team based social deduction game. In each game, players are randomly dealt 3 facedown cards which will determine whether the player is a (as you may have guessed from the title) a Good Cop or a Bad Cop. Each turn, a player may Investigate another player (by looking at one of their 3 facedown cards), pick up some equipment or even a gun, or Shoot a gun they picked up earlier.

The goal is to eliminate the leader of your opposing team. At the onset of the game, you don't know who is on your team so you need to rely on social manipulation and table talk to try and form alliances and determine who you can trust and who may be scheming to take you down. Some of the equipment you pick up can help expose team members, but if you accidentally reveal the leader of your own team then the opposing team will be able to quickly target and eliminate that player.

If you've played games like Mafia or Werewolf, you will find familiar elements here. I like the interesting twists added by the equipment cards that can give you a special advantage or even cause a little chaos by manipulating the identity cards (which could result in a person becoming a member of a different team).

Even though it has player elimination, each game goes fairly quickly so there won't be a lot of downtime for players eliminated early on. There are even some equipment cards that can 'revive' a previously eliminated player to get them back in the game.

Board Game Review - Viscounts of the West Kingdom

I recently had a fun time learning Viscounts of the West Kingdom from Garphill Games and Renegade Game Studios. This is the third in the "West Kingdom" series and yet another amazing game from Shem Phillips.     

As with the other West Kingdom games, players strive to earn the most victory points by hiring various workers and using their resources to advance their goals. Similar to the first two games, you must work to build a deck of workers that will best help ensure you have the right resources and influence to carry out the tasks at the right time.    

Available actions are determined by moving your Viscount figure around a Rondel that outlines a specific path around the board. The amount you can move depends on which worker you play on your turn (though you can adjust this slightly by paying coins or building a certain building). When your Viscount ends movement, you are presented with a handful of different actions. 

Board Game Review - Nidavellir

Nidavellir is one of those games that I kept seeing on the ‘Hotness’ list but never really took the time to learn anything about it. I finally decided to give it a try and I’m glad I did.   

Thematically, Nidavellir is the name of the Dwarf Kingdom and the kingdom is being threatened. Your goal is to hire up an army to help repel the threat. Honestly, the melding of the theme is pretty tenuous but the art and style is fun.  

At a high level this is an auction game where you bid coins to try and hire cards from three different taverns. The cards interact in a set collection / combo method to score points and give some unique bonuses and abilities. 

Board Game Review - Running With the Bulls

Have you ever had a desire to throw yourself in front of a bunch of charging bulls?  Well, Calliope Games has a way to do it that’s safe for you and for the bulls.  Their game Running With the Bulls lets you help direct your own group of “runners” as they try to race across the city of El Toro to a variety of possible destinations. 

The runners and the bulls are represented by colorful dice and the city of El Toro is filled with whimsical artwork with lots of little nuances to make you laugh. 

The game is played over three days (rounds).  Each day, all players roll their dice to determine their starting point at the top of the city.  The larger bull dice are also rolled and will start alongside the runners.  

Book Review - The Eye of the World

I'm certainly late to the party on this one. The Eye of the World sat on my shelf unread for over two decades before I finally cracked the cover and it was already old and well beloved by the time I purchased a copy. Now that I've finally dipped my tip into the monumental work that is Jordan's Wheel of Time series, I can understand the appeal. 

The prologue quickly set up some tension and intriguing insights into the overarching storyline and mythos. It also left the reader with plenty of questions, just the thing to keep pages turning.

The book does a great job of introducing us to a wealth of characters, locations and stories. I was pleased that most of the characters quickly felt distinct with their own characteristics and voice. Their actions and reactions felt fairly believable given the circumstances and the nature of each character. We didn't get a ton of depth into the characters from the prologue but moving into the first chapter, the author methodically puts characters into our path and drops details to us in a slow but increasingly steady pace. 

Board Game Review - Blue Lagoon

Have you played Blue Lagoon? 

 

The game has two rounds. Each round is scored the same and gameplay is basically the same in each phases with a slight rule twist in the second phases. While this is a strategy game, the rules and gameplay are simple enough for younger players or new gamers. The art and theme are great as well. 

 

On your turn, you either place one of your explorers or one of your villages onto the game board. In the first phase, your settlers must either be placed in the water or else on a tile adjacent to a token you already placed. Villages must be placed on land next to a settler you’ve played previously. For the second phase, you remove all of your settlers but leave the village tokens on the board. On your turn you place your settlers next to one of your already placed items.  

 

Book Review - The Clockwork Scarab

I received an advanced reader's copy of The Clockwork Scarab ages ago, but somehow it slipped through the cracks. I remembered being intrigued by the overall premise—young female relations of Sherlock Holmes and Bram Stoker taking on a mystical mystery in a steampunk London. It sounded like fun. I finally cracked the cover and dove in but I found myself struggling to stay as interested as I would have liked.

The overall premise is intriguing. The development left me wanting more. The story is presented in first-person narration by Evaline Stoker and Mina Holmes as they pass the storytelling narrative back and forth between one another from chapter to chapter. The alternating narrative does help with the sometimes uneven delivery of plot elements since jumping from one perspective to another (often within different locations and with different knowledge) explains why we get unsteady introductions of information and plot points. 

We learn that the Stoker family is actually a bloodline of vampire hunters and that Miss Stoker is a sort of hunter in training, still working her way up to being a full Slayer. Interestingly, it seems that her brother, Bram Stoker, isn't quite as involved in the realm of the supernatural. He is merely writing what he considers to be fiction. Meanwhile, Miss Holmes is the niece of Sherlock Holmes, who is definitely a real character and not fiction. And although Miss Holmes has shown that she has intelligence and deductive skills, she is still relegated to being kept apart from all things Holmesian. 

Let's try that again...not dead yet

I know I made a post like this ~18 months ago....the past year+ have been a little crazy.  I'm truly hopeful that it will work out this time and I can/will get back into a regular regimen of posting.

Thanks for anybody who's still visiting this blog.  I'll be dusting off cobwebs and making more posts soon.

As a side note, while the posts are certainly smaller, I have been posting with more regularity on my Instagram accounts...so feel free to hop over there for some updates.

Personal instagram = TheOkester

Board game related instagram = BountifulGaming

Book Review - The Delusionist

As a child, there were a bunch of things I wanted to be when I grew up. High up on that list was the career of magician. That history alone had me interested in The Delusionist. As the synopsis outlines, this book is about a teenager named Quinn who has a lifelong goal of being a magician. He is working towards earning a spot at a super exclusive Magic summer camp but naturally there will be a few obstacles in the way.

Quinn generally performs magic with his best friend Perry and even though it seems clear that Quinn is the mastermind behind the magic, Perry is the outgoing crowd-pleaser who always gets everything right.  Quinn generally doesn't feel jealous or resentful of Perry but it's clear throughout the book that Quinn feels like he's a second class person, especially next to his best friend. As the camp audition rules arrive, the wording seems to suggest that they are looking for SOLO performers rather than group acts like the friends have. Quinn is both excited and a little sad about splitting up to try out.  At about this same time, the boys meet a girl that recently moved into town who also has a passion for magic. Watching her tricks, they are quickly in awe of her talent and it's clear that she could be their main competition in the camp tryout. Add to this that Quinn has an immediate crush on her and things are really starting to get complicated for this competition.

The book is filled with a lot of Quinn's inner monologues as he tries to work through his emotions and struggles with his feelings of inadequacies and doubt. His parents are supportive but they are super quirky and hyper involved in their performance project. And with Quinn's friend and hopefully-girlfriend as his main competition, Quinn is left to try and figure out the path forward on his own.

Still alive -- 9 months since the last post

Wow....has it really been 9 months since I last posted?  Some years/months I was better about making posts than others but I feel like this might be the longest outage between posts.  I don't know if anybody subscribes to this or even visits anymore.  I guess we'll see over time.  My page counter claims that I get between 250 and 300 pageviews each month so there's at least something that wanders by even if it's just an automated web crawler.

I started this blog back in 2004 with no real specific aim or goal originally.  I figured it would just be a random dumping ground for ideas, writing or whatever.  Over the years it's morphed a little bit and has been filled with personal updates about myself and my family, creative writing, travelogs, reviews about movies/books/boardgames/theatre/videogames  or just random sharing of Internet minutiae and memes.

I'm not sure if I'll actually get this up and running again with any sort of consistency or momentum but for now I'm stopping by to say I'm still alive.  Back when I first started this blog, I had been married less than a decade and we had 3 very young children (one was less than a year at the time). My wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary last year and all of our kids have graduated high school (one is married and the youngest just started attending college).  I did finally graduate with that English major and I still work in software even though I don't really love the field. 

I'll think about posting more updates later...even if just for the unknown human posterity who might stumble on this and find it interesting.

Thanks for sticking around.  If you're still here, feel free to drop a note and say "HI"

Books Reviewed in 2021

Each year I try to read and review a bunch of books. Some years I do better than others. Some years life gets too crazy and I either don't read as much as I'd like, or I don't write reviews on as much, or a combination of both.

Below are the books reviewed during this year.

Here are links to the past few years (2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009)

1. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse
2. Codename Danger: Unmasking a Villain
3. The Pillars of the Earth
4. Real vs Rumor: How to Dispel Latter-Day Myths
5. Dandelion Wine
6. 
   

Book Review - Dandelion Wine

When I think of Ray Bradbury, I usually think of science-fiction or at least fantastical-fiction. Dandelion Wine captures the magic and fantastical of his other writing but it does so in a much more subtle manner. 

This book is a story of the summertime adventures of Douglas Spaulding, a 12-year old boy in the small town of Green Town, Illinois in 1928. Douglas' experiences vary wildly in scope and nature but from a high level, they could mostly be considered fairly ordinary. And yet, Bradbury weaves them into magical tales of growth and imagination. 

The title of the book comes from the story of Douglas' grandfather bottling dandelion wine throughout the summer and Douglas presenting it as a metaphor for bottling up the various experiences and memories of each summer day. Each golden bottle represents a different memory, tucked away to be retrieved and savored at a later date. 

Book Review - Real vs Rumor: How to Dispel Latter-Day Myths

Growing up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I heard many rumors ranging from the mundane to the outrageous.  Some were presented by people trying to convince me that the church was lead by wicked frauds and others were presented during Sunday classes as potential faith building experiences.  Still others were just presented as random nuggets of information just considered interesting.

When I picked up this book, Real vs. Rumor, I mostly expected it to be a listing of dozens or even hundreds of stories that would then either be proven as fact or debunked as fake.  What I found was somewhat different.

The true content and intent of the book is elaborated by its subtitle: "How to dispel latter-day myths".  While the book does use a handful of rumors and stories as examples, the real purpose of the book is to present readers with a sort of blueprint or methodology for evaluating these stories and rumors on their own to try and determine their veracity.

Book Review - The Pillars of the Earth

I heard many people praise The Pillars of the Earth when it was released 30+ years ago and so I eventually bought a copy, fully intending to read it quickly.  I even bought the sequel at a thrift store with the expectation that I would fall in love with the story.

After sitting on my shelf for nearly a decade, I finally dusted it off and dove into this sweeping tale of cathedral building in medieval England.  Sadly, It took me nearly a year to finish reading the novel, not necessarily because it was a slow read but because I actually put the book down half a dozen times and intended to NOT FINISH the book.  I'm still not sure what compelled me to power through and finish it, but I picked it back up multiple times and eventually finished it (even though I skipped numerous passages here and there, as I'll explain later in this post).

The first thing I noticed while reading was that even though this was represented as an ambitious book with enormous scope (over 1000 pages covering 50 years of medieval life) the book seemed to take an almost microscopic view of events.  Rather than giving us an overarching history of nations, towns or events, Follett picks a handful of characters and lets us walk alongside their day to day life for decades.

Book Review - Code Name Danger: Unmasking a Villain

I read this book as a potential gift for my 8-12 year old nephews who aren't much for reading.  I felt like they might have fun with the premise....a young tweenage boy gets cast as the amazing "Agent Danger" for a new TV show only to find out that the story is based on real life and the author has cast him not only for the show but also to be the real-life Agent Danger.

Reading as an adult, the writing, plot and character development were all fairly simple and high level.  But reading from the mindset of a young boy, especially one with a short attention span who loves video game adventures more than reading, I felt like the tone, level and depth of the story is about right.

Board Game Review - Nagaraja

Recently, my wife and I tried out the 2-player game Nagaraja. I knew hardly anything about this game but had heard some good buzz and the theme and mechanics sounded interesting.  

Nagaraja is a tile laying, route building, hand management game. Each player is a treasure hunting archaeologist trying to find the most treasure in one of two ‘twin temples.’ 

Each round, a new room tile is revealed. Players secretly bid cards which determine how many sticks and which type of sticks they get to roll. The player who rolls the most Fate symbols on the sticks will get to place the room tile in their temple to proceed with exploration. 

Book Review - The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse

I don't remember who recommended this book to me but I'm glad I picked up a copy.  It's a short, quick read that reminds me a bit of Winnie the Pooh, The Giving Tree or other children's stories filled with a blend of whimsy and practical life advice.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse follows a simple narrative as each of these creatures meet and interact with one another in fanciful childlike ways.  Some of the phrases read a bit like fortune cookies or other snippets of advice that feel so obvious and timeless that you wonder why you hadn't thought of them before.  The book also balances emotions between humourous, laughable moments and tender, sad situations.