Work
I took this week off, and just lazed around at home. I’ve still got a bunch of days to use by the end of the year, so I’ve also arranged to take every other Friday off until the end of the year (with a little more around Christmas), too.
Then the next big break will be in April for the Japan trip.
Books
This week I read:
Hawkmoon: The History of the Runestaff by Michael Moorcock
I wanted to read as much Michael Moorcock as I could before the Black Sword Hack one-shot last week, so I started this immediately after Corum and finished it early this week. I like how all of Michael Moorcock’s protagonists, while fairly similar, do have their differences, and have very different settings. The Hawkmoon stories have a weird science thing going on, and are definitely going for that “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” feeling.
But I’ve now decided to take a short break from Michael Moorcock and read some other books for a while. I might read the second Hawkmoon trilogy, but I don’t think I’ll start the Jerry Cornelius books before the year is out.
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Story of Your Life is, of course, the story that Arrival (excellent film) was based on, though the film significantly expands the military aspect of the story. Some of these are arguably not “stories”, as they just explore an idea and then end with no plot development or anything like a conclusion. Ted Chiang has a knack for exploring the consequences of one single idea in an interesting way, despite nothing actually happening.
My favourites were all actually religious-themed stories: Tower of Babylon, which is about building a big tower to reach Heaven; Seventy-Two Letters, which is about a world where golemancy is a science; and Hell is the Absence of God, in which angelic visitations are commonplace and are kind of like localised natural disasters.
Once again, I’m running low on space for fiction. I have 552 fiction books right now, and think I have the space for maybe 30 more. Unfortunately, this time, I really do think I’ve reached the limit for how many bookcases I can cram into one room. I could take over my spare bedroom with books, but (1) I never go in there so I’d never see them, which kind of defeats the point of having nice full bookshelves, and (2) it’ll be difficult enough when I eventually have to move out, without getting yet more furniture.
So I think I’m going to have to slow down on the fiction-buying. Maybe curate my collection a bit, getting rid of some books I’m not going to read again. I still have space for nonfiction, so I’ll probably start reading more of that.
It’s a hard life, being a bookworm.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
A little bittersweet this week. We hit the 6 month mark, which is great, and I wrote a long post on the RPG blog about my experiences running Arden Vul. But one of the players had to drop out, so now we’re down to two (not including myself) again.
It does feel like I’ve exhausted the RPG-capability of this one small community. Everyone who has some interest in RPGs has been recruited by now, there’s just one person left and another I’ve managed to recruit from elsewhere. And we’ve all exhausted our RPG-playing friends.
I don’t really want to have to publicly advertise for new players, and trial people who none of us know, but it’s looking more and more unavoidable.