LostSurprise
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We've played a few in the last week or two.
DS wanted to play The Road to Canterbury. It's a 2-3 player game where you are tempting and pardoning pilgrims (the ones from the Canterbury Tales) with the Seven Deadly Sins, and collecting money and influence from doing that. I don't really like the theme that much (I don't find it as funny as the designer does) but the art is really beautiful and the mechanics are well balanced.
It was a fast game because DS was actively trying to kill off pilgrims (pilgrims die after 7 sins are played on them). Usually people want to maximize their funds, not do Last Rites.
We also played Tikal last weekend with the same teen.
Tikal is a game for 3-4 players where you are uncovering temples and artifacts in the jungle. A lot of the game is setting up spheres of influence so that when scoring rounds come you make a good score.
Lots of hopping around and trying to make the most of your actions. It's fairly strategic too. As you're making a path you try to set it up so it's harder for everyone else (but easy for you) to get there.
Tikal's not easy to play with 2 people (the board is too big then..it's not a fight over territory), so it was nice to have a reason to pull this out.
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Alan Moore and Frank Miller are really well known. I love Gene Luen Yang.
Y: the Last Man is pretty good (Brian Vaughn).
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Maybe something with simultaneous play or which you need to pay attention when it's not your turn?
Bohnanza (trading and negotiation game)
Sushi Go! (everyone is picking cards and creating sets at the same time, then you pass your cards and do the same thing again)
Escape: Curse of the Temple (dice rolling, move and escape but it lasts 15 minutes and everyone is moving at the same time)
Incan Gold (a press your luck exploration game)
Tessen (collecting sets of animals and stealing from others, again 15m with simultaneous play)
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We kept the unusual ethnic names as middle names in our family. Lots of kids can have different reactions to an unusual names (especially @11-14), so I wanted the ethnic name to be the super secret beautiful jewel that they could hide as a middle name or wear proudly instead of their first name.
I have one sibling with a very unusual German first name. He's always gone by his middle name. Even though the first name is phonetically as it looks, no one has ever gotten it right. It is completely unfamiliar and more than one syllable. They give up right there. This sibling is not embarrassed by the name. He doesn't hate it. As he's aged, he's actually found it amusing and interesting. But public school with it could be a chore and we moved a lot. He fell back on what was easier and hid it for several years.
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I don't allow one person to degrade or insult another person in my presence, but I do allow children to make their own choices about their vocabulary otherwise. I'd rather model a more complex usage than codify it.
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Faux-cabulary
Wise and Otherwise or Balderdash
Crappy Birthday
Mice and Mystics
King of Tokyo
Smallworld
Dominion
Bang!
a themed Fluxx like Zombie, Monty Python, or Pirate
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It's interesting how sometimes we think we're being intellectual and honest and breaking down barriers when really what we're doing is being offensive and prejudiced and creating other social constraints.
I finished Lost Girls: an Unsolved American Mystery. I originally thought it would be about human trafficking. I hadn't heard of the Long Island Killer and the back and flaps was kind of vague about what happened to the girls. I liked the idea of seeing a crime through the history of the victim and their family and community. It seemed really female positive and person--rather than plot--based.
I did enjoy the beginning of the book and reading all the girls' stories. It was very human and very eye-opening. Some of it I could relate to (lower and lower middle class background) and some of it I couldn't, but that's good for me. The book had a few problems. There are so many characters (parents, siblings, friends, SOs, children) and the author did not have a plan for making switches between family groups easier on the reader, especially at the end. I did not enjoy the second half of the book after the crime was revealed. I wasn't expecting closure on the crime, but family did not react in a healthy way and by the last 100 pages I felt the cynicism leaking out of the author and coloring every action and conversation. We want tragedy to be very simple. We want to feel bad and put the person on a pedestal and sooth the family, but people are still people. They react in ways that disgust or sadden us. All in all, it was a very honest book, I think, but it was hard to read. People can be so disappointing. Their emotional needs are so very complex and often unrealistic. Sad.
Read a few more Gene Luen Yang graphic novels. Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks and Loyola Chin and the San Pelagrin Order shared characters. Loyola was a bit more obviously Catholic (in a welcome way) then I was expecting. Both had flashes of imagination and weirdness but the stories followed paths I was expecting. Themes of bullying, friendship, forgiveness, perfectionism, social darwinism, and perception.
Working on Tam Lin and finishing up the Charles Stross short stories Wireless.
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It is possible to use 'short bus' descriptively, especially when a parent is trying to describe how a child is coming home to another caregiver. As the mother of a special needs child with developmental delays, I have no problem with that. It sounds like she wants to be sure her son is cared for by being very specific about where and when and what kind of transport he will be on. I would be similarly specific, maybe even overly specific, if I was in that situation. You can't take any chances with a special needs child. You are overly explanatory, repetitive, and then you check up on everything. That's just part of the life.
Not every area uses shorter buses for special needs. Our area is small. It has 3 long buses, a short bus, and a van. The short bus is not used for special needs. It's used for the preschool kids. The special needs kids ride on the long buses with everyone else or in the van (depending on where they're going). If someone says, "Ellen is coming home on the short bus," they just mean Ellen is not coming home in the van or on the long bus. Sometimes one vehicle is switched with another and everyone tries to make sure communication stays open. No one wants a child left home alone or a parent worried.
The jokes about short buses are sad, a disappointing and callous part of our society. Humor has an edge of pain to it. Sometimes we like that edge, especially when it doesn't effect us. Often we understand very little of the pain caused by humor until we or someone we love are hurt by it.
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ooh, I hope you find it soon! Yes, it has a goodheartedness to it that always brightens my life when I am immersed in it. Where were you in it? (What point in the year/which year?)
I haven't loved any Forsters, but I have appreciated/enjoyed several of them, but I quit Passage to India partway through many, many years ago and haven't come back to it... though Eagleton's analysis of the opening paragraphs in How to Read Literature has me thinking about trying again.
Tam Lin: I'm still pretty early in (found it down by the shower last night..yikes). Janet went to Hamlet with Thomas, Molly, and one of of those other 'beautiful boys.' I'm enjoying the doppelgangering which seems to be happening with a few characters, the squeal-worthy book quoting, and the vivid portrayal of early college life. I must be a prude because the idea of someone sleeping with someone they've known a week and has mixed feelings about is a bit disappointing....even if it is circa 1970. My 18 year old self is telling her not to be stupid, but only because I wasn't stupid about that when I was 18. I was stupid about other things. We'll see where it goes. Magic is afoot and Janet is being pulled in, I think.
Forster: I felt the same way about Passage. I started it a few times before finishing it (only because one of my students was reading it for an open project). I don't remember anything past the beginning. Maybe I should re-read it. I may be old enough for it now. It took me decades to like Moby Dick and I still prefer them never to leave the harbor. ;)
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I do think John Updike deserves the award. I'm sure there are others who are worse but not others as consistently celebrated. Ugh, Brazil. I haven't read any of the others, but in times past (last year or two years ago when JK Rowling was on the short list) there was an amusing article with examples of why each author was up for the award. Some of the quotes were pretty funny.
I can't find Tam Lin so I'm reading Lost Girls: an unsolved American mystery. It was on the new shelf at the library but I think it was published in 2013. It's not about the true crime event as much as it's about the story of the girls lives, their families, and the decisions which led them to their fate. I love the stories of the various women. It's very objective and compassionate, but the closer we get to whatever crime happened the sadder I get. I feel a sense of loss that you wouldn't usually feel reading a headline like Craigslist Call-girls Murdered. No one is understood by a label. Events are really about people. Good journalism.
When this is all over I think I'll need Tam Lin's sunniness. Better look harder. -
Gift books:
I only do my immediate family. Books for others are so hit and miss.
The Individualist (ds15)--a few of the Wheel of Time series (ds15)
The History Buff (ds14)--accidentally on purpose got him started on Heinlein recently so maybe Door into Summer or Tunnel in the Sky? Or maybe I'll go the opposite way and get him some nice grown-up translation of The Illiad and a book on Greek warfare or Gates of Fire (Thermopylae). (ds14)
The Scandinavian (ds11)--Moomintroll books and Jo Nesbo's Dr. Proctor fart powder series. Maybe Uncle Albert.
The Avian-lover(ds10)--picture books about birds and something to learn bird calls.
I'm not sure about dh yet. Last year it was Bowling Alone. This year it should be some rolicking science fiction or Scandinavian mystery, I think.
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Got to see Madame Butterfly at the opera last night. I shed a few tears at the beauty & the tragedy of the story. Lovely stuff.
Amy asked about book gifts. In our house...
Ds will be getting more Terry Pratchett books (in his quest to have a full collection of Discworld books), as well as the knowledge that he will get the new Flavia de Luce book when it comes out in January. Probably also Ultimate Signspotting.
Dd wants the last couple of books in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series (she has the rest). She will get some other books, I'm just not sure what yet. She's easy to buy books for.... Some contenders include: Faeries, Rookie Yearbook 3, The Black Apple's Paper Doll Primer, The Paper Magician, The Pack Goat, The Crystal Cave, Eat the Year, etc....
Not sure about other book gifts. I usually get my sister at least one very weird book of some kind. (Any recommendations?) Sometimes I'll get a book for my dad, usually some sort of military history. (Again, any recommendations?)
I'm not a big military history enthusiast (although I am a history enthusiast), but these are interesting:
There's always Julius Caesar or Livy's histories. The Pelopponesan War. Xenophon. Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
The Killer Angels (Gettysburg...but a really well-known choice)
Shelby Foote's Civil War series
TE Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom or the recent biography which is probably more objective (WWI-ish)
Gerhard Weinberg's World at Arms or Visions of Victory (WWII)
There have been several interesting books about the Mongols the last several years. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Warriors of the Steppe.
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Looking back over the list it looks like EM Foster has a few on there. Does anyone recommend a particular book to start with or to avoid?
I'm in agreement with A Room with a View. I haven't read Where Angels Fear to Tread, but I have read Maurice (which it sounds like no one else has).
Howard's End has a great feel to it (as a lit person), but if you're a A+B=C person some of the character motivations feel inscrutable.
Passage to India is probably his best, but it's kind of...I don't know...impersonal? in tone. With the theme I found it hard to get into.
Loving the conversation on everything from sentience to love-at-first-sight.
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If you think Chrononauts looks interesting you may like Timeline or Chronology. Looney Labs also has a Back to the Future version.
Fluxx either tames competitive people (it's so random) or it drives them absolutely bonkers. Look at the themed ones. We like Pirate Fluxx with my 11 year old, but some of them have ties to things like Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
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I woke up today in a quantifying mood. As such urges strike rarely, I wanted to share, lol...
Of VC's 52 books thus far in 2014, I've read 8, or 15%. Of these 8, only one did I read this year (Cone Gatherers). VC's comment about how much higher a percentage of the 1001 list she'd read in
more recentETA: earlier!! centuries got me curious, so...(first of all, I would like to take this opportunity to kvetch about just how exasperating to quantifcation-minded sorts such as, ahem, myself :lol: are all the a,b,c's on that list???! Once you count all those in, it's not 1001 books at all; it's more like 1243!! So, Robin, at current rates it actually will take 123 MORE years to get through them all than you'd forecasted.....)
Anyway, drumroll...
In the 2000's: I've read 17 out of (approximately! see a,b,c issue, above, grumble) 109 books: 16%
in the 1900's: I've read 127 out of (approximately! grumble) 920 books: 14%
In the 1800's: I've read 33 out of (approximately! grumble) 189 books: 17%
Earlier: I've read 10 out of 25 books: 40%
(total: 177 / 1243 ish: 14%)
which was interesting to me... unlike VC I actually don't feel that I mostly live in pre-1800 literature circles -- I expected the % to decline as I went back in time. It is true that were it not for Austen, the Brontes and Dickens by 1800's would have been quite paltry!
So that's my Morning Report. I do believe I'm avoiding dusty philosophy books...
I'd rather do the VC list myself, hers looks more interesting. :P
I love statistics. Thanks for being bored last night, Pam. I tallied mine up while dh while waiting for ds to do grammar. You beat me in 2000s. I beat you in 1900s. We're about even in 1800s. And I'm not sure if Earlier includes 1700s or not because somehow I end up with more books than the total? Did I mention I didn't major in Math?
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It would be nice if my boys had any interest in journaling.
The closest I've come is my oldest used to draw pictures of me as an old pirate clown with an eye patch and the words, "mom, I ht yu.' I only read it because he threw it in the hallway and left it there. ;)
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52 Books Blog - 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die: I received this book last Christmas and determined that I had read 51 out of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.
So I've set a new goal for myself as well as, drumroll please......decided to present you with a new mini challenge for next year. I thought you'd appreciate the advance notice. In order to avoid the 'my eyes are bigger than my stomach' syndrome, going to limit it to 5 books. The five books I have chosen are:
- Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
- Foucaults Pendulum - Umberto Eco
- The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
- To Kill a Mockinbird - Harper Lee
Those are all interesting books! I've finished all but the Captain Corelli, and what I read of that was amusing.
Eco is always challenging, but I thought that was one of his more interesting concepts. That doesn't mean it wasn't all over the place! It sounds like an exciting year!
Ok, this will sound weird, but where else can I say this but in the company of readers - I think I'm just starting to get over the expectation that life will be like a novel. Or maybe that a novel is the same as real life.
In real life, Eleanor won't have a Park. But it's OK for Eleanor to have Park in a book.
:)
The problem that I have with these lists of What One Must Do in general is that they tend to reflect a certain popular consciousness--not only with the contemporary books listed but with those mentioned from the past. Further there are multiple selections from numerous authors and neglect of others. For example, as much as I love Hemingway (and am now ducking tomatoes) I cannot imagine expecting anyone who did not enjoy one or two of Papa's novels to read the five on the list! I have read four of the five Calvino's listed--same comment.
I am delighted to see some of my beloved Eastern/Central European authors on the list (Kundera, Schulz, Borowski). But returning to the comment in the previous paragraph, would it be better to have fewer Calvinos or Hemingways in order to include a Carson McCullers or a Sherwood Anderson, American authors who apparently are no longer be in vogue.
Yeah. Did you notice that the one Willa Cather they included was The Professor's House? Now I want to be a fly on the wall when the reviewers make these decisions.
Well, I enjoyed reading through the 1,001 books list. As already mentioned, I'm curious as to why there would be any repeats on there. There are so many books, so many authors through time that surely a list can come up with 1,001 separate authors? That said, it was fun to see some of the ones on there & I had a fun trip down memory lane seeing some (for ex, Lazarillo de Tormes, which I read in Spanish oh so many, many years ago). Definitely saw some old favorites on there, some that I really hated too. :lol: I think I read about 90 or so of them, with another 20 or so clocking in as 'partially' read (either I only read sections for a class or I ended up abandoning it without finishing because I didn't like it). I did see a few on there that I already have in my current to-read pile....
Here's a List Challenge of the 1001 Books List. It makes for easier checking.
I have a love-hate relationships with lists. I'm not fond of this one, so I usually ignore it when it makes the rounds. I do enjoy looking at their European and ancient choices, but they tend to be Western-focused and a bit dull. So many books I've read and thought mediocre. So many repeat authors. Eh.
It is fun to challenge yourself though, no matter what the source. :)
Yay for babies! Boo for fleas! Diatomaceous Earth was helpful for us.
Still enjoying Tam Lin (Pamela Dean) and it's still not very mysterious. I was a college freshman the year it came out. I wish I read it then! It brings back so many memories, a lit girl feast.
Supplementing with Gene Lang graphic novels and an early steampunk novel about HG Wells Morlocks invading Victorian London.
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The last 2 months have been crazy in terms of butter prices. Even the cheese factory was $4/lb and they are never over $3. Walmart has been almost $5/lb.
However, we just went to pick up cheese last Friday and butter was back down to $2.50/lb. I stocked up with 10lb. Hopefully this means the price is on it's way back down.
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Since I schedule things together, we may not have chicken every week but when we do it would be 3x (roast chicken, soup, enchiladas for example). We tend to have meat 4x a week, bean or dairy protein 1-2x, and an egg meal 1-2x.
Our meats are mostly chicken and pork with beef occasionally thrown in. Of course, winter is here so I may be sending dh to look for cheap beef cuts because I love braised beef and noodles. Mmm.
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Smallworld is great for this age group, but if you're worried about over-competitive natures it may not be the best. Neither would 7 Wonders, although it's a great game. You're influenced by the people to either side so people with very competitive natures may get frustrated.
Forbidden Island/Forbidden Desert are both shorter co-op games and could work for you. Castle Panic is semi-cooperative, but it would still fit your needs. It's fighting attacking goblins and protecting a castle together. One person is the 'winner' but you work together. It takes a bit longer.
Not mentioned yet, but Escape: Curse of the Temple or Zombie 15. Both of them are 15 minute games where everyone makes decisions in real time, so everything is happening at the same time. Lots of dice-rolling for Escape (I haven't played Zombie 15). There's also an audio recording, so it's possible a nervous person wouldn't enjoy the craziness but it is very fast and co-operative (you win and lose together).
I think Dominion is a great game too. You are competing for who has the most land, but you aren't directly competitive unless you buy a special expansion which allows you to hurt each other. Most of the game is using money and actions to gain land. You spend a lot of time drawing cards, spending money and actions, buying things, and then shuffling your cards. There are lots of cards in the base set so you can pick new actions every time. The game ends when 3 piles of cards are acquired. With 3-4 people, it's usually under an hour. The hardest part is usually remembering what the action cards do (I usually just read them while everyone else takes their turn) and shuffling. Most people like this game.Also not very competitive: Bohnanza (short, card trading and set collecting game)
10 Days is a fun game, but it's very educational. Unless your child is really into geography it won't get played very often.
Quick 2-player games that would work with a 12 year old:
Tessen (set collection and attack game, very fast, players play simultaneously)
Travel Blokus (more strategic)
Battle Line (more strategic)
2+ players, quick game:
Momma Mia (memory game)
Mosaix (manipulating symbols)
Archaeology (set collection)
Cartagena
Coloretto
San Juan (longer, more complex)
Blueprints (building with dice, longer)
For Sale
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BTW, if you get really into it there were a lot of social media tie-ins. Jane had a fashion page on Tumblr. There were various connected Twitter feeds (Fitz, Gigi, some random people from Pemberly Digital). There's a lot out there. Part of the fun was running across things. There was a page on Facebook--Socially Awkward Darcy--which used to be kind of a clearinghouse of fan finds, meme creations, and emoting.
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I find it works out better if you watch them when they come up. They fit in with the plot (although Maria Lu's not so much) and won't work as well outside of the timeline.
Enjoy! ;)
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There's some time when you're half asleep that you can end up in sleep walking-like behavior. Basically you're partially asleep and you simply forget that period when you wake up. The way you forget what you're thinking about right before you fall asleep.
Was the cord in or near the bathroom? Needing to urinate is one physical thing people often do half asleep. Usually we just lie there. I'm not a sleep walker but my mother would sometimes run into me on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night and I would not remember it the next day. You're in your own little world too. Reality doesn't make much of an intrusion.
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That is insane. Totally agreeing with you. The good ones want to get in, get out, move on to the next job.
I bet part of the 'I'm such a great guy' schtick is because he knows this is weird.
Knitters, what are you working on??
in The Chat Board
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I finished my first project...a cowl neckwarmer/earband. Not bad.
Working on fingerless mitts. Struggled a bit at the start. Poking myself a lot and I had to unravel several times. Hopefully it will go smoother now.