Reading (etc) Road 1st steps
Reading (etc.) Road, first steps.
James Maliszewski shared a challenge
“My namesake over at Lamentations of the Flame Princess has issued a challenge to "name the primary influences in your personal game, so we get a flavor not of what set of rules you decide to use, but what kind of game people can expect to play with you!"
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/06/challenge.html
My first draft response promptly overflowed LiveJournal’s maximum comment limit, so I’m serializing this.
I’ve met the majority of my friends, including the first friendships that lasted over two years (some over 20+ years now) directly from gaming or a step or two away .
But first I’ll go through the reading and other influences that I soaked up. If anyone wants to talk more about kids books, Gumby, upsidsasium or worm ranching, telepathic time traveling pterandons who want to Rule The World, and a bunch of sf and fantasy this would likely be a good and cheerful thing for me.
I don’t remember learning to read - but I vividly remember getting better at reading. Esther Averill’s books of Jenny Linsky and the Cat Club had a lot to do with this.
Being shy since at least kindergarten, reading about a shy heroine Doing Stuff certainly had attraction. They were a fun read in first grade and several more times over the decades. I haven’t checked back this century - will do something about that this weekend!
There are close to a dozen of these. One set of memories is tackling Jenny Goes To Sea, a late book that was * 128 pages * long. Each chapter was as long as a whole book! Several times I would dive in, and it was a bit too much. Smaller text, way more words per page. I’d back off, read a couple easier books in the series and having gone up a level (oops, Warcraft influence), tried again. Eventually the 128 page massive tome was possible, then increasingly easy fun re-read.
I’m pleased to find that most of the books are still available, as well as something about the author. I’d enthusiastically recommend anyone that has any overlap in interests with me try some from a library to see if they are fun for them or Tastes Vary.
http://www.nybooks.com/nyrb/jenny/averill
Then something dreadful happened. I ran out of new Jenny books! I re-read some. I like the phrase “a good book is something I can stand to read three times” and have gotten better at focusing my reading on reading stuff that has good replay value. But eventually I looked around for other similar books.
I found Ruthven Todd’s Space Cat books, which started a transition to looking for space books.
I also just discovered that Ruthven Todd had written a lot more than I was aware of. Today Wikipedia is being my friend.
To be continued.
James Maliszewski shared a challenge
“My namesake over at Lamentations of the Flame Princess has issued a challenge to "name the primary influences in your personal game, so we get a flavor not of what set of rules you decide to use, but what kind of game people can expect to play with you!"
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/06/challenge.html
My first draft response promptly overflowed LiveJournal’s maximum comment limit, so I’m serializing this.
I’ve met the majority of my friends, including the first friendships that lasted over two years (some over 20+ years now) directly from gaming or a step or two away .
But first I’ll go through the reading and other influences that I soaked up. If anyone wants to talk more about kids books, Gumby, upsidsasium or worm ranching, telepathic time traveling pterandons who want to Rule The World, and a bunch of sf and fantasy this would likely be a good and cheerful thing for me.
I don’t remember learning to read - but I vividly remember getting better at reading. Esther Averill’s books of Jenny Linsky and the Cat Club had a lot to do with this.
Being shy since at least kindergarten, reading about a shy heroine Doing Stuff certainly had attraction. They were a fun read in first grade and several more times over the decades. I haven’t checked back this century - will do something about that this weekend!
There are close to a dozen of these. One set of memories is tackling Jenny Goes To Sea, a late book that was * 128 pages * long. Each chapter was as long as a whole book! Several times I would dive in, and it was a bit too much. Smaller text, way more words per page. I’d back off, read a couple easier books in the series and having gone up a level (oops, Warcraft influence), tried again. Eventually the 128 page massive tome was possible, then increasingly easy fun re-read.
I’m pleased to find that most of the books are still available, as well as something about the author. I’d enthusiastically recommend anyone that has any overlap in interests with me try some from a library to see if they are fun for them or Tastes Vary.
http://www.nybooks.com/nyrb/jenny/averill
Then something dreadful happened. I ran out of new Jenny books! I re-read some. I like the phrase “a good book is something I can stand to read three times” and have gotten better at focusing my reading on reading stuff that has good replay value. But eventually I looked around for other similar books.
I found Ruthven Todd’s Space Cat books, which started a transition to looking for space books.
I also just discovered that Ruthven Todd had written a lot more than I was aware of. Today Wikipedia is being my friend.
To be continued.