What are you reading in 2025?

[jian]

You can borrow some of mine!!

But what if I’ve read them?

 

[Nellisir]

But what if I’ve read them?

I have others.
So many others.
<sigh>

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished Tiptree & McIntyre's The Girl Who Was Plugged In / Screwtop. The Girl Who Was Plugged in is so ahead of its time - if PKD is the grandfather of cyberpunk, Tiptree deserves to be named the grandmother. Screwtop isn’t as prescient, but rather it shows how little the penal system has changed.

Now I'm reading William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive. Somehow, I never got around to reading the final Sprawl Trilogy novel before.

 

[Cadence]

I'm 30-some pages into Elliot Paul's "Waylaid in Boston: A Homer Evans Mystery" from 1953 (go, go inter-library loan!).

It is mentioned in Stout's autobiography because it's by a friend of Stout's and has a page ripping on how easy tailing someone to find out vast information about them iis made to look in various detective novels (including the Nero Wolfe ones).

The first few pages were really painful (including some huge run on sentences), but it turned around enough that I am going on with it.

 

[Mannahnin]

Started Flint Dille's The Gamesmaster last night, and it's a breezy read so far. Very conversational.

Finished this yesterday. It's good, overall. There's details Flint doesn't get into because he doesn't want to offend, and clearly some stuff is a little skewed by his perspective, but as a memoir about working in Hollywood in the 80s it gives a really good glimpse. Especially if you have interest in animated properties of the era, since he worked on Transformers, GI Joe, Inhumanoids, Visionaries, Garbage Pail Kids, Droids, and other properties.

There are some good stories (scattered through the book) about the D&D Entertainment mansion, Gary and the crew there, and the joy of gaming and writing and just hanging out with them. And some insights into the Williams takeover, albeit from the perspective of someone personally invested in Buck Rogers and who was trying not to get involved or take sides in the dispute between his sister and his friend. There's some pretty interesting stuff about how much difficulty he had working with TSR design staff on Buck Rogers afterward, like it was pulling teeth and no one was enthusiastic about it, to the extent of people actually walking out of a meeting at one point when he self-reportedly said "Look, if you don't want to do this project, I don't want to force you."

It's mostly chronological but largely just divided into short chapters on various topics, people, shows, and periods of time. A few details get repeated, as is to be expected when someone is telling stories of their life in this way, but overall a good read, with MUCH more insight into Gary and Lorraine by comparison to Ewalt's book.

Next up, I'm getting a little more academic again, and starting Gary Alan Fine's Shared Fantasy.

 

[Alzrius]

I've been meaning to read Shared Fantasy for some time now, particularly given that it was still referenced (and Fine himself had a chapter) in Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've been meaning to read Shared Fantasy for some time now, particularly given that it was still referenced (and Fine himself had a chapter) in Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons.

Shared Fantasy is really worth reading. As far as I'm aware, it's the earliest academic work examining RPGs and gamers. But it's also quite readable.

Two things that struck me about in particular. 1 - Even in the earliest days, there were people fudging dice rolls. and 2 - Likewise, arguments about old and new players and go back to really when everyone was a new player. But that didn't stop them from complaining about the new players entering the hobby and arguing about what a true gamer is.

 

[prabe]

Shared Fantasy is really worth reading. As far as I'm aware, it's the earliest academic work examining RPGs and gamers. But it's also quite readable.

Two things that struck me about in particular. 1 - Even in the earliest days, there were people fudging dice rolls. and 2 - Likewise, arguments about old and new players and go back to really when everyone was a new player. But that didn't stop them from complaining about the new players entering the hobby and arguing about what a true gamer is.

I haven't read anything like as much on TRPG history as some people here, but my strong sense is that it's been the same arguments and the same errors more or less since the beginning.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I haven't read anything like as much on TRPG history as some people here, but my strong sense is that it's been the same arguments and the same errors more or less since the beginning.

Definitely. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The book does talk about the prevalence of cheating, and why. Interesting stuff.

 

[prabe]

Definitely. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The book does talk about the prevalence of cheating, and why. Interesting stuff.

I can see that. Seems that in the Pleistocene, the GM ignoring a die roll or considering it to be one higher or lower or whatever would have been seen as cheating, because he would have been expected to be working against the players'/characters' interests; here in the Holocene, though, it might be more a matter of taste regarding whether the GM is expected to have a story in mind, or maybe even just a desire for any PC deaths to be relatively meaningful.

Interesting that a player doing any of that will probably still be considered to be cheating.

But anyway, back to books ...