Well, I Finally Read a Few More Books
Aug. 2nd, 2024 08:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroDirect Creativity by Paul Kupperberg - Another book of interviews with comics creators, this one nominally focused on people’s inspirations and which creators inspired them, but again mostly focusing on what comics they read as kids and how they got into the business. And since they’re pretty much all the same generation, the stories are pretty much all very similar. Marc Guggenheim was the standout interesting interview, as the co-creator of the Arrowverse his stories were differentiated. But I think this needed either a few interviewees from other generations (like, someone born after 1970 who got into comics after they cost more than 12 cents), or a much wider selection of questions.
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai – Our protagonist, a perennial screw-up, has managed to muck up a pivotal moment in world history and turn the sci-fi utopia he was born in into…the terrible world we live in right now. And we get to watch this unfolding tragicomedy from his first-person perspective. He does NOT have a good time, and as he notes, time travel is not actually good for fixing things, just breaking them in more and better ways. (I’m mildly annoyed that there’s an ontological paradox built into the final “revision” after temporal drag is introduced as a valid concept, but that’s just quibbling. It’s a solid book, cleverly sci-fi and amusingly self-referential.)
Mage: The Ascension - The Book of Spheres: Magicks Disparate & Mad by M. Charles - A Mage fan supplement that, to his credit, he does a good job of making feel like an actual White Wolf product. It centers around the idea that since magick is based on belief, the “nine spheres” cosmology should be just as variable as everything else. So starting from the “Data” and “Dimensional Science” technocratic spheres, it builds out options for other alternate spheres used by Crafts or different Traditions (some outright replacing an existing sphere, some combining multiple effects from different spheres into a unique paradigm). Though I’ll admit, I had hoped for more Tenth Sphere-based plot points rather than focus on playable variants of the standard nine. I feel I wouldn't want players dealing with variant spheres, but some of them (Undeath, particularly) seem like great ideas to build an unpredictable antagonist around. (This was specifically by one of the Talking Time regulars, which was what brought it to my attention.)
Making It So by Patrick Stewart – Very much what you’d expect and at the level of quality you’d expect, telling the story from Stewart’s humble beginnings with a strong awareness that Captain Picard was his most famous role and that’s what a lot of the readers are there for. (There are Star Trek stories scattered through the first half of the book, long before it’s ever on the horizon.) He’s generally very gracious to people who helped or influenced him, though there were a few directors and producers who earned his ire and a bunch of others he admits to just never really connecting with. He’s also willing to call out times that he made an ass of himself, and is matter-of-fact but regretful about the circumstances of his two divorces and some less-than-stellar behavior on his part. If anything, it’s a good reminder that he’s an amazing actor and despite seeing him in dozens of roles over decades, I know very little about his actual personality. And he still thinks of himself as a humble boy from Mirfield.
The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett – The last book Pratchett finished before his death, and the death of Granny Weatherwax and passing the torch to the next generation are the major themes of the book. It’s very much a book of endings and bittersweet as such; it brings back a lot of characters and running gags and it deals with Tiffany finding her own place and the role she wanted rather than anyone else’s footsteps. (Which is particularly noteworthy given that Pratchett’s daughter did not take of writing Discworld.) I suspect I put off reading it for as long as I did because I knew that despite it being ostensibly a fun book it would make me sad.
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai – Our protagonist, a perennial screw-up, has managed to muck up a pivotal moment in world history and turn the sci-fi utopia he was born in into…the terrible world we live in right now. And we get to watch this unfolding tragicomedy from his first-person perspective. He does NOT have a good time, and as he notes, time travel is not actually good for fixing things, just breaking them in more and better ways. (I’m mildly annoyed that there’s an ontological paradox built into the final “revision” after temporal drag is introduced as a valid concept, but that’s just quibbling. It’s a solid book, cleverly sci-fi and amusingly self-referential.)
Mage: The Ascension - The Book of Spheres: Magicks Disparate & Mad by M. Charles - A Mage fan supplement that, to his credit, he does a good job of making feel like an actual White Wolf product. It centers around the idea that since magick is based on belief, the “nine spheres” cosmology should be just as variable as everything else. So starting from the “Data” and “Dimensional Science” technocratic spheres, it builds out options for other alternate spheres used by Crafts or different Traditions (some outright replacing an existing sphere, some combining multiple effects from different spheres into a unique paradigm). Though I’ll admit, I had hoped for more Tenth Sphere-based plot points rather than focus on playable variants of the standard nine. I feel I wouldn't want players dealing with variant spheres, but some of them (Undeath, particularly) seem like great ideas to build an unpredictable antagonist around. (This was specifically by one of the Talking Time regulars, which was what brought it to my attention.)
Making It So by Patrick Stewart – Very much what you’d expect and at the level of quality you’d expect, telling the story from Stewart’s humble beginnings with a strong awareness that Captain Picard was his most famous role and that’s what a lot of the readers are there for. (There are Star Trek stories scattered through the first half of the book, long before it’s ever on the horizon.) He’s generally very gracious to people who helped or influenced him, though there were a few directors and producers who earned his ire and a bunch of others he admits to just never really connecting with. He’s also willing to call out times that he made an ass of himself, and is matter-of-fact but regretful about the circumstances of his two divorces and some less-than-stellar behavior on his part. If anything, it’s a good reminder that he’s an amazing actor and despite seeing him in dozens of roles over decades, I know very little about his actual personality. And he still thinks of himself as a humble boy from Mirfield.
The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett – The last book Pratchett finished before his death, and the death of Granny Weatherwax and passing the torch to the next generation are the major themes of the book. It’s very much a book of endings and bittersweet as such; it brings back a lot of characters and running gags and it deals with Tiffany finding her own place and the role she wanted rather than anyone else’s footsteps. (Which is particularly noteworthy given that Pratchett’s daughter did not take of writing Discworld.) I suspect I put off reading it for as long as I did because I knew that despite it being ostensibly a fun book it would make me sad.
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Date: 2024-08-04 12:47 pm (UTC)