vivdunstan

Catching up with this, and another 6 titles finished since my last post:

( earlier titles )
1. Colostle Complete Edition by Nich Angell
2. Wild Card: Let the Tarot Tell Your Story by Jen Cownie and Fiona Lensvelt
3. Insomniacs After School volume 5 (manga) by Makoto Ojiro
4. Doctor Who: The Ruby's Curse by Alex Kingston and Jacqueline Rayner
5. Notebook by Tom Cox
6. Kiki's Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono

Of the new ones the Colostle solo RPG/journalling game was fun, but not something I decided I'd want to play. An original fantasy setting, with solo gaming mechanics, based on random tables.

The Tarot book was fantastic, and really got me feeling more confident about doing self readings.

I continue to *adore* the Insomniacs After School manga series, which is being slowly but steadily published in English translation.

The Doctor Who book was somewhat fun, and a new tale about River Song. But it ultimately felt a slog to read through, and was overly muddled. I'm guessing Jacqueline Rayner wrote most of it, though Alex Kingston had some input too, and got top billing.

Tom Cox's Notebook is a varied hodge podge of often amusing rambling thoughts. I loved it! I had backed the digital edition, but not read it yet. I ordered a signed paperback from Tom a few weeks ago. He has lots of his books after the collapse of Unbound (who owe him thousands of pounds) and is selling them on.

And we read Kiki's Delivery Service - the original novel the Studio Ghibli film is based on - for my book club. I've not seen the film yet. A very young read, but still charming.

Even though I've bought a previous version of this bundle, this new one is much bigger, and well worth picking up for anyone interested in the Cubicle 7 Doctor Who RPG publications. Even if you don't intend to run the games, they're a good read.

I'm currently playing Level 9 interactive fiction text adventure game Knight Orc from 1987. Which feels like a MUD with many autonomous NPCs running around, fighting and grabbing treasure! And has some very unusual command shortcuts, as shown in the image of part of the manual. A very intriguing game. Which can get into unwinnable states, like Melbourne House's The Hobbit. But I am very much enjoying it. Will write up more thoughts after. I have a dedicated thread on the intfiction forum for my new foray into old games.

It's time for another interactive fiction competition that's open for judging, and now it's the turn of Spring Thing. This is the other huge IF competition every year, in addition to IFComp that runs in the autumn. This year there are nearly 30 games entered into Spring Thing, a mix of web/choice based and parser. A huge range of genres. I've played and reviewed 4 so far, and especially enjoyed a Victorian Holmes-esque detective hunt and a spoof Star Trek TOS word puzzle game. Anyway if you like text games do check Spring Thing 2023 out. Here is the link: https://www.springthing.net/2023/

Current main reading as of mid February 2022. Continuing the Wheel of Time book 2, Steve McNeil’s video games history and a marvellous Louis Wain cats book. New reads for me are a history of the Hermitage in St Petersburg, short novel Strange Weather in Tokyo, and Rachel Clarke’s junior Doctor story.

I generally like to have a couple of novels on the go at once, one usually gargantuan, so that’s why I’ve got the Japanese book newly started alongside the (admittedly nearly finished) fantasy novel. I also like a lot of non fiction books.

Normally I read in a gargantuan font on my Kindle, but two of the above books are coffee table sized printed ones i.e. the cats and Hermitage books. But both are very heavy on pictures and very light on text, so they’re just about manageable for me. Both gorgeous books anyway.

I have nearly finished the Wheel of Time book but don’t expect to go straight on to book 3. But I am likely to read another whopper of a novel next.