Book Review – Jonathan Livingston Seagull (By: Richard Bach)

This book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was handed to me as a thing I should have on my shelf because it “was big in the 70’s” and I might want to look at it. Why I decided to read it so soon with so many other classics has to do mostly with the fact that it was short, but also because it was supposed to be “positive” and I had just finished reading something that was on the whole quite “negative”. I knew that it was “related” to the whole “power of positive thinking” movement and that there were a lot of pictures of seagulls in it, but otherwise I pretty much dove in blind.

I don’t know how I always get the edition with the hard to find cover.

And I was… surprised? I mean, with no expectations it’s hard to be surprised, but reading was a very strange experience. On the back of my copy Ray Bradbury says this book “gives me flight”, which was tantalizing but not up my alley. There are moments where I feel I am flying for just a moment and then I get run right into the ground. There is a story, surprisingly enough (it says so on the cover), and it focuses on Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a seagull who desires to fly for the sake of flying and not as a means to flail and fight for food. As a result of learning how to fly faster, higher and with more control he breaks seagull law and is ostracized from the group. From there he begins a spiritual journey or something.

My first problem is that I can’t find myself agreeing with the central point of the book (though, to its credit, it is short enough that I had finished it before this doubt had fully-formed in my mind). While it may be personally fulfilling to master an art, I’m not sure that stepping out of the “rat-race” for food to do that mastering will lead to anything but death. It turns out you can’t transcend reality (which does happen, he goes to a higher plane of existence) by being a Buddhist or really good at flying. In the real world, if you don’t eat you die, not escape to a higher plane of reality by virtue of the fact you love to do something you’re good at. And I do understand that it is a story meant to inspire, but it comes off like a snake-oil salesman who every once in a while stops to give you a bunch of numbers.

And that is my second problem (fortunately I only really have two and a half problems with this book); every once in a while, in what is supposed to be an immersive flying experience, Bach just starts listing a bunch of numbers and technical terms that really take me out of the whole thing, and towards the end I just started skipping sentences that had numbers in them. Not only does it break the immersion and flow by being very technical in a spiritual story, but it’s also very wrong. It never gets to that goya (not in reference to the painter*) moment. I do understand he’s supposed to be breaking records of seagull flight-speed here, but seagulls aren’t meant to go terminal velocity, and at such speeds most anything they could do would probably kill them.

I get that it’s just not a book that was written for me (maybe the spine on my copy literally snapping halfway through was a bad omen). I don’t need an uplifting “religion without religion” story to teach me to think outside of the box and find personal happiness or something. And I’ve very skeptical of people who try to “sell” that to me, though I’m sure there was no malicious attempt on Bach’s part there. I just can’t dig it. I can’t suspend my disbelief and pretend I’m flying, soaring to another reality. The layers just don’t make sense to me. And that’s not the writings fault, as, other than the numbers, it’s pretty good. It’s readable, understandable, and emotive. The only nitpick I have is a few times he does that thing where he “says” someone spoke for a while, but summarizes it in one sentence and then has another character speak as if only that sentence was said. And that’s just a very specific thing that bothers me when a writer wants a character to have an inspirational speech but can’t actually think of an inspirational speech. But that and the numbers are few and far between in this relatively short book that reads very quickly and does leave a good feeling in your stomach (heart) if not my head.

So, despite a book about spiritual teleporting seagulls in seagull heaven not really being the one for me, is it a good book? And the answer to that is “probably”. I don’t think I’ll be recommending it to anyone, but I think it is appropriate for many people at a certain time in their life. It’s like a child’s version of a Zen master/student spiritual uplifting thing, and there are simple empowering messages behind it. I wouldn’t blame anyone for liking it or thinking it was good. And there are quite a few pictures of seagulls in it, which, while not the most attractive birds, evoke the ocean in a pleasant way.

*As in the Urdu word

 

Book Review – The Little Prince (By: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

When attempting to clean up and organize my books, I found I had (at least) three copies of The Little Prince (all 3 from various print runs). Seeing that I had so many copies of such an acclaimed book that I had never read, (and had been recommended to me a few times when out in the world selling my own books) I just had to put it into my to-read pile.

Slightly Higher in Canada

I knew very little of the book, save that it was an illustrated “children’s book” and the titular prince lived on a small planet (asteroid). And upon starting it up I was captivated from the dedication (a good dedication is something you don’t see very often). The story is simple: a pilot crashes in the desert and meets the little prince while trying to fix his plane. As they talk the pilot learns more about the prince, an astral child living in a world of whimsy (and adults “unfortunately”) and relays this information to the reader.

The first portion of the book, where the author is talking about himself and then meeting the Little Prince is thoroughly entertaining and engrossing. This wanes slightly as it moves into the mildly monotonous recitation of the prince’s adventures coming to and on earth. But it comes back with a wonderfully emotional, if heavily telegraphed, ending. And even if you don’t think it’s as great as I do, it is very short (after all, it is ostensibly a children’s book) and a good chunk of its page length is taken up by the illustrations.

Supposedly it is a children’s book, but I might have to disagree. While most morals in children’s literature are dubious, quite often the ones on display here aren’t particularly good. And I feel that the story wouldn’t resonate as much with children or early teenagers as it would with the adults it appears to me it was obviously written for. It’s a tale of childhood imagination and love made while the author had recently seen his country defeated by Nazis and was living discontentedly in the Americas. At the time the author was a man who was tired of “matters of consequence”, as it were.

And that desire to go back to being childlike doesn’t seem like something children would enjoy. Or if they picked up on the motifs, they might get the wrong idea. The flower (the object of the little prince’s affection) is selfish and harsh; friendship and taming are presented as strangely absolute but with little benefit to either party, and there is an overarching feeling of futility through it all. The world of selfish men, tipplers, businessmen, and kings (not forgetting the “negro kings” as it says) isn’t changed by the little prince, and while he “sees through it” it is obvious that “matters of consequence” do have consequences.

And the prince himself is a mysterious character. On his “planet” he is quite responsible, cleaning out the volcanoes, pulling up the baobab trees, and tending to the flower. But he suddenly leaves with little reason and shows almost no concern for the plight of others. He relentlessly asks questions until he gets a response but doesn’t answer any himself, and he takes actions only to further his own personal journey. And that might be indicative of many a young person, or the story must simply go on, but still, it is quite a contrast.

Even so I was very engaged with the story and enjoyed it the whole way through. The pilot and the prince both have a charm and personality that comes through the words. Of course I’m reading in English, so the original French may have been better or worse (how do I keep reading translated works?). And there’s a quality in it that just speaks to me both as an artist and a twenty-something.

So is it good? Yes. Would I recommend it? Probably, though it is a sad and longing book (my eyes blurred once or twice). Does it deserve all the praise? In a way, I don’t think it’s quite as good as many people do, but it is an excellently crafted work of literature and art as well as being a halfway decent children’s book. And as a creative person in either painting or prose (or both), it is almost a mandatory read. For others, there’s a lot to be found in this little book, and not a lot to be lost save an hour (and maybe some tears).

Interlude: WINTER EDC – EDC 2016-17 Part 2.5

As a quick little interlude here, I wanted to do a short list of stuff I carry/use in the winter as part of my daily-carry systems that are omitted from the rest of this list, which is essentially a summer list since I live in an area of the world where it doesn’t get cold very often (people in Alaska would probably say it never gets cold here). But, with it being winter (barely) now, they’re on my mind.

  • Overcoat (London Fog) (Pretty generic beige color. Keeps me warm with the liner, and keeps the snow/rain off of me with or without it.)
  • Fleece(y) Headband(s) (I don’t know the brand of these but they come from Wal-Mart {probably} and my ears love them.)
  • Driving Gloves (A nice pair of warm leather gloves that used to belong to my father and whose only identifying markings say “made in Hong Kong”.)
  • Other (Touchscreen) Gloves (Champion) (Basically, Target brand gloves that aren’t as warm but are much more useful if I want to use my fingers, grip, or manipulate a touch screen {phone probably}.)
  • Silk Handkerchief (An essential item for wearing layers. I wear it over my neck under my shirt to prevent 4 layers of clothing from chafing it into oblivion.)
  • Scarf (Cashmere)
  • Hand Warmers (Mostly Grabber) (Isn’t it obvious why?)

And that’s basically it. I don’t go overboard for winter since there isn’t much of it here (where I live), but I just thought I should include a little bit about how I prepare for it since it does affect what I can carry.

Book Review – The Role-Playing Game Primer an Old School Playbook (By: Chris Gonnerman)

The Role-Playing Game Primer is a book by Chris Gonnerman intended to be used as an introduction to RPGs in general and “old-school” RPGs in particular. “Old-school” here being mainly “retroclones” of older RPGs (as opposed to those games themselves) such as Gonnerman’s own “Basic Fantasy RPG” (Based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition rules using the Open Game License {That gets complicated}) and “Iron Falcon” (Based on older D&D {Also under the OGL}) games, and several others that are mentioned by name (but those names don’t really mean much to a person who isn’t in the culture yet). But just how good is it at being the “primer” it set out to be?

I’m not exactly the best one to evaluate this book, as I don’t really need “priming” on the whole RPG thing. I am far from an “old-school” gamer, but I generally know the differences in play styles between them and the “new-school” (or whatever they’re called) gamers. So this book was more of a curious read and not me actually looking for an introduction. And it was a nice, short read. The 62 pages have slightly larger than average text and a good amount of illustrations. These illustrations are either: stock images, those sent in by contributors for Gonnerman’s “Basic Fantasy” game, or maps of areas designed as examples. At least that’s my assumption, since, while the art is good, it varies wildly in style and has almost nothing to do with what is written on the page (a common theme in most “OD&D*” books I’ve seen). But it’s still nice to look at and gets the job done. (*Original Dungeons & Dragons)

The text is divided into chapters, but can be further divided in my mind into the first part, where Gonnerman describes new players starting up a game with the Game Master (GM) (using his own system as an example), and the second part, where he talks directly to the reader and gives them advice. I really like the first part. It does a good job of giving an explanation and examples for how to play a Role-Playing Game (even if the dialog is a bit unrealistic at times). It’s one of those reaffirming sections where one can go “whoo… I’m not doing this thing wrong” in reference to starting up and playing an RPG. And it’s short enough to not overstay its welcome. The second part needs to be taken with a grain of salt as it’s written with an obvious bias against newer RPGs (but maybe the title gave that away) that’s never really given adequate justification. One might, through some unlikely circumstance, come out of this book thinking that “old-school” role playing is simply “better” or “the way to play” rather than there being different sets of people who enjoy either. With that aside, however, it does do a very good job of explaining how “old-school” games work for both players and GMs while providing some nice tips along the way.

The brevity of this book is another plus. The language is nice and concise while being informative and not particularly confusing (as far as something being about an RPG can not be confusing). It moves along fast enough that it can be easily recommended as a read before diving into, or while beginning to read, one’s first role-playing game (it does help if it’s one in the older vein, though). The advice, information, and explanations are informative and well laid out (probably from years of experience) while being simply but not dumbly written. Aside from one humorous example where an “old school building” is referenced and in the text hard to differentiate from the many other times “old school” is used in reference to RPGs I was never confused when reading (though as I say I did know about the subject going in). Gonnerman’s experience in the area and writing skill show through when reading.

It’s far from and essential book, but it’s inexpensive (being print-on-demand), short, and well written. I would recommend looking into it as a beginner, but I have to question whether or not it’s really worthwhile with so many good forums, blogs, and videos on the subject out there. If one doesn’t want to sift through that content or wants a more focused experience, this book would work great (and I also can’t imagine you ever finding this review). Otherwise it’s more of a curiosity so that one may, like me, make sure they aren’t “doing it wrong” and maybe get a few helpful tips along the way (except for the part where he calls the traditional way to draw {dungeon} maps into question, but maybe the reason is only obvious to me).

Lessons from Board Games – Hanafuda and Sorta Maybe Entirely Luck-Based

I chose Hanafuda for this, but it really applies to most card games (I just want to talk about Hanafuda for a bit). Hanafuda are Japanese Flower cards (and refer to some of the games played with the cards): a deck of what is essentially playing cards that were invented in Japan after western cards were banned.  Hanafuda  then spread to neighboring Pacific areas. There are 12 suits (representing the months with flowers) and 4 cards in each suit.  The cards have values of either 1, 5, 10, or 20, though not all suits contain all values. To a western player the lack of numbers can be difficult to grasp, but since most of the games involve matching flowers, it’s easy enough to remember that in general the more decorated a card is the more points it’s worth and to just match cards.

photo-39

Hanafuda caught my attention when I was looking for a card set for Mah-Jongg. I had been aware the cards’ existence but hadn’t though much of it. I play a lot of board games and have enough regular decks of cards and American card games as it is. Then I bought a cheap copy of Mah-Jongg at a thrift store, and wanted to find an easier to learn and play version. I found a card version, in the related items section there were Hanafuda cards, so I bought those as well.

Now I play a lot of board games, and while in school I started playing cards and chess when I had finished my work. I’ve since moved on mostly to more “complex” (chess is pretty complex at times) games that are more fun and/or accommodate more people. In general, I stopped playing card games because they were so luck based. Even though it might not seem like if for those who used French deck-based games (or even Hanafuda to some extent), eventually, after playing far too many games, one realizes that winning is only luck in such games. And it seemed less fun to have no skill involved in the game. But since I was so fascinated by both Hanafuda and Mah-Jongg I figured I’d take a chance on these luck based games.

This is all far too much information leading up to my basic point: that I’ve played Hanafuda (Hawaii style with a bit of my personal flair) as well as a few other mostly luck-based card games (with a modified French deck) and had a blast. Sometimes it’s just fun to play a game and talk to people, which you can do when no skill is involved. I know I’ve said that before, and some luck-based games like Snakes and Ladders or whatever can be terrible. But the illusion that you are in control that many card games give you is great for masking that and providing a basis for social interaction. Hanafuda only lasts a few minutes for a round, and you only have to play one. But for that you can look at pretty flowers, have a good conversation, and not mind the sorta kinda, entirely luck-based game.