My Gaming Bookshelf
August 2nd, 2005Alfred just posted a great piece on books about games. This is the sort of thing blogs are best at.
I have not read too many books about games, just the basics:
- A Gamut of Games – Sid Sackson. Out of date and print, but there is still lots of good stuff.
- New Rules for Classic Games – R. Wayne Schmittberger. Excellent, particularly on abstracts.
- The Oxford History of Board Games – David Parlett. The author designed Hare and Tortoise. He is a bit too fond of his own creation, but I can forgive him for that. This book approaches the topic in the right level of detail for my taste.
- Dice Games Properly Explained – Reiner Knizia. This is OK, but I am not interested in pure dice games. I would rather he wrote a book about board games. I believe he contributed to a book on board games design.
- 100 Strategic Games for Pen and Paper – Walter Joris. This could be good, but some of the rule sets are too sketchy. I have yet to find anyone to play a game with me. I keep it in the glove compartment of my car with a couple of pens in case I am ever stuck somewhere with nothing to do.
My favourites are definitely New Rules for Classic Games and the Oxford History of Board Games.
Joe Huber’s book reviews at The Games Journal are good, but he has not yet enthused me about any of the books.
I am tempted to try Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis. I love books about obsession by obsessives. It takes one to know one.
August 3rd, 2005 at 04:59
Word Freak is a great read. Like you say, it’s about the obsessives of the Scrabble world (a lot of them make most boardgamers look pretty normal by comparison, although Fatsis goes out of his way to focus mostly on the really strange ones), and the world of “professional” tournaments (the tournaments don’t pay a lot).
Fatsis gets involved in the tournament scene himself,and starts to taste the obsession himself, also becoming friends with several of the more colourful people he describes, so his portrayal is surprisingly sympathetic and empathetic.
Highly recommended, even if you don’t like Scrabble at all.
August 4th, 2005 at 12:30
The Knizia book is probably Salen’s and Zimmerman’s Rules of Play, which contains an essay on the design of Lord of the Rings board game by Knizia. There’s also a game by James Garfield, among other interesting information. It’s a good, if a bit heavy, read.
Another good one is Jonathan Schaeffer’s book One Jump Ahead, which is about Checkers. If you don’t know who Marion Tinsley is, you should.
August 4th, 2005 at 14:17
I think Marion Tinsley is in the History of Board Games.
Draughts Champion of the World for 1000 years running, or something like that.
I just checked in Wikipedia, and I am right.
August 4th, 2005 at 21:01
Yeah; Tinsley is one of the greatest players in any game ever. He’s the Alexander Karelin of Checkers.
And I notice I managed to combine two persons into one: Rules of Play has a game by James Ernest and maybe a one by Richard Garfield, but I’m not so sure about that.