I’ve noticed that I often bring up in conversation one or more of the fascinating books I’ve been reading lately, only to fail utterly at recalling titles or authors’ names. I’ll take this opportunity to at least have a handy reference available for anyone who cares to follow up on something I’ve said.

Just check my blog!

Non-Fiction

Economics, history & politics

Why Nations Fail : the origins of power, prosperity, and poverty by Daron Acemoglu

Gaming

Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set Rule Book

Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set: The Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure book

Language

German I by Pimsleur (audio CD)

Math & technology

Gödel, Escher, Bach : an eternal golden braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Fiction

The Great Passage written by Shion Miura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter (note: this was a freebie from Amazon for being a Prime member)

My Kind of Crazy by Robin Reul (Young Adult title)

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (Young Adult title)

Reading Notes:

Preparing for a role playing game is all consuming

I found a few sleepy moments to finish the latest installment in my before bed brain candy mystery habit (J.D. Robb’s futuristic series about Eve Dallas), but managed very little additional pleasure reading this week.

I haven’t found the motivation to finish Thirteen Reasons Why, but I started My Kind of Crazy. I was hoping it would be a little more cheerful. Young Adult and Children’s titles can be very relaxing, but these both tend more into “youth at risk” territory. It takes more energy for me to read something distressing.

My Kind of Crazy feels like it could get amusing, but it isn’t yet. It also read like a book about a boy written by a woman. I checked the author’s bio, and, yup, Robin is a woman. I’ll keep reading and see if my opinion shifts.

Most of my free time last week was spent prepping for running a Dungeons & Dragons game session that morphed into two evenings of play. It’s not strictly reading, though there are about 100 pages of information with which the leader (DM) should be familiar. So I read through it, then made some notes, then read some parts again. After the first few hours of game play, I also printed out some cards to help me keep track of every individual character.

Thus far, my experience as a D&D DM feels like an exercise in office supply logistics.