Reading

Just a stream of consciousness "journal" type post right now. I had a hard time falling asleep for some reason last night, so I'm quite tired, maybe a little delirious or punch drunk as a result, and will probably call my work day early today to go take a nap at home or something. 

First off, I just finished reading The Game Master's Guide to Instant Towns and Cities which I'm doing by memory, so I think that the title is correct, by Jeff Ashworth et al. I saw this at Barnes & Noble on Christmas break. It was listed at $24.99, but was on sale at 50% off. I'm still not sure that I'm happy with the purchase at that price. The book is a great example of everything wrong with 5e; while it does indeed have the bare bones of a large number of potential cities and towns in all kinds of environments, with all kinds of details, few of them are very interesting. It feels very much like a YA theme park version of a very Harry Potter-esque D&D, most of the names of people and places are puns or cultural or pop cultural references and in-jokes, everything is really bohemian and bougie; it feels like the entire thing was written by a cadre of authors who simply can't imagine a world outside of Greenwich Village or Portland. I'm actually quite disappointed.

Other than that, I'm also reading The Lords of Madness, my old 3e aberration book, and I'll probably finish this week, I think. On deck I have also Darkness & Dread and Monsternomicon vol. 2 in the 3 sphere, and beyond on deck, Elder Evils, Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss and later Heroes of Horror.

But I don't want to just read gaming books, so I've got the second and third "Lord of Nightmares" novels, part of an Arkham Horror trilogy published by FFG, I believe. I have to reread the second one (recently reread the first) so that I can remember what the devil it's all about before I read the third one, which is new to me. Sadly I didn't buy it when it was in print, and it was unavailable or prohibitively expensive for a long time.

Then I'm going to turn to the four novels of the Riftwar Saga. I haven't had these novels for a long time either, because I had a guy move while he was borrowing three of the four of them. (To be fair, he left a few things with me too. We're probably even.) I rebought them in the original printing, because the so-called "director's cut" or whatever were the only ones available for a long time, and I didn't actually like them quite as much. I have read this before several times, but it's been many years.

Then I've got something actually new to read after that, the Flame Tree Epic Tales Greek Myths & Legends book. Eventually I'll also read the Norse and Celtic (i.e. Irish) ones, since I now own all three, but not immediately.

I also bought a B&N exclusive Lovecraft mega compilation that is his complete fiction (minus the stuff that he wrote or collaborated on but wasn't published under his name, like stuff for Hazel Heald or Zealia Bishop—but I've got a collection for that too) that I'd like to read. 

Still need to find my last box of books from my move; I think I know where they are in the garage where all the stuff we couldn't fit is waiting, but it's not easily accessible, sadly. But in there, I've got the Dark Elf trilogy in omnibus format, the Solomon Kane complete collection, and the first five Barsoom books in omnibus format that I'd been planning on reading. I also have more Lovecraft collections, but now I don't really need it, I guess. And my daughter bought me a super nice leather-bound copy of Dracula omnibused with some other Bram Stoker works, although I doubt I have any interest in reading anything other than Dracula itself.

And I've got further out gaming books to read; Sharn: City of Towers, Five Fingers: Port of Deceit, Freeport: City of Adventure and... well, that's enough stuff; let's see how well I do on that big list, and how long it takes me to get through it before I worry too much about what comes next. 

I've decided to make a concerted effort to not fritter away evenings and weekends on YouTube very much like I have been, and buckle down on reading like I used to always like to do. But still; that's a lot to chew on and if I've read all of that before the year's over, I'll consider myself to have done fairly well. Most of these are, of course, books that I've read before, and only a few of them are genuinely new to me, which is... I dunno. I feel like I should be disappointed in that, but I'm not really. I've read way too many books taht are disappointing; reading books that I already know that I'm going to enjoy; at my age, I kind of prefer that these days.