Week in review: Week to 7 February

[pedanther]

My random book for February was Devil May Care, a James Bond novel by Sebastian Faulks - or, as the cover had it, "Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming". That would usually mean that the book was originally published under Fleming's name before Faulks's authorship was acknowledged, but I gather that in this case the author credit has been in exactly those words right from the first edition, and indicates that Faulks made a conscious effort to mimic Fleming's manner of writing instead of employing his own. I found the result felt slightly exaggerated, not to the level of parody or caricature but enough to be a bit offputting, especially since it highlighted some of the aspects of Fleming's novels that I never much liked in the first place. It also had a few new faults of its own, including that thing you often get when a setting is pastiched by a writer decades later who can't resist throwing in a bunch of references to historical events and people that the original author wouldn't have considered relevant or appropriate to include. All of which I could probably have forgiven if it had succeeded in endearing me to the characters or engaging my interest in the plot; as it was, I hit page 50 and still didn't give a fig for the fate of the world or any of the characters, so I ditched it and went to read something more fun.

My new random book for February is Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind, which I haven't started reading yet.


The group of people I've been playing through Pandemic: Legacy with managed to get together on the weekend and play a few more rounds for the first time in a few months. I'm still finding the unfolding legacy plot familiar and predictable, though I appreciated that a document that was revealed this session provided context for an earlier plot development I'd been unhappy about and established it as something that we're intended to not be happy about. I was also amused when the same cache of documents contained an in-story explanation for a game mechanic that's necessary for game balance but hadn't, until now, made a great deal of sense within the fiction of the game.

At the same session, we also played Western Legends, Raptor, and Schotten Totten. In Western Legends, the board is a map of a territory in the Wild West and each player takes on the role of an outlaw or lawman (or stays neutral, but you earn victory points for being a notorious outlaw or a successful lawman and there's no reward for doing neither) and moves around completing activities like prospecting for gold, fighting bandits, robbing banks, or driving cattle, according to personal preference and the character's secret goal cards. Raptor is an asymmetrical game where one player controls a family of dinosaurs and the other controls a group of hunters trying to capture them. In Schotten Totten, two families are fighting over a property line and players win skirmishes by putting together the best three-card combinations.

At the usual Monday evening session, we played Deception: Murder in Hong Kong and Forgotten Waters. In Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, I was the clue-giver once, and succeeded in leading the investigators to the murderer; and the witness once, and succeeded in getting the murderer caught without being identified and nobbled; and a regular investigator once, and achieved nothing of distinction. Forgotten Waters is a pirate game with narrative elements that's intended to be played over several sessions; we started a game about a year ago which fell apart quickly for a number of reasons, so this time we were starting again from scratch with a partly different group of players. That meant that a lot of the story bits we got to were familiar, but the game went well and we remembered to record the game state at the end of the evening so we could pick it up again another time.


Rehearsals have fully started for Guys and Dolls. I'm enjoying the singing, and mostly managing to remember the dance steps.


Still bike riding regularly. Somewhat complicated by the fact that there's an ongoing project to resurface the city's bike trails, and on a couple of my regular routes this has got as far as digging up the old cracked tarmac but not yet progressed to laying down the new smooth tarmac. A couple of days ago, when I was out riding in the morning, I saw a kangaroo, which stood a few metres from the bike trail and watched me go past.

Comments

[igenlode]

a writer decades later who can't resist throwing in a bunch of references to historical events and people that the original author wouldn't have considered relevant or appropriate to include

I think you've put your finger on something that often subconsciously jars about novels set in the past; they tend to emphasise the elements that the readership is likely to associate with that era rather than the ones that might have seemed more important to the characters. So the background events that the author chooses to emphasise are often ones that people of that era might have taken entirely for granted -- the classic example being that Jane Austen famously doesn't mention Napoleon in any of her books :-D

[pedanther]

Yes, that kind of thing.

Another aspect of it - I think it's what made me first consciously notice the phenomenon - is Sherlock Holmes pastiches that include real historical royalty or politicians under their actual names, when Arthur Conan Doyle always invented fake titles for any such who happened to cross Holmes's path.

[igenlode]

Yes, the Victorians would have been scandalised by Real Person Fiction (which of course that sort of thing would have been from their point of view)!