Yesterday was my first visit to this small quarterly boardgames convention in Watford.
Here's what I've read in July.
Classic detective fiction; fourth, roughly, of Tey's novels of Inspector Alan Grant. An unreasonably beautiful young man visiting from America goes to the country to stay with casual acquaintances in a village that's been Discovered by writers and artists, causes social ructions, then disappears. What happened, and was it murder?
First of a projected seven-book fantasy series. In a decaying imperial city, a thief and con-man just wants to be left alone to get on with his business. But people keep interfering.
I was watching some magpies squabbling, in a tree half-way down the road, when something amazing happened. Large image follows: cc-by-sa on everything.
I've missed a few Reading sessions lately (with holidays and such). This time, with just three of us present, we played Dead of Winter.
Eleventh in Brett's Fethering Mysteries series (amateur sleuthing). A local bric-a-brac shop is burned down, but the body found inside it was shot first. Carole Seddon and Jude investigate again.
First meeting I've got to for a while, inspired by the bank holiday.
2014, 12 episodes: AniDB
Young people with superpowers in modern Tokyo? Well, that seems to be the premise at first. It soon gets much stranger.
Sixth (though the order doesn't really matter) of the collections of Paul Jennings' short humorous pieces, mostly from The Observer, published in 1958.
My copy of Dead of Winter has finally arrived; I pre-ordered it in December of last year. With images; cc-by-sa on everything insofar as I'm able to assert it.
Continuing with David F. Chapman's RPG a Day. Part 1 is here.
I've started playing with my drone. It's a Micro Drone 2.0 from Extreme Fliers, also available from Micro Drone and Amazon, with the camera module. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
Over the weekend I went to the Worldcon, at ExCel in Docklands. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2014, 12 episodes: AniDB; also known as The Kawai Complex Guide to Manners and Hostel Behavior.
Romantic comedy; high school boy lives in boarding-house with a variety of Characters, one of whom is a cute female bookworm.
In the mid 2000s, China tries to buy seven Kilo-class diesel submarines from Russia. The Americans aim to prevent this. Meanwhile, something odd is going on at Kerguelen Island.
2011, dir. Steven Soderbergh, Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon: IMDb / allmovie
A contagious disease spreads across the planet; civilisation starts to fall apart.
In the latter days of the Second World War, a U-boat group leader tries to maintain morale and keep his crews alive.
2013-2014, 38 episodes: AniDB
Weakling anime fan Sakamichi Onoda finds there's nobody else interested in forming an anime club at his new high school, so ends up joining the bicycle racing club instead. Seems he's got a hidden talent for cycling that even he didn't know about.
Last of a six-book series. In the distant future, a long-frozen space-navy captain tries to lead his fleet home. I'm going to deal in spoilers both for this book and for the whole series.
I've been to Thirsty Meeples in Oxford quite a bit. Now there's a boardgame café set to open in London.
David F. Chapman came up with the RPG a Day idea: one question about one's RPG experiences to be answered each day during August. That makes for short posts, though, so I'm going to group them together a bit.
Yesterday I did a quick course in the basic use of the Austrian scythe. These are my notes and recollections. Do not mistake them for an actual scything course! Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
Bernard Rhodenbarr, the closest New York in the 1970s can get to a gentleman burglar, is back for his third mystery book appearance. This is the one where the formula changes a bit.
A few years after the big magical war against the evil emperor, a pair of retired soldiers wander the land looking for work. They meet a young sorceress carrying a coffin on her back, and she employs them to help her find the remains of her father so that she can give them a decent burial. Oh, did she mention her father was the evil emperor?
In a city powered by steam heated by a fire-god, that fire-god has suddenly died. An inexperienced mage looks into what happened. Gladstone is nominated for the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer.
No room at the boardgame café, so we ended up with some three-sided games at my place. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
In the late Edo period, Perry's black ships were fought off by giant mystical mecha. Twenty years later in Nagasaki, a young yakuza boss has just unified the town under his rule by beating up everyone who objected. But he's got bigger things on the way...
In a now-alternate 2002, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier suddenly disappears at sea, apparently in a nuclear accident. What happened?
What's the best way to cross the various bodies of water round Denmark? Let's check this with actual data.
It's been around four years since I cycled much. About time I took it up again.
Third of the "Dickson McCunn" novels: superior thud and blunder. The affairs of Evallonia, the mitteleuropan country that provided motivations in Castle Gay, are now in the foreground, as forces gather round the potential restoration of its monarchy.