Books Completed May 2022

Between yard work, work work, Rogue Legacy 2 coming out of early access, and messing up my back, I didn't get a ton of reading done this month. The fact that I'm posting this late in June doesn't bode too well for the June post either, but we'll see.

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers - I don't remember where I saw this referenced, but I picked it up secondhand as inspiration for the pirate game I'm perennially writing. Perhaps that my copy arrived soaked in cologne prejudiced me, but I couldn't quite enjoy this book. There are a few good hooks slipped in early on that come together satisfyingly around the middle, but the end feels rushed. The action sequences are nice and dynamic, with lots of nameless pirates and sailors getting tossed around. It's a very casually -ist book, though. Like, only the black characters are given accents, or have their skin color described. One of the villains is your basic fat == evil. There are only three women with speaking roles in the whole book: One's the heroine, who four different men are chasing to own for various reasons; one is described mostly in terms of her breasts; one is a ghost. 

Dyson's Book of Swords by Dyson Logos - This barely counts as a read, but it's a fun little picture book of 50+ fantasy swords with evocative, short descriptions. They're cute and I can imagine using this as a flipbook treasure table.

Eat the Weeds by Ben Charles Harris - This has been in my subconscious for a long time as a classic of the foraging hobby, which interests me more from a local knowledge and awareness perspective than survivalist. Turns out this is out of print though, so can't be that much of a classic. Finally reading through a second-hand copy though, I can safely say the author was a lunatic.

It took me a while to pin down the writing style, which reminded me so much of modern right-wing articles for some reason. I think it's the tone someone who is convinced of their own correctness and intelligence they've never listened to feedback or actually tried to improve, so it just comes out as stilted and pompous. The usefulness of the material itself was hindered by this not being a field guide in the least, and assuming you already know what kind of plant you're looking to possibly eat. Or, as he suggests, bringing samples to local experts who will certainly be happy to take time out of their day to identify yet another mallow for you or such. Then the uses are almost all one of three:

• Substitute it for another Vegetable. There was a weird assumption about a baseline set of vegetables that you could sub in foraged stuff for. As in, the foraged plants were never discussed as first-class produce on their own, just something you could have instead of Spinach or Asparagus. Also, he capitalizes all the plant names like that and it weirds me out.
• Make a tea. Probably as a substitute for Coffee or Black Tea (again with the uppercase), which contains the harmful Caffeine (also a good smattering of proper nouns for no reason). Cold teas are to be avoided (this is also a health book from the 50's), and warm teas are to be drunk like eight times a day, and slowly swished in the mouth to mix them with spit before swallowing (what).

Add it to a soup. Inspired.

Also he consistently referred to Native Americans both in the past tense and in the possessive which, yikes.

The Walking Dead Vol.1-9 by Robert Kirkman and friends - I've had the early volumes of this on a shelf since they came out, but stopped keeping up with it around volume 13 or something. But I was  walking the dog and happened to find volumes 15-21 in a little free library. Then I noticed I had loaned out volumes 1 & 2 sometime in the past. Anyway, so I picked up the first two again and the two in the gap to fill in the collection because at this point why not.

This proved to be a good move because I really screwed up my back in May and had to lie on the floor for a long time and do not particularly challenging things. Like rereading comics. I've also seen the first few seasons of the show, so probably the most interesting thing about revisiting the comics was seeing where I could remember deviations between them, or watching how some events got reused in different places. I don't love the franchise, but it's entertaining enough. There's more torture put in front of the veil than I think is necessary, but I guess that was one of its selling points. The treatment of the group "dealing with" the cannibals is effective without showing the specifics, for example.