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This book has a lot of useful details for running a game set in the Caribbean, including an appendix of Spanish weights, measures, and containers, examples of merchants' marks, a glossary of nautical terms, "New World exports and plunder" to give you some great ideas for treasures, coinage of various powers, description of a traditional boucanier barbecue, a list of real privateer, buccaneer, filibuster, and pirate captains and their vessels, an explanation of a ship's officer's ranks (positions, really) and shares, and an example of a ship's articles (the terms of employment for a pirate expedition). This is all in addition to about 220 pages covering various aspects of a buccaneer's world in the late 17th century, plus maps and drawings of different types of vessels and weapons.
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Edit: just read that the author was (or is?) an advisor on a pirate-themed TV series called Black Sails, of which I have only seen about 15 minutes which took place on dry land and was all expositional talking so I can't judge whether it's any good.
 
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Ooh, that one looks good.
Edit: just read that the author was (or is?) an advisor on a pirate-themed TV series called Black Sails, of which I have only seen about 15 minutes which took place on dry land and was all expositional talking so I can't judge whether it's any good.
I've seen less than that, but my understanding is that it's part Game of Thrones IN THE CARIBBEAN, part historical docudrama, and part Treasure Island prequel.

Anyway, no doubt coincidentally I've been making my way through this:
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Being over 160 years old it's not the easiest read, but I've never actually heard of some of these "Infamous Pirates" before and if half the stuff this book says about them is true . . . well, let's just say I'm getting plenty of inspiration for future piratical PCs. :gunslinger:
 
In conjunction with books about pirates. This is good so far as it starts with the Yardbirds era.
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I just started with the Witcher series. So far so good. It started as pretty action oriented, later on more relationship oriented and now it seems to move more into the political realm. Cool stuff and I believe a Netflix series will come later this year, so I will watch that one for sure.
 
After thumbing through the Cyberpunk supplement and and eyeballing it for years, I finally picked up When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger. Good read so far.
 
I bought the original Challengers of the Unknown stories in digital trade (it was on sale) because I'm working on something that is partly influenced by the group. Pretty good so far
The Day the world blew up is the best story in the book, imo.

My current reads.
Time life book of the battle of the north atlantic
Master of kung fu omnibus vol 4
Amazing Spider-man omnibus vol 4
David Copperfield by some guy.
Rereading WEG SWRPG 1e which I love running
And trying to penetrate Dnd 5e, a game I will never run.
 
Revisiting a classic. Hardy’s use of dialect hasn’t aged well but for pure beauty in his prose and effectiveness in plotting I think he is one of the greats in the English language.

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I started to read the copy of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer that my parents gave me for a present a few years ago. It's well written, but I'm not that motivated to finish a (true) story of "dude goes into the woods unprepared and under-supplied; dies." I don't want to sound callous, but, duh.
 
I finally picked up When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger. Good read so far.
You are in for a treat. I'm a big fan of Effinger's "Budayeen" stories and have read them all.
 
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You are in for a treat. I'm a big fan of Effinger's "Budayeen" stories and have read them all.

The others are on order right now.

I started to read the copy of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer that my parents gave me for a present a few years ago. It's well written, but I'm not that motivated to finish a (true) story of "dude goes into the woods unprepared and under-supplied; dies." I don't want to sound callous, but, duh.

Saw a news story about this sometime back. Park rangers hate this book because it keeps encouraging idiots to do the same thing.
 
I got back into Malazan. Though that may be a tad premature to say. i'm about 280npages into Memories of Ice and, tbh, I'm a bit bored. I've previously read the first two (this being book 3). Somehow, despite not knowing what was happening, I rather enjoyed the scale of Gardens of the Moon, with the big magic battles. Book 2 I had no idea what was going on with Tavore and the prisoner's sub plot.

I'm just not sure I'm really enjoying it. I picked up most of the series (all but the last 3 and a couple of Cam's standalone's). I've also read - and enjoyed - Night of Knives.

But it's just all a bit too slow. These are 800 page tomes and it's all "he detected power" or "the stench of sorcery/power was present". Am I wasting my time? I've got a ton of books I've foolishly bought that I need to get through (ffs, including Way of Kings and the Mistborn books, and the Rothfuss books, and...)

I think I might need to prune.
 
I got back into Malazan. Though that may be a tad premature to say. i'm about 280npages into Memories of Ice and, tbh, I'm a bit bored. I've previously read the first two (this being book 3). Somehow, despite not knowing what was happening, I rather enjoyed the scale of Gardens of the Moon, with the big magic battles. Book 2 I had no idea what was going on with Tavore and the prisoner's sub plot.

I'm just not sure I'm really enjoying it. I picked up most of the series (all but the last 3 and a couple of Cam's standalone's). I've also read - and enjoyed - Night of Knives.

But it's just all a bit too slow. These are 800 page tomes and it's all "he detected power" or "the stench of sorcery/power was present". Am I wasting my time? I've got a ton of books I've foolishly bought that I need to get through (ffs, including Way of Kings and the Mistborn books, and the Rothfuss books, and...)

I think I might need to prune.

I got further in the Malzzn books, but I ground to a halt in book 5. Twice.
 
I got as far as Midnight Tides and got distracted by other books.
 
Doctor Spektor is fun. I liked a lot of those Gold Key characters: Doctor Spektor, Doctor Solar: Man of the Atom, Magnus: Robot Fighter, Turok: Son of Stone. Did not enjoy the cruddy 1990s Valiant versions of them, though. Dell's Nukla and Brain Boy were other good ones done in style similar to Gold Key.
 
...
Saw a news story about this sometime back. Park rangers hate this book because it keeps encouraging idiots to do the same thing.

I think a lot of people miss the ambivalence of Krakauer's book.
 
Just finished Shadowfire by Tanith Lee and starting Hunting the White Witch the final volume of the Birthgrave Trilogy.

Rob
 
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I'm just starting this one here:
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I got it in an attempt to grok the medieval mindset better.
It's okay so far... the author keeps making the point that no matter what seemingly ridiculous thing people might of got up to... such as putting a corpse on trial, or executing a pig... that they had rational reasons for doing so according to the common beliefs and knowledge of the time.
 
Happened upon this collection. It seems to be in chronological order starting with a tale from 1919. I hope it gets better as the first three stories were rather dull. I kept waiting for the good part and then it would end without much having transpired.
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Just finished Shadowfire by Tanith Lee and starting Hunting the White Witch the final volume of the Birthgrave Trilogy.

Rob

We need more fantasy RPGs with Lee as an influence. I've seen the Hydra Cooperative kids namecheck her which is cool.
 
Happened upon this collection. It seems to be in chronological order starting with a tale from 1919. I hope it gets better as the first three stories were rather dull. I kept waiting for the good part and then it would end without much having transpired.

A lot of early to mid period Lovecraft is merely okay to lame. It is mostly his later, longer stories that are his best.
 
We need more fantasy RPGs with Lee as an influence. I've seen the Hydra Cooperative kids namecheck her which is cool.
Very strong sword and sorcery feel, strange alien weird settings, definitely not high fantasy. Doesn’t shy away from grim and dark. Yes, we need more rpg’s influenced by her work .

Rob
 
Not sure how obscure the book is, but it seems to be out of print and hard to obtain. I happened to buy it at a library sale.
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Not a biography, per se, it discusses his life in terms of one song at a time, in order of their recording (I think--maybe in order of composition), excluding the Beatle years except for his solo, non-Beatles work like "Badge" (written with Eric Clapton for Cream).
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My wife picked this up for me for our anniversary.

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I have this book! A great view and read.

I just read 2001: a Space Odyssey. A great companion piece to the movie. What it lacks in audio-visual poetry it makes up in explanation and neat science stuff.
 
I was looking for a good John Denver biography, but found nothing that didn't sound like a hagiography or People magazine article. I did, however, find a contender for the best biography title ever:
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I was looking for a good John Denver biography, but found nothing that didn't sound like a hagiography or People magazine article. I did, however, find a contender for the best biography title ever:
Is that a series? I swear I've seen that same title and cover design for other celebrity biographies. May even have been the same font.

Edit to add: Ah, I found them on Amazon. They're all by the same author and apparently, self-published. The ones I could find page counts for were extremely short.
 
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About to start reading this book since I got a cheap used copy while looking for a cheap used copy of Across the Great Divide, recommended by Voros Voros, by the same author. I'm still waiting on The Band one to arrive, but that's okay as I usually read at least two or three books at the same time, off and on. (I'm also in the midst of a Stevie Nicks biography my wife just finished, a Freddie Mercury biography my mom read and gave to me, and A Tale of Two Cities. My wife is reading The Scarlet Pimpernel so there's a high probability that I'll be reading that soon as well, which, combined with the aforementioned Dickens book and my ongoing reading* of the Privateers and Gentlemen novels, will likely make me want to play something set in that era.)

(* They are very entertaining but I also find them very dense and jargon-filled: I had to keep looking up nautical terms when I read the first one.)
 
About to start reading this book since I got a cheap used copy while looking for a cheap used copy of Across the Great Divide, recommended by Voros Voros, by the same author. I'm still waiting on The Band one to arrive, but that's okay as I usually read at least two or three books at the same time, off and on. (I'm also in the midst of a Stevie Nicks biography my wife just finished, a Freddie Mercury biography my mom read and gave to me, and A Tale of Two Cities. My wife is reading The Scarlet Pimpernel so there's a high probability that I'll be reading that soon as well, which, combined with the aforementioned Dickens book and my ongoing reading* of the Privateers and Gentlemen novels, will likely make me want to play something set in that era.)

(* They are very entertaining but I also find them very dense and jargon-filled: I had to keep looking up nautical terms when I read the first one.)
Got through about 80 more pages while waiting in the jury lounge. It's very interesting and detailed, beginning with the early 20th Century pre-WW2 jazz scene, though the author doesn't quite grasp the culture of Southern California at least he did his research and gets his facts down. Lots of interesting quotations from key figures. Right now it's the early 1960s with the Beach Boys just starting their thing. Once in a while the author's hipster tastes intrude, but it's infrequent enough to be tolerable. The only real problem is he flings so many names at you at once that it can sometimes be hard to keep track of who's who without re-reading a paragraph and going, "Okay, he's now referring to Phil Spector as 'he,' not Jerry Leiber." Voros Voros, you would probably find this book worth your while.
 
Happened upon this collection. It seems to be in chronological order starting with a tale from 1919. I hope it gets better as the first three stories were rather dull. I kept waiting for the good part and then it would end without much having transpired.
I have that edition. Yeah it is great that it has all of Lovecraft's Mythos stories, but I have the same problem grinding thru alot of the earlier 'filler' stories to get to the juicy stuff.
 
I have that edition. Yeah it is great that it has all of Lovecraft's Mythos stories, but I have the same problem grinding thru alot of the earlier 'filler' stories to get to the juicy stuff.
Lovecraft took a while to get good, and he also took a while to actually become Lovecraftian. If someone has a book in chonological order, they'd be better off reading the stories from back-to-front.
 
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