Avidly Reads Board Games
by Eric Thurm
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Pub Date Oct 08 2019 | Archive Date Jan 16 2020
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Description
“How we should think about board games, and what do they do to us as we play them?”
Writer and critic Eric Thurm digs deep into his own experience as a board game enthusiast to explore the emotional and social rules that games create and reveal, telling a series of stories about a pastime that is also about relationships. From the outdated gender roles in Life and Mystery Date to the cutthroat, capitalist priorities of Monopoly and its socialist counterpart, Class Struggle, Thurm thinks through his ongoing rivalries with his siblings and ponders the ways games both upset and enforce hierarchies and relationships—from the familial to the geopolitical. Like sitting down at the table for family game night, Board Games is an engaging book of twists and turns, trivia, and nostalgia.
Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly—an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books—specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author’s emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781479826957 |
| PRICE | $15.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 144 |
Featured Reviews
John L, Reviewer
This was a promising start for me to a new semi-academic series of books, a bit like the Bloomsbury 'Object Lessons' imprint. Our narrator did fall into the trap of reciting too much I already knew, especially about the origins of "Monopoly", but went much further into 'legacy games' which to me seem a wasteful, single-use version of something computer software could do so much more sensibly. But the argument against that opinion is that board games can only be board games if you take all electronica out of the equation, and just use the rule book and the board(s) and avatars you get. This book would demand you agree with it, that there is so much more culturally significant about them than that reductio ad absurdum might imply, and that the way they add narrative to social occasions and demand everyone together obeys a set of rules unique to each game, whether for solo or group victory, et al, are worthy of academic study. This might feel a little inconsequential in that regard, but consider it a very eye-opening initial salvo.
Elizabeth W, Librarian
love board games. I've been really into the hobby for the last two years, but I played plenty of games growing up, from games of Clue with my whole family or intense showdowns of Stratego with my sister. While I have moved on to slightly heavier and more niche games, the attraction of board games for me is the opportunity to get immersed in the world of a game with one or several other people for an hour or two. In Avidly Reads Board Games. Eric Thurm clearly captures the joy of board gaming while also providing interesting history and context for how the board game industry has expanded and grown.
Board Games is a quick, accessible read that would probably be best for those already at least somewhat immersed in the board game hobby. While I haven't played all of the games mentioned, I had enough of a frame of reference for many of the games mentioned, which was fun while reading it.
I really enjoyed the chapters that were more history focused- Playing Along with Complicity and Monopoly and Its Children. Playing Along with Complicity was especially fascinating, as I had never heard of either Juden Raus or Train, and this lead me to do some additional reading on Train. One of my favorite things about reading nonfiction is learning something that sparks some interest and leads me to learning more about it. I had heard about some of the variations on Monopoly like Public Assistance, but I was unfamiliar with Class Struggle, and found it to be fascinating.
If you are an avid board gamer like me, I think you will find much to enjoy in Board Games. It really makes me want to do more research into the history of the hobby!
Thanks to NYU Press and NetGalley for the ARC!
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