The History Book: Week #25

This week I revised Columbia Games. It was an article where things were in a considerably different state than they were in 2007. Then, two companies were fighting hard over the rights to Harn and the internet was in an uproar. Now, N. Robin Crossby has sadly passed away, and though his company continues on under the stewardship of his daughter, the acrimony over the split has largely disappeared, at least on the public front. Of course, given she picked up a Harn trademark last year, I'm not convinced there won't be another big change soon, maybe even before the book goes to press.

I also finally got back to my expansion work on Wizards of the Coast, which made me very happy. Besides revising the last several sections I'd written, I also wrote about 3 pages on the trainwreck surrounding the 4e OGL/GSL release and how all (or almost all) of their third-party publishers abandoned themover the period. I think the marketing trainwreck concerning Essentials was what enthused me to write about their last major cock-up.

I hope to keep expanding Wizards of the Coast week-by-week, again. Next up is the release of 4e itself, then back to trainwrecks, this time surrounding Gleemax and DDI. How can such a big company be so terrible about marketing & rumor control!? In some ways, they're as bad as TSR in their last days, when Ryan Dancey famously condemned them for not listening to their customers.

The Beet Queen, by Louise Erdrich

Today Kimberly & I finished reading aloud the second of Louise Erdrich's books, The Beet Queen. Like Love Medicine, many parts of this new book were published individually as short stories. However, it's a much more cohesive story than Love Medicine, and I think the whole work really benefits as a result. Yet, it still holds onto some of the advantages of short stories: a number of the chapters (particularly the early ones) have real kick to them. But everything also continually builds on itself.

The structure of the story is also entirely intriguing, as it spirals through numerous characters, sometimes jumping back in time to tell one character's point of view on events we've already seen from another. It's used to best effect in the last several chapters which all circle around one day in 1972.

I also find the themes of the book quite interesting. It's about nature versus nurture, how some aspects come from how we were born and some from how we were raised. It's about shared misery, and how it can jump from person to person like a plague. It's about the webs that connect us together into society, how they can fray and come back together. And finally it's about the secrets we each hold inside, how we can never truly know why someone did the things they did.

Anyway, fine book. I'm quite looking forward to Tracks, though I've read it before too. We'll start it in a couple of months.