Murder by Death

I wouldn’t normally call myself an obsessive personality, but I do occasionally get a little hyper-focused on something that appeals to me for whatever reason.  A TV show that resonates, a foodstuff that meets some mysterious physiological need (apples and peanut better are a cyclical favorite), a genre of fiction that I suddenly need to devour.

But generally, I’d call myself a curious plodder, or maybe a dabbler.  Open minded to a degree, but mostly even-keeled.  Which is why the last couple of months have taken me by surprise, because I have become obsessed with a board game.

In my last random, non-book post, I mentioned Wingspan.  It’s an engine building game with an ornithological theme.  It’s all about building out bird habitats, which sounds so boring I’m impressed you made it to the end of this sentence.  But oddly, it’s not.  It’s a compulsively playable, gorgeous, game – so much so that I’ve bought both available expansion card sets (they plan on one for each continent) and upgraded to a wooden dice roller and storage set.  I have been thoroughly sucked in.  And not just me; MT has, to my astonishment, been just as thoroughly sucked in.  So much so that he’s starting to recognise and identify birds we see out on our weekly hikes.  We play at least once a day, and often twice (games last about 45 minutes); it’s turned out to be a great way to relax and de-stress, which has become more important than ever in these crazy days.  I’m still a little confounded by its ability to captivate me, since the last game I bought and played with enthusiasm is Scrabble, but it’s been a lifesaver, so I’m embracing it.

I’ve still been reading and up until last week, still thoroughly on my non-fiction streak.  Lately, I’ve been weaving in fiction re-reads from my adolescent years, and just yesterday, picked up a Seanan McGuire for a re-read.  For the first time all year, I’m thinking about buying books again, curious about new titles for the first time in recent memory.

In retrospect, it’s obvious that I needed to unplug and remove myself as much as possible from humanity.  People were – are – stressing me out in a myriad number of ways and, as I was getting dangerously close to taking a flamethrower to most of my interpersonal relationships, both online* and in real-life, unplugging and distancing myself was probably a wiser move.  I’m still not sure I’m ready to mix and mingle, but I was delighted when I woke up this morning and felt like sitting down to enter my read books and writing up a post or two.  That hasn’t happened in a long time.  So, Yay!

• Nobody specific, just an accumulation of frustration and fed-upped-ness with the general stupidity of online discourse in light of recent (read: the past several years) events.

Hopefully everyone has been doing well and enjoyed their holidays.

As I write this during a new, snap 5 day level 4 lockdown in Melbourne, looking at events of the last 6 weeks, it certainly appears as though 2021 doesn’t have much more to recommend it than 2020 had.  It’s early days yet, and at least 2021 has offered hints for optimism here and there.  It’s not much, but in the absence of water, people will drink the sand, to quote Aaron Sorkin.

Still, I’ve tried not to let it all bog me down too much – or at least any more than it already has.  I’ve been reading consistently, though not as frequently as I usually do.  This has more to do with a birthday gift than it does current events though.  Anybody heard of the board game called Wingspan?  I hadn’t until I received it; it calls itself an engine building game – your goal, using cards, food tokens, and eggs, is to build out a bird habitat.  It’s a beautiful game, but we were dubious – the instructions cover 3 different booklets!  Still, we gave it a go and after a few awkward games, started to get the hang of it and now we’re hooked.  We play pretty much every night, at least one game, sometimes 2.  It’s not a high-intensity, action packed sort of game, but it’s thoroughly enjoyable.  I’ve already bought the European expansion pack and have put my name down for the back-ordered Oceania expansion.

In other bird related news, the beginning of our snap, 5 day lockdown coincided with the Great Backyard Bird Count, which I’d planned to hit big with several national park excursions.  That was obviously nixed, but we did hit a couple of local parks within our 5km limit.  No new and exciting birds, but one or two less common ones were spotted.  And of course, I’ve actually counted the birds in my own backyard.

A Long-billed corella, dismantling pine cones from the top down.

I’ve been on a non-fiction reading streak; 2021 has not seen a single fiction title read so far.  Which is good, since I have an alarming number of non-fiction titles on my TBR, so I may be reading slower, but I am accomplishing a more significant TBR reduction.

Also unusual this year is that to date, every title has been written by a man.  I don’t make any effort to read more of one gender than another; my natural reading taste for mysteries makes my shelves female heavy without any effort, and even a large percentage of my non-fiction, popular science books are written by women, so the string of all male authors felt unusual.

The biggest accomplishment amongst these reads it my completion of Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, which has been on the TBR some years now.  I’ve also completed a long-in-process book about feeding wild birds.  Both reviews will be forthcoming.  Just the other night I grabbed another book – non-fiction, travel, but the first by a woman for me this year – called The Stone Boudoir about small villages in Sicily.  Yes, please.