Alrightreads: Not Local

Colin Nutt, Callum Cochrane and photographers, Picturing Scotland: Edinburgh

2011 / Hardback / 96 pages / UK

***

Lots of nice pictures of familiar places and attractions I never bothered to visit in three years, unfortunately annotated with self-described "fascinating insights" into Scotland's "multi-faceted" capital, with all the "hidden depths," "elegant vistas" and "stark contrasts" that make it "truly a capital city." The sort of generic travel copy I vomit up when I can't be arsed, that was all in the opening paragraph.

Julian Flanders, 1001 Days Out: Your Comprehensive Guide to the Best Attractions in the UK

2010 / Hardback / 384 pages / UK

****

This reliably economical Parragon guide has been road tested at precisely 0.0% of locations so far (as a family unit), but with its regional focus and broad smorgasbord – from overhyped star attractions to quirky dilapidation and plenty of nature – it should get a lot of use as both guide and motivator. If I let the challenge aspect get to me, this could end up having an insane amount of influence on all our lives. Chester Zoo, here we come.

Various, AA Mini Guides: Britain

2009 / Paperback box set / 2,560 pages / UK

****

More virgin travel guides that might take a while to get stuck into, what with them primarily targeting more adventurous grown-ups with their own sets of wheels, but they're bound to be pretty good, right? If I was driving, I wouldn't be able to read the guide, would I? Think it through.

Patricia Schultz, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die: Revised Second Edition

2015 / Paperback / 1,216 pages / USA

***

A practical travel companion rather than a coffee table book to procrastinate with, though the necessarily brief summaries and extravagant business recommendations make its usefulness limited, even if we ever bother to get out of the country again.

Nigel Hicks, This Is the Philippines

1999 / Hardback / 176 pages / UK

**

As expected, and frankly hoped for, a highly selective and irresponsibly rose-tinted presentation of the nation that housed me for the best part of the last decade (the glowing preface is from the Secretary of Tourism, so you know it's reliable), so our daughter can grow up with the romantic ideal of where she comes from without being exposed to the depressing side that was the main reason behind the migration in the first place. Now we're going to watch This Is England for balance.

Alrightgames: Flanx

Flanx (a.k.a. Omiga, One Minute Game)

2017 / Real-time tile placement card game / 2 players / Germany

*

I wasn't looking for this game, but I put a minimum bid down on one of the many unwanted new & sealed Christmas gifts finding their ungrateful way to eBay card game searches and ended up winning for less than it cost them to send it. So I guess we're stuck with it.

If you're stocking up on games with an eye to bonding with your child in the future, it's definitely a good idea to pick one that's stressful and intensely competitive by design. Thanks, Flanx. Thanx.

Alrightgames: Star Wars – Death Star Attack

Star Wars: Death Star Attack

2010 / Trick taking card game / 2 players / UK

Donated

From vintage board and arcade games to total immersion VR, game manufacturers are going to keep milking that one scene forever, aren't they?

This basic number-matching card game is presumably one of the less satisfying interpretations out there, but since I'm keeping it sealed for freshness, I won't know until my daughter's an appropriate age to appreciate the incestuous space saga.

I have a fond memory of that time my Dad pulled out a cheap (free?) Smiths Crisps Back to the Future board game after we watched the film on TV, so I'm looking forward to continuing the tradition of enhancing cinematic experiences with tat. Don't you wish I was your dad?

Alrightgames: Scooby-Doo! – Creepy Card Games

Scooby-Doo!: Creepy Card Games

2007 / Card game / 2 players / UK

**

Buying a preowned Happy Meal toy is akin to dumpster diving for my daughter's dinner, but this is a nice compact deck that's better than the charmless crap Waddingtons used to churn out for the less enduring franchises of my childhood.

I don't know how much she's going to like Scooby, but this focuses squarely on the classic hippy heroes and costumed villains, so I'm not obliged to sit through any modern muck.

Alrightgames: Accused

Accused (a.k.a. I Commit)

~1950 (2011 reproduction) / Collecting card game / 2+ players / UK

**

Slightly broken themed rummy. There's not much incentive to actually play it, but I enjoy the quaintly racist pulp art.

These nostalgic reproductions of vintage Pepys games go for about £2 in The Works or a bit more on eBay with postage, see if there's a theme that tickles you. If nothing else, the tin makes useful micro storage or a makeshift rattle.

Alrightgames: Splendor

Splendor

2014 / Economic card game / 2-4 players / France

****

There was still space on the games shelf, a need for some diversity among the deckbuilders and a few days of December left before the year/decade of austerity began,* so I traced the dodgy eBay sellers back to their source and picked out a few forgeries of titles I wouldn't have been interested enough to risk being disappointed by at full price, but are jeopardy-free at £3.79 (unless you have any ethics or values or something).

Its bourgeois pseudohistorical theme is unappetising icing on the basic maths, but it beats playing Monopoly again, I suppose. I upgraded the cardboard tokens with a child's coloured plastic gems to add superficial appeal and fool me into wasting time every once in a while.

Update: Finally got around to playing it and enjoyed the same satisfying sense of seeing the strategies unfold as with Backgammon. Next time I might even get all the rules right.

* After a few days off, I continued to buy things in January regardless. Austerity begins in February, definitely. Update: Whoops.

Alrightgames: Ascension Theme Pack – Rat King

Ascension: Theme Pack – Rat King

2010 / Deckbuilding card game booster pack / 2+ players / USA

***

I'm normally repelled by the booster business model that tempts fans to subscribe indefinitely for more of the same game they already have. But this rat bastard (and his loyal horde) was my favourite foe in the digital game, and I estimated my analogue games being about 25% more fun with a Rat Nest side deck when I negotiated an offer for the transatlantic import of what's ultimately a 12-card booster pack, like children buy to get Pokemons, except with just the two repeating cards.

It's crossing a line, but since it was entirely funded by selling spare components from my other discounted sets, I think I got away with it this time. But I'm watching me.

Alrightgames: Star Realms – Colony Wars

Star Realms: Colony Wars

2015 / Deckbuilding card game / 2 players (+) / USA

****

I only realised after buying the base set and this formerly mandatory multiplayer expansion at a discount that I could have voyaged into unexplored Frontiers for the same price, especially since my apparent loyalty to the base set on Steam means that some of these cards still have that unnecessary-sequel vibe about them. But playing through the solo challenges has made me warm to this samey supplement, even over the originals. They're all combined now, anyway.

However deviously contrived, you at least get a complete game for your money, so you could share the commitment with a buddy. If you ever catch me buying a 12-card booster pack for pretty much the same price as I got these, you're authorised to take my child away.

Alrightgames: Star Realms

Star Realms

2014 / Deckbuilding card game / 2 players (+) / USA

****

Backtracking from the more efficiently convoluted spin-off Cthulhu Realms, my first impressions of the digital deckbuilder when I played it fashionably late in 2017 were disappointment at its comparatively elementary mechanics, bland art and uninspired space scenario. Then I had a go and it turned out to be addictively therapeutic.

I didn't exactly need another formulaic deckbuilder, so held off buying the proper game until the American importer's £10.50 wore me down. I hadn't played it for a couple of years, and seeing those generic spaceships and starbases again, out in the real world, made me feel more warmly nostalgic than I'd expected.

The size of the box it came in was simultaneously disappointing, funny and admirable, and this second edition has solved the issue of awkward health "authority" tracking in a way that's simultaneously efficient and annoyingly fiddly. Of course, in the unlikely event that you find more than one other person who's prepared to play it with you, you'll have to buy more.

Alrightgames: Maze – Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle

Christopher Manson, Maze: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle

1985 / Cryptic gamebook / 96 pages / USA

*****

Masquerade and the other vintage armchair treasure hunts generally come off too poncy and smart-arse to be worth the effort, but this nightmarish labyrinth gamebook is enigmatic and sinister (classic clue) enough to obsess over in all its cross-hatched gloom. Until I get stuck in another loop and start wedging my fingers in pages. I mean, rooms.

I'm fairly confident I've got the first door sussed. The rest will take some time. I'm looking forward to trying to initiate my daughter into the cult. I wonder what the fish... okay, I just got it.

Babyliography VI: The Undiscovered Country

Jan Pieńkowski, Numbers

1974 / Hardback / 32 pages / Poland

**

I was supposed to curb the spending this year, but then I got tempted by another bulk buying offer and wasted the coveted final seat on yet another 1–10 counting book, because I thought it would pair nicely with the Wheels book. The sacrifices we make for OCD.

Jan Pieńkowski, Wheels

1991 / Hardback / 32 pages / Poland

*

The better half of the Meg and Mog partnership also drew some books about things. This is one of those. I was expecting a bit more than an illustrated vocab list, though I'm not sure why.

Judith Kerr, The Adventures of Mog

1993 collection / Hardback / 112 pages / UK

***

I had Mog and the Baby (collected herein), and remembered it with vague nostalgic fondness, but I was never as into it as she is. "Bebby" is the current go-to nappy-changing story, as she relates to its anonymous antagonist. She'll go nuts for Baby's Day Out.

Neil Gaiman and Adam Rex, Chu's Day

2013 / Hardback / 30 pages / UK/USA

***

It's a bit early to creep her out with Coraline (though her cousin was obsessed with the film when she wasn't much older), but this interactive sneezalong was a fast favourite. Neil's put in the work to earn his celebrity children's author retirement more than most.

Unknown, Teletubbies: Pocket Library

2013 / Board books / 48 pages / UK

**

There's plenty of time to bury the classics in crap merchandise (I think we had an entire shelf of TV annuals growing up), but like the wobbly toys, I hoped these could make substitutes for the episodes since she started requesting "teh, teh, teh" a bit too often. I don't blame her, I was a bit obsessed with them when they came out, and I was in double figures. The back covers cobble together into a jigsaw like her Mr. Men set, so I'll retroactively dock those a star for redundancy.

Alrightmusic: January

John Butt, Bach: Mass in B Minor

1991 / Ebook / 128 pages / USA

**

Summarising the state of scholarship on the elusive, impractical mass c.1991, this didn't succeed in illuminating Bach's wonders more than other things I've read, and some of those tried a lot harder. If you can graph it out symmetrically, it must be good, right?

Thomas Sipe, Beethoven: Eroica Symphony

1998 / Ebook / 160 pages / UK

**

There's no chance of conjuring your own connotations after you've been bombarded with the composer's politics and the corresponding history of interpretations. The last chapter finally gets around to the music and attempts some vaguer themes, but it's already been ruined.

Stephen E. Hefling, Mahler: Das Lied Von Der Erde

2000 / Ebook / 176 pages / USA

***

Whether the font was smaller or he just had more worth writing about as he drew links across the symphography, this seemed more substantial than these usually are, even without the unnecessary chapter-length digression on reception.

Peter Hill, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

2000 / Ebook / 184 pages / UK

***

Such a comprehensive look at the polarising ballet, its origins, form and behind-the-scenes and before-the-pit drama that it's a shame I'm not obsessed with it, really.

Paul Everett, Vivaldi: The Four Seasons and Other Concertos, Op. 8

1996 / Ebook / 120 pages / Ireland

***

A brief overview to kick off independent study of the well-loved concept album and its accompanying, less overplayed, but similarly digestible themed works. Along with some less interesting abstract ones to skip.

Alrightfilms: January

Dudley Andrew and Carole Cavanaugh, Sanshô Dayû

1999 / Ebook / 79 pages / USA

***

BFI books permit authors to peter out at a pathetic page count when they ran out of things to say, but this one smartly splits the assignment between scholars who bring different expertise to the dissection of a grim folk tale. I favoured the musings on mathematical framing over the history and politics.

Scott Anthony, Night Mail

2007 / Ebook / 97 pages / UK

**

Excessive postmortem of a vintage Post Office propaganda piece (evidently more detailed than many proper films are worth), though I could probably wax similarly tedious about some of my favourite adverts, if tasked with writing the book on the early-90s CIC Video Star Trek VHS trailer or something.

Simon Louvish, It's a Gift

1994 / Ebook / 96 pages / UK

*

A brief biography of W. C. Fields, whom we're presumably supposed to be bowled over by as he pratfalls between laboured comedy skits, these recapped verbatim and illustrated by page-using screencaps, because there's just not that much to say, really.

Joan Mellen, Modern Times

2006 / Ebook / 88 pages / USA

***

The tramp and his most serious silliness are examined in their crazy context. The standard scene by scene breakdown is more justified when they're near-silent vignettes. Complete with deleted scenes and archive talking heads, this is all you could ask from a worthwhile documentary.

Paul Hammond, L'Âge d'or

1998 / Ebook / 76 pages / UK

**

I hadn't made it far into this nonsense nightmare without a walkthrough. He provides the background and clarifies the visual foreign puns and other elusive things, but a person who's so enthusiastic about this shit isn't someone you really want to spend even a stingy page count with.

On the Omnibuses: January

Various, The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Sixth Edition, Volume 2

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1785–1833) ***

Variably enrapturing laudanum-fuelled nightmares, paeans to nature and guilty defences of idleness, concluding with some boring criticism I didn't read because I don't have to write essays any more.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1830–92) **

Thematically all over the shop, pinned down by stubborn rhyme and meter that comes off as a patient challenge. I didn't make it through the Camelot faff.

William Shakespeare, The Illustrated Stratford Shakespeare

The Tempest (1610–11) ***

Touted as The Bard's grand, fantastical, malleabllegorical finale, I still don't get what all the fuss is about. Forbidden Planet did it better.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594) **

Dull courtly love pentangle, brightened by some really laboured jokes that could be mistaken for an exaggerated pisstake. There were some nice rhymes, which is the sort of enthusiastic note I make when forced to listen to rap.

The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600) *

Blackadder's putdown to Baldrick that he'd laugh at a Shakespeare comedy frequently came to mind as I endured this mirth-free pantomime of a horny rascal getting his comeuppance, with bonus funny foreign accents. Even the fans don't like this one.

Measure for Measure (1604) **

This early-17th-century #MeToo drama is less problematic than expected, but it still takes about four acts longer than necessary to make its straightforward point.

The Comedy of Errors (1589) ****

Actually recognisable as a comedy and actually funny as contrived confusions and identity crises pass the absurd threshold. Better than Beckett, though I may have been swayed by the phantom laugh track of Elizabethans wetting their breeches.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Original Illustrated Strand Sherlock Holmes

The Sign of the Four (1890) **

Technically a superior sequel, I suppose, but the more laid-back padding made it feel more stretched out than its predecessor's gratuitous double feature, and not really deserving of the length. Its more intimate stakes for Watson could also be considered a plus, but feels off in light of all the episodic jumping around we're going to do. Basically, it's just a bit weird to do the movies before the show.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891–92) *****

Tied with Paradise Lost for the number of versions owned over the years, a miniaturised facsimile of the first two collections was my go-to plane book for a few years, but it's luxurious to have these full-sized in a coffee table book to pore over with morning coffee.

Physically and thematically lighter than the novels, the Adventures are generally more enjoyable as a result, and Holmes' aloof arrogance now comes off as a funny character flaw rather than borderline insufferable. Plenty of classics, but 'The Red-Headed League' was always a favourite for its incredible overcomplication, and it's always refreshing when they get out to the country.

Arthur C. Clarke, Four Great SF Novels

The City and the Stars (1956) ****

Your standard hero's quest turned star trek in an inspired far future setting that's so far down the line, and its machinations conveniently mysterious, that it doesn't come off as dated.

I expect one of those streaming services will mount their own pointless adaptation of it one of these days, rather than having to come up with their own stories.