Parks and Pachinko
Oct. 28th, 2021 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearLast night, we played a new game called Parks.
It has some similarities to Tokaido, in that you have hikers that move as far along a trail as you like (and can't move backwards), collecting various things and taking various actions at each point.
It's slightly more complicated (and a lot longer) than Tokaido, because you are collecting different combinations of resources, in order to be able to visit specific national parks, which is where you score points.
I enjoyed playing and did reasonably well for a first try (though I realised at the end of the last round that I could have scored three extra points, which would have secured the victory). There's a lot more to consider and think about than it seems at first glance, so I'd definitely like to play again, in order to work out better strategies.
Last night, I also finished reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. It tells the story of several generations of a Korean family, living in Japan from the start of the 1930s, through to the end of the 1980s. It's about prejudice and identity, family ties and aspirations. It has a lot of historical and cultural detail that I found really interesting, and I got very invested in the fates of the characters.
Lee breaks two major rules of writing - there's a lot of telling rather than showing, and the narrative perspective hops around between all the characters within every scene. And yet, I found the book very compelling and wanted to keep reading it late into the night. I felt it lost cohesion a bit towards the end, as the time jumps between chapters got bigger and the story lost touch a bit with the older characters. But the ultimate conclusion was very satisfying, and I would recommend this as a very involving, beautifully written and fascinating book.
It has some similarities to Tokaido, in that you have hikers that move as far along a trail as you like (and can't move backwards), collecting various things and taking various actions at each point.
It's slightly more complicated (and a lot longer) than Tokaido, because you are collecting different combinations of resources, in order to be able to visit specific national parks, which is where you score points.
I enjoyed playing and did reasonably well for a first try (though I realised at the end of the last round that I could have scored three extra points, which would have secured the victory). There's a lot more to consider and think about than it seems at first glance, so I'd definitely like to play again, in order to work out better strategies.
Last night, I also finished reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. It tells the story of several generations of a Korean family, living in Japan from the start of the 1930s, through to the end of the 1980s. It's about prejudice and identity, family ties and aspirations. It has a lot of historical and cultural detail that I found really interesting, and I got very invested in the fates of the characters.
Lee breaks two major rules of writing - there's a lot of telling rather than showing, and the narrative perspective hops around between all the characters within every scene. And yet, I found the book very compelling and wanted to keep reading it late into the night. I felt it lost cohesion a bit towards the end, as the time jumps between chapters got bigger and the story lost touch a bit with the older characters. But the ultimate conclusion was very satisfying, and I would recommend this as a very involving, beautifully written and fascinating book.
