|
|
Post by GRWelsh on Sept 18, 2015 8:05:39 GMT -5
Has anyone seen that a biography of EGG titled EMPIRE OF IMAGINATION, by Michael Witwer, is going to be released Oct. 6th? Is anyone planning on buying it and reading it? |
|
|
|
Post by geneweigel on Sept 18, 2015 17:35:02 GMT -5
I just checked it out at the website and the review commentary actually sounds positive: www.empireofimagination.com/#!reviews/caag The Easley cover is a tribute to UNEARTHED ARCANA. I'd like to check it out. |
|
|
|
Post by geneweigel on Sept 18, 2015 17:55:38 GMT -5
Heh, its crazy in all this time that he's been gone, and with all the alternative D&D game avenues, that I haven't heard anything new that is interesting game-wise. Non-fiction-wise, I still never got around to getting the book about early D&D yet. Anybody read that?
|
|
|
|
Post by GRWelsh on Sept 20, 2015 18:52:11 GMT -5
I read PLAYING AT THE WORLD by Jon Peterson if that's the one you're talking about. Or at least I read large chunks of it. It's good, and I think worth getting. It is very detailed and dense, so I don't think I'd want to just read straight through it. But I like to read bits at a time, and I like it that someone took the time to try to document some of this early material with a historian's approach. So I'm glad it exists.
|
|
|
|
Post by geneweigel on Sept 21, 2015 10:13:10 GMT -5
Alright I'll start looking at that other on when I get the chance.
|
|
|
|
Post by grodog on Sept 26, 2015 1:02:09 GMT -5
I picked up an advance copy on eBay for ~$10, so I've started to read Empire of Imagination. I'm not sure that I'll like it in the end, but I'm trying to stay open-minded (flipping through the index, there were a number of key people from BITD who aren't listed at all, so....).
Allan.
|
|
|
|
Post by GRWelsh on Oct 9, 2015 10:39:38 GMT -5
I did receive this in the mail Wednesday, and started reading it. One thing I immediately dislike is the pretension of a biographer who turns his subject into a character like you would find in a novel ("Gary walked through the town of Lake Geneva and thought about such and such..."). But I'll reserve judgment until I'm finished.
|
|
|
|
Post by GRWelsh on Oct 13, 2015 17:42:52 GMT -5
I read this over the weekend, and I have to admit it won me over. I thought it was a respectful yet balanced biography of EGG. It was easy to read with short chapters that were each based on some milestone or particular recollection from his life. I wish it was longer and that more people had been interviewed, but that isn't the worst criticism. At first I didn't like the presumption of treating EGG like a third-person POV character in a novel -- after all, who is this biographer to say what Gary thought and said in several unrecorded moments during his life? That annoyed me right off the bat. I think it is very presumptuous for a biographer to do that, because then it takes a biography and moves it in the direction of "based on a true story" or "historical novel." But, I have to admit, this style makes it very readable -- like a story -- rather than just a dry listing of facts and footnotes. It was a stylistic choice, and in the end I can't say it was a bad one. I already knew a lot of what was in this book, but not everything, and I'm glad to now have all of those story bits and recollections very concisely stored between two covers. There is also a very nice but too short section of photographs, and I was especially interested to see a few of EGG when he was young -- like pre-1970. I'm grateful someone published a biography of EGG, because he certainly deserved it!
|
|
