After finishing Borne, which was fantastic but heady and I felt it required my FULL FOCUS, I wanted something lighter and easier to digest. Sometimes you want the rare steak and other times you want a delicious hamburger. Or sometimes you want the spicy dragon roll and other days you’re just craving a simple California roll. All fulfilling in their own way but definitely unique tastes.

ANYWAY, what am I reading right now? Well, a few things!

We Could Be Heroes by Mike Chen, which I have had checked out from the library for an embarrassing amount of time and finally started right after finishing Borne. This might not have worked in the book’s favor – Chen’s writing is a bit more mainstream compared to VanDermeer. Which is what I wanted, but at first it just felt so basic?

I’m about a third of the way through and the set up is two people with powers who have mysterious pasts are trying to figure out what happened to them. One was using their powers for good, the other for…not good. But circumstances have thrown them together and they realize they need each other to find the truth.

The dialogue is light, it has a humorous, playful tone. I just wish I liked the two main characters a little bit more. I don’t find myself thinking about this book when I’m not reading it and I am kind of finding it hard to stay interested. We will see if I power through the remaining two thirds to find out the big mystery or if I continue to become distracted by other books in my TBR pile.

Other books like:

Your Move: What Board Games Teach Us About Life by Jonathan Kay & Joan Moriarity, a book that, at 180 pages, was calling to me as a quick read when I found myself starting to slow down with the Heroes. It is also part of my personal quest to know too much about this hobby that I have recently become obsessed with.

I’m about four chapters into this and I am really enjoying it. Moriarity and Kay approach board games from their own unique perspectives. Moriarity works at a board game cafe, teaching people games for a living and watching players new to the hobby and veterans alike navigate the ever growing world of tabletop games. Kay is an academic and likes to talk about the history of board games and their mechanics, though he isn’t above talking about the psychology of the way games effect players.

From the first chapter, when Moriarity talks about how so many people go at life with a “play to win” attitude and don’t enjoy the taste of group failure. But knowing how to fail, how to lose a game with grace and a smile on your face, is a very important skill to have and tabletop games can teach us that. I have a feeling I will finish this book before the month is over.

Speaking of quick reads, I checked out both of Nathan Pyle’s comic collections from the library:

If you follow the Strange Planet Instagram, chances are you have seen most of these comics, but it is nice to have them all together in these little square packages. It’s easy to flip through and they are obviously begging to be gifted. I have them listed as “currently reading” on my GoodReads but I think I have technically already read them because I check the Instagram every day. It always brings an instant smile. But if you have not seen the antics of the alien beings and prefer the book format to online, they exist and you should read them.