Category: REVIEWS

So Saith Xenophon

gordsellar0 Comments

If you’re considering tabletop RPG systems and thinking about how XP (experience points) should work, or maybe just thinking about a fresh perspective on how adventurers might see what they’re doing, you could probably do worse than to read some old Greek manuals on hunting: Do not envy those who push ahead rashly for their own advantage, either in their private business or in public affairs. Remember that the best of them, although well thought of, are envied, while the evil ones are both ill thought of and badly off. For they make off with the property of the private citizens and that of …

Continue Reading

The Shin Kyung-Sook Plagiarism Scandal

gordsellar2 Comments

Given how rampant plagiarism is in many fields in South Korea—and it really, really is, despite some limited attempts to address it—I figured it was only a matter of time until some famous contemporary author here got accused of it… at least, on a stage public and prominent enough for it to make it into the English language news. Well, that finally happened earlier this year, in September… accusation, scandal, flubbed dismissals, and finally an apology… well, sort of. (Kind of a non-apology apology, of the sort that’s very fashionable these days everywhere.) It happened back in September, but I’ve been busy so I’m only posting …

Continue Reading

Modern Day Vaudeville

gordsellar0 Comments
This entry is part 7 of 7 in the series What We Talk About When We Talk About Music

I’ve been trying to stay off Facebook, but somehow this has just gotten me started answering questions on Quora. Frying pan, fire, right? The funny thing is, sometimes I’ll answer a really stupid question there, just because it gets me thinking about things in a new way. And then I realized something about my whole long-ago post on popular music as a hybrid performance art, rather than a musical genre: The whole popular music paradigm is, in some sense, just the modern-day form of vaudeville. Popular music (a term I use for basically all the stuff North Americans think of as “music”—rock, pop …

Continue Reading

July/August Books

gordsellar0 Comments

My last stretch of comments on books was really, really long. 5,400-odd words long, if I recall right. So I’m going to try for shorter and pithier this time. Should be easier, since I read less than I’d hoped I would, but even so… shorter. Pithier. Also: I have been feeling like I have been reading too few books by women, so I did something about it. At least on the fiction side I achieved parity—three female authors and three male ones—but I’m not so concerned about the nonfiction/research books, since you don’t get to choose who writes research books pertinent …

Continue Reading

Mr. Turner

gordsellar0 Comments

It’s rare I see a film as full of human ugliness as Mr. Turner, and rarer still when it’s a biopic. It’s also rare to see a film as beautiful as Mr. Turner… and rarer still when it’s a biopic. But most of all, it’s rare to see a film as astute about history—inaccuracies and all— as Mr. Turner. The title character—a representation of J.M.W. Turner—is, on a personal level, a monster almost half of the time: he uses his maid as a sperm receptacle, he stomps on people when he disagrees with them, he is ugly and weird, and when he …

Continue Reading

On Listening

gordsellar0 Comments
This entry is part 6 of 7 in the series What We Talk About When We Talk About Music

A little over a year ago, someone posted this question on Quora: Why does John Coltrane’s music sound like someone just erratically blowing on a sax sometimes? The short version of my answer, I suppose, could be this: Except with the word “LISTEN” underlined and circled in red pen. But here’s the longer answer that I actually posted:

Continue Reading

The Lais of Marie de France

gordsellar0 Comments

Though I don’t read it often enough, writing from the Middle Ages almost always gets me… at least, when I can get myself to read it, and, of course, when it’s actually accessible to me.  There’s something truly fascinating about Medieval literature, something fresh about it—probably, I think, because it operates along such different lines from modern fiction. So the other day I read a book that I’ve been meaning to get around to for almost two decades, ever since reading a small part of it for a course—The Lais of Marie de France. Who was she? Well, as with all authors of the time, it’s hard …

Continue Reading

A Short History of the Donghak Peasant Revolution by Soonchul Shin and Jinyoung Lee

gordsellar2 Comments

Note: I’ve appended an update to the end of this post, with information provided to me on Facebook. Read on for more.   Original Post: I’ve been reading up on Korean history—not just out of interest in filling in some blanks in my historical knowledge, but also, I’ll confess, because of an ongoing writing project, and because the library at work has a ton of materials to which I previously had no access—and the results have been interesting… for the most part, anyway. Sometimes, though, that’s not the case. There’s hits and misses, and the book I’ll be discussing today is …

Continue Reading