I don’t normally choose to read a lot of non-fiction books as I don’t generally find them as engaging, but these next few books won me over.
Non-Fiction:
101 World Building Prompts by MD Presley: I enjoyed reading this book of tips for making new worlds. The author was really good with helping you think of new ideas and other things to consider. It was an easy and thoughtful read. I am currently writing a world for games based on a Nano idea and it’s been really fun to incorporate some techniques from the book and clarify my process. I can use this book for both personal use and for work stuff. Best part? I got it for free on Stuff Your Kindle day!
Disability Visibility Edited by Alice Wong: This was a book of short essays about disabilities and the ways they impact people who are just trying to live in the world not set up for them. I appreciated the new perspectives, the straight talk, and the reminders of things to do to help support others in general.
The Dressmakers of Auschwitz by Lucy Adlington: This book had a profound effect on me. I hadn’t known that a dress salon existed at Auschwitz or that it was an important point of resistance for the prisoners who were held there. The idea that clothes are something more than just fashion and body coverings, especially in a place where clothes could be the difference between life and death, is something I feel I should consider more as a sewist myself. My joke about sewing being a sought after skill during the zombie apocalypse feels a little flat after reading a book about women who were literally sewing for their lives. The history seen through the eyes of these ladies and the pictures and interviews with some of them in the book were amazing. The trauma and horror of war isn’t glossed over and has just enough of a statement of fact to drive home the facts of what these women suffered. I would highly recommend this book, just be prepared that it is not a light read.
Work Related:
Little Wizards by Antoine Bauza: This is a delightful first step into tabletop role playing games for both kids and parents who haven’t played before. It offers three stories with varying levels of instruction or suggestions for the Storyteller. They are all kid friendly and offer lots of different choices for how to investigate the mystery. I’m currently in the middle of the first one with a kid who is highly enjoying the novelty of solving the mystery. I really like the illustrations too- they are all adorable! Character customization is easy and you only need two 6 sided (regular cube) dice for it, so no special dice are needed. I would recommend this for probably 6-9ish? Maybe 10 if you added questing options or side quests. Check it out if you need something fun to do!
Kids on Bikes by Jon Gilmore and Doug Levandowski is a super cute and highly customizable tabletop role playing game system that is similar to Buffy the Vampire Slayer or more currently- Stranger Things. The general outline is that you are kids in a small town in a time before readily available google and cell phones and you have to solve a mystery that’s happening in your small town. Perhaps it’s aliens? Or maybe space monkies? Who knows? All you really know when you start the game is some rumors that you might start hearing about from the other players. This uses fancy dice, but is really open ended with just a few prompts and hooks to get you into the story. Then after that, the game master and players really take it away.
I’ve used it at work for one of my game groups and it went over pretty well. My players did the exact opposite of what I thought they were going to do most of the time, but that just kept me on my toes! It was fun to play and fairly easy to design characters and teach. I’m definitely keeping this in my work rotation.
Creative Therapy in the Sand by Roger and Christine Day is a sandtray therapy book with some general information and then some directive prompts to use in therapy sessions. Sandtray, while it is a little bit magical, can sometimes be hard to explain to people and this book does a good job of explaining the basics. I’m a big fan of sandtray and have used it myself to help me understand some of my more difficult things in life. I am always looking for more directives for sessions, so this was a good book to help prompt me with that. It’s definitely a small book though, so I wouldn’t recommend clinicians just use this with no other training.
I did read more non-fiction last year, but these were my favorite ones. This year, I hope to read some more of the books I keep buying for work and then not actually reading. Wish me luck!
