One of Everything: May

This is a short one not because I didn't get to a lot of stuff this month, but because I'm writing about all the indie games I played for my column! Check that out in mid-June. Here are the books (including cookbooks) and assorted other games from this month.

Book

The Secret History

I thought the ending of this book was pretty bad. In fact, I have been reading this book since the end of 2022 when I got it and got stuck for over a year at perhaps the most dramatic part. Also, I think it’s dumb that Donna Tartt made up “fake Iran”.

This would indicate I don’t like this book very much. However, I read the last 300 pages in a week and now I want to read The Goldfinch. I will always have space in my heart for a book about a liberal arts college and this one includes a murder mystery or 2 which makes it even better. Tartt’s biography makes her seem like a real interesting person, one of the last Classical Authors tm who get hand-picked to be at a school because another author thinks they’re a genius (or one of the last good ones, anyway).

Cook As You Are

Ruby Tandoh’s Instagram has been a waystation of mine for several years, as has Vittles magazine where she wrote a ranking of ice creams in London. Cook As You Are is a cookbook for home cooks who have life stuff going on but still want to make a nice meal.

I’ve been trying to improve my cooking for the past couple years in the same way I’ve tried to learn languages (half-heartedly) and while I would say I’m competent, I don’t make involved dishes very often (or rather I make like 4 and I follow the recipe for them closely even if I’ve made them 50 times). I am bored in the kitchen and this book I hope will help me break out of that. The tone of this book is very comforting, sometimes bordering on too “it’s ok not to be ok,” etc. but more often it comes across understanding that you have no time or energy but still want to eat something nice. Also, how refreshing to have an easy-going cookbook that still gives you exact measurements and directions; I find it stressful to improvise, so I appreciated that. I eat mostly vegetarian and all the recipes have substitutions for meat, gluten, and certain vegetables as well as kitchen items. It also reminded me that more than making food, I love reading about food- especially all the regional specialties she covers with detail in this book.

I’m a “physical media person” I guess (I like stuff), but I’ve been trying to get more things from the library/borrow instead of buy them. Regardless, though, I have 5 cookbooks in my collection now (plus a recipe book where my boyfriend and I write down our top recipes) and using a physical book, rather than my phone, is so much nicer. I got this one used for $6.

Game

Starvaders

Thank you Into the Aether for telling me about this! A roguelike-deck builder-mecha game (forgive me) that plays like Slay the Spire x Space Invaders. Its difficulty curve is a little weird for me (first easy, then too hard) but there are so many unlocks in this game that it soothes losing in the first level because hey, you probably unlocked at least three things. I don’t quite feel that this captured my attention like Slay the Spire did, but that’s a high bar and I’ve played too many deckbuilders recently anyways. I recommend this if you like aliens and shooting-on-a-grid games maybe a little more than me.

Baba is You

To be fair, I only played a few levels of this— but to be even more fair I only ever played about 15 levels before I dropped it in 2019. 6 years later I felt the puzzle game itch and had a free evening.

Baba is You is a word-based puzzle game where you make sentences by pushing words around. It got a lot of attention for its creativity. What I think is even more impressive, however, is that its maker wrote a puzzle guide with small, medium, and complete hints to help people who got stuck. I used the guide too much for the game to remain fun, but I'm keeping it on my desktop for later.

Show

The Rehearsal

I read a review of the Rehearsal finale that said they found it annoying that they couldn’t figure out if the show was sincere. Meaning, if the people were acting or not acting for most of it. I’m tired of this being the yardstick to evaluate this show. I think the finale of The Rehearsal is the most sincere thing I’ve seen on TV this year, and that has nothing to do with the life of the actual person who made it.

The show's goal is to draw attention to how messed up it is that pilots are incentivized to hide their mental health history to keep their job. Unlike season 1, which could be tangentially mean at times, S2 feels like it kept this goal in mind the whole time. It made me think about pilots’ emotional state when flying for the first time even though I already knew pilots’ mental health disclosure was an issue. Regardless of if it moves the needle on policy, though, the twist at the end back into character— making it clear, as Garrett Martin wrote for Paste, that we are watching “Nathan Fielder” now and not Nathan Fielder— only hilights the sincerity with which the show has treated mental health up to now. The irony of the creator becoming the problem he’s hilighting *is* the spotlight on the problem, dramatic irony turned up to 11. Thinking that catching someone “acting” is a gotcha, rather than the explicit point the show is making, seems like a close reading fail to me.

Other

Renshuu

I know three alphabets: latin, Cyrillic, and Hebrew. However, rather than become fluent in any of the languages in these alphabets, I recently decided I wanted to learn the 3 writing systems in Japanese (hiragana, katakana, and kanji). I wanted to learn Japanese when I was 15 (so I could play unreleased video games lol), but my school never had classes in it so I took French and then Russian instead. Now I am over a decade older and still play video games and want to visit Japan if I can save up to celebrate getting my phd/turning 30 in a couple years/whatever else is going on in my life at that point. So I decided, when it comes to learning Japanese, or at least the alphabets, why not start now?

This app was recommended to me as a letter practice tool and it has taught me how to write the basic hiragana and katakana letters. I hope I will learn a lot more vocabulary as I go along. If anyone reading this has recommended resources for practicing letters, let me know!