Ahira's Hangar

It is one of the most beat up books I have ever encountered that has still managed to stay intact. Most of the words on the back cover have been worn off, and the whole book ripples from water damage. But I checked the pages quickly, and they all look both legible and intact. And it is free, so I will not be too picky.

I know Highdrake talks about this book a lot...

So what is it about? And can he (or anyone) give me a reason to move it up near the top of the Mt. Everest of TBR piles?

I do see the quotes in the thread down below, and they are beautiful. But they do not tell me what the book is about.

I have read Hesse's Sidhartha and loved it; tried Steppenwolf and had to put it down...at the time when I tried to read it, I just did not have the time required to sit down and actually concentrate on it, and it was a deep little book that required concentration. I did keep that book, though - I hope to read it someday when I do have time to concentrate and can do it justice.

You mean The Glass Bead Game? Great book. Tells the story of Ludi Knecht (knecht means serf in German) and how he becomes the Master of the Glass Bead Game, a complex "game" which attempts to reproduce everything in reality as a series of figures and patterns.

It's been too long since I read it to remember many specifics. The players of this game are very highly regarded in his world, spiritual, mystical priest-like figures IIRC.

It's pretty deep too I think. But it's better explained/written than Steppenwolf.

Worth a read for sure.

--A

AAAAAHHHHH!!!!! What a book! It's the one that won Hesse the Nobel Prize for Literature. Yeah, it's a lifetime award, but I gather it's generally awarded after a particular book comes out that makes everybody say, "Wow!! S/he's been great all along, and occasionally better than great. But this is amazing!!!"

Magister Ludi means Master of the Game. As Av said, the game attempts to reduce all things to symbols. But it's more than that. A string of symbols might mean 6+7=13, do-fa-re-ti-do, How do I love thee..., the Grand Canyon, and any number of other things - all at once. Depends on which discipline you're interpreting the symbols in. In the Game, you start with whatever, let's say do-fa-re-ti-do, and write it in the Game's symbols. In the next step, maybe you reinterpret those symbols as math, and you change things as you go.

Now don't get the idea that you're going to actually learn about how to play the game. You don't. The book is more about how the Game gives the players their particular philosophical outlook, and how that outlook compares to those of the other people Joseph runs into throughout his life.

I could never say enough about the book. If I read as fast as you do, duchess, I'd reread it every few years. But I'm slooooooooow. (Took me 6 days to read FR, to give you an idea.) It's not light reading, but you will go through it much easier than me.

Haha, I was massively disappointed that you didn't learn how to play the game.

I felt the same way in Bank's Player of Games. Tantalising hints of how it worked...bastard.



(Oh yeah, I'm a fan of freakishly hard strategy games. )

--A

Remember Kirk teaching the guards how to play Fizzbin? ROFL! And Hawkeye and BJ were playing Kranko, then Double-Kranko , in one episode.