I bought this book well over a decade ago. Preparing for grad school, where I expected to study games and learning, I was fascinated by the idea of a work of philosophy that used games as its central metaphor. Well, it isn’t the easiest book to get through, so I made some progress and some notes (most of which missed the point) and then let it drop for a long time.

I recently remembered the book and have been trying for several months to finish it. It’s still a hard book to get through, even if I understand it better this time. It commits those sins of philosophical writing of going off on tangents, making assertions without explaining them, and insisting on distinctions that just don’t seem to matter in lived experience.

And yet, it’s also amazing, so I can forgive the book most of these sins. The beginning metaphor is amazing, the conclusion of the book really drives the point home, and there are arguments in here that remind me of David Graeber, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and all kinds of people whom I wouldn’t have expected to hear echoed in this book I bought on a whim when I was a very different person.

• Finite and Infinite Games
• James Carse
• games
• meaningful games
• David Graeber
• Robin Wall Kimmerer
• anarchism
• mindfulness