"How we should think about board games, and what do they do to us as we play them?"
Writer and critic Eric Thurm digs deep into his own experience as a board game enthusiast to explore the emotional and social rules that games create and reveal, telling a series of stories about a pastime that is also about relationships. From the outdated gender roles in Life and Mystery Date to the cutthroat, capitalist priorities of Monopoly and its socialist counterpart, Class Struggle, Thurm thinks through his ongoing rivalries with his siblings and ponders the ways games both upset and enforce hierarchies and relationships-from the familial to the geopolitical. Like sitting down at the table for family game night, Board Games is an engaging book of twists and turns, trivia, and nostalgia.
Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly-an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books-specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author's emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life.

About the Author
Eric Thurm is a writer whose work has appeared in, among other publications, Esquire, WIRED, Real Life, and The New York Times.

Reviews
"Readers with an avid devotion to a hobby bordering on obsession could empathize, and this is one of the charms of Avidly Reads: where a nonfiction author who is enthusiastic about their subject matter strives to maintain an even tone, here, their devotion for board games shines through." * Popmatters *
"Avidly Reads Board Games puts this marvelous form of group entertainment center stage and explores both the author's personal connection with the genre and how different games create different experiences, both intentionally and unintentionally." * Manhattan Book Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9781479826957
Author Eric Thurm
Format Paperback
Page Count 144
Imprint New York University Press
Publisher New York University Press