What is Top 10 Games You Can Play In Your Head, By Yourself?

It’s a book that is real.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself repeatedly fielding one particular question: “what’s the deal with this book?”

This question has been presented to me in various ways, sometimes in statement form, with iterations including:

• “You have been so quiet about this. What is it?”
• “Why does your book look old?”
• “I still don’t quite get it. But I trust your instincts” (A real thing a friend texted me)
• “So you did or didn’t write it?”
• “Who is J. Theophrastus Bartholomew?”
• “How long have you been working on this?”

Admittedly, I’m not going to answer a lot of the questions I’ve received about it, particularly the more pointed ones, because I want people to read the book. So yeah, this is not an FAQ, but I did want to write something to explain to the readers of this blog what this is all about.

I’ll note that I did write something about this on my more formal, writing-centric blog—D. F. Lovett Dot Com—but as that blog has a far lower readership than the one you are currently looking at, I found it necessary to write something for both.

That said, here are answers to a few of the questions I’ve gotten about it:

What is this book?

Top Ten Games You Can Play In Your Head, By Yourself can be defined in many ways that I’d like to resist pigeonholing it into one specific genre.

I will tell you that it’s not:

• A novel
• A traditional collection of short stories
• A traditional book of games
• A book that you have read before

What does it look like?

This:

Is there anything you can compare it to?

Not in a way that I feel comfortable with. I will say that it owes something to previous works ranging from Dungeons and Dragons to Italo Calvino to the Choose Your Own Adventure series, without really being in the exact same genre as any of those.

Is it really a book of ten games?

Yes.

That you play in your head?

Yes.

By yourself?

Yes.

What are the games in the book?

There are ten games in the book. They are, in order

• Adventure
• Space
• Dungeons
• Trucks
• The Visitor
• The Alamo
• Murder Night
• Your Job
• Chess
• Another Life

Are there any themes that connect any of the games?

Yes.

What are they?

I’d rather not say until you have read the book.

I noticed there isn’t a Kindle version.

That is correct. There is not a Kindle version.

Will there be?

No.

Who wrote it?

I wrote some of it. I am one of the editors of the book.

Who else wrote it?

Sam Gorski of Corridor Digital also wrote some of it, as he is the other editor of it.

So if you are the editors, then who else wrote it?

J. Theophrastus Bartholomew.

Who is J. Theophrastus Bartholomew?

He is the author of the original series Games You Can Play In Your Head, By Yourself. All the information we have about J. Theophrastus Bartholomew is in the book itself. I would rather not say more about him in this blog post, so as to avoid spoiling any aspects of the book.

But here is a photograph of him:

What else can you say about it?

That you should read it. And you should buy it here.

What should I do after I read Top 10 Games You Can Play In Your Head, By Yourself?

That’s up to you. You can go right on living your life as you were before.

However, one thing we encourage is that anyone who reads it tells others about your experiences playing the games. We would like this to be something that furthers creativity and spurs people on to tell their stories of the adventures these games led them on.

You can tell your stories in your reviews of the book, on social media (using the hashtag #gycpiyhby) and any other way you see fit.

Wait, how do I buy it?

here. .