Favourites of July 2026

The summer holiday is halfway. I somehow managed to read eight books in the past three to four months—including cheating by resurrecting a previously discarded book and by diagonally scanning a creativity-related book to find out if there was anything I wasn’t yet aware of. I was quite frustrated by my inability to consume words through physical pages for the last year due to parenting; this is another small win for me.

I took the eldest to the city centre and of course we ended up in the bookshop where I bought Blaise Pascal’s biography by Graham Tomlin in a whim. I consider that another win: I once started his Pensées but it didn’t yet click. My gut told me to grab that book. I am glad my gut is still intact. Lifts up shirt. The real one as well, thankfully.

Previous month: June 2026.

Games I’ve played

June was a really good month video game-wise. July wasn’t: cero cero cinco. I did try my hand at Void Stranger and got to room eighty-ish but the summer holidays invite outside play here, not inside. So I shifted gears and tried to pick up the board gaming hobby again as that one was doing really bad this year.

The shelf cleanup made room for new ones: so far I picked Pirates of Maracaibo and my wife chose Cozy Stickerville. That’s yet another hobby getting quite expensive: the Pirates box was €50. For a standard-sized box that holds mainly cards and a few cardboard sheets to punch out, that somehow feels very steep. I’ll have to dig into the price history a bit more.

Here’s the BGStats summary of this month’s plays:

The Matcha expansion of The White Castle is well worth the purchase: it streamlines nearly everything in the base game that I found slightly annoying (one more turn, more lantern combo activations, even more variety, …). We’re at play number eight in Dorfromantik: Sakura and just unlocked the ability to collect sakura flowers. Playing such a lighthearted legacy game with the wife is both relaxing and exciting!

Selected (blog) posts

Yet again, I find myself knee-deep into the fountain pen rabbit hole, so apologies for the fountain of (ha!) pen-related links in here.

• The Pen Addict ranks all Pilot CH 912 custom nibs. The Soft (fine) medium wins and my favourite, the Waverly, does poorly. To each their own!
• UK Fountain Pens has interesting reviews on their blog/site.
• I think I already posted these, but there’s a theme going round: If I Could Only Keep 10 Pens. I saw The Well-Appointed Desk’s post first. Thanks!
• This is a 2018 post, but Tom Gidden’s Flex And The Art of Line Variation is a gold mine when it comes to making sense of “flexible” nibs, both old and new.
• Winnie Lim wrote a letter to her 10-year old younger self and warned her not to play the status game (and more).
• Another favourite fountain pen blogger that also sketches, Parka Blogs (Teoh Yi Chie), wrote a review of the Pilot Custom 743 with the Falcon nib, the one I bought last week. I haven’t yet encountered ink flow issues as I’m not a good “flex writer”—yet.
• You might have heard it already: as Roy Tang puts it, the end is nigh for physical video gaming. Nintendo won’t save us this time I fear, Switch 2 is also evolving that way.
• The Gentleman Stationer quips: chase nibs, not pens. Will do! Clicks buy (again)
• David reviewed Drop Duchy an indie game mixing Tetris with deckbuilding? Sounds right up my alley!
• Marcus The Boardgamer shared his current top 10 games over at Mastodon.
• Fude Fan put out an updated guide on how to buy pens and ink directly from Japan.
• I really enjoyed this designer diary post from the makers of The White Castle: Matcha. They won’t play the game without the expansion anymore!
• On a strange corporate looking blog I found a summary of unique Kit-Kat flavours exclusive to Japan. That list goes on and on and on!
• Nagasawa Pens is a well-known store in Kobe, Japan that collaborates with the Big Three Japanese brands to sell unique and limited edition variants. The more you know!
• In 2021, Jane from Yoseka Stationary wrote about the origins of the Sailor Naginata Togi nib. Many nibmeisters nowadays offer similar grinds like “katana” or “blade” that resemble the Naginata Togi. I have a Kodachi on my list from Mr. Nagahara Junior.
• Related to that, Parka Blogs compares Sailor specialty nibs before and after 2015/2025.
• In case that wasn’t yet clear: the pen is Mightier than the Keyboard. Ennui Vagaries agrees.
• A Kelson Vibber conspiracy theory: genAI uses a lot of em-dashes because it’s trained mainly on WordPress blogs and bloggers use a lot of em-dashes—to they?
• Did you know you can fit a Sailor nib inside a standard JoWo/Bock housing? Or Pelikan or whatever? Thanks to Flexible Nib Factory, you can!

metapost