The best fiction and nonfiction books with heavy doses of games and fortune-telling

This book is the best I've come across that explores the overlap between games and fortune-telling with detailed examples from cultures around the world.

The suggestion in the book's title that board games originated from attempts to divine the future is perhaps questionable, but there is no doubt that the two have been entwined from the earliest times, which is not surprising because all games try to some extent to create a microcosm of some of life's aspects and people have never been able to resist trying to nudge things in a favorable direction. Or at least get a heads up on what lies around the corner.

Ludomancy, it's called–a lovely word. Personally, I find that playing some form of Patience is a great way of ordering the mind before tackling any piece of work or, in fact, any tricky life decision. The flickering images conjured by the cards help sort whatever the current puzzle is into an order that can then be addressed.

This book was my first introduction to One-dimensional Chess. I assumed the idea was as ridiculous as other impossible games in the story, such as Spotless Dominoes, but then it occurred to me that maybe not.

I devised a version with a King, Queen, Knight and three or four pawns facing each other along a single line of spaces and amazingly it does kind of work, though it is probably more of a puzzle than a game. I later learned that there are many other versions of One-dimensional Chess devised by chess fanatics over the years.

Apart from that, the story is a thought-provoking triple fantasy that plays with the notion that perhaps life itself is just a game, a puzzle we have to solve before we can move on.

I came across this book in the window display of a small bookshop, attracted by the hint of Tarot card in the cover design. The baggy-eyed shop owner told me he'd been up most of the previous night reading it and was eager to share it with the world. Well, after the first couple of chapters, I was gripped by the same enthusiasm and, over the next few years, must have given away a dozen copies to friends to spread the good news.

The following books were not only equally brilliant, but Davies seemed to get better and better till the day he gave up the ghost in ripe old age. What he did in his books was summarise the Twentieth Century from an unusual Canadian angle. At the beginning of the series–the First World War–Britain is the dominant world power. In the end, it is America, and Canada is trying to find its own identity in the shadow of both.

Robertson Davies does a brilliant job of articulating Canada's ongoing struggle to define its own place in the world, with useful perspectives on both the Old World and the New that are still relevant here in the Twenty-first Century.

Does Terry Pratchett seem a frivolous choice compared to my others? Not at all. There is deep and humane wisdom hidden in his Discworld humor. 

In the eternally recurrent conflict between Dwarves and Trolls in the Discworld, the board game Thud (a parallel world echo of the Scandinavian hnefatafl games) plays a pivotal and, ultimately, crucial role.

The story's hero is Samuel Vimes, a favorite avatar of Pratchett's. Vimes is a recovering alcoholic, depressive policeman who through chance and a stubborn inborn streak of decency and sense of fair play, happens to end up as the Duke of Ankh Morpork (the Discworld equivalent of London) and mediator between the two warring tribes. It's his job to find the point at which they can at least agree to not slaughter each other.

Years ago, long before the TV series, I was looking for a book to while away the ferry crossing from Plymouth in the south of England to northern Spain. My young neighbor Robbie recommended A Game of Thrones, a nice chunky volume that looked up to the job.

Well, as it turned out when we docked at Santander, I was very annoyed at the interruption and had to put the book down to get back behind the wheel. The rest, as they say, is history.

The book and its successors are also well worth re-reading. Shame about the yet-to-appear last volume.