Kara Winslow writes about the games she plays and the books she reads, plus the occasional post about the rest of her life around them.https://karawinslow.net/en-UShttps://karawinslow.net/articles/the-body-in-pain/https://karawinslow.net/articles/the-body-in-pain/Elaine Scarry's central claim is that pain has no object, it isn't pain of or about anything, and once she says that you can't stop noticing it's true.Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Body in PainKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/i-rebuild-the-same-insert-every-fall/https://karawinslow.net/articles/i-rebuild-the-same-insert-every-fall/Every October I pull our biggest box off the top shelf and reorganize an insert that was already fine, and I've stopped pretending this is about function.Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/i-dont-play-games-solo-and-im-not-going-to-start/https://karawinslow.net/articles/i-dont-play-games-solo-and-im-not-going-to-start/Half my shelf has a solo mode built in at this point, and I own maybe four games I've actually opened without another person in the room.Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/renatas-sister-doesnt-believe-in-letting-kids-win/https://karawinslow.net/articles/renatas-sister-doesnt-believe-in-letting-kids-win/She came up for a weekend, played our older kid straight, no mercy, at a game the poor kid had only tried twice, and I watched a real philosophical disagreement play out over a card game.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/other-minds/https://karawinslow.net/articles/other-minds/The octopus is the closest thing on this planet to meeting an actual alien intelligence, and Peter Godfrey-Smith makes that case without ever overselling it.Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTOther MindsKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/the-return-cart-doesnt-care-about-your-system/https://karawinslow.net/articles/the-return-cart-doesnt-care-about-your-system/Nine years of shelving other people's returns taught me exactly one thing about organizing my own house, and it's not the thing I expected.Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/march-in-burlington-is-a-personality-trait/https://karawinslow.net/articles/march-in-burlington-is-a-personality-trait/Nothing on this site so far has been about the actual place I live, which feels like an oversight given how much of my year gets shaped by one specific, ugly, six-week stretch of weather.Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/library-cards-before-they-could-spell-their-names/https://karawinslow.net/articles/library-cards-before-they-could-spell-their-names/Working the desk means my kids grew up assuming every building has a checkout system, which has caused some genuinely funny confusion at other people's houses.Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/annihilation-of-caste/https://karawinslow.net/articles/annihilation-of-caste/A speech that was never delivered, because the reformist group who invited Ambedkar to give it read the draft first and pulled the invitation. Reading it now, I get why.Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTAnnihilation of CasteKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/a-door-into-ocean/https://karawinslow.net/articles/a-door-into-ocean/An all-female, purple-skinned, entirely pacifist water world gets invaded by a patriarchal moon next door, and the book refuses to let the pacifism read as weakness.Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTA Door Into OceanKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/the-tuesday-table/https://karawinslow.net/articles/the-tuesday-table/Renata and I have played something almost every Tuesday for six years now, and I only realized recently how much of the actual week gets organized around that one fixed point.Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/the-sparrow/https://karawinslow.net/articles/the-sparrow/Jesuits fund the first human mission to an alien planet, quietly, without asking permission from any government, and it goes about as well as you'd fear.Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe SparrowKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/the-cabinet-door-is-on-its-third-roll-of-tape/https://karawinslow.net/articles/the-cabinet-door-is-on-its-third-roll-of-tape/I keep my whole reading and gaming log taped inside a kitchen cabinet in actual pen, and I've thought a lot about why I've never once switched to an app.Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/dominion/https://karawinslow.net/articles/dominion/The game that got me into the hobby, and somehow, expansion count climbing every year, still the one my wife's group asks for by name.Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTDominionKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/the-giver/https://karawinslow.net/articles/the-giver/Read it in middle school, remembered almost none of the actual plot, remembered the sled and the color red perfectly. That's a strange thing for a book to do to a brain.Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe GiverKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/gloomhaven/https://karawinslow.net/articles/gloomhaven/The insert is doing more organizational work than most games' entire rulebooks, and honestly it kind of needs to, because this box is a lot.Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTGloomhavenKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/being-you/https://karawinslow.net/articles/being-you/Anil Seth's whole pitch is that your perception of reality is your brain's best guess, not a readout, and once you buy that the rest of the book gets genuinely unsettling in a good way.Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTBeing YouKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/i-sold-my-copy-of-twilight-struggle/https://karawinslow.net/articles/i-sold-my-copy-of-twilight-struggle/Cleared it out in a shelf purge four years back because we'd only played it twice, and I've regretted that decision at a genuinely embarrassing frequency since.Fri, 03 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/slay-the-spire-board-game/https://karawinslow.net/articles/slay-the-spire-board-game/I was skeptical a screen-native deckbuilder could survive the trip to cardboard, and honestly, the sleeving-before-first-play chore aside, it mostly does.Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTSlay the Spire: The Board GameKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/android-netrunner/https://karawinslow.net/articles/android-netrunner/One player is a dystopian megacorp, one player is a hacker trying to burn it down, and the two of them are playing what are basically two different games that somehow balance perfectly.Sat, 13 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTAndroid: NetrunnerKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/thunder-road-vendetta/https://karawinslow.net/articles/thunder-road-vendetta/You crash into people, shoot them, and run them off the road, and I genuinely cannot tell you if that's a good game in the technical sense, I just know I want to play it constantly.Mon, 25 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTThunder Road: VendettaKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/inis/https://karawinslow.net/articles/inis/Everyone spends the whole game quietly building themselves up, and then it all unravels into a chaotic fireball in the last round, every single time.Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTInisKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/development-as-freedom/https://karawinslow.net/articles/development-as-freedom/Amartya Sen's whole argument is that GDP is the wrong lens for measuring whether a country is actually developing, and once you buy that, a lot of policy debate stops making sense.Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTDevelopment as FreedomKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/arkham-horror-lcg/https://karawinslow.net/articles/arkham-horror-lcg/Every scenario, whether we win or lose, gives our table a story we're still telling weeks later, and that's not something I can say about most cooperative games.Sun, 29 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMTArkham Horror: The Card GameKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/the-overstory/https://karawinslow.net/articles/the-overstory/Nine people, one book, and by the end I genuinely could not tell you which character's chapter I was in without checking, and I mean that as a compliment.Wed, 11 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe OverstoryKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/lotr-duel-for-middle-earth/https://karawinslow.net/articles/lotr-duel-for-middle-earth/I was never fully sold on 7 Wonders Duel, and this reskin of it, with the victory-point cards swapped for a map of Middle-earth to conquer, is the version that finally clicked for me.Fri, 30 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earthKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/sleeping-gods/https://karawinslow.net/articles/sleeping-gods/A ship's crew wakes up decades off course in a world that isn't theirs, and the game hands you an entire atlas to explore instead of a fixed path.Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTSleeping GodsKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/physical-books-every-time/https://karawinslow.net/articles/physical-books-every-time/I work in a building full of e-reader converts and I still haven't budged, and I've finally worked out that it's not really about the reading experience at all.Fri, 18 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/andromedas-edge/https://karawinslow.net/articles/andromedas-edge/Three plays in, all at two, and every single time I finished thinking this was fine when everything about the box says I should be in love with it.Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMTAndromeda's EdgeKara Winslowhttps://karawinslow.net/articles/outline/https://karawinslow.net/articles/outline/A writer named Faye flies to Athens to teach a workshop, and mostly just listens to other people talk about their lives. That's the whole book, and somehow that's enough.Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMTOutlineKara Winslow