At times dense and a bit verbose, Homo Ludens offers great insights on play and its role in human history.

Homo Ludens is a study into play where Huizinga argues that play is an element in everyday life. It was recommended to me by Daniel Bosch, my English professor. The book provided insight into ancient cultures, their linguistic, and contests that contributes to play-like qualities. We explored how play is found in poetry, war, philosophy, contest (and more) of both archaic and modern societies. This book gave a great general scope of humanity through the thread of play, something that I did not consider previously. For example, the magical sphere of play that is bounded by rules and time, the innocence of play (where we play for the sake of playing), and the seemingly bipolar concepts of play and seriousness that are more intertwined than we expect.

However, I found that I did not understand a number of the references due to my limited understanding of historic literature (ex. Plato). I hope to return to this book when I have more time, considering I finished this during finals week and was forced to return it, and a broader understanding of Greek texts. This was also partly my fault because I went into this book not knowing it was essentially a formal study, and the reading is dense.

Interesting but dated.

Lastig om doorheen te komen door de taal en door het schrijven met alle vooroordelen en 'kortzichtigheid' van zijn tijd. Alhoewel een interessant onderwerp wat je aan het denken zet, ben ik het met veel niet eens.
Voornamelijk het versimpelen van de oude maatschappij en het vergroten van de mate van 'civilizes society' van het heden.

There are some things to know about before reading this book:

1) It's an older book, it's written like an academic essay, and it's a translation. This all lends to it being quite dense. I was occasionally re-reading and looking up terms.

2) Due to the age, there is some language use and there are topics that aren't sensitively approached. As an example, the word "savage" is used a lot in describing cultures. You can also expect some pretentious takes that are best ignored, like his criticisms of modern dance and reverence for ballet.

3) Akin to [b:Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience|66354|Flow The Psychology of Optimal Experience|Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1432253110l/66354._SY75_.jpg|64339], the initial chapters (I'd say 1-3) hold the primary points of the authors arguments, and many of the subsequent chapters are focused only on how this argument applies to various topics. I think it's a bit harder to skip topics in this book than in Flow, since some key arguments are embedded in these topical chapters, but still, I wouldn't worry too much if you'd prefer to skip a chapter or two.

All that aside, the book is very well written, and coherently argues it's definition of play or "the play-state", and applies those concepts neatly to many cultural components. There are countless interesting observations of ancient cultural development from the play perspective. It had me consistently pausing, processing, and appreciating one of these observations in the midst of my reading. I'd say the price of admission here is worth it, just to train yourself to view aspects of your life in reference to play.

As college students, how many of us ever made it through the entire "recommended reading" list for a class? And for a class with 17 recommended titles and "Homo Ludens" being the most difficult to acquire (the vast University of Minnesota library system doesn't have a copy), even the most thorough of us could be forgiven for leaving it by the wayside.

But four years after taking the Toy Product Design class that cited Homo Ludens, I find myself helping to teach it, and I figured I ought to have a more complete knowledge of the background information.

Unfortunately, I have to satisfy myself with giving it the old college try. The book is written as an almost stream-of-consciousness contemplation on the idea of play, and after giving a vague notion of his definition of the concept, Huizinga goes on to meander through related subjects without a clear hypothesis or point.

I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter on the concept of play as expressed in language. I nearly went for a linguistics minor in college, and the chapter on other ideas expressed through words related to play and their possible connection to the "play-concept" fascinated me. In this chapter, Huizinga gets closest to making any kind of cogent argument: the words for play in many languages refer both to a specific kind of recreational or ritual activity that he defines as the "play-concept" and to rapid or capricious movements of objects, systems, or creatures.

After that chapter, my interest in the book rapidly declined as successive topics were abruptly discarded, as by a toddler who has seen something even more colorful across the room. I didn't finish the book; my attention span is perhaps no more blameworthy than Huizinga's. Perhaps the final chapter neatly wrapped up all categories of study and contemplations with a cohesive conclusion. I haven't the patience to find out.

This is a fairly approachable academic work (despite its publication in 1930s) that shows how play is the basis of culture and society. Huizinga does this through a few different lenses including a fascinating chapter that proves this basis through etymological connection alone. It's not too long so while he goes sufficiently deep, it never felt dry. Overall, worth reading if you have an interest in origins of human culture.

The audiobook is not great. The reader cannot pronounce any of the German or Dutch, which is distracting because there's so much German and Dutch! After all, it's a book with a chapter on etymology and is a translation from Dutch and German.