ex libris – Terence Eden’s Blog

New Ex Libris Cards

@edent — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 12:00:35 +0000

Last year (also during NaBloPoMo) I was enthusing about the literary card game Ex Libris. The only trouble with the game, in my opinion, are the limited numbers of cards available in the set. Much like Trivial Pursuit - once you've gone through them a few times the game is exhausted.

I had planned on creating my own unofficial cards - but copyright law put the kibosh on that.

Luckily, the good folk at Oxford Games have emailed me to say that there are new official cards available as an expansion pack!

At only £5.50, Ex Libris - Addendum should be right at the top of your Christmas List.

Copyright Strikes Again!

@edent — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:00:36 +0000

In my last post, I was talking about generating new cards for the fantastic game "Ex Libris".

I emailed the manufacturers to see if they had any objections - and to see if they were releasing any updates. With their kind permission, I'm posting their reply in full.

Dear Mr Eden,
We are delighted that you love our game 'Ex Libris' and understand your frustration about the limited number of cards in the pack, but I'm afraid that we would strongly object to you creating ' unofficial' new cards for Ex Libris that you either publish or post on your web site.
We have several reasons for objecting, but the primary reason is that you would be breaking all manner of copyright laws (UK and US) in publishing these cards without the permission of the author/publisher/agent of any work still within copyright. As I am sure you know, a book does not come out of copyright until at least 50 years after the death of its author. We would be exceedingly unhappy if you were to even suggest that your cards are 'New Cards for the Game of Ex Libris'. This would create the impression of an association between Oxford Games and yourself, which does not exist.
As you may imagine, it took a considerable effort to obtain the necessary permissions for cards in the original deck. And some authors' estates did not grant permission (Agatha Christie's for one) even though we produce Ex Libris in association with the Bodleian and British Libraries.
Finally, please be aware that we are currently working on a new set of cards for Ex Libris, which we may make available online in some form or another. We will keep you posted.
Meanwhile, I trust you understand that , well intentioned as they certainly are, we cannot endorse your efforts.
Kind regards
Leslie Scott
Oxford Games Ltd

So, the good news is new cards are coming! The bad news is that I cannot (legally) create my own to share (freely or not). To make it clear, I did not intend to create an impression of any association with Oxford Games.

I am particularly indebted to Emily Goodhand - aka "CopyrightGirl" - for providing a some advice.

The "Infopaq" comment refers to a European Court of Justice decision which stated that even an 11 words excerpt was copyright infringing.

Which, is a bit annoying, but there we go. There is nothing to stop me creating cards for my own private use - or even creating cards from books in the public domain. But nothing from works still in copyright.

Many thanks to Leslie at Oxford Games for the swift and courteous response.

New Cards for Ex Libris

@edent — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:11:21 +0000

Ex libris is a wonderful game. No - better than that - it's a beautiful game.

Here are the rules:

Everyone has to write the opening line of a novel, based on the novel's summary.
One player has the real opening line to copy down.
One other player (the guesser) has to guess which of the opening lines is the real one.
If you fool the guesser, you win the point. If the guesser is correct, she gets the point.

Simple and perfect. You don't need to be well read - you just need enough of an imagination to write what you think someone else will think the opening line of a novel is.

There's a minor problem - there are only a limited number of cards and none of them are very new. There's no Harry Potter, We Need To Talk About Kevin, or American Gods.

As with any game, it can get a little bit repetitive - once you've played it a dozen times it can become a bit obvious which are the real extracts from the books.

So, what's needed is a whole set of new cards.

The rules say:

Each card gives you the title, author and plot summary of a novel or short story.

The card also has the opening and closing sentence of the book.

So, for example, the new card for John le Carré's "Our Kind of Traitor" would say (SPOILER WARNING!)

Title: Our Kind Of Traitor
Author: John le Carré
Plot: A young Oxford academic and his girlfriend take a holiday to Antigua. By chance they bump into a Russian millionaire called Dima who owns a peninsula and a diamond-encrusted gold watch. Dima propels the young lovers on a journey to the murkiest cloisters of the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britain's Intelligence Establishment.
Opening Line: "At seven o'clock of a Caribbean morning, on the island of Antigua, one Peregrine Makepiece, otherwise known as Perry, an all-round amateur athlete of distinction and until recently tutor in English literature at a distinguished Oxford college, played three sets of tennis against a muscular, stiff-backed, bald, brown-eyed Russian man of dignified bearing in his middle fifties called Dima."
Closing Line: "Was it sex? Was it drugs? Was it arms? For want of a shred of evidence it was none of them. Terror, the great catch-all these days, has also been considered, but rejected out of hand. No group has claimed responsibility."

Making It Happen

I was planning on writing a Calibre Plugin to automate the generation of cards from my fulsome library. It would be fairly easy to extract the author, summary, and cover image. However, finding the first line from a book is a slightly tricky matter - not to mention how you determine where the last line is.

So I think I'll stick to manually for the time being.

I think this could be a great way to revatilise a wonderful game. Only a few - non-technical - problems.

Would I face a massive lawsuit from the good folk at Oxford Games? Would the insanity of the UK's copyright laws stop me?

More importantly, would anyone be interested in this? If you're an Ex Libris player and would be interested in some new cards - please leave a comment on this post!