Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Did you know that the word ‘book’ is actually an ancient Sumerian greeting, short for: ‘can I have that book back I lent you eight months ago you said you’d have finished in like, two? This is going to be another one of those, isn’t it?.’ Truly, language’s many permutations are a font of limitless wonder. This week, it’s Pony Island, The Hex, and Inscryption maker Daniel Mullins! Cheers Daniel! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
What are you currently reading?
The World Of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig
What did you last read?
The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut
What are you eyeing up next?
I recently visited Jonah Senzel who does the music and sound for my games. He and his friends seem to worship an author called Keith Johnstone and a book called Impro: Improvisation And The Theatre. They tell me that despite it seeming to be about improv theatre at first glance, it’s full of wisdom for any art form and even for life itself! So that might be next.
What book do you quote from the most?
I can’t say I quote from books too often but I recently learned that the origin of the phrase “salad days” is from the Shakespeare play Antony And Cleopatra and I love it. “My salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood. To say as I said then!” Previously I had only known the phrase as a Mac Demarco song and thought it was gibberish.
What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?
I’m way less annoying about it now than I was in my salad days, but probably Animal Liberation by Peter Singer.
What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?
This might sound painfully “on-brand” and there are already games that have explored this type of thing, but House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski would lend itself really well to a game.
I’m just not sure where I’m going wrong, readers. I keep choosing great guests with great answers, and yet, they keep missing the subtext in my emails requesting that they name every book in existence. Another round next week it is, then! As a bonus this week, it turns out Edders and I are reading the same book, completely accidentally. That being Jake Adelstein’s The Last Yakuza. Edders got it is as a gift, and I moved on to it after finishing Adelstein’s first book, Tokyo Vice. I think I prefer the scrappiness of Tokyo Vice so far, but they’re both fascinating.
Also, Alice Bee done a second novel! I’m sure she won’t plug herself, so I’m doing it here. She writes novels after work! I can barely microwave pasta post 5pm! Let me know what you’ve been reading below, and remember: a rushed sign off will be forever bad, but a delayed sign off will just needlessly drag out the length of this sentence to disguise the fact I still haven’t come up with a good sign off.