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! That’s two weeks in a row now, which I’ve decided is enough for me to not have to caveat or lampshade the word ‘regular’, except obviously in this specific instance. We are back 4eva, in the Blakean Infinite sense, which is my favourite reference for making my fecklessness seem profound.
This week, it’s The Stanley Parable, The Beginner’s Guide, and Wanderstop’s Davey Wreden! Cheers Davey! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
What did you last read?
I’ve recently finished a number of fantastic novels, but there are two in particular that immediately entered my personal pantheon of greatest books I’ve ever read.
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett: A mother abandons her two young children with no explanation of why she left, leaving them to be raised by their father and spend their lives wondering why exactly their mother left, and whether they’ll ever be capable of feeling truly secure in life. This one started a bit slow, but by the middle I was hooked. The last third of this book shook me in a way very few pieces of media ever have, it took me for a ride of bittersweet hope and emotional violence that I don’t think I recovered from for several days. Stunning.
The Remains Of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro: This one astonished me. It sounds so mundane, it’s about a mid-20th century English butler looking back on his life and reflecting on his services to his employers. And yet somehow every single scene is layered with depth and nuance and grief and passion that is almost entirely implied. Rarely does the book form its conclusions for you, it simply presents its surface and lets you make all of the discoveries for yourself. I was in awe of the writing prowess on display – how do you say something entirely new and bold in every single scene of the book without ever actually saying any of it? When I finished I flipped back to a dozen different scenes and re-read them over and over just soaking in the warmth and humanity. This book has probably shifted some fundamental thing in my brain about what it means to write with depth.
What are you currently reading?
Coming off Remains of the Day I decided to dig through more of Kazuo Ishiguro’s work, I had actually already read Never Let Me Go and for some reason it didn’t have quite the same impact on me. This time I’m trying A Pale View of Hills, his first novel. It feels a bit rough around the edges and I’m not sure where it’s going yet, but he’s earned a lot of trust from me. I also just flipped the last page on French Braid by Anne Tyler, which was very slow paced but absolutely wonderful and extremely lush in its depiction of mundane family drama.
What are you eyeing up next?
The friend who recommended Dutch House and Remains to me has suggested I take A Visit From The Goon Squad for a spin. I actually read it about a decade ago and really didn’t connect with it for some reason, but I’m willing to take it for another spin and see if I’ve changed in the intervening years. I’ll also probably dig into something else by Ishiguro, and I’d love to try more books by Ann Patchett as well. Prior to Dutch House I had read Bel Canto, which I thought was a truly lovely piece of work, albeit VERY different from Dutch House, so I’m curious to try some more of her books and see just how broad her range is.
What quote or scene from a book sticks with you the most?
Because Dutch House is so fresh in my memory, I’ve been thinking a lot about a particular part of the book that has to do with the question of what it means to forgive an act that feels unforgivable (don’t want to spoil it). It’s been a really useful tool when thinking about real-life relationships. Also there’s a scene from Infinite Jest where a tennis player is dealing with intense feelings of envy and how much he wishes to be like someone else. When a mentor suggests that even if he were to achieve what he’s envious of it still would not satisfy him, the tennis player asks why not, and the mentor replies “What fire dies when you feed it?” That line has stuck with me over the years.
What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?
Probably the book that I have given or loaned to friends more than any other is Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Fun Home reached me at an instrumental point in my life and shifted how I thought about storytelling in the direction of the more grounded and personal. I’ve still never read any other book that manages to do memoir in such an honest yet (mostly) unpretentious way, it set the gold standard for me when it comes to personal storytelling. It’s also easy to recommend because it’s a graphic novel and so it’s just a faster read than a traditional book.
What book would you like to see someone adapt into a game?
The books that come to mind are all books that would be extremely difficult to adapt haha. Like, I would love to see an adaptation of Annihilation, but not adapted in the traditional sense, I’d want a game adaptation that’s as deliriously inscrutable and intangible as the book is. How do you do that when every mechanic of a game has to be so concrete? Even the film version of Annihilation (which is VERY different than the book) necessarily compresses the story into something far more coherent and discernible than what’s in the book. I’ve seen a couple games that dance at the periphery of what Annihilation did (Mouthwashing and Expedition 33 come to mind) but nothing I can recall that captures the full breadth of Annihilation’s silent terror.
Also, reading The Remains Of The Day really makes me want to see a game where the entire emotion of the story is communicated through subtext and implication. Honestly I have no idea what either of these ideas actually look like in practice haha, they both rely so much on implication where video games tend so much more toward the explicit. It’s hard when games require so much specificity to even be functional. Maybe these ideas are just better in my head.
As per last week, please shovel in your guest requests into the comments like fresh manure on nascent crops, thereby helping this column thrive lively and long into the future, like a mutant beetroot that makes you slightly more interesting at parties when consumed. Book for now!