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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome to Booked For The Week – our Sunday feature where we ask a selection of cool industry folks questions about books! Did you know that if you cup a book over your ear you can hear the gentle ambience of a thousand seagulls screaming how Charles Bukowski is literally them fr? I cannot judge these irritating gulls. “Air And Light…” is still one of my all time favourites. This week, it’s El Paso, Elsewhere developer, Hypnospace Outlaw writer, and RPS contributor Xalavier Nelson Jr! Cheers Xalavier! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
What are you currently reading?
Right now I’m reading The King In Yellow! I know it was the origin point for a lot of modern eldritch, supernatural, and conspiracy-based fiction, so I figured I’d go back to the root of it all and see what I find for myself. Watching and reading origin points (Alien, Roadside Picnic, Twin Peaks, etc.) has been an immensely inspiring and creatively fulfilling process so whenever I can, I go back to the source of whatever new thing I love and see how it might impact me in turn.
What did you last read?
I mean… it’s usually manga. It’s always manga. I just finished Hell’s Paradise, which is super good! We love a ninja who’s also a wife guy. But if we’re talking about prose, my last book was Black No More by George Schuyler. It’s about scientists inventing a process that allows a black person to change their skin color in the 1920s, and how that turns American society upside-down. It’s one of the first pieces of afrofuturism ever written, and you can feel the heated nature of its satire to this day.
What are you eyeing up next?
Reading the first chapter or so of The Body Keeps the Score was a sobering reminder of my human mortality and the consequences of my actions, so I’ll probably dig into In Cold Blood next, or Starship Troopers.
What book do you quote from the most?
My most quoted is probably The Bible. I like the King James Version specifically, because of the richness of language and–again–just how often a piece of phrasing will make a sentiment land in a way that causes me to stop and take a breath. There’s a verse in James about the ill-gotten wealth of the rich literally eating their flesh like fire. I frickin love that kind of stuff, and I only regret that this side of the Bible wasn’t something I learned about until I was an adult.
What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?
For a while it was The Sister’s Brothers. It was the only book I’ve read that made me believe I could write prose – because it was structured like the Twine games I started my career writing. A chapter wasn’t an arbitrary length, it was exactly as long as a scene or moment needed, and the author actively plays with the structure and “gamefeel” of turning pages to add to the reader’s sense of pacing and space. I’d never seen anything like that before, and it kinda changed my life.
What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?
High-Rise by J.G. Ballard. A thousand times. Let me witness the existential and physical collapse of a micro-society in a megastructure, please.
For the third week in a row, Xalavier gave us some cracking responses but absolutely whiffed the implied assignment to name every book in existence, so I suppose we’ll have to do it all again next week. And remember: a penny saved is 1/1000 of a book earned. I’m desperately trying to finalise this sign-off. It’s not a gag. Although three in a row sort of means it’s a gag now. Bum.