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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! July has shrivelled up like a freshly laundered sock left on the radiator for too long, and yet, it’s still hot enough that even typing the word radiator makes me want to inject concentrated Solero straight into my bloodstream. With my last remaining un-fugged brain cells, I have wrenched this column back from its hiatus, and who better than to get us into the swing of things once more than Baldur’s Gate 3 lead writer and bloody RPS legend Adam Smith! Cheers Adam! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
What are you currently reading?
I have a habit of reading too many things at the same time. Usually I aim to have one non-fiction book and one fiction book on the go simultaneously because I tend to be in the mood for one or the other, but the distinction isn’t always clear. Erik Larson tickles the non-fiction part of my brain, for example, while Herman Melville tickles non-fiction. Or lobs a harpoon through it.
In reality, I rarely have two books on the go at a time, it’s usually three or four. It turns out graphic novels occupy a different space, and teeny-tiny books have a slot of their own, and sometimes a short story collection outlasts a whole pile of books as I take bites out of it over a longer period. Right now, I have three books in progress.
Eating To Extinction by Dan Saladino is from the non-fiction stack. I’m learning a lot about food diversity (I know very little!) and it’s all cleverly wrapped up in stories of travel, culture and people. It’s vast in scope but often focuses on a personal story or single location. I’m only a hundred pages in, but so far I’m enjoying it a lot. And it’s one of those books I half-expected to endure rather than enjoy. Like many of the healthy things I don’t eat enough of, I thought it might be worth the effort, but not particularly pleasant in the moment. I’m glad that’s not the case!
My fiction book is Grave Expectations by Alice Bell. You may have heard of the author. She’s great. The book is too. You should buy it.
And I just started on Blue In Green, written by Ram V with art by Anand RK. It’s billed as a horror/jazz graphic novel, and if it’s half as good as I’m hoping, I’ll be singing its praises for the rest of the year.
What did you last read?
I’m going to cheat a bit and pick two because I finished them both very recently. One that I’ll be recommending to everyone with even a vague interest in horror is The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales by Attila Veres. It’s a collection of short stories and if you don’t like the one about the Budapest underground music scene and haunted tapes, you’ll probably like the one that’s like a simultaneously horrifying and hilarious review of the worst holiday ever. Veres does things with cosmic horror that feel fresh, manages to write in a bunch of different styles and tones, and managed to scare me and entertain me so much that I devoured the whole collection in two sittings.
Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett is the first in a trilogy of fantasy novels that a friend recommended because it reminded him of Dishonored a little. That was enough to sell me and the way the magic system works a bit like hacking code kept me interested even when the actual plot was in danger of losing me. I enjoyed it and I’ll read the sequel, but I’m not hungry for more just yet. It won’t be next… which brings us to..
.
What are you eyeing up next?
Every book in existence. But mostly Last Call by Tim Powers and Raw Concrete: The Beauty Of Brutalism by Barnabas Calder.
What quote or scene from a book has stuck with you?
My wife insisted that I read one of her favourite books, In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami, a few weeks after we met. When I finally did (sorry, Ilona – I’m slow) the entire thing stuck with me and I don’t think it’ll ever unstick. But there are two scenes that are among the most disturbing and fascinating I’ve ever read: one at a batting cage, the other at a karaoke bar. Both immediately felt like nightmares I might have had in the past and would certainly have in the future. A fragment of a quote from that one: “…I’m definitely malignant, yet I think I play a necessary role in this world.”
What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?
House of Leaves. It feels like the answer everyone who knows me would expect me to give and I wish I could be more original, but it’s the truth! I often have to apologise after they read a hundred pages of it and tell me how much they dislike Johnny Truant. Then I tell them to listen to Poe’s album Haunted instead/as well.
What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?
The Third Policeman.
Adam told me he enjoyed the column, which was nice, And yet! even this familiarity did not elevate his passing lip service to every book in existence to any sort of effort to actually name them all. With yet another guest failing in this laughably paltry task, we must continue ever onwards. So, join us next week for another paper-pilled guest telling us about their favourites. Book for now!