Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – the only regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books that has no conception of space, time, responsibility or consistency. Also, I can’t read. Still, I’m feeling confident we can get through this together. In that, I have no other choice. This week, it’s editor and author for books like Digital Love and Well Played, and writer on games like Orion Trail and Bramblewood, Heidi McDonald! Cheers Heidi! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
What are you currently reading?
Society As I Have Found It by Ward McAllister, a book mentioned a few weeks ago on HBO’s The Gilded Age which was an actual book. It’s free for download on Project Gutenberg. Lots of folks on the fan boards of the show say it’s a boring read, but as I really enjoy literature from that period (1873), I am used to that type of prose and have found it fascinating and amusing so far.
What did you last read?
Magnitude by my dear friend, Victor Jiminez. It’s his first novel, it’s great, and needs to be a sci-fi thriller movie on one of the streaming services.
What are you eyeing up next?
More of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett because I was super late to the party on those and only just started the series last year. It’s exquisite.
What quote or scene from a book sticks with you the most?
There was a quote from Birds Without Wings by Louis Berniéres that affected me when I read it years ago and really haunts me these days: “If you listen closely, you can hear the bleating of a goat with nothing to say.” It’s like the old wise man from a Turkish village just summed up the entire internet and American politics in one sentence.
What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?
Meeting In The Devil’s House by my friend Richard Dansky, and The Secret Lives Of Church Ladies by my friend Deesha Philyaw.
What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?
The world in the Mortal Engines series by Philip Reeve, and of course, ANY GAME based on books from the Gilded, Edwardian, or Victorian ages because those books are my jam and I’d write the crap out of such a game.
The celebration of art and resistance in all it’s myriad, fleeting, impossibly vital forms will continue until morale improves. It will get worse before it gets better. We will remain silly resilient and resiliently silly. Book for now!
