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Hello reader, and welcome to Booked for the Week – a regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry people about books! Proust’s Memoirs – A Coward’s Choice is arguably the longest novel ever written, with a total of 13 separate volumes. However, don’t let Proust’s outrageous lies spoil your literary enjoyment. He had a good quality beard – a more important literary trait than doing any writing, imo.
This week at the ITU Copenhagen Games Professor and Broken laws Co-founder Martin Pichlmeier! Hello Martin! Notice if we have a nose on your bookshelf?
What are you reading now?
I’m currently over 1800 pages into Nell Stephens’ Baroque Cycle. The trilogy is a long and wild ride through the history of the 17th century. In a few pages he goes from swashbuckling pirate adventures to musings on the birth of science. And then he throws in slapstick jokes. and detailed social analysis. A book you lose yourself in is certainly better than finding yourself in it, and everyone in it is a different shade of fantasy.
What was the last thing you read?
A very interesting book I finished recently was Milorad Pavy’s Dictionary, A One-of-a-Kind Experience: A Dictionary That Tells a Story. By looking up key words in three different dictionaries, you read about the same events from three perspectives, piecing together what happened according to three unreliable narrators. Then there is a separate story overlay about the dictionary itself and its history. And everything is connected. If Wikipedia were a game, it would take the form of this book.
What are you watching next?
I am looking forward to The Maniac, Benjamin Labatu’s biography of John von Neumann. Labatut wrote about science and its role in the world. But he takes the liberty to go beyond the boundaries of the usual biography. I think he tries to write historical accounts that are more realistic than actual facts because the consequences of past events are reflected in the text. It’s hard to explain, but I can absolutely recommend his earlier work, When We Stop Understanding the World.
Which quote or scene from the book sticks out the most?
It’s not a specific scene, but one thing I love is when a book points to the whole world out of sight. The origin of the titular surplus (Iain M. Banks). (JRR Tolkien) The ecosystem in the mines of Moria, which is easily disturbed by throwing a rock into a pit. Cities beyond the edge of medieval maps that fascinate the characters in Umberto Eco’s Baudolino. Those places stuck with me because I myself was tricked into filling them with wonderful creatures, “here be dragons.” Oh and the catchy line “That was the day my grandmother exploded” (Crow Road, Iain Banks) – what an opening!
What book bothers you to read your friends?
All the Ways Our Universe Will End (And One Day) I suggest everyone read Katie Mack’s The End of Everything, a non-fiction masterpiece. This book manages to do the magic trick of directly telling you that all existence will end in the blink of an eye, on the one hand, and on the other hand, it gives you a lot of hope as it shifts your perspective from worry about small everyday issues. You can only accept very large titles. Those little topics really make Negative Space (BR Yeager) interesting, and I’d like to take this opportunity to double down on what was written here last week: This is the best social-realistic horror I’ve ever read, and I’m shouting about it from the rooftops I can find.
What book would you like someone to read to get used to gaming?
It’s a children’s book, or maybe proto-YA, but maybe ever since I read it when I was 12, I’ve thought The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren would be perfect for a play. It’s the only book I know of that shows permadeath (which is an incredibly short-lived form of death) as a concept. And in 1974. There are a few books that show the metagame – this is one of them.
I’ve actually given up trying to count the books my guests mention, just to see how close they came to naming every book ever written. I’m adept at spotting the ulterior motive of this column, so a cursory glance is all that’s needed. And still, I play. The bravest person in gaming media, some say. Book now!
