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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! This week, I’ve been half reading in the garden and half staring in awe at my Kindle’s paperwhite doohickey and it’s ability to stay readable in searing sunbeams. I’m tempted to look up how it works but I don’t want to find out it’s made from the luminous, genetically-engineered husks of the workers that drop dead from dehydration at the fulfilment centers or something. To help distract me with yet more books, it’s Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider writer and Destiny 2 senior narrative designer, Dr. Hazel Monforton! Cheers Hazel! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
What are you currently reading?
Songs Of A Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti. They’re both collections of short stories and considered pillars of the Weird Horror genre. Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach series, described Ligotti as someone who “subsumed Lovecraft and left his dry husk behind.” It’s very true.
What did you last read?
The Medieval Pig by Dolly Jørgensen. It’s an interesting little examination of the role of pigs in medieval Europe, both in rural and urban settings. I enjoyed it very much; I’m always interested in reading about that place and time in history
What are you eyeing up next?
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. It picked up the Nebula Award for Best Novel last year, and I’ve only heard good things.
What quote or scene from a book has stuck with you?
There’s a passage in the Time Passes interstitial in To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (one of the subjects of my PhD thesis!) that always upsets me. It concludes a very solemn set of paragraphs describing our desires for things out of our reach (penitence, goodness, answers) and settles on an image of Mr. Ramsay reaching out his arms to embrace his wife.
“Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs. Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.”
What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?
This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar. Especially the audiobook, narrated by Cynthia Farrell and Emily Woo Zeller. The prose is rich and beautiful and the constellation of moments it brings forth are wonderful. Absolutely stellar stuff.
What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It’s a delightful book about spectacle, imagination, fate, and ambition; it takes you by the hand and leads you somewhere lovely. Also, I think the author would be pleased to see it adapted into a game.
Namechecking Ligotti is almost as good as naming every book in existence, but I’m afraid that Hazel has still failed to meet the very secret goal of the column. Ah well, she isn’t the first, and I suspect will not be the last (also, The Final Shape was incredible and you all deserved so much better). Will our next guest finally name every book every written, only to despair as a new one appears the second they utter the name of the final tome? We’ll find out next week! Book for now!