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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! I need to start getting a ‘Gene Wolfe referenced’ reaction image for these things, I swear – although this reference is at least hidden behind a couple of links. Which links? That’d be spoiling the layered environmental storytelling that keeps you coming back. This week, it’s Senior Technical Narrative Designer at Remedy, previously of Fullbright, Bioshock 2, and Where The Water Tastes Like Wine fame, Johnnemann Nordhagen! Cheers Johnnemann! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
What are you currently reading?
I’m someone who has a lot of books going on at once, generally – some of that is because I got into a few podcasts by games-adjacent people, like Shelved By Genre (partly hosted by Austin Walker, who worked on WTWTLW with me!), for which I’m currently reading Mercedes Lackey’s Last Herald Mage Trilogy. I also am working my way through John Le Carre, currently on A Perfect Spy – I really adore his scathing spy fiction that tears into the institutions of the world as they ruin his protagonists. On my phone for waiting in lines and things like that I have right now The Soulmate: A Novel, which is a light mystery-thriller.
What did you last read?
For Just King Things, another podcast, I read Song of Susannah by Stephen King. It’s an interesting project to go through the entire body of work of a prolific writer in order – I’m learning a lot. I also recently finished Long Island Compromise, a book that I really enjoyed – I guess a bourgeois novel would be the way to describe it, modern literary fiction, funny and tragic and real in all the best ways. I don’t want to spoil it but I think the ending is really masterful.
What are you eyeing up next?
I enjoyed Karl Ove Knausgård’s Morning Star when I read it a while ago and I’m looking forward to reading the next two in the series – I live in Sweden now and it feels appropriate to read some Nordic fiction. And then obviously wherever my book podcasts go I shall follow.
What quote or scene from a book has stuck with you?
I think I will never forget the ending of Blood Meridian. I think the whole novel has stuck with me, though, clinging to me no matter what, haha.
What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?
Oh, this is tough, because I feel like I have a different book for everyone I meet! I feel like I have recently mentioned Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy to a few people though. I also keep trying to get someone as excited as I am about Remainder by Tom McCarthy.
What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?
I’ve thought a lot about how China Mieville’s The City and the City would work as a game – a mechanic requiring the player to only pay attention to certain things on the screen, or perhaps forcing that on them somehow, would be a really fascinating thing to explore. I don’t think I’d want to do the exact plot of the book, necessarily, but that specific quirk of the world is so cool and seems well-suited to exploring in an interactive context!
“I know I gave multiple books for nearly every answer, but that’s because I was trying to name every book ever written. I think I got close?” says Johnnemann. No. No you did not. But that’s fine! Gives next week’s guest something to talk about (books). I realized the other day that some folks might be coming to this column for the first time, and so not realise that “book for now” is a deliberately stupid sign off I stuck with while trying to think of a better one. In the mind of at least one person, I am someone who would unironically write “book for now!” as a sign off. Ah well. Book for now!