Hello, reader who is also a reader, and welcome to Booked For The Week — our regular Sunday chat with awesome industry people about books! I’ve spent this week half-reading in the garden and half-admiring my Kindle’s paperwhite and its ability to remain readable in the blazing sun. I want to find out how it works, but I don’t want to find out it’s made from the glowing, genetically modified shells of workers dying of thirst at distribution centers. To distract me with more books, here’s Dr. Hazel Monforton, author of Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider and senior narrative designer for Destiny 2! Hi Hazel! Would you mind taking a look around your library?
What are you reading right now?
Songs Of A Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti. Both are short story collections and are considered pillars of the Weird Horror genre. Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach series, described Ligotti as someone who “absorbed Lovecraft and left his dry husk behind.” Quite right.
What was the last thing you read?
The Medieval Pig by Dolly Jørgensen. An interesting little exploration of the role of pigs in both rural and urban settings in medieval Europe. I loved it; I've always been interested in reading about that place and time in history
What's next?
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel last year and I've only heard good things about it.
What quote or scene from a book has stuck with you?
There is a passage in the interlude called Time Passes (one of the subjects of my doctoral dissertation!) of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse that has always saddened me. It concludes a series of very serious paragraphs about our desires for things beyond our reach (regret, kindness, answers) and settles on an image of Mr Ramsay stretching out his arms to embrace his wife. “Mr Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched out his arms, but they remained empty, as Mrs Ramsay had died quite suddenly the night before.”
Which book are you trying to get your friends to read?
This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar. Especially the audiobook with the voices of Cynthia Farrell and Emily Woo Zeller. The prose is rich and beautiful, and the constellation of moments it reveals is wonderful. It is absolutely magnificent.
Which book would you like to see adapted into a game?
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. A delightful book about glamour, imagination, destiny, and ambition; it takes you by the hand and takes you to a beautiful place. And I think the author would be delighted to see it adapted into a play.
Naming Ligotti is as good as naming every book in existence, but I'm afraid Hazel still missed the column's top-secret goal. Oh well, she's not the first, and I don't think she'll be the last (besides, The Final Shape was amazing, and you all deserved so much better). Will our next guest end up naming every book ever written, only to despair when a new one pops up the moment they name the last one? We'll find out next week! Books for now!