Hello fellow reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of great people in the industry about books! I don’t want to share a completely true book fact with you this week because I just read a book that tells me that sharing book facts is actually destroying the online book fact industry. Come back next week, by which time I may have finished another book that disproves these claims. This week it’s the developer behind Sluggish Morss, Dujanah and the upcoming Judero, Jack King-Spooner! Cheers Jack! Would we mind poking our noses at your library?
What are you currently reading?
I usually have a few books on the go at once, and right now I have more than usual. I’m really into fairy tales and how they can be interpreted. I love it when stories passed down for hundreds of years end up having familiar archetypes like the Good King or the third child who steps up. There is a lot to be learned from this. Lang’s Fairy Books, Ella Young’s Celtic Miracle Tales, Hughes’ How The Whale Became are all on hand with Post-Its marking the good bits. For something more substantial, I read my dad’s Peterkin, a whimsical semi-fantasy story about how the first dog was domesticated. I also read the Bible.
What was the last thing you read?
Besides all the folktales and fairy tales, I’ve recently read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (boys), Norm Macdonald’s Based On A True Story and The Woman In Me by Britney Spears. The first two are brilliant.
What are you looking at next?
I have to read Bob Mortimer’s book next, can’t wait. And Prince Harry’s Spare, but I think GMTV ruined the best bits for me. And this really curious book by Neil Grossman about how a post-materialist social order can solve the challenges of modern life, all through fictional conversations with Plato and Socrates.
What quote or scene from the book stuck with you?
I don’t think I have a very good memory for anything, I don’t have a brain and I’ve always memorized lines. Maybe Robert Burns poetry because where I grew up we always recited it and I always liked it. As for the scene… maybe Aslan sings of darkness in Narnia (Magician’s Nephew) or the end of Winnie the Pooh where we leave them in the Enchanted Place… that absolutely devastates me just thinking about it. I find both scenes beautiful. Such delicate use of language, wrong word and “it wouldn’t work”. I’ve come to love Narnia more than Middle Earth and Winnie the Pooh (not Disney’s) means the world to me.
What book do you think you pester your friends to read?
Probably White Noise by Don Delillo. Or Limmy’s books. Or Crime And Punishment if they haven’t read it.
What book would you like someone to adapt into a game?
There is an unfilmed screenplay by John Water for the sequel to Pink Flamingoes, which I think should be a play, but someone else probably said it. Also, David Lynch has written a script for a sort of Eraserhead sequel called Ronnie Rocket, which could be a game. What about Aesop’s fables? I’m tempted to say something really disgusting. So the book has to be a bit aphoristic and have a strong sense of place… The story doesn’t matter because you might as well read the book… Doing, it would need to continue gamification… it has to be The Wind in the Willows.
An eclectic collection for your pile of shame, although Jack joins the pile of shame in this column with all the other guests who couldn’t list every book ever written. Will we find someone who knows this top secret destination for next week? The loyal cops among you may have noticed that I changed the fifth question to my liking. I might change some other questions too just to keep you guessing. Or maybe I won’t, but doesn’t the possibility that I might fill you with exciting uncertainty about what the future might hold fill you? Book now!