Currently I'm reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It's a heartfelt book about game development and follows the lives of three young people who start a game company around the turn of the millennium. I'm about 3/4 of the way through at this point and the flow of the story and the character development are extremely good.

That was an excellent story, Piero, and I loved all the game references!

That was an excellent story, Piero, and I loved all the game references!

It really is great isn't it. I loved the references too but I have been wondering about the timing of some of the gaming world events in the story. For example, there's a reference to many people having problems downloading a game - did people commonly download games in the early 2000s? Maybe it was different in the US to the UK where I was at that time.

I didn't download games at that time, but then I was a newbie to computers and games and also a Mac user, so what did I know? I suspect the author might have stretched things a bit for the sake of the story.

That was an excellent story, Piero, and I loved all the game references!

It really is great isn't it. I loved the references too but I have been wondering about the timing of some of the gaming world events in the story. For example, there's a reference to many people having problems downloading a game  - did people commonly download games in the early 2000s? Maybe it was different in the US to the UK where I was at that time.

Diablo II, from Blizzard, had to have certain files downloaded, even if you purchased the game box with CD-ROM.  It was released in 2001.

I finished and loved Dennis Taylor's second Bobiverse novel, For We Are Many, and am looking forward to the third one.

Harry Dresden has been one of my favorite fantasy characters since I followed the short-run Dresden Files tv show in 2007. All of the previous 19 books in the series have been great reads, and I'm now having great difficulty putting down Twelve Months, as the circles under my eyes can attest.

A few books I've loved so far this year are The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir, Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark, and Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott. They're all pretty quick reads at between 150-200 pages, but they pack a punch despite being so short. 

The first two are horror, but The Night Guest is creepy supernatural horror and Ring Shout is monster/body horror. I highly recommend them both! 

Ex-Wife was published anonymously in 1929 and was quite scandalous for its time. It's a wonderfully written exploration of 1920s society from a newly divorced woman's point of view.

Once again, The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson captivated me with its observations about human nature. Shirley Jackson writes with great emotional intelligence; her characters display all the quirks, funny and otherwise, of the human condition.

It's been my experience people either appreciate this or find the stories low on plot and the people depicted lacking in "likability" - its depth lies beneath the surface and I feel it works great as a projective personality assessment in this regard.

Speaking of personality assessment; I've been revisiting Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. I used to have strong democratic ideals, this is a great book to challenge those beliefs. We tend to seek out narratives pushed by people in the media; influencers, politicians, celebrities - and copy whatever resonates with our interests, anxieties and prejudice. We seek comfort or excitement, a way to externalize inner turmoil, to negate what we consider hurtful, to find pleasure in one way or the other. On the whole, we are looking to exert energy according to what we perceive as our strenght (and to cover up our weakness).

We differ in our ability to work though discomfort, the loneliness of thinking for oneself, to work in accordance to instinct, rather than rationalizations, reward/punishment and social engineering. Like any other skill, this is determined by talent and willingness to struggle. But in the end, this is the nature of our reality. We can only accept suffering to the degree it serves us - and for most people, this is very limited - which is fine. Thinking big is like lifting heavy - it's not going to be for everyone. Most people tend to be more aware of their limitations in the latter than the former: I think this is because you can always think up a narrative just complicated enough to fool yourself. We're susceptible to rhetorical tricks and tend to accept our neurological response as indicative of truth/goodness, or the opposite.

There's obviously more to this book - I find it challenging in different ways at different stages of life.

My next read: Clive Gamble's Timewalkers.

To balance out the (overly) serious tone of my previous post, I'd like to recommend a novel with some adventure game sensibilities: The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler.

This is a very plot-driven novel, with mystical qualities, drama and an interesting way of connecting present and past together to unfold the mystery of a family curse. Starting off with a young librarian, living out an uneventful and mostly solitary existence with little direction, we are introduced to a cast of colourful characters, lovers, strays and carnival folk, people driven to make consequential and sometimes fatal decisions - and those who work to set things right.

I really enjoyed the writing; it has attention for detail, but it never gets too ornamental, it doesn't go out of its way to impress. It switches between first and third person - present and past - one gives you a sense of immediacy, the other of a story being told through the ages. The character's aren't deep reflections of the human condition, but they are memorable. It's more of an emotional journey than an intellectual excersize. That said, it does do a great job of revealing each piece of the puzzle, slowly revealing a larger picture; it kept me engaged beginning to end.

A few books I've loved so far this year are The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir,

Oh this sounds like a fun read! I've read a few Scandinavian horror novels over the years and they're always worth it.

Bob,
I'm currently reading Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, part of the tome containing The Lottery and Other Stories and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, none of which I've read yet. I like the way author is building the tension slowly in this one. I didn't realize that the Robert Wise 1963 movie version of The Haunting follows the story the closest compared the later version. I saw the movie many years ago but don't remember much about it. My sister owns both versions, so I'll probably do a comparison after I finish the story.

By the way, Nietzsche is pietzsche, according to one of my high school English teachers. I haven't read him.

Two books I can recommend for those who like detective mysteries combined with fantasy are The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. He has built an interesting world with a complex crime-solving duo consisting of the brilliant but often frustrating elderly Ana and her assistant, Din, who can remember events with perfect detail. I enjoyed both books tremendously and hope for more with these two characters.