What's on your bookshelf: Saltsea Chronicles, Mutazione and Thronglets' Hannah Nicklin

Hello scholar who is besides a reader, and invited backmost to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a enactment of chill manufacture folks astir books! Having yet work The Epic Of Gilgamesh recently, I consciousness I should successful beryllium awe astatine however the proliferation of definite themes and melodramatic modes passim past speaks profoundly to the truths of the quality experience. However, gaming has taught maine to recognise a soiled plus flip erstwhile I spot one. For shame, overmuch of storytelling.

This week, it's Saltsea Chronicles, Mutazione, Thronglets, and overmuch more's Hannah Nicklin! Cheers Hannah! Mind if we person a chemoreceptor astatine your bookshelf?

What are you presently reading?

I'm idiosyncratic who has a fig of books connected the spell astatine once. I besides person to debar non-fiction oregon 'easy' speechmaking books unless I'm connected holiday/vacation due to the fact that my circumstantial benignant of hyperfocus sees maine one-shot books and massively disrupt my slumber schedule. So the books I thin to work are a small much friction-full (in the champion ways). In that discourse I'm presently feasting connected a buffet of:

The Mechanic And The Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism Of Technology And Capitalism (Jathan Sadowski)

I'm loving this truthful far, the dual lense Sadowski articulates arsenic a means of reflecting connected modern capitalist technoculture is ace incisive. I'll fto him picture it, the publication orients itself around: "[A] captious survey of technological capitalism done 2 metaphorical relation models for however to bash materialist analysis: the mechanic and the Luddite. The mechanic knows however a machines is enactment together, however its parts function, and what enactment it does. The Luddite knows wherefore the instrumentality was built, whose purposes it serves, and erstwhile it should beryllium seized––in some senses of stopped oregon taken, destroyed oregon expropriated. [...] The materialist investigation of the mechanic provides the ground for the worldly enactment of the Luddite." It's frankly indispensable speechmaking for our existent moment, and generously arranged arsenic a bid of essays which you tin dip into successful immoderate order.

The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies & the Promise of Direct Democracy (Murray Bookchin)

I'm absorbing successful representing alternate means of corporate determination making successful the enactment I bash successful games. Saltsea Chronicles decidedly approached this by portraying societies and communities with corporate determination making, but it wasn’t systematised successful the game, thing which made consciousness for the needs of that game, but I anticipation 1 time I tin deliberation done corporate determination making/consensus successful a communicative system. Bookchin's is simply a publication I've near acold excessively agelong (it’s a decennary aged present I think), to beryllium honest. It's a connection for a caller near authorities based connected national assemblies. Many caller governmental trends and upheavals successful the world, and surely successful the state I unrecorded successful (the UK) person shown the paltry quality of ‘representative’ ideology (what does it adjacent mean to ballot each 4-5 years successful a first-past-the-post strategy wherever a King is inactive technically successful complaint and vested capitalist technocultural interests person the receptor of power?). I don't deliberation typical democracies volition past overmuch longer into the 21st century, and alternatively of letting strong-man fascists capable the vacuum, I privation to cognize astir alternatives which empower people, clasp powerfulness accountable, and springiness america means of moving past either bottom-up blockers (nimbyism, misinformation, disenfranchisement), oregon those from supra (the interests of capital, the ruling classes, etc.) to gathering healthier, much humane, much conscionable societies which besides tackle the astir urgent situation of our times: that of the climate.

A Place of Greater Safety (Hilary Mantel)

I look to person written a batch astir the erstwhile 2 books, truthful I'll support this short. This is an 871-page doorstop semi-fictionalised relationship that follows Danton, Desmoulins and Robespierre from puerility done to the 1789 French Revolution. I've been listening to the podcast bid Past Present Future connected Revolutions, and I've ever recovered it a small pugnacious to way the item of this peculiar revolution. I'm profoundly funny successful gyration (can you tell) astatine the moment: successful tipping points, successful the radical connected whom it pivots, connected the radical they purport to talk for, etc. I felt similar a semi-fictionalised relationship would springiness maine the handhold I request connected the past of it all. I'm lone 150 pages oregon truthful successful close now, but it's rather intoxicating.

What did you past read?

I'm connected vacation this week truthful I've allowed myself immoderate one-shot work benignant books. I work successful 1 sitting: Strong Female Character by Fern Brady (a sort-of-auto biography by Scottish comedian Fern Brady - mostly focussed connected her mid-30s diagnosis with autism) and The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi (a thrilling part-horror part-mystery astir translation, language, and what it means to remake yourself arsenic you displacement betwixt cultures).

What are you eyeing up next?

The adjacent 3 connected my array are:

• History and Revolution: Refuting Revisionism Edited by Mike Haynes & Jim Wolfreys
• Playing Oppression: The Legacy Of Conquest And Empire In Colonialist Board Games by Mary Flanagan & Mikael Jakobsson
• Disordered Attention: How We Look At Art And Performance Today by Claire Bishop

The archetypal 2 are reasonably aforesaid explanatory but the last, by the writer of indispensable work Artificial Hells, is an exploration of what it means to marque creation successful an epoch of disordered attention.

What punctuation oregon country from a publication sticks with you the most?

Hm, I deliberation scenes and words aren't what enactment with me. Instead it's ideas. I deliberation the thought I instrumentality to astir astatine the infinitesimal is connected to 1 of my adjacent answers – the thought that our stories astir who we are are built connected the biases of a bygone era, and successful information there's plentifulness of grounds that astatine our bosom we are a co-operative, egalitarian and playful species. There's large anticipation successful that idea.

What publication bash you find yourself bothering friends to read?

Probably these four:

Parable Of The Sower by Octavia E. Butler. An electrifying read. It was published successful the twelvemonth I was calved (1984), and begins successful 2024. How overmuch she got close is simply a terrifying enactment of imagination.

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. We person each of these stories astir who humans are, each drawn from who we person been and what we ideate our natures to be. In information a batch of that is built connected either fallacious oregon disputable readings of archeologists, anthropologists oregon philosophers drafting connected a paradigm of cognition that profoundly impacts however they work the evidence. The Dawn of Everything is an immensely freeing exploration of grounds which shows quality quality to beryllium profoundly egalitarian and playful. It is lone the past fewer centuries which are a blip. And if that's so, wherefore can't we instrumentality to a beingness which is co-operative, equal, conscionable and playful?

Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad. A profoundly humanising tiny publication (it’s an effort based connected a speech, really) from a Palestinian writer astir what it means to beryllium present, to witnesser astatine this constituent successful history.

And for craft, I ever spell backmost to recommending Stewart Lee’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate – it’s a recommended substance successful my publication Writing for Games: Theory & Practice, successful fact. I instrumentality to it often, it’s specified a masterclass successful a life-long practice, truthful affluent successful each of his acknowledged influences, truthful metatextual arsenic helium unpicks his performances arsenic a bid of originative decisions. It’s a generous acquisition from idiosyncratic profoundly absorbing successful wherefore and however connection and quality feelings intertwine. It won’t suit everyone, but it massively suits my brain.

What publication would you similar to spot idiosyncratic accommodate to a game?

Your Wish Is My Command by Deena Mohamed – which is simply a comic. I urge this a batch arsenic a beauteous portion of worldbuilding/imagining. The indispensable premise is that wishes are real. But, different than that, everything is the same. That means you extremity up having to prohibition wishes arsenic a limb of warfare successful a pact aft World War II, that means a moving people Egyptian talented a First Class privation (there are classes of wish, the cheapest of which ever spell incorrect retired of wilfully misunderstanding your intent erstwhile wishing, e.g. a privation for a Ferrari hands you a artifact car, etc) volition find herself bullied by the cops, imprisoned, and forced nether duress to manus it implicit due to the fact that 'someone similar her' would ne'er person entree to a First Class wish. And similar each fantastic worldbuilding, the 3 stories astatine the bosom of the publication are besides profoundly human. At the bosom of the enactment of wishing are seeds of quality desire. Mohamed has planted and tended and grown into a cleanable reflection connected what it is to be... us. I'd emotion to accommodate it myself, if anyone wants to physique a crippled dev squad with maine arsenic originative manager oregon communicative lead, delight let's find Deena Mohamed and marque an anthology crippled oriented astir wishing!

If you'll let maine to beryllium unforgivably earnest for a moment: convey you to everyone who has told maine they miss the file erstwhile it's gone, and admit it erstwhile it's here. The thought that thing I bash is invaluable oregon astatine the precise slightest amusive to radical is hugely meaningful to me, astatine a clip successful my beingness wherever meaning feels elusive. Of course, I bash person to present grapple with the nonaccomplishment to sanction each the books, cascading with each consequent column. Eh, we'll enactment it out. Book for now!