What's on your bookshelf?: Divinity: Original Sin 2, Baldur's Gate 3, and Saltsea Chronicles’ Charlene Putney

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! Everyone knows about ‘hardback’ and ‘softback’ books, but have you heard of the quickly discontinued ‘rice puddingback’? While hiring so many rice grain artists to transpose the blurbs in beautiful calligraphy made for an impressive spectacle, they were eventually banned after several fatal train slippage and/or smellage incidents. Ah well! This week, it’s Charlene Putney, who’s been writing for games for over ten years, including bits for Divinity: Original Sin 2, Baldur's Gate 3, NUTS, and Saltsea Chronicles! Cheers Charlene! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

What are you currently reading?

I’m almost finished with Pilgrim by Mitchell Lüthi, which is an absolute page-turner about a group of travellers in 12th century Jerusalem who’ve been tasked with a kind of reverse fetch quest for the Pope. Let me tell you - if anyone ever tries to get you to transport a strange religious relic for them, run as far and as fast as you can.

I’ve been on a real roll with this kind of historical fiction that teeters in and out of reality lately: with my favourite being Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman, and an honorary mention for Alamut by Vladimir Bartol.

I’m also re-reading fragments of Too Loud A Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal for an upcoming book club I’m leading on it. Such an excellent desolate poem of a book, highly recommended!

On the non-fiction side of things, I’ve been reading Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing by Hélène Cixous, and I’m always dipping in and out of Meditations on the Tarot.

What did you last read?

The last book I read was Agents of Oblivion by Iain Sinclair, an entrancing psychogeographical meander around London via inspiration from HP Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, JG Ballard, and Algernon Blackwood. It was a real treat for me as a writer, hiker, horror aficionado, and weirdo! Highly recommended, and available via the excellent Dublin-based Swan River Press.

What are you eyeing up next?

I love all of Olga Tocarczuk’s books (especially The Books of Jacob), so when I found out that her new one The Empusium has the tagline “a health resort horror story” I knew it was going to be one for me! I have it sitting on my nightstand waiting, and will likely get to crack the cover this evening.

What quote or scene from a book sticks with you the most?

This is a tough question, because there are so many! I have to go with the one that entered my mind on reading the question: at the end of Journey By Moonlight by Antal Szerb there is the line: “And while there is life there is always the chance that something might happen...” We never know what might happen next, but as long as we are alive then there exists possibility, hope, and the chance for us to change ourselves and the world around us.

What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?

I was absolutely consumed by Negative Space by BR Yeager recently, and even talked about it extensively on the Die Gute Fabrik “One Cool Thing” podcast here. I’m a big fan of the consolations of horror, and this is one of the best of the last few years, so if you’ve talked to me about books in the last two years I’ve certainly shrieked about it!

I also often recommend Thomas Ligotti’s short stories in Teatro Grottesco, and I’m very partial to trying to get people to read short life-changing books like One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, and Omon Ra by Viktor Pelevin.

What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?

There are so many interesting ancient tales from mythology that would make great games in my opinion: from biblical stories to Irish folk tales. But the idea that’s prime in my mind at the moment is that qntm’s There Is No Anti-Memetics Division would make an excellent game! I would love to design the narrative backend for all of the memory loss and loops in there.

It may not surprise you, reader, to learn that Charlene’s selection here (after extensive research on my part) does not actually cover every book ever written, for which I must deem it yet another miserable failure of a week - despite very much also recommending Negative Space by BR Yeager to everyone. Ah well, on the pile it goes! Might next week’s guest finally solve this column’s clandestine conundrum once and for all? Probs not, tbh. Book for now!