As some of you may know, every Sunday at 4pm GMT I host ‘Booked for the Week’ – a regular chat with a selection of chilly industry people about what they’re reading, what they hope to read next and what books they have planned. recommend. The very secret purpose of the column is for guests to name every book ever written. It is a task at which each of them has failed miserably, with two notable exceptions. One of them was Dan Griliopoulos, who put 400 books into the document before he got bored and gave up – a heroic if ultimately futile effort. The second was Warren Spector in November, who not only gave me the longest and most detailed response I’ve ever received before or since, but also told me several times to add more books to the list.
“Hey, if you remember, I reserved the right to change my mind on anything on my ‘What I’ll Read Next’ list in your ‘Advertising’ column,” Spector emailed me last night. “Well, I completely changed my mind and thought an update might be fun and interesting. You can ignore it, but here’s what I thought.”
Of course, I have no intention of ignoring Warren Spector. I thought the update to the original post would just get buried, so here it is in full. “Is this just promotion for your damn column, Nic?”, you might ask. Au contraire, my little perfidious can of banana bread. Is this a promotion literature itself. Greetings again, Warren.
So in my last entry in the Bookshelves column on this site, I listed a few books I was considering reading next. I did the logical thing and listed the books that were next to my reading chair or at the top of my Kindle library, but I reserved the right to change my mind. Good thing I did, because boy did I change my mind!
Recently I read an fascinating book that I wanted to share. None of them had All related to books I thought I would read. I’m not talking about AND book, but several unrelated books that turned around outside related to each other and are richer when read together than when read separately. They are all exceptionally well written. I highly recommend each of them, but especially if you read them all back to back. It’s a truly unique experience. Or at least it was for me.
First, “New York in the 1950s” by Dan Wakefield. It is a history of the city’s intellectual and original history from the delayed 1940s to the early 1960s, primarily around Columbia University and Greenwich Village (West and East). The author resembled the character Zelig from a Woody Allen film. He knew Columbia intellectuals, Esquire and New Yorker writers, the founders of the Village Voice, Beats, lots of musicians, blacklisted people, C. Wright Mills, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Pynchon, Bob Dylan and more.
But there is also book number 2 – Three Shades of Blue by James Kaplan. This is the story of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans (with a lot of information about Charlie Parker) during the SAME PERIOD in the Village and downtown (the jazz center of New York). You can look at these years completely differently. It’s fascinating. The author talks about specific songs and albums, all of which can be streamed. While reading, I listened to the music he talked about, which added to the experience.
AND THEN there’s Positively 4th Street by David Hajdu, a story about the folk scene AT THE SAME PERIOD, also in the Village. It’s mainly about Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Richard and Mimi Farina. Another look at this period again.
Then I will read the book The Slip by Prudence Peiffer, about the art scene in the same place and time. I expect it will be fascinating because of the perspective as well.
One of the more fascinating things I found out is that ALL of these people hung out at a bar called The White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village – ALL of them. Oh, to be a fly on the wall!
Even if you’re not interested in time, place, or (seriously) subject matter, the way the books interlock with each other makes for a fascinating reading journey. You may find yourself interested in things you weren’t interested in before.
I’m very ecstatic to work on this site for many reasons, but one of them is the game developers who email me out of the blue at 8 p.m. to talk passionately about the books they’ve read so that I can share them with the public made up of people I know I’m 96% sure most of them won’t give a shit. It makes me want to stay curious and excited, and I hope you feel the same. Thank you again, Warren, and thank you to everyone who reads and comments on this column each week. While I’m always excited to talk to a recent guy, some of my favorite moments were when I couldn’t find anyone, but you all kept the conversation going anyway with great recommendations and thoughts. I think this is something unique and uncommon for a gaming site, and I intend to continue doing so as long as I can.
If you are a programmer with a habit of reading books, please contact us. I need recent guests for the slate, and I’m very slothful.
In case you missed it, Spector is teaming up with Greg LoPiccolo and David McDonough to create an addictive recent simulation called Thick As Thieves. They recently discussed the project with RPS’s Jeremy Peel.
