What's on your bookshelf?: Firaxis, Hindsight, and Life Is Strange writer Emma Kidwell

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! This week, it’s writer on Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Hindsight, Life is Strange Season 2 and more, Emma Kidwell! Cheers Emma! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

I’m currently reading Thrum, a novella by independent author Meg Smitherman. She pitched it as a gothic sci-fi horror romance, but the premise reminded me a little of Project Hail Mary which is why I picked it up (P.S. special order books through your local bookstore!).

Gone Girl. I had recently re-watched the movie and wondered what the book was like and wound up enjoying it a lot. But that’s not an exciting answer, so before that I blasted through the Hunger Games trilogy to get past my reading rut and indulge in some “I remember reading these in middle school” feelings.

Legends And Lattes by Travis Baldree. A dear friend of mine bought it as a gift after I told her I had a hard time reading fantasy. I’m a visual person, so when it comes to fantasy it’s easier for me to parse concepts when I can see them in a video game or movie or described in meticulous detail through a very good dungeon master. Curious to see whether I can stick with it!

Okay, so even though I have a lot of complicated feelings about Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow, it has one of the most (SPOILER ALERT) beautiful chapters about a character’s death. Books don’t make me cry very often, but reading the POV from the only likable character as he’s in a coma and right before he passes away made me legitimately tear up. Reading his thoughts as he drifted away listening to his mom and dad talk to him, his girlfriend, his inner monologue… I’ve never read anything like it. If it were any other character or any other book, I don’t think I would have cared, I don’t think it would have made the same impact-- especially the circumstance in which he was placed in the hospital… but that scene devastated me. It’s one of the only positive things I have to say about that book. The author wrote a very likable character and wrote a poetic, beautiful send off for him.

Probably Project Hail Mary. I’ve liked every single book Andy Weir has published. I’m a huge stan. I like every single one of his protagonists, I like how he writes dialogue and how he breaks down science and math concepts so a regular person like me can understand them. It’s good science fiction! It made me laugh and get angry and feel relief and everything! Read it.

Night Bitch would be a cool video game. It’s being adapted into a movie, but the body horror and lapse in memory and sense of existential dread would serve as a neat scary game. I could see it having PS1 era graphics, just because I like that aesthetic when it comes to horror.

Another Sunday, another spectacular failure by our guest to name every book ever written. It is, as they say, how the book-y crumbles. I’m really sorry I just wrote that. Book for now!