What’s on your bookshelf?: Sluggish Morrs and Dujanah developer Jack King-Spooner

Hello reader who’s also a reader, and welcome back to Booked for the Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of industry finesse about books! I don’t have a completely true fact to share with you about books this week because I just read a book that tells me that sharing book facts is actually destroying the online book fact industry. Check back next week, by which time I may have finished another book debunking these claims. This week, it’s the developer behind Sluggish Morss, Dujanah and the upcoming Judero, Jack King-Spooner! Happy Jack! Do you think we have a nose on your bookshelf?

What are you currently reading?

I usually have several books on the go at once and at the moment I have more than usual. I am very interested in fairy tales and how they can be interpreted. I love it when stories handed down for hundreds of years end with familiar archetypes like the Good King or the third child being placed upon him. There is a lot to take from this. Lang’s Fairy Books, Ella Young’s Celtic Fairy Tales, Hughes’ How The Whale Became are all handy with Post-Its marking good bits. For something a little more substantial, I’ve been reading my father’s book Peterkin, which is a humorous semi-fantasy tale about how the first dog was domesticated. I have also read the Bible.

What did you read last time?

Besides all the folk stories and fairy tales I recently read Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (for the boy), Norm Macdonald’s Based On A True Story and The Woman In Me by Britney Spears. The first two are great.

What are you watching next?

I have Bob Mortimer’s book to read next, can’t wait. And reserve Prince Harry, but I think I’ve ruined the best parts for me from GMTV. And this really curious book by Neil Grossman about how a post-materialist social order can solve the challenges of modern life, all through fictional conversations with Plato and Socrates.

What quote or scene from a book has stuck with you?

I guess I don’t have a very good memory for a lot of things, I’m out of my mind and I’ve always been pretty useless at remembering lines. Probably the Robert Burns poem because where I grew up we always recited it and I’ve always loved it. As for a scene… maybe Aslan singing the darkness in Narnia (The Sorcerer’s Nephew) or the end of Winnie The Pooh where we leave them in an enchanted place… that absolutely cracks me up just thinking about it. I find both scenes very beautiful. Such a subtle use of language, one wrong word and it wouldn’t “get in”. I grew up loving Narnia more than Middle Earth and Winnie the Pooh (not Disney) means the world to me.

What book do your friends bother you to read?

Maybe White Noise by Don Delillo. Or Limmy’s books. Or Crime and Punishment if they haven’t read it.

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

There is an unfilmed script by John Water for a sequel to The Pink Flamingo that I think should be a game, but someone else probably said that. Also David Lynch did a script for a sort of sequel to Eraserhead called Ronnie Rocket that could be a game. What about Aesop’s fables? I’m tempted to say something really unpleasant. So the book should be kind of aphoristic and have a strong sense of the place… The story doesn’t matter because you can also read the book… To do, it would take sequels to gamify… it should to be Wind in the Willows.

An eclectic collection for your pile of shame, though Jack joins this column’s pile of shame with all the other guests who have failed to mention every book ever written. Are we somehow going to track down someone for next week who knows this biggest secret of goals? The faithful heads among you may have noticed that I have changed the fifth question, as is my wish. I’ll probably change a few more questions, just to keep you guessing. Or maybe I won’t, but isn’t the possibility that I might fill you with an exciting uncertainty about what the future might hold? Book now!