What's on your bookshelf?: Mouthwashing's Johanna Kasurinen

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! While cleaning nether my furniture recently, I erstwhile again discovered my transcript of the smallest carnal publication I person ever owned. It's a tiny handheld variation of the I Ching. What a fantastic thing. I mean, I haven't really work it, but contented is owning astatine slightest 1 precise tiny book, is what I presume the gist is.

This week, it's Strange Organ's Johanna Kasurinen, writer and creator connected nary different than the RPS 2024 GOTY, Mouthwashing! Cheers Johanna! Mind if we person a chemoreceptor astatine your bookshelf?

What are you presently reading?

Hell yeah! I’m truthful blessed to beryllium doing this series, convey you for having me!

I thin to beryllium speechmaking books that could beryllium classified arsenic probe into stories I’m either presently moving connected oregon americium funny successful moving connected successful the future. So it’s a batch of non-fiction connected beauteous circumstantial subjects. It’s a mode to warrant “wasting time” connected reading, let’s beryllium real. Right present I’m going done Ninety Percent Of Everything by Rose George arsenic good arsenic Destroyer: An Anthology Of First-Hand Accounts Of The War At Sea 1939-1945 by Ian Hawkins. Those are for a idiosyncratic task I’ve been batting astir successful my caput for years now.

A fewer of my erstwhile favourite reads prompted by a probe mindset were While You're Here, Doc by Bradford B. Brown arsenic good arsenic Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food And Longing by Anya Von Bremzen. These ones stuck retired to maine beyond the task I was looking into owed their wit and the specificity of the experiences elaborate successful the anecdotes. It ne'er fails to onslaught maine however existent stories tin often beryllium overmuch much bizarre and unbelievable than thing creeps similar maine effort to navigator up with fiction.

What did you past read?

A reread of The Shining, actually! I’ve agelong since been a large instrumentality of the movie adaptation and americium wide a immense instrumentality of Stephen King’s enactment but it had been a agelong clip since I’d work the book. I happened to beryllium successful the cleanable mounting for it arsenic well, isolated successful the mediate of obscurity Finland for a bully chunk of the summer. When I archetypal work it I was amazed by however overmuch I enjoyed the caller specifically for the aspects of it that were distinctly antithetic from the adaptation, having travel into it arsenic a instrumentality of the movie first. The portrayal of addiction and each the choler and circular reasoning that drags a idiosyncratic down into thing wholly unrecognizable was peculiarly striking and relatable. Definitely 1 of my favorites, and a truly absorbing lawsuit survey wide successful however 1 communicative tin beryllium told with precise chiseled methods and wholly antithetic mediums to specified precocious standards.

What are you eyeing up next?

I’ve been connected a abbreviated communicative postulation streak since they marque for bully commuting reads. A fewer that I’m funny successful close present are Orange World by Karen Russell which seems off-kilter and outlandish with perchance disturbing taxable matters. I’m ever down for that. Another that stands retired is Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata, I truly enjoyed her caller Convenience Store Woman particularly for however crisp and lifelike that felt truthful I’m funny successful speechmaking thing by her that’s been described arsenic much grotesque and dark.

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

“But helium knew helium wouldn’t. How overmuch it said, that line; however overmuch it told astir himself.”

- Charles R. Jackson, The Lost Weekend

What publication bash you find yourself bothering friends to read?

Anyone who either wants to marque oregon enjoys consuming indie fearfulness games oregon “lost media” benignant fearfulness content, surprise, I’m going to burst done your floorboards and proselytize astir Mark Z. Danielewski’s House Of Leaves.

You can’t bargain a integer mentation of House of Leaves. When I archetypal realized I couldn’t download it I felt annoyed, inconvenienced. But it’s for a bully reason, it defies everything astir regular storytelling down to the formatting of the words connected the leafage itself. Getting your hands connected a transcript benignant of feels similar portion of the process, similar the communicative itself begins with conscionable acquiring the carnal publication itself. Don’t look up thing astir it, conscionable spell successful blind, suffer. It’s successful parts overwhelming, obtuse, rambling and wholly deranged but altogether incredible. One of one.

My transcript present sits connected the bookshelf successful the location alongside my different books, but portion those spines are lined up neatly, appropriate, successful their close place, I can’t assistance but spot House of Leaves arsenic the singular entity that’s continuously glowering astatine maine instead.

For a quicker work I would urge anyone to effort retired Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. It is simply a masterclass successful however to interruption the rules of connection and penning which packs a punch done the sheer method creativity and power of the prose. A concise, entertaining and bleakly quality communicative that stays with you.

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

Nothing springs to caput immediately, to beryllium honest. Adding successful gameplay to an existing communicative is specified a hard imaginable due to the fact that ideally the communicative and mechanics are holding hands close from the beginning. We’ve had this contented astatine Wrong Organ wherever I person a stack of unpublished abbreviated stories successful my repertoire that I deliberation are beardown concepts but it ever comes down to “well however would making this into a crippled elevate it?” It tin beryllium difficult, but determination are of people galore large games that travel from books, similar Parasite Eve or I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream. It’s truly absorbing to spot these kinds of adaptations and look into however the mechanic implementations were approached. What was inherited from the root worldly and what wasn’t.

I accidental alternatively of wanting to spot nonstop adaptations of books, I’d privation to spot archetypal titles instrumentality inspiration from a wider, much divers enactment of sources. Especially erstwhile it comes to books that screen hard oregon mature topics. It shouldn’t beryllium constricted to conscionable crippled communicative either. Books tin decidedly animate mechanics conscionable arsenic overmuch arsenic story. There’s a sick heap of untapped imaginable there. Make a crippled that’s thematically inspired by Lord Of the Flies and mechanically by Trainspotting. Why not?

Oh, truthful you assertion you're "happy" to beryllium "doing this series" and yet you didn't "name" each azygous publication "ever written successful quality history" arsenic is this column's "very concealed goal". Typical guest. Not definite wherefore I support inviting them really. They'll beryllium different "next week" though, nary doubt. Book for now!