Your Recommendations

Books, your writing, and other texts you've recommended in relation to the last 10 podcasts

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

Hello Readers!

It’s been an interesting few months hearing the discussion from all of you in relation to the podcasts I’ve been putting out. We’ve looked at several ideas for layers of the truth in fiction, and I wanted to compile some of the reader recommendations from the comments. I’ll be back with an update on my project direction next week.

Just so you know, I linked any books to my Bookshop.org US affiliate page. If you want to support my work and local bookshops, the affiliate page sends me 10% and independent bookshops 80% of profits. It is a great organization and has sites also in the UK and Spain (unconnected to my shop).

Feel free, of course, to share other related recommendations in the comments here or on the original podcast post. This includes your work!

Enjoy.

📖 Part I Getting Lost
🎙How to use frames and titles to amplify stories ⬩HK topography
🎧 Let’s Do This

• Shimizu Akira : Japan Ordinary Photos - on liminal spaces (discussed by Jules )

• Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel (discussed by Simon Haisell )

📖 Quarry Bay, i
🎙 How to layer the cinematic in fiction ⬩ apartment buildings
🎧 Let’s Do This

• Damon Galgut's The Promise (discussed by Simon Haisell )

• Rhapsody (short film, recommended by Jules )

• Silent Hill 4: The Room video game (discussed by Nadia Gerassimenko )

• Blade Runner (film, recommended by Nathan Slake )

• Unknown Country (film, recommended by DB )

📖 Quarry Bay, ii
🎙 How to use multingualism in fiction ⬩Quarry Bay
🎧 Let’s Do This

• Exophonic writers: Kafka, Camus, Joseph Conrad, Tom Stoppard, Kundera ( Alexander Ipfelkofer )

• Lolita ( Nathan Slake )

• The Yield by Tara June Winch ( Simon Haisell )

• Ben Woestenburg and Harvey Hamer ‘s fiction

📖 Causeway Bay, i
🎙 How to consider political censorship in fiction ⬩newsrooms
🎧 Let’s Do This

• Roald Dahl and current debate about editing and cancel culture ( Alexander Ipfelkofer )

• Shayda (film, Nathan Slake )

• Florida book banning and LGBTQ+ fiction ( Mr. Troy Ford )

• A variety of fatwas on texts ( Alexander Ipfelkofer )

📖 Causeway Bay, ii
🎙 How to include discourse about class and income gap in fiction ⬩MTR and metros
🎧 Let’s Do This

• Mr. Troy Ford ‘s and Alexander Ipfelkofer ‘s fiction

• Jon ‘s upcoming fiction

• Titanic, Parasite, Squid Game ( Nadia Gerassimenko )

📖 Sheung Wan, i
🎙 How to use physics in fiction ⬩cafes
🎧 Let’s Do This

• The Arrow of Time by Roger Highfield and Peter Coveney ( Johnathan Reid )

• “Speaking of physics, if anyone is looking for visual inspiration, well, Nolan movies explore physics in refreshing ways. Remedy games are all about bending our understanding oh physics, especially Quantum Break (which is also a movie after you finish each chapter), Control, and Alan Wake.” Nadia Gerassimenko

• Harvey Hamer ‘s fiction

📖 Sheung Wan, ii
🎙 How to use the concept of the Pharmakon in fiction ⬩Sheung Wan
🎧 Let’s Do This

• Con/Jur/d ‘s fiction

• No Simple Remedy by Ben Woestenburg

• This chapter from Harvey Hamer

• “Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Magwitch in Great Expectations, Dexter from the American series about a serial killer” ( Jules )

📖 Vienna, i
🎙 How to use pathetic fallacy in fiction ⬩reclaimed land
🎧 Let’s Do This

• The Layers of the City by Antoni Jach ( Peter Wise )

  • Also: “you mention Hardy, check out The Woodlanders, a virtual prose poem to place and its interactions with the human. And one that works in the other direction: The Story of the Weeping Camel (film) in which the exchange of ‘meaning’ passes from the human to the animal.”

  • Swampy Cree (Manitoba) poems

  • Lion Man figure from the Stadel Cave in Germany

  • Just see his comments!

• California vs. New England and micro-seasons ( Mr. Troy Ford and Nathan Slake )

• Harvey Hamer ‘s fiction

• “I’m reminded of The Jungle (1906) and Sinclair's aperture opening up as the train leaves the countryside and heads towards the stockyards of Chicago in the beginning of the novel…” ( Brian Wilcox )

• Persuasion, Jane Austen ( John Halbrooks )

• From later in my novel:

  Up on the fourth floor, Ivy stayed up late to watch the storm, listen to the wind against the buildings. The threat of nature was intense but beautiful. It reminded her of days in Maine on the coast, the remnants of hurricanes that worked their way North. 

  Her solitude on this evening was cathartic as she thought of ocean waves. But at the same time, as much as she tried, she couldn’t help but feel her own pathetic fallacy in the storm. Though she was trying to tell herself everything was under control…her future was fine…something kept telling her that whatever methods she had employed were self-destructive and had made her passive to the brutal nature of the world. 

  Despite her new resolutions, Ivy continued to feel shame for getting into all those shitty situations. Was she so fucking desperate? Or was that just a part of finding love?

📖 Vienna, ii
🎙 How to use negative space and gaps in fiction ⬩Vienna
🎧 Let’s Do This

• Empty space as a place for the reader to reflect themselves in the work ( Brian Wilcox )

• Death as absence in the fiction of Mr. Troy Ford

• Intentional ambiguities in the fiction of Alexander Ipfelkofer

• “The Old Ones” by Stephanie Sweeney

• Kae Tempest: “Icarus”

• 10 Books to Make Sense of Vienna

• Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World, Richard Cockett of The Economist (I’ve seen this at several bookshops since recording and really, really want to read it! It’s big…and I’ve had a pile of books in my hands at time of viewing, so it will come. Anybody read it?)

A Hong Kong Story