Following my second bout of covid, I reflected on what books and video games I read/”read” to pass the time, wondering what hits different when Sick. This is a ranking based entirely not on quality of works, but how the metric slides when you are sick, isolated, looking for something to entertain yourself aside from texting everyone “lol i’m dying”
1. Alan Wake
You know what kind of slaps when you’re sick? The deeply mid, cliche quality of writing of Alan Wake. I just started plowing through this, even playing when it was dark out which my baby brain can’t handle. I have a high tolerance for horror movies, but controlling a character in a horror game is often something I cannot do at all, even in a horror-lite game like Alan Wake. But once covid brain hit? Hell yeah, I wanted all of it. Give me every goofy-ass situation that happens to Alan Wake. I want every metaphor about how Being A Creative is like living in a nightmare.
I want birds that make monster groans attacking me. Give me the mysterious spooky old lady who seems to be a different antagonist than who we thought was our antagonist thus far! Give me the Stephen King supernatural-ass inexplicable-things-are-happening-ain’t-that-scary scares. I felt alive in the midst of this thing that I have always known was a little too goofy to be particularly “good”.
2. Monstrilio (Gerardo Sámano Córdova)
My girlfriend gave me this novel for Christmas and I brought it home with me and once I was quarantined in my bedroom, it was time to crack it open. I want to say it has a slow start, but in covid-addled retrospect, I think the slow start that exists in my head is, like, eleven pages.
The plot of this one is a couple’s child dies, and during her grieving the woman cuts out a piece of their dead son’s lung to keep. Which she then feeds and it begins to grow into a little monster. There seems to be a Table of Contents–promised shift in perspectives between different characters that I’m looking forward to, the magic realism of the premise is done in a way that really works for me (enough to get the ball rolling, the why this is happening isn’t the important part so don’t think about it too hard), and even though this is a very sad book (or maybe because?) it really clicked with my covid christmas quarantine sadness. I haven’t gotten very far though because, again, covid. And because, par for the course for me, you will see how long this list of how many things I was already in the middle of.
3. Persona 3
Admittedly this is high on the list because I was mostly just dungeon crawling, which feels like cheating for including this as a “reading” video game, but I still had covid when I got back into the parts of a Persona game where you’re largely between the action video game-y dungeon parts and the denser story parts, where you mostly just go to school each day and have short conversations that sort of advance subplots but mostly just add texture to role-playing as a high school teenager. And that was delightful. Not just because I like this sort of lowkey hangout type of video game to begin with, but during the social isolation of covid, wow, what a blessing.
Love that I’m so early in my Persona journey; I got so many more of these! Just, uh, would prefer to not get covid again to feel that gratitude, I’m good thanks.
4. Big Swiss (Jen Beagin)
Started reading this before covid and already had a “well, it just got more interesting now that these two characters have actually met and one of them is acting super weird about it” shift in what I thought of this book, but during covid it went back to a bit of a narrative lull and/or I had too much covid brain where I couldn’t get invested in it.
As a post-covid update, picking up the book again it turns out the answer to “did anything happen during the bits I read while I was sick?” is “the main characters kissed” lol oops. To be fair, this does remain more of an indictment on me than the book. But apparently my brain will not commit weird doomed romance to memory during sickness.
5. The Odyssey (Emily Wilson Translation)
I’ve enjoyed revisiting The Odyssey with a new (better?) translation for my book club much more than I was expected, given my memories of a tedious, stuffy translation assigned in high school. But once covid hit? Nope. Immediately back to hating it. Covid Matthew just saw walls of text describing people giving each other gifts and talking about their families and totally glazed over. After covid passed, it was more interesting again – the tedium has its own rhythm to it that makes it interesting from a historical perspective. That said, and I say this as someone who has read the unabridged Les Miserables, Waterloo chapters and all, The Odyssey doesn’t really need to be unabridged.
6. Final Fantasy Tactics
My covid-addled brain couldn’t even begin to understand what’s happening in this story lol sad
Standard Plugs Zone
ATTENTION NEW YORK CITY PEOPLE: my band is finally playing our debut concert! My band, Good Cry, will be the first in a 4-band lineup playing at The Broadway in Brooklyn on Tuesday, January 9. Tickets are on sale now!